Drying out (part 4) - Water as diuretic

Drying out for competition

Gadi Taroni

If someone would tell me that the more money I have the more I’d spent – I would believe him and wish it would happen.
I can understand why the less money I have the more money I save.
Same goes with water retention and excess water.
The less you drink, the less you excrete.

Just like you have your self-aware mechanism that prevents you spending money when you don’t have extra so does the body has it’s own mechanism known as ADH or anti diuretic hormone – Vasopressin.

Vasopressin is secreted from the pituitary gland to regulate urinate excretion according to the blood sodium levels and body fluids amount.
Lets put it this way – when Vasopressin is triggered, forget about getting dry in any form.
This hormone is meant to circulate the sodium and blood levels from the kidney back to your body on and on to keep the appropriate ratio.
So, the lower the blood or water levels are – the body has higher level of vasopressin.
How to suppress vasopressin?
If you wish to keep ADH hormone low you need to drink – and a lot.
Yet, you wish to cut excess water in your body, just drinking a lot won’t do the job.
You have to consume sodium and – lots of it.

If you’d like to know more about this hormone just go back to part one.

Why?
Because another hormone meant to prevent you from dehydration is Aldosterone which produced in the adrenal gland and is essential for sodium conservation in the kidney, salivary glands, sweat glands and colon.
The less sodium you consume – the body has higher aldosterone levels to maintain a normal sodium blood levels ratio.
In order to suppress this hormone you can rather use Aldospirone/spironolactone (chemical drugs)
or consume much more sodium than normally.

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Sodium consuming

Sodium consuming combined with big amounts of water will help to flush the sodium out of your body and to keep you with no excess water. A few weeks is recommended to suppress both Aldosterone and Vasopressin hormones in a way which stop drinking and cut sodium a night before the competition will not trigger those hormones and your body will flush more water so you can get dry.
This method is, by the way has way less risks and side affects then most other methods.