Police Psychology:  Dehydration

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D  ABPP

My head was beating, one of those really bad headaches that only come every once in long while.  This one was different though.  I had a little vertigo when I stood up, so much so that I was having trouble standing and needed to lie back down.  My heart was racing: I was extremely tired, in fact all I wanted to do was sleep.  My thinking was all messed up, like I was in a fog and couldn’t concentrate.  I was craving a roast beef and tomato sandwich from a street deli back home.  I hadn’t been to the bathroom in a long while, a couple of days.  I wasn’t going now because I couldn’t stand.  My joints were badly aching.  I was sure I was coming to the end of my life as the century had just turned and I was 43 years old.  My father only made it to the ripe old age of 45.  Besides, I felt I was needing to die to feel better.  With help, I made my way over to the infirmary at McMurdo station, where a physician’s assistant diagnosed me with the Antarctica Crud, a sort of flu-like disease people seems to get on first visiting the continent.  I went to the bathroom on the way out and noticed the tiny drops of urine were deep yellow, almost brown.  Then a thought occurred to me.

“Um, excuse me,” I asked the infirmary staff.  “Could this all just be dehydration?”

“Not if you are drinking your 6 liters of water.”  They snapped back.

“Six liters!!  That’s a little more than eight 8-ounce glasses I was always taught.”

“This is the coldest, driest pace on earth.  You need three times as much water.  Didn’t they tell you that?  People die from dehydration here.”

I do vaguely remember someone form the National Scientific Foundation telling me that when they described my work here, but I didn’t give it a second thought.

“Yea, Yea.  They told me that.”  Trying to hide my stupidity.  I walked back home and chugged water for two days and was better, but what stayed with me was how a few glasses of water can make a person feel so bad.

Dehydration is the body being deprived of water.  It can physically make you have all the symptoms above.  Vertigo, headaches, dark yellow urine, cravings, heart racing, bad breath, dry skin, muscle pain, and let’s not forget, major digestive problems.  Yet, estimates show around 75% OF PEOPLE WALK AROUND DEHYDRATED EVERY DAY!  75 PERCENT!!!!  And that is normal people.  They are more fatigued than they should be, have more aches, etc.

And I want to bet you that emergency service workers and police probably have some of the highest percentages of dehydration of all.  After all, if you are pushing a sector car you don’t want to be having to stop for the bathroom constantly, so you drink a little less.  If you are working an emergency and dealing with someone bleeding, you don’t want to taking breaks for hydration.  If you are involved in something that is a major event in another person’s life, are you thinking about having your daily water.  And if you go out for “choir practice” with your colleagues after work, alcohol is a natural drier of the body tissues.

So what does all this have to do with psychology you may ask, after all this is a psychological site?  Well, the effects of dehydration are not just physical, in fact even mild dehydration (like 75% of the population has) can have major psychological effects.  Mood problems, more irritable, fatigue, tension, anxiety, poor judgement, difficulty concentrating, memory and lack of judgement.  Any of this sound familiar?  People with dehydration are less like to have the energy to exercise regularly.  In fact, it affects the neurotransmitter production, the oxygen to your brain, and the whole running of your metabolism, so there are endless psychological effects.  In the British Journal of Nutrition study shows differing effect for young males and females.  Females tend to have more of the headaches, difficulty concentrating and tasks seem larger than life so they got over-whelmed easier.  Men tended to have problems with vigilance, mental learning and working memory.  Women also had greater mood variation when even 1 -2% dehydrated.  Ouch!  Maybe is not early stage of Alzheimer’s, may its water that is your problems folks!

Among other things, a clear simple test is available to help you.  I like simple.  If your urine is clear or faintly yellow, you are probably hydrated.  If it looks any darker than a light Chardonnay, you’re at least a little dehydrated.  If it is the color of a regular beer, you are there.  Drink ‘til it’s clear.  It could be that easy to keep your mind and body hydrated.

And I’ll drink to that.

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