introduction
It is shocking to me that the recommended level of consumption of water was 1-2 liters of water a day. That is so obscenely small compared to how much I drink in a day even when sedentary.
I was scared the past couple of days that I had diabetes insipidus because I'd be drinking so much and then peeing it out. The reason I don't believe that I have it now is that when I wake up in the morning, after not having drank since I was sleeping, my urine will be a concentrated yellow looking cover. Diabetes insipidus is diagnosed through water deprivation and then measurement of urine osmolality, diabetes insipidus would display low osmolality and a light color in spite of deprivation and I am just assuming that since my color is not light then I do have ADH/vasopressin activity. That being said, my water consumption is still inordinately high despite cutting down to 500 ml per 2 hours which over a 16 hour period of being awake would be 4L and despite that there are stretches of the day I double my intake to 500 ml an hour.
My tentative assumption is that this is psychogenic polydipsia, at some point in the past I must've conditioned myself to indulgent water consumption and now I'm suffering from a sort of withdrawal. Ripping this quote straight from wikipedia, "chronic and extreme compulsive drinking may impair the response of the kidneys to vasopressin, thus reducing the kidney's ability to concentrate the urine", so yeah a feedback loop and now I'm suffering from withdrawal and my kidneys are sensitizing themselves to vasopressin again?
6 HOURS LATER UPDATE:
AFTER DRINKING LESS WATER INTENTIONALLY
I definitely drank less water today and a rough estimate would be like 3 glasses of 400 ml size and like an additional 600 ml from my water bottles. I was out and about all day and I have to say that I felt mildly drugged out. Earlier a couple of days ago when I had started experimenting with cutting back water I noticed a complete release from any social inhibitions and I was talking very freely among my coworkers, and this was before I had read about the surprising mental effects of vasopressin and that there are studies where folks with autism have lower levels of vasopressin and supplementation makes them more sociable. I thought I was just getting loopy from dehydration!
that being said
I feel a hint of sadness, not because of my new regimen but rather as a secondary effect to what is noticeably different as a result of water restriction; I feel less creative, I'm not daydreaming as much. My mind would wander to extreme places when I was overhydrated and now I almost feel like... too normal. I guess maybe there is some odd trade off where I would previously generate ideas from weird synchronicities and whatever noise in my mind was appealing to me, and now I'm able to hone in on environmental stimuli and react.. better? Some silver lining to my diminished eccentricity (other than the increase in social ability) occurred when I played some arcade games. I felt like my performance was on par with friends and family members, who I would've previously rated as superior in terms of motor skills, cause I was doing surprisingly well, my accuracy and score was the same as theirs. And I can't remember if I was overhydrated but in my past experience with motor skills and gaming (FPS games I used to play) I definitely had a trend where I would peak in performance in the first match and then abruptly decline as my brain somehow instinctively defocused from the supposedly repetitive environmental stimuli and my movements would become mechanical and poor.
I feel warm again too, which is nice, except my forehead body temperature is like 99.1 degrees and I'd assume that heat is neurotoxic (alternatively, doesn't heat increase the velocity of molecules and speed up enzymes or something?)
I want to also bring up an interesting phenomenon which I've noticed with my body and is relevant to this conversation
this phenomenon is the distinction between
cold periphery and hot core (dive reflex, heat conserving)
vs
hot periphery and cold core (heat shedding)
I definitely feel in like a heat shedding mode right now and it's not unpleasant but it's not the best either, I guess this is supposed to be a generally normal feeling that people usually have. Dive reflex feeling is definitely a bad feeling though, and whenever I am feeling ill it's always dive reflex. Dry mouth, cold hands, 98.4 degree temperature, etc. So, I guess being in heat shedding mode is an improvement.
conclusions, 2 days later
I am still struggling with the ups and downs of progress because getting better doesn't equate to always feeling good, there are still the hormonal and dietary ebbs and flows which have hit me particularly hard in the morning. I'll be mildly depressed upon waking and that'll continue until (and I'm assuming this is what resolves it) I eat a meal with a decent amount of salt. I don't want to encourage over doing it, but as far as your electrolyte fluid balance is concerned you definitely shouldn't under do it.
Additionally, SSRIs apparently have a anti-diuretic effect and also increase risk of hyponatremia through retained water levels outmatching your sodium levels, so there's definitely some relation between electrolyte fluid balance and depression/anxiety (or I should say a relation that has been noted in actual scientific literature and not just my anecdotes) and this could be interpreted as aligning with the changes I have noted thus far.
Water loss through mouth breathing is a major contributor to dehydration and feelings of thirst/polydipsia. I've noticed that breathing through my nose has contributed tremendously towards my goal of reducing water intake and my tongue color (which had been a frequent point of concern for me because it was always pinkish-white despite overhydration) has turned to a darker color and is more moist. My throat does not hurt either and I also have more "mucus movements" in my sinuses which I guess is a good thing.
And just to wrap things up, I'm still going to continue my regimen of 500 ml/ 2 hours (sometimes even less than that) and ensuring that I get sufficient sodium intake (Neither under nor over). Presumably my body is accustoming itself to the vasoconstrictive effects of vasopressin and on some level that concerns me because I feel like I am increasing my risk for cardiac incidences, but at the same time the majority of the population has "healthy" levels of vasopressin unlike my near absence and I think doing what most other people are doing is most of the time the healthiest thing you can do. I am planning on ensuring I get adequate levels of vitamin c so as to maintain the flexibility of my blood vessels. Once again, the right thing to thing is probably striking a balance between periods of vasoconstriction and vasodilation and having excessive fluid intake upsets that balance, and is probably why, anecdotally, I was developing very visible veins across my palms.
That's pretty much it. I will have to look into this stuff further, but for the time being this is what I have to present to anyone who cares to read.
