My Order
Your cart is empty.
Have an account?
Log in here.
What to Know About IV Fluids for Dehydration
May 19, 2022
Have you ever complained of head and neck tension, stomachache, or any other minor discomfort? There is a good chance you are just dehydrated. We all know how important it is to drink water and stay hydrated, but it’s challenging to constantly stay on top of it.
If you’re having a busy day, you have to remember to lug a water bottle around. Additionally, sometimes we become dehydrated by things outside of our control – such as environmental changes, extreme weather, vomiting, and diarrhea can all lead to dehydration.
Keeping our body hydrated is crucial to keep our body functioning properly. If you are feeling dehydrated, getting IV fluids will be the best way to get your body hydrated again. Here’s what you should know about IV fluids for dehydration.
Who Is At Risk of Dehydration?
On the most basic level, everyone can be at risk of dehydration. If your daily lifestyle includes spending time in hot weather or exercising excessively, you need to pay attention to your body to ensure you don’t become dehydrated.
Additionally, if you have recently been sick or experienced a condition that causes vomiting or diarrhea, you will also be at a greater risk of dehydration. Anything that causes your body to lose an excessive amount of fluids will be a risk factor for dehydration.
Older adults also have a higher risk of severe dehydration because their body composition changes, and they naturally retain less water.
What Can Happen If You Are Too Dehydrated?
If dehydration is left untreated, it can lead to serious complications such as:
- Sensitivity to Heat – If your body is not properly hydrated, you may experience heat injury after exercising or sweating heavily. Heat injury can range in severity and cause anything from mild heat cramps, to heat exhaustion, to potentially life-threatening heatstroke.
- Kidney Issues – If your body is not properly hydrated, that probably means you are not urinating enough, which can cause issues for your kidney. Dehydration can lead to urinary tract infections, kidney stones, and even kidney failure.
- Seizures – Electrolytes being out of balance, which happens when you are severely dehydrated, can cause issues with the electrical messages in your body. If your body is not handling the electrical messages properly, you may experience irregular muscle contractions or a loss of consciousness, which can lead to a seizure.
- Low blood volume – Because your body needs to be properly hydrated to maintain a healthy amount of blood, being dehydrated means less blood is running through your body which causes a drop in blood pressure. When your blood pressure drops, less oxygen is reaching your tissues, and this can be life threatening.
Obviously, these complications range in severity, but none of them are desirable. Keep your body hydrated, and you can avoid these sometimes serious issues.
What Are The Signs of Dehydration?
As we have already learned, dehydration can lead to serious damage to the body. Therefore, it is helpful to understand the warning signs so you can act when needed.
Bad Breath
Dehydration can prevent your body from making enough saliva, which will lead to bacterial overgrowth in the mouth. A side effect of not having enough saliva is bad breath.
We wake up with morning breath because saliva production slows down during sleep, which causes bacteria to grow and leaves a bad taste in your mouth. So, next time your mouth seems dry and your breath smells off, it may signify your body is dehydrated.
Flakey or Dry Skin
If your body is not properly hydrated, you can get dehydrated skin. Additionally, your skin may even appear pale, dry, or even flakey. One test to check if you might be dehydrated is to pinch your skin. If your skin takes some time to return to its normal, flat appearance after pinching, this might be a sign of dehydration.
Muscle Cramps
If your body does not have the proper amount of fluids, it won’t be able to cool you off. If you are dehydrated and staying in warm weather or are sweating from exercise, you can get heat illness.
A telling symptom of dehydrated-related heat illness is muscle cramps. Your muscles will seize up under the heat while trying to function normally.
Even in cooler weather, dehydration is possible if your body is not adequately hydrated while working out. The symptoms may be milder or come on slower, but dehydration carries the same risks, regardless of the temperature.
Head and Neck Tension
Because your body is not operating properly when dehydrated, you can feel aches and discomfort in different parts of your body. Head and neck tension is a widespread symptom of dehydration.
They can feel different to different people, but they typically have symptoms similar to those of other common headaches. For many people, it can be described as a pulsating ache on both sides of the head that’s aggravated by physical activity.
Dehydration can also be a migraine trigger, and migraines can exist within a range of severity. Migraines might lead to severe pain on one side of the head, nausea, and light sensitivity.
What Are IV Fluids?
IV Therapy Treatment is a form of delivering fluids made up of electrolytes, vitamins, nutrients, minerals, or medicine to your body through an IV. They contain a saline solution and the nutrients you want to be administered to your body.
In the case of using IV fluids for rehydration, the saline solution will administer electrolytes and other rehydrating nutrients that help restore hydration fast. The exact mixture of your IV will depend on your level of electrolytes and your goals for rehydration.
IV fluids are made using crystalloid solutions, which enable water to move in or out of your cells thanks to a process called osmosis. In cases of malnutrition, colloids — large molecules that draw fluids into intracellular spaces — are used instead of crystalloids since they require lower volumes of water.
Different IV Fluid Treatments
Now that you understand the risks of becoming dehydrated, you might be ready to sign up for your next IV fluid treatment. However, there are many different options to choose from, each catering to the specific results you want.
At The I.V. Doc, our services include:
- Cleanse Treatment used to rebalance your body with fluid and electrolytes and is the most basic, streamlined treatment that aims to rehydrate your body
- Detox treatment provides your body with a natural source of hydration and energy, which can help you fight off lethargy after too much food or alcohol.
- Refresh Treatment is used to supply your body with the proper hydration and you may consider adding vitamins necessary to regain mental clarity and physical ability.
- Rescue Treatment provides your body with electrolytes and hydration when your body is depleted and dehydrated (usually caused by a hangover).
- Antioxidant Therapy boosts your immune system with a custom blend of powerful anti-oxidizing agents to aid in neutralizing harmful free radicals.
What Are the Benefits of IV Fluids?
If you notice symptoms of dehydration, you want to act quickly to prevent further complications. Your first instinct may be to chug as much water as possible, but IV therapy is advantageous compared to drinking water when it comes to hydrating your body.
Suppose your stomach and digestive lining are irritated and inflamed for any reason. In that case, it may be difficult to absorb the water and electrolytes that you need to rehydrate your body completely. Even the excessive mucus caused by colds and the flu can lead to dehydration. The water in the body is recruited to create mucus when you have a respiratory infection, therefore leaving the rest of your body without the proper amount of water.
However, rehydrating with IV therapy allows you to replace fluids directly into the bloodstream, bypassing the digestive system altogether. This will forgo the risk of additional irritation of the digestive lining while drinking by mouth, and it also allows the benefits of hydration to begin immediately.
What Does an IV Appointment Look Like at The I.V. Doc?
Receiving IV fluids is a comfortable, fast, and easy process.
When you schedule an IV therapy treatment with The I.V. Doc, a medical professional will come to your house, hotel, apartment, etc., and administer your rehydrating IV fluids. The saline solution will be administered through an IV in your hand or arm.
While receiving the treatment, you can sit comfortably and listen to music, read a book, or watch a video on your personal device. The entire process should take less than an hour, and you will start seeing the benefits almost immediately.
The best part of receiving IV fluids is that it is totally customizable. You might want to increase or lower the level of electrolytes you are receiving based on your body’s current level of electrolytes.
Similarly, if you want to target other issues your body is experiencing besides dehydration, you can add on different minerals or vitamins to fix other problems.
You can schedule and customize your appointment easily with us.
Conclusion
It is essential to stay hydrated. If your body becomes dehydrated, you run the risk of hurting your heart, kidneys, nervous system, and other functions in your body.
While it might seem overwhelming to stay on top of hydrating yourself if you are busy with work, family, and being away from home for long periods, there are more efficient ways to hydrate your body.
Receiving electrolytes and hydration through IV fluids is a safe, reliable treatment. A health professional will closely monitor your levels, and you can relax in the knowledge that you are taking care of your body and eliminating the risk of dehydration.
If you are still new to the idea of IV treatments or have more questions, you can read more about it.
Sources:
Choosing between colloids and crystalloids for IV infusion | Nursing Times
Bad breath - Symptoms and causes | Mayo Clinic
Heat and exercise: Keeping cool in hot weather | Mayo Clinic
.
