Water

You know, it's taken me 47 years to get it right.  I never did drink much throughout the day.  I did manage to acquire a Coke habit - Coca Cola that is, Classic.  About 3 years ago, I got a nasty virus, and ended up badly dehydrated and had to have IV fluids.  A couple of bags later and I'm feeling better, although it was days before I was over that virus.  I drank cranapple juice while I was sick.  I realized that I hadn't had a Coke in a few days, so I thought I'd see if I could go a week.  I found out that Coke dehydrates you instead of hydrating you.  You have to drink two glasses of water to even things out.

And just three or four months before the virus,  I'd been admitted to the hospital to get re-hydrated, I knew I needed to make some changes.

I made the week without coke and thankfully without the caffeine withdrawal.  I tried for two weeks and reached that goal, then I went for a month, two months, and well, you get the picture.  I made it a year, and now, it's been three years since I've had a Coca Cola.  Like any addict, sometimes I long for that taste, but I have managed to stay strong.

I replaced Coke with cranapple juice, but the problem with that was that I didn't increase the volume much.

Chronic dehydration started causing all sorts of problems for me.  After my back surgery in 2010, it delayed me being released from the hospital by 3 days because they couldn't get me hydrated.  What was supposed to be a 2-3 day admission stretched into 6 days.  My neurosurgeon later commented that I had done great with the actual surgery, he just couldn't get me well from a medical standpoint because of the dehydration.

During my recovery, I started passing out, or nearly passing out.  Dehydration they told me.  Some tummy problems - dehydration again.  I stayed dizzy all the time and found myself holding onto things to keep from falling over when I'd get a wave of dizziness.  Fighting that feeling of knowing you're about to faint isn't fun.  Being dizzy all of the time isn't fun.

I had to have a tilt table test because of all of this.  Turns out - chronic dehydration was causing the symptoms.  The doctor told me that 99.9% of his patients were told to avoid salt, but he wanted me to add salt, to everything.  And to increase my water intake.

Still, it's hard changing life long habits.  I tried, I really did, but I was failing pretty miserably.  On top of failure, I was still fighting the dizziness.  However, I did notice that I wasn't as dizzy all of the time.  For the first time, I was feeling a little encouragement.

It was frustrating to not be able to stand for very long before the blood starts to pool in your ankles and because of your dehydration your heart can't pump it back very well, and the resulting dizziness causes the near fainting. 

My GI doctor told me that he believes it is POTS syndrome.  Dr Google agrees - reading the information about POTS was like they wrote it for me.  Guess what the treatment is?  Yep, water and salt.  He said that finally for him, the years of trying to deal with my crazy GI symptoms - now everything falls into place.  Several years ago, I had a very bad episode of what turned out to be ischemic colitis - which they describe as a heart attack in your intestines.  They were all surprised that I actually had it, I did not fit the profile of someone who gets IC - I had none of the risk factors.  They just scrathed their heads, but the biopsy confirmed it.  He had a light bulb moment at my last visit and for him, the chronic dehydration was the culprit, the last puzzle piece.  He said he felt comfortable to release me from further follow up with him unless something comes up in the future and I need him.

So,  what I took away from that last visit with him - water and salt.  Go figure.

Finally, after having it pounded in my head, I knew I needed to do something.  I don't know why it was such a struggle to drink the water, but it was.

So, I had to come up with something that I could stick to.

Four 16.9 oz bottles of water would get me the minimum amount of fluid a day that I needed.  So, in order to keep track of what I was drinking.  I would stop and grab 4 bottles of water a day and put them on my desk.  I won't leave work for the day until all 4 of them are gone.  I did it the first day, and the second day, and every day since.  Sometimes, I go grab a 5th bottle. So, when I get home, anything else I drink is gravy.  On the weekends, I put four bottles on the kitchen table, Chris knows that's my hydration station and leaves those bottles alone.

I've really been successful, and over the past few weeks, I've noticed a pretty significant decrease in my dizziness.  Talk about encouragement.

I helped out at a car show yesterday, and was on my feet for most of the day.  Once I got home, I realized that I hadn't been dizzy all day.  I didn't have to sit down because of dizziness, not once!  I did have to rest my feet and back though.  I would take a break and go sit in the car and turn on my heated seats, because it was so cold and windy and raining, but I didn't have to take a breather for being dizzy.

Water.  Who knew?