I’ve been riding my bike to work for the last week or so, and I’ve noticed a strange thing.
If I don’t drink a lot of water before I set out, I hardly perspire at all, and it’s difficult to ride. My muscles don’t respond as quickly or with as much strength as when I do have enough water, and I get really, really hot. As soon as I drink a bottle of water, I sweat a lot**, and feel much stronger. After a while, the sweating stops, and it gets harder to ride, so I stop and drink more, then the cycle (haha!) continues.
My guess is that I’m not dehydrating, as such, but my body is getting a signal that water is scarce, then switching into rationing mode. I drink, generating a signal that water is available again, so I go back into wasteful mode.
So anyway, I guess my question is twofold:
a) Is my guess above, about how the body works regarding water conservation, correct?
b) If a person really was dehydrated (to a dangerous degree), how fast would water get back into the system and rehydrate their tissues? Are we talking about seconds after drinking? Minutes? Hours?
Ok, it’s threefold. c) Is there anything I can do to help speed my adjustment to the climate? I mean is there any sort of diet modification or supplement that will help, or do I just need to tough it out for a few summers until I adjust naturally?
**[sub]When I’m riding in the summer, sweat literally almost pours off my forehead, as if I had dumped a cup full of water over myself. I never had this problem when I lived in NM, so I assume that this is what is happening: When I overheat here, since sweating doesn’t cool you off when humidity is high and water can’t evaporate much, my body says “wow, I’m not cooling off…better sweat more!” And it escalates to an almost cartoonish level.[/sub]