Are You Dehydrated?

Go to any fish or pet store and purchase a hydration meter for about $11. Here is information on determining hydration or dehydration with a hydrometer or salimeter  which is used to make certain the aquarium water has the proper salt to water ratio.

It is used by every person who owns tropical fish and wants them healthy. It measures the salt/water ratio which ideally should be at 1.023 and for a person should be at 1.010 & ideally between 1.004 and 1.008. This should enable even the most skeptical skeptic to determine if he is dehydrated or not without talking to anyone. Please do a search on the words "specific gravity salt urine" or "specific gravity urinalysis salt urine" for more information. This alone should make the logic of the water cure far easier with less explaining, plus the ease of it could save countless lives.

Every urinalysis, in addition to other things, also measures specific gravity for the purpose of quantifying the level of hydration. Doctors often interpret a reading (over 1.010) as having too much salt in the diet. It is true that the salt is too high for the amount of water in the urine, but the problem is that there is too little water for the amount of salt which is usually caused by the use of caffeine & alcohol dehydrate or just not drinking enough water. Bottom line is that the higher the reading over 1.010, the more dehydrated a person is.

Dr. Polancheck of Tucson, Arizona told me that he first tells every new patient that they must monitor their hydration level in their urine daily by using this device as 80% of the patients he sees are dehydrated. According to Dr. P., the perfect level is between 1.004 and 1.008. Connie & I both checked our a number of times & was within those limits every time but one.

What could be simpler than this for a person to determine his hydration? It certainly beats having to explain all the symptoms of dehydration. There is a rule that what gets measured gets done and this easy to use device should inspire any health conscious person to want to get one to measure theirs. The results are also irrefutable by medical science because they are already using it in every urinalysis.

Everyone should own one. The one Dr. P. uses is from Aquarium Systems & is called SeaTest, although I'm sure there are others that work just as well. He purchases them at Pet Smart. He said it is almost as accurate as the one purchased in medical supply houses costing many times more. The following is what I got off the Internet:

URINE DIPSTICK CHEMICAL ANALYSIS

Specific Gravity (sp gr)

Specific gravity (which is directly proportional to urine osmolality which measures solute concentration) measures urine density, or the ability of the kidney to concentrate or dilute the urine over that of plasma. Dipsticks are available that also measure specific gravity in approximations. Most laboratories measure specific gravity with a refractometer.

Specific gravity between 1.002 and 1.035 on a random sample should be considered normal if kidney function is normal. *Since the sp gr of the glomerular filtrate in Bowman's space ranges from 1.007 to 1.010, any measurement below this range indicates hydration and any measurement above it indicates relative dehydration.*

If sp gr is not > 1.022 after a 12 hour period without food or water, renal concentrating ability is impaired and the patient either has generalized renal impairment or nephrogenic diabetes insipidus. In end-stage renal disease, sp gr tends to become 1.007 to 1.010.

Any urine having a specific gravity over 1.035 is either contaminated, contains very high levels of glucose, or the patient may have recently received high density radiopaque dyes intravenously for radiographic studies or low molecular weight dextran solutions. Subtract 0.004 for every 1% glucose to determine non-glucose solute concentration.

Dr. Polacheck jpolach@dakotacom.net