On Sat, 13 Aug 2016 22:22:18 -0300, Joy Beeson
wrote:



The first sign of dehydration is loss of judgment. By definition, you
are not going to notice that, but if you do something that you
consider particularly clever, you might want to pause and think.


You might be dehydrated if:

you've been riding for four or more hours and you aren't anxiously
evaluating the opacity of every bush.

you keep applying and re-applying your lip balm.

you feel tired and you haven't been working all that hard.

your urine is darker than usual.

your stomach feels a little off.

you get a muscle cramp.

Your post inspired me to do a little research on "dehydration" and it
turns out that related to exercise it is a fairly complex subject.
Bicyclists apparently drink all the time while the top level
marathoners drink relatively little and typically lose 7 to 8 pounds
during a race, about 3 - 4 liters of water, or 6 to 8 bicycle bottles.

In addition when one begins to lose water content one doesn't
immediately become thirsty and after water is imbibed it takes as much
as 20 minutes before your body has absorbed it into the body's fluid
systems and adding complexity is that chemicals in the water determine
how quickly it will be absorbed. GaterAid was not originally designed
as a "sports drink" but as a liquid that the body absorbed faster than
pure water.

Given that the human body has a sort of sell leveling fluid system the
logical thing to do is to drink as much as possible, as often as
possible, as the body's automatic volume control will eliminate any
surplus :-)

It might be of interest that a male body weight is largely, 60% water
while a female is only 55% water so theoretically a woman might be
more susceptible to dehydration than a man.
--
cheers,

John B.