Drinking water can be a safe, simple and effective way to avoid fainting.
Within three minutes of drink a few glasses of water (12 ml/kg body weight), adrenal gland hormone level norepinephrine in our bloodstream can spike by 60 percent, as you can see in the graph below and at 0:19 of my video The effect of drinking water on adrenal hormones.
When researchers had people drink two cups (500 ml) of water with electrodes on the legs, an approximately 40 percent increase in bursts of fight-or-flight nerve activity was documented in 20 minutes, as shown in the graph below and in the minute 0:25 in me video.
If you drink two or three cups (11 ml/kg body weight) of water, blood flow is tightened in the arms and calves, clamping almost in half, since the arteries in the extremities and skin squeeze to divert blood to your core, as you can see in the graph below and at 0:42 in my video. That’s why drinking water can be a safe, simple, and effective way to prevent fainting, which is medically known as syncope.
Fainting is “the sudden, brief loss of consciousness caused by decreased cerebral blood flow,” that is, to the brain. About one in five people experience this at least once and about one in ten may have repeated episodes. It is the cause of millions of emergency room visits and hospitalizations each year. Although fainting can be caused by heart problems, it is most often triggered by standing for too long (because blood pools in our legs) or strong emotions, which can cause our blood pressure to bottom out.
Approximately 1 in 25 people has what is called blood injection phobia, where being pricked by a needle, for example, can cause you to faint. More than 150,000 people experience fainting or almost fainting every year when they donate blood. To avoid getting dizzy, try drinking two cups of water (500 ml) five minutes before getting the needle stick. The secret is not to increase overall blood volume. If you drink two cups of water or even an entire liter (500 to 1,000 ml), your blood volume does not change by more than 1 or 2 percent. Rather, it is due to the change in the distribution of blood towards its center, caused by noradrenaline-induced peripheral artery constriction, as you can see in the graph below and at 1:56 in my video.
Drinking water stimulates as much norepinephrine as drinking a couple of cups of coffee or smoking a couple of unfiltered cigarettes. If simply drinking water triggers such a profound fight-or-flight reaction, why doesn’t it make our hearts pound and shoot our blood pressure through the roof? It’s like the immersion reflex I talked about in my previous video. when we drink water, our body simultaneously sends signals to our heart to slow it down, to “stop the heartbeat.” You can try it at home: measure your heart rate before and after drinking two cups (500 ml) of water. In ten minutes, your heart rate should decrease by about four beats per minute. At 15 minutes, you should have dropped six or seven times, as you can see in the graph below and at 2:42 in my video.
One of the ways scientists discovered this was by studying heart transplant patients. When you pass a heart from one person to another, you have to cut all the connected nerves. Surprisingly, some of the nerves grow back. But even so, if you give two glasses of water to cured heart transplant patients, their blood pressure increases up to 29 points. The body is unable to sufficiently quell the effect of that burst of norepinephrine. some people have a condition known as autonomic insufficiency, in which the nerves that regulate blood pressure do not function properly and your pressures can dangerously spike by more than 100 points after drinking approximately two cups (480 ml) of water. This is how powerful the effect of the simple act of drinking water can be. The only reason this doesn’t happen to all of us is that we have an even more powerful counter-response to keep our hearts in check. (This reminds me of the woman who had a stroke after taking the ice bucket challenge due to an insufficient diving reflex to control all that extra norepinephrine release).
This remarkable effect of water can Be useful for people who suffer from milder forms of autonomic failure, such as orthostatic hypotension, which occurs when people become dizzy after standing up suddenly. Drinking some water before getting up in the morning can be a great help. But what about that metabolic boost? With so much norepinephrine released and adrenal gland hormones in overdrive, could drinking a few glasses of water cause you to burn more body fat? Could tap water be a safe form of ephedra, allowing us to lose weight but with a pleasant slowdown in our heart rate? The researchers decided put to test, which we will explore below.
If you missed the previous video, watch How to Get the Weight Loss Benefits of Ephedra Without the Risks.
Stay tuned for What is the safest metabolism stimulant? and Friday Favorites: Optimize Water Intake for Weight Loss.
What type of water is best? Discover it in meIs it better to drink tap, filtered or bottled water??.
