Dehydration in older adults can be a severe problem. It can cause problems with their memory and alertness, affect their kidneys, blur their vision, cause a urinary tract infection, and more. Therefore, it is important to encourage our older family members to drink water regularly and ionized water from a water ionizer is the highest quality water they can drink.
Older adults have many reasons for not drinking as much water as when they were younger. They might have some bladder issues that make them reluctant to drink. They might have memory issues and simply forget to drink. They might be on medications that block the thirst signal so they don’t realize that they are thirsty.
If the older adult in your family has Alzheimer’s or any kind of memory or concentration issues, they may not notice their dry mouth, dark urine, and other signs of severe dehydration. Also, if they’re reliant on in-home care or live in a nursing home, the people taking care of them may forget to give them as much as water as they need.
Dehydration in older adults can make any symptom that they have worse. If they have memory issues, dehydration can make them much worse. Dehydration on its own can cause confusion. It can also cause weakness and disrupt sleep patterns, severely impacting their quality of life.
Dehydration can also cause a buildup of toxins in their body, which will weaken it and make them more susceptible to getting sick. And if your lived one does catch a virus, the virus will hold on much longer and make them miserable.
One potentially scary complication has to do with urinary track infections. Often doctors will diagnose a build-up of bacteria in the bladder as a urinary track infection and prescribe antibiotics. But the bacteria isn’t from an infection, it is from dehydration, therefore the antibiotics don’t help. Also, giving antibiotics unnecessarily will build up your loved one’s resistance to antibiotics so that when they do get really sick from an infection, the antibiotics won’t help them as much.
There are many symptoms that we simply accept as being caused by old age. But many of these symptoms, such as poor sleep, poor concentration, low energy, body aches and pains, irritability, depression, and more are actually caused by dehydration.
One of the best things you can do for your aging loved one is to get them a premium water ionizer and also a stopwatch that will go off every single hour. When the alarm goes off, your loved one will know to drink a tall glass of ionized water, which is three times more hydration than bottled or tap water and also full of antioxidants that will detoxify their bodies.
So, next time you are with your aging loved one, ask them how much water they are drinking. Dehydration in older adults is a serious and chronic problem all over the world. Before you call the doctor and get pills prescribed their various conditions, get them a water ionizer and encourage them to drink regularly. You may be very surprised to see their quality of life drastically improve and good health and enjoyment is what we all want in our golden years.
To your health!
