How Important is Water, Really?

Everyone knows water is important for survival. Go 1-2 days without it and you’re in for a pretty bad time. The human body is 65% water and 2-3 liters of this water is expelled every day via sweat, urine, and excrement.

This means you need to replace that water on a VERY regular basis or else everything in your body is affected, and in a survival situation that means some pretty nasty side effects.

So how important is water really? Let’s check out the details and what happens if you stop drinking it.

Why is Water So Important?

First things first, you already know that water is important, but do you know why? Like we mentioned above, your body is around 65% water. Water in your body acts as a universal solvent, carrying nutrients and hormones all over your body. Water cushions your joints, regulates your body temperature, and lubricates your eyes.

Urine removes toxins from your body by diluting them in water and allowing you to eliminate them. Without water for this purpose, those toxins would build up.

Water is also one of the biggest determining factors in your blood volume. The more blood you have the more active you can be, and generally the healthier you are. Lower blood volume means it’s easier to pass out from blood loss and to become light-headed in a given situation.

Water is basically like the oil in a can engine. Without it you won’t get very far at all and when it runs out, very bad things happen.

The Effects of Dehydration

So, let’s say you’re in a survival situation and your water supply got lost, so you’re without water. The average person requires 2-3 liters of water per day to replace what is lost, and this number goes up dramatically with exertion and extreme temperatures.

Not replacing the water that you lose daily can put you into the first stages of dehydration. The beginning phases of dehydration decreases your efficiency and can even increase your susceptibility to going into shock in case of injury.

If you were to lose 5% of your total bodily fluids you’d experience thirst, irritability, and possibly nausea and weakness. At 10% of your total body fluids you’ll experience dizziness, headache, and an inability to walk paired with a slight tingling in your limbs. Basically you’re partially drunk.

15% body fluid loss is where things get really bad. Your vision can dim, urination will become painful as the ratio of toxins to water grows, your tongue will swell, hearing will become difficult, and your skin can even feel numb. If you lose more than 15% of your total body fluids you risk death.

Overall, as you become dehydrated your blood vessels will actually shrink along with your brain. Simple tasks become more difficult and take more energy to complete than if you were fully hydrated. Your response time slows, your internal temperature gets out of whack, and muscle spasms are common.

Signs of Dehydration

While it’s hard to sense higher levels of dehydration in yourself, you should look for the warning signs from anyone you’re with. The most visible sign of dehydration are dark, sunken eyes. Skin elasticity will be greatly decreased as well as a delayed capillary refill in your fingernail beds.

Along with these external signals, fatigue and emotional instability usually come along with intense dehydration, but in a survival situation these can be mistaken for everyday stress.

The more dehydrated you become the darker and more..fragrant..your urine will become, so this can be used as a good gauge. Don’t hesitate to urinate as often as you need to, as holding it in will not help keep you hydrated at all.

Having Enough Water

Once you feel thirsty you’ve already lost nearly 2% of your body’s total fluid supply, so rationing water on a continual basis is important. Even when you’re not thirsty you should drink some at least once every hour to make sure you’re replacing the water you’re using up. A good test for having enough water is expelling around .5 liters of urine every 24 hours.

If you’re short on food you need to increase water intake to 7-8 liters per day. In higher and lower temperature extremes your body can lose up to 2.5 liters of water PER HOUR, which means you need up to 30 liters of water every day to keep healthy.

Rationing

Remember that when you lose water you’re not only eliminating H2O, you’re getting rid of electrolytes as well. This means that your body needs some salt and sugar to fix itself again. Now, this doesn’t mean you should drink salt water, but mixing 1/4 tsp of salt into a 1 liter of water can help you recover those lost electrolytes. Any more salt than this and your body won’t be able to absorb it.

Make sure you drink water while eating to aid in absorption and digestion. Your body uses up water in the digestion process so replacing it while it’s going on is important.

The saying goes “conserve sweat, not water,” and it’s very true. If you’re short on water you should slow or stop labor-intensive activities and drink the appropriate amount of water instead of working hard and not drinking enough.

IF all else fails and you need to go into a strict water-rationing regimen, you can survive on a minimum of .5 liters of water per day if you mix in 2 tsp of sugar per liter. This mixture will keep you going on a very limited basis for no more than a week. This assumes you’re not in extreme temperatures or doing any activity over the most minimum possible.

Wrap-Up

Everyone knows water is important, but few truly understand how important it really is. All the bad side effects of dehydration listed above don’t take 7-10 days to come on, without water those happen in 1-2 days. In other words, 48 hours without water will put you into dire straits and make the act of survival nearly impossible.

Make a water plan now and prepare for your needs before they come up. You should have a 3-tier approach to water planning.

Stored water
Water filtration
Water sanitization

With these planned, you shouldn’t have to worry about water, which allows you to focus on other equally important tasks.