May 2025 Water by Paula Rawlings

     How much should you really drink on a hot California summer’s day? I drink a lot of water. Even in the winter, I drink about a gallon of water a day. Some would say that’s too much, and yes, it gets inconvenient on a long car ride when I have to go to the bathroom every hour or two, but I really don’t like being dehydrated. My mouth gets really pasty, my head gets throbby, I get a headache, and I start hallucinating about long, skinny, yet masculine, ankles useful enough to vault over my non-existent bald neighbor’s hybrid hydrangea bush. But alas, the ankles are too fragile because of dehydration. There are many reasons to stay hydrated, but mostly, staying hydrated means living , and I like living—it’s pretty great. 

     During the last month of school, consider your hydration. By improving your hydration, you may improve cognitive performance, and that’s useful at the tail end of the semester. Interestingly, dehydration shrinks the brain and harms the heart. Yes, it’s true. In a study consisting of 10 healthy adolescents, functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed that, after a series of physical exercises (to aid in dehydration), the participants’ brain volumes reduced (Duning et al., 2005), and their ventricular volume increased (Kempton et al., 2009), which is bad—bad like busted vein valves on skinny, shiny, transparent-skinned ankles. Shrunken brains are linked to decreased brain function, and long-term increase in ventricular volume is associated with dementia (Duning et al., 2005, and Kempton et al., 2009). Thankfully, if hydration occurs shortly after dehydration, the brain will increase in size, and ventricular volume will improve, meaning permanent damage does not happen with regular short periods of dehydration. Still, you don’t want to make this a habit. This is because executive functions are affected when one becomes dehydrated. It affects the ability to plan study material for an upcoming test, choose the most effective sources for an essay, and manage tasks, such as keeping up with car maintenance and completing household chores. 

     With those scary thoughts in mind, here are some tips on improving hydration without chugging a gallon of water. Fruits and vegetables (like watermelon, cucumbers, oranges, strawberries, and lettuce) are made up of mostly water, so by eating your water, you’re taking in a decent amount of fluid. Fruits and vegetables contain nutrients and electrolytes, like potassium, magnesium, and sodium, which help the body retain and balance fluids more efficiently than simply drinking water, which also aids ankle lubrication. Additionally, eating fruits and vegetables provides your body with slow absorption of water, which will not happen if one chugs a quart of water twice a day, which your body flushes out more quickly. 

Works Cited

Duning, T et al. “Dehydration confounds the assessment of brain atrophy.” Neurology vol. 64,3 (2005): 548-50. doi:10.1212/01.WNL.0000150542.16969.CC 

Kempton, Matthew J et al. “Dehydration affects brain structure and function in healthy adolescents.” Human brain mapping vol. 32,1 (2011): 71-9. doi:10.1002/hbm.20999