How does dehydration cause anxiety?
Determining what comes first is a kind of a ‘chicken and egg’ situation. On the one hand, being anxious could increase your risk of dehydration, since you may simply forget to drink water regularly or neglect to notice the signs of dehydration when you’re frazzled.
“Those experiencing poor mental health may become dehydrated due to prioritizing other things and people over their own wellbeing. Often, when we’re going through tough times, the first thing to drop down our list of priorities is taking good care of ourselves.” explains Certified Intuitive Eating Coach Peta Coote.
Lack of sleep due to anxious thoughts could also play a part in being dehydrated. Not only is there evidence that not getting enough sleep increases your risk of dehydration but you might also reach for coffee and energy drinks to help with fatigue if you’re not getting enough shut eye. Whilst coffee and energy drinks do count towards your fluid intake, they’re high in caffeine. There’s not conclusive scientific evidence but some people do notice that caffeine is a diuretic for them.
“We may tend to reach for fast acting caffeine fixes to wake us up and help us feel more focused, however these aren’t going to hydrate us like water, fruit and veg will” adds Peta. When something is a diuretic, it makes you pee much more. This not only means a ton more bathroom trips but also that you lose more fluid and more are at risk of getting dehydrated.
It’s also worth pointing out you may already have an increased risk of dehydration if you have certain health conditions, such as diabetes or Inflammatory Bowel Disease.
However, there’s research that suggests not drinking enough could also cause those anxious feelings or make them intensify. This is because we know that not drinking enough water increases your risk of becoming anxious with one study finding those who drank the least amount of water had twice the risk of developing anxiety and depression.
Forgetting to drink as much water as usual can also play havoc with your mood: research has found that those who drank less water than they usually did felt less calm and more tense than usual when their water intake dropped. You don’t even have to be super dehydrated to notice your anxiety being impacted: research has found even mild dehydration can worsen your mood.
When we’re dehydrated, it can impact a ton of different bodily functions and this includes your brain. Impaired brain function can lead to issues such as confusion, fatigue and worrying thoughts. “Our brains are made up of 75% water and because dehydration slows down circulation, less oxygen gets to your brain and then impacts cognitive function.” says Simone Thomas, Bioenergetics Practitioner and Nutritionist from Simone Thomas Wellness.