3 Ways to Combat Fatigue with Sickle Cell Disease

Fatigue is a common symptom associated with sickle cell disease. Due to the smaller size of our red blood cells, we cannot carry as much oxygen as those with healthier red blood cells. This leads to a lack of oxygen in our bodies and, ultimately, fatigue.

Fatigue describes the feeling of constant tiredness and lack of energy. Being tired all of the time is frustrating because it prevents me from doing some of the things I want to do. In response, I have decided to do all that I can to minimize its effects.

Following are some of the things that have helped me:

1. Drink more water

Being hydrated is essential to optimizing your energy levels. When we are dehydrated, our blood thickens and does not move as freely through our bodies. This means that the heart has to work harder to pump blood around the body, which results in fatigue.

Making sure you are well hydrated may significantly improve your energy. Other benefits associated with good hydration include clearer skin and better liver function. In a previous column, I shared tips for maintaining adequate hydration levels.

2. Optimize your sleep

Adhering to a good sleep routine can help when it comes to dealing with fatigue. This includes the quantity of sleep and the activities we engage in before bedtime.

While preparing for sleep, some people may opt for a hot drink. While this may be comforting, if the drink contains caffeine, it could prevent you from falling asleep. Drinks that are high in sugar and alcoholic beverages can also disrupt your sleep. 

Ensuring adequate rest is essential when combating fatigue. Experts recommend that adults get seven to nine hours of sleep a night.

Your sleep quality can also be improved with a favorable environment. Make sure that your room is dark, cool, and quiet to minimize disturbances while you sleep. (MORE)

Source: Sickle Cell Disease News

Hydration and Travel

Staying Hydrated While Traveling – Why It’s So Important

When people travel, there are various factors that can exacerbate dehydration and take the fun and excitement out of going on a trip. Getting enough fluids each day is certainly important when you’re at home and going about your normal routines. But it is perhaps even more important while visiting a new place via plane, train, or car.

Here’s why it is so important to stay hydrated while traveling and some tips about how to stay hydrated on your next trip.

Causes of Dehydration During Travel

When you travel, your body is taken out of its normal routines and exposed to different elements it’s not used to. If you travel to another country, you could be at a higher risk of traveler’s diarrhea due to food and drinks you consume. Also, air travel commonly causes dehydration due to the low humidity levels in airplane cabins. Prolonged heat exposure, excessive alcohol intake, and food poisoning can also cause a person’s body to become dehydrated while traveling.

Symptoms of Travel Dehydration

One of the most common symptoms of dehydration, while you’re away from home, is traveler’s diarrhea. This condition is often caused by E-coli that results from eating or drinking something that is contaminated with bacteria. Traveler’s diarrhea often lasts for at least three days and is typically accompanied by nausea, vomiting, cramping, abdominal pain, bloody stools, or fever.

Other symptoms of dehydration that occur during travel include headaches, dry skin, extreme thirst, dizziness, and a lack of urination.

The Importance of Travel Hydration

Staying hydrated while traveling means much more than not feeling thirsty, especially when you’re traveling. When you become dehydrated, your overall health is put at risk and you are more likely to feel fatigued, have an increased heart rate, and experience confusion.

All of these things can be a recipe for disaster if you’re traveling for work and need to be alert or if you’re trying to navigate an unfamiliar place on vacation. However, maintaining enough water in your system can be effective in preventing blood clots in your lungs or legs while traveling, as well as for preventing heart attacks. When you’re away from home, you won’t have access to doctors who are familiar with your health, and you may have trouble finding the care you need to manage your symptoms.

How to Stay Hydrated on a Trip

Although squeezing through the aisle to use the airplane lavatory may sound like a hassle, try to drink about a cup of water each hour while flying. You should also consume hydrating foods on travel days to prevent dehydration, such as fresh fruits, vegetables, and soups. We also suggest bringing Hydration Drops with you to add to your water.

Source: Hydratze

Staying Hydrated As A New Study Strategy

Humans need water to survive, of course, but a water bottle is often traded in for a cup of coffee. Monitoring fluid intake isn’t usually high on a student’s list of priorities, but this can lead to health and mood issues. 

One student, who prefers the pseudonym Jack, will tell you why drinking water has become a priority in his daily life.

In early October, Jack was simultaneously treated for a bladder infection, a kidney infection, and kidney stones. Jack is in his twenties and reported drinking around four ounces of water a day before his health issues caused him to reevaluate his liquid choices.

“I knew I wasn’t [staying hydrated],” Jack said, “but I thought, what’s the worst that could happen?” He said he thought staying hydrated was something to worry about later in life. Jack now aims for drinking at least one 24-ounce water bottle a day and has largely cut out caffeine from his diet.

There isn’t an official amount of water prescribed for daily drinking because of differences in weight, sex, climate, and activity. However, the recommended daily water amount from TheNational Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine is 91 ounces for women and 125 ounces for men.

