10 Dehydration Symptoms and How to Avoid Them, From a Dietitian

Learn how to spot dehydration, how to prevent it, and how to deal with it when it comes.

— On Sep 24, 2025

10 Dehydