Five Weird Symptoms of Dehydration

Everyone knows the feeling: You forget to drink water for hours on end and start to feel strange. Your throat might feel dry and scratchy; maybe your muscles start to feel tight muscles. However, inside the body, even more is happening: Cells start to shrink as water leaves them, and the kidneys start to conserve water, which makes urine become darker.

It's an easy problem to fix by drinking more water. Yet so many of us don't do this basic act of self-care; 24 percent of older adults in the U.S. are at least a little dehydrated, according to a recent meta-analysis.

"Nothing happens in your body without water playing a role in it, and so to ignore it completely is just missing huge opportunities to improve health,” said Jodi Stookey, a nutrition epidemiologist at San Francisco Department of Public Health who studies hydration. Although official recommendations vary—the widely-cited eight glasses a day may not have strong scientific backing—Stookey recommends about a liter a day for most adults.

Please select this link to read the complete article from TIME.