The good news is that 20% of that daily value can come from your food and caffeinated liquids can help with other 80% of hydration. (MORE)

Source: The Metropolitan

7 Ways Drinking More Water Can Make You Healthier

Getting these health benefits is as easy as drinking a few glasses of water.

Water is extremely important -- so much so that it makes up 60% of our bodies. If you don't drink enough water in any given day, you can feel the physical effects, including fatigue, irritability and headaches.

Dehydration can also impact your overall health and well being in more ways than you may think, leading to UTIs, digestion issues and even kidney issues. It turns out that water may be the cure to several common maladies, but some people still struggle to drink enough.

Here's just some of the amazing things drinking enough water can do for you, and how to tell if you're hydrated. 

Benefits of drinking more water

1. You'll feel energized

Drinking more water gives you more energy to do anything from strenuous physical feats to staying awake at your desk after lunch. Many studies have shown that dehydration lowers athletic performance, making you feel sluggish and off your game. It can also cause you to feel tired or sleepy, so if you're getting enough sleep but can't keep your eyes open, you may need to just up your water intake.

One study suggested that being dehydrated hurts physical performance for any activity longer than thirty seconds. Even if you don't work out for hours on end, short flights of stairs or walking around the city you live in will feel much easier if you're hydrated. (MORE)

Source: Cnet

Hydrating Foods: The Top 20 And Their Benefits

Water is essential for human health, but water alone does not hydrate the body. In fact, people can increase their hydration level and water intake with many foods and other drinks.

Eating healthful hydrating foods — especially during warm weather, when the body loses water and vital electrolytes through sweating — can keep hydration levels up and provide a variety of nutrients.

These 20 foods contain at least 85% water, making them a great choice for a person's hydration needs. (MORE)

Source: Medical News Today

Got Water? Most Kids, Teens Don't Drink Enough

Most American children and teenagers aren't drinking enough fluids, and that's leaving them mildly dehydrated, according to a new study. In fact, one-quarter of a broad cross-section of children ages 6 to 19 apparently don't drink any water as part of their fluid intake.

The Harvard scientists who turned up the finding were initially looking into the consumption of sugary drinks in schools and looking for ways to steer children toward water instead — a much healthier beverage.

Along the way, they noticed that "kids weren't really drinking that much fluid," says postdoctoral researcher Erica Kenney at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She wondered if that was posing any problems for them.

So she and her colleagues dug into data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which gathers an amazing amount of information from study participants, including chemical tests of their urine. Those urine tests reveal whether people are adequately hydrated — people who don't take in enough water have darker, saltier urine.

The researchers report Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health that more than half of the several thousand students studied between 2009 and 2012 were at least a bit dehydrated.

"This doesn't mean we're saying kids are dropping like flies or that they're very seriously dehydrated and need to go to the hospital or anything like that," Kenney says. But even mild dehydration can affect children's fatigue levels, mood and possibly their ability to learn, she says.

"It was astounding to me," Kenney says, that so many children said they drink no water at all. "And even among the kids who were drinking water — they weren't drinking very much of it." (MORE)

Source: NPR

More Studies Show Fluoride Affects Brain and Disrupts Sleep

While water fluoridation was never adopted or has been eliminated in many areas around the world, including most of western Europe,1 many U.S. water systems2 still add fluoride chemicals such as fluorosilicic acid3 (also known as hydrofluorosilicic acid) to their municipal water supplies.

As detailed in Christopher Bryson’s book, “The Fluoride Deception,”4 water fluoridation as a public health measure (ostensibly to improve dental health) was invented by brilliant schemers who needed a way to get rid of toxic industrial waste.

They duped politicians with fraudulent science and endorsements, and sold them on a “public health” idea in which humans are essentially used to filter this poison through their bodies, while the vast majority simply goes down the drain.

Since the inception of water fluoridation in 1945, fluorosilicic acid suppliers have been making hundreds of millions of dollars each year5 selling a hazardous industrial waste for use as a water additive rather than having to pay for toxic waste disposal.

“Toxic Treatment: Fluoride’s Transformation from Industrial Waste to Public Health Miracle” in the March 2018 issue of Origins,6 a joint publication by the history departments at The Ohio State University and Miami University, notes: (MORE)

Source: Mercola.com

The Power of Hydration for Endometriosis

The following article is from Endometriosis News:

I drink a lot of water. If you’ve been following my interstitial cystitis journey, you’ll know I’m actually drinking too much for my weight and height! But that’s not the case for most people. Most of us struggle with staying hydrated, yet it’s integral to managing endometriosis.

Many of us with endo suffer from symptoms such as:

• Brain fog
• Constipation
• Fatigue
• Difficulty concentrating
• Memory issues

But these are also symptoms of not drinking enough water.

What if we’re missing something? What if we aren’t taking a close look at some of the key foundations of health and nutrition that might be contributing to the symptoms of our disease? What if those symptoms weren’t solely caused by endometriosis, but were partly because of hydration issues? Could we improve our endometriosis symptoms by improving the foundations of our health?

I believe we could.

