So, say someone has a cold and they’re blowing their nose dozens of times a day. Is it possible for them to lose enough fluid to become dehydrated? Bonus question: what exactly is the composition of mucous?
I will place the odds at somewhere near unlikely to close-to-impossible, but I would not be surprised if there is someone out there with a chronic drip condition so bad it would contribute to their dehydration.
Dude… mucus can be googled.
Yes, that’s one reason you are advised to “drink plenty of fluids” when you have a cold.
I know that when I was young and had really bad hay fever attacks, sometimes lasting multiple days, I sure felt dehydrated. It never reached a point of requiring medical care, but my skin would dry out, I would have terrible thirst, and I’d have dark urine. Fatigue, too, and sometimes weakness and nausea.
The situation might have been aggravated, though, by the other symptom I would often get: a craving for salt. I could put down a bag of pretzels and come back for more. I figure all the salt I was taking in might have made the dehydration worse.
Not really… it’s just an old wive’s tale, etc.
This advice is an example of a long-held belief for which there is no scientific or medical basis.
Researchers from the Cochrane Collaboration tried to find out if there are any trials that can answer the question of whether increasing fluid intake can really help with upper respiratory tract infections. They also looked for any evidence that it might do harm.
The researchers found no trials of the practice at all. There is, then, no strong evidence for or against the “more fluids” advice. The researchers came to the conclusion that people with upper respiratory tract infections like cold and flu can just drink what feels right for them. Warm drinks could help ease sore throats, for example. But there is no medical reason to drink more than is comfortable.
(bolding mine)
I never took it as advice to drink more than is comfortable. Just … a reminder to stay hydrated, which is important at any time but probably even more so when you’re sick and your body is more weaker and more vulnerable.
Fever can increase the rate of water loss (due to evaporation and sweating) and contribute to dehydration, and people who are sick often eat and drink less than usual, so it’s a general reminder to make sure to keep yourself adequately hydrated so that you don’t add another stress to your body when it’s trying to mount an immune response. I don’t think anyone’s claiming that overhydration is going to make you get rid of a virus faster, but being dehydrated will make you feel even worse at the least and in severe cases could have other consequences.
Nasal mucus is made up of water, salt, some proteins and antibodies. I learned that last month when trying to find out if it has a calorie content. The verdict seems to be no, but it still leaves me confused. If nasal mucus contains no calories, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t take any to produce, does it? It seems like your body is doing some sort of work when your nose is running 16 hours a day…