Dehydration Headache

Do you remember the children’s rhyme about Jack Sprat who ate no fat and whose wife would eat no lean? No? Maybe I’m dating myself again. My guess is that while Mrs. Sprat lived a relatively pain-free life—when she wasn’t giving birth, a thing that the wives of those old fabled rhymes had a tendency of doing a lot—poor old Jack suffered debilitating headaches. Of course, Mrs. Sprat may have been a terrible nag, and she might have even roughed up Jack more than occasionally, all of which could contribute to a head-splitting migraine; but my guess was that Jack’s headaches had a more cryptic source, and that he could have remedied them easily had he known the cause.

Here’s a simple fact for you: fat people sweat a lot. I’m sure this comes as a complete surprise to you. The added blubber acts as insulation to lardos like me, resulting in discomfort (“Why is it always so damn hot in here?”), perspiration and dry mouth. Hence, therefore and ergo, fat people tend to drink a considerable amount of water. The Mayo Clinic recommends that the average person consume about two liters (a little more than half a gallon) of water a day to replace fluids lost through perspiration, breathing (we all exhale a surprising amount of water vapor every day) and waste elimination (urination and… er… uh… pooping). A well-known rule for water intake is the rule of eight: drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day (about 1.9 liters, or close to a half a gallon). As I consider myself your everyday ordinary kind of fat man (to paraphrase Stephen Schwartz; yeah, I know you have no idea what I’m talking about, and I like it that way), I usually drink a gallon a day. Naturally, I spend a considerable amount of time around urinals.

Contrarily, many skinny people tend not to drink enough water. My wife is a perfect example of this.  Granted, she is rather small, so perhaps half a gallon a day would be more than she could handle, but I doubt that she drinks more than a quart of fluids every day, and some of those fluids are coffee and tea. As a result, she is constantly dehydrated.

 Dehydration leads to a diminished blood volume; this in turn often results in chronically low blood pressure. It also leads to severe headaches, which my wife suffers regularly, mostly because she refuses to take my advice and drink enough water (of course, as a woman, she is naturally hesitant to take advice from a man, not that I can blame her; let’s face it: women generally possess more common sense, like it or not, guys).

Do you know why you get a terrible headache when you’re hung-over? It’s because alcohol is a diuretic (in other words, it makes you pee more than normal) and even the water contained in beer will not replace all of the fluid lost; in addition, drunks often tend to vomit, sometimes a considerable amount, and this also results in fluid loss. You should also keep in mind that anything containing caffeine is also a diuretic and will increase urinary output, which results in dehydration.

To summarize, to avoid getting terrible headaches that won’t respond to aspirin, Tylenol or Advil, either try to keep yourself properly hydrated, or put on fifty or sixty pounds.