Water is a life source for all of us, and it’s particularly beneficial for those of us with endometriosis.

Healthy bowel movements are essential for managing endometriosis, and being properly hydrated supports the formation of healthy, easily passed stools. Our detoxification functions allow us to eliminate toxins and old hormones such as estrogen through our daily bowel movements and urine. We know that in many cases, endometriosis growth is encouraged by estrogen. A recent study showed that endometrial cells have varying hormone receptors, meaning some endometriosis actually responds to progesterone rather than estrogen. But there is evidence demonstrating that endometriosis is estrogen dependent for many of us.

We want to ensure that our hormones are correctly balanced. A key part of this is having a healthy detoxification system, which supports the excretion of estrogen through the colon. (MORE)

Source: Endometriosis News

Could Hydration Levels Influence Cognitive Function?

Dehydration can cause headaches and several physiological issues, and older adults are most at risk of experiencing it. Does it also affect cognitive function, however? And might overhydration also affect mental performance?

Dehydration can cause headaches, lethargy, dizziness, and many other issues, depending on how severe it is.

Studies have tended to focus on the effects of dehydration in younger populations — especially in the context of sports and fitness, where overexertion and abundant sweating can cause people to lose more fluids than they than ingest.

However, one segment of the population is particularly susceptible to dehydration: older adults.

"As we age, our water reserves decline due to reductions in muscle mass, our kidneys become less effective at retaining water, and hormonal signals that trigger thirst and motivate water intake become blunted," explains Hilary Bethancourt, Ph.D., from the Pennsylvania State University College of Health and Human Development in State College.

Older adults also have a higher risk of cognitive impairment. Are their hydration levels and their cognitive performance linked in any way? Bethancourt and colleagues set out to answer this question in a new study. Their findings now appear in the European Journal of Nutrition. (MORE)

Source: Medical News Today

The New Rules of Hydration

There's a ton of misinformation about how much to hydrate and when, but the basics are actually pretty simple. Here's what you need to know.

Robert Sallis has seen it all. As a medical director for the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii, he’s spent 20 years watching athletes in every manner of distress get wheeled into the medical tent. He’s seen hyponatremia, or overhydration, a handful of times. He’s seen hundreds, maybe thousands, of dehydration cases. Sallis has even seen athletes show symptoms of both at the same time: they’ve dropped weight over the course of the race, signaling dehydration, but their blood sodium levels are dangerously low, a sign of hyponatremia.

What most surprises Sallis, a former president of the American College of Sports Medicine, is the heap of misinformation on hydration that he hears swirling among athletes. He partially blames the media that picks up stories like this Cycling News article from December 2016, in which Roger Palfreeman, Team Sky’s top doctor, touted “functional dehydration” as a strategy for making his athletes lighter and thus faster. “It’s stupid,” says Sallis, adding that mental and physical performance plunges when you’re 2 percent dehydrated—any advantage from a reduction in weight would likely be offset by a reduction in power and mental resolve.

Advocates of functional dehydration tend to cite two athletes in particular to support their position: Tour de France rider Tommy Simpson and marathoner Jim Peters, who was a lifelong proponent of abstaining from food and water during races. “There is no need to take any solid food at all and every effort should also be made to do without liquid, as the moment of food or drink is taken, the body has to start dealing with its digestion,” Peters said in 1957. According to Sallis, both athletes experienced extreme, career-ending cases of heat stroke because of this strategy. Simpson, known for trying to ride long stages with just a few bottles, died in 1967, likely from a combination of heat stroke and amphetamines, after collapsing during a scorching climb up Mont Ventoux.

But there is a lot of new, thorough research on the rules of hydration, and these rules could save your life. Learn them, and then practice them. Here are the basics. (MORE)

Source: Outside Online

Stay Hydrated

DRINKING FLUIDS IS CRUCIAL TO STAYING HEALTHY AND MAINTAINING THE FUNCTION OF EVERY SYSTEM IN YOUR BODY, INCLUDING YOUR HEART, BRAIN, AND MUSCLES.

6 Benefits Of Staying Hydrated

STAYING HYDRATED - STAYING HEALTHY

Water accounts for 60 percent of your body (or about 11 gallons or 92 pounds in a 155-pound person) and is essential to every cell. So it’s not to surprising that new research — reported on at a recent British Psychological Society Annual Conference — found that college students who brought water with them into an exam scored higher marks than their counterparts who didn’t have water.

Unfortunately, the researchers didn’t look into whether the students actually drank the water. Nor did they investigate the reasons behind the study findings. But the researchers hypothesized that drinking water could improve students’ thinking and/or help students stay calm and quell their anxiety — both of which could hinder their test performance.

Their thinking makes sense: Other research has suggested that staying hydrated keeps your memory sharp, your mood stable and your motivation intact. You can also think through a problem more easily.

Staying hydrated doesn’t just impact your brain, though. Here are a few ways water benefits your body’s health. (MORE)

Are You Really Hydrated?

I Know You Drink Water 

But Are You Hydrated On A Cellular Level?