College is known as a time in your life where you learn a lot, decide what you want to do with the rest of your life, and where you can party. Drinking (even underage drinking) is an issue among the majority of college campus’s, and it is important to know how to drink appropriately, but also to know how your body reacts to alcohol consumption. Alcohol can cause you body to dehydrate, but why?

Each individual person has a different tolerance of alcohol that depends on gender, age, and weight. For example, a person who drinks more tends to have a greater tolerance to a larger amount of alcohol as opposed to someone who infrequently drinks, and woman and men have different tolerances as well. With that in mind, as a person drinks their body changes. Your body is very smart and has detectors that tell your body the amount of water you have in your body at a period of time. These detectors can tell when you don’t have enough water in your body and signal to your posterior pituitary gland that you are dehydrated. Your posterior pituitary gland then begins to release anti-diuretic hormones (ADH), which makes you stop urinating. Gastrolyte explains, “Firstly, alcohol decreases the body’s production of anti-diuretic hormone, which is used by the body to reabsorb water. With less anti-diuretic hormone available, your body loses more fluid than normal through increased urination. Drinking excessive amounts of alcohol can also cause vomiting, which depletes the body of fluids and can causer further dehydration.”

A study was conducted in 1950 served 5 shots of bourbon and researchers examined the amount of urine released by the participants. They found that the alcohol caused participants to produce an additional 120 milliliters of urine per alcohol drink. Back then, they did not realize why this occurred, but form the information known today in the above paragraph, this experiment proves that an excessive amount of alcohol makes your body do the opposite of what it should do when it is dehydrated.

How do you avoid this dehydration?

1. Don’t drink as much.
2. Drink a large glass of water before you start drinking alcohol.
3. Drink a large glass of water before you go to bed.
4. Drink water with the alcohol. For every alcoholic beverage, drink a glass of water.
5. Keep in mind that electrolytes can substitute for a large glass of water, so drinking a beverage that has electrolytes is another idea.