Your Body Needs Water to Create Blood
How drinking water helps your heart and helps fight COVID-19. Even if you are healthy otherwise, dehydration can cause low blood volume, which can cause high blood pressure. Your blood plasma is 90% water.
When you are dehydrated, your body doesn't have enough water to create enough blood which lowers the amount of blood in your body. When the amount of blood in your body is lower your heart has to pump harder.
As a survival response to your body not having blood your brain tells your pituitary gland to produce vasopressin, which tells your blood vessels to reduce in size. Pumping blood through smaller blood vessels increases your blood pressure to help get your blood sent throughout your whole body. It's kind of like when you're watering your lawn. If you put your thumb over the end of the hose, it creates a smaller opening to make the water go further.
Making your heart pump blood through smaller blood vessels to create higher blood pressure increases the stress on your heart. Here you can see two red pipes representing a normal size and a smaller sized blood vessel with red clay balls representing blood clots.
You can see how a larger blood clot that would pass through a normal sized blood vessel would get stuck in a blood vessel that had been reduced in size. Smaller blood vessels can increase the risk of blood clots getting stuck in them and blocking the blood that your organs in different areas of your body need to survive.
Low blood volume also creates thicker blood which can contribute to blood clots becoming larger. The larger the blood clot, the more chance of a blood vessel being blocked and shutting off the flow of blood, oxygen and nutrients to that organ or part of the body. Thicker blood can also contribute to the creation of more blood clots.
When you are dehydrated, your body doesn't have enough water to make enough blood, so your blood level goes down and your blood becomes thicker.
To demonstrate this, you can see ketchup representing thick blood in a canister at a lower level than it should be. Thick blood is harder for the heart to pump and clots easier, raising the risk of blood clots.
You can see how thick it is when we stir it. If we add water to it, you can see it becoming thinner and easier to stir, which will also make it easier for your heart to pump, less chance of blood clots, and raising the level of the blood to where it needs to be.
Drinking water helps your body have the water that it needs to make enough blood. High blood pressure is also called hypertension and is one of the main underlying conditions for the COVID-19 virus. With the COVID-19 virus some doctors are having to fight blood clots that are appearing in the heart, lungs, brain and other areas of the body in their patients.
Dehydration causes thicker blood which clots easier and smaller blood vessels which are blocked more easily. Some doctors are giving patients blood thinner to thin their blood and pharmaceuticals to increase the size of their blood vessels to help fight these blood clots, which are happening with the COVID-19 virus. When blood clots block a blood vessel, they prevent blood, oxygen and nutrients from reaching that organ or area of the body.
Blood clots in the heart can trigger a heart attack. Blood clots in the brain can cause a stroke. Blood clots in the lungs can cause breathing problems. Blood clots in other organs in areas of the body cause problems as well. You can be healthy and still have problems with blood clots if you're dehydrated, as it creates thicker blood, which clots more easily, and smaller blood vessels which clog more easily.
Drinking water is a natural way to help prevent blood clots that you can do at home. Early intervention is important when fighting the COVID-19 virus and drinking enough water at home can help you fight the COVID-19 virus in its early stages.
Drinking water helps you fight the COVID-19 virus and helps you fight heart disease. This is important because heart disease is a leading cause of death in the world. Heart disease kills five times more people every year than respiratory diseases. Drinking water helps reduce the risk of heart disease by over 45%.
Overworking your heart because you're not drinking enough water so your blood level is low, causing it to work too hard, can damage your heart and wear it out over time. When you're dehydrated, your heart has to work even harder. Your heart already works very hard. It pumps 2000 gallons of blood a day while beating over 100,000 times a day.
The COVID-19 virus kills people quickly so it gets a lot of attention and press. Heart disease kills people over a longer period of time, usually years, so it doesn't get as much press, but it's just as deadly and kills many more people.
The great thing about drinking water is that it helps you fight both COVID-19 and heart disease. There are certain heart conditions and underlying illnesses where you shouldn't be drinking as much water. Sometimes the body is retaining water and there are other reasons.
So talking with your doctor about how much water you should be drinking, especially if you're dealing with heart issues is really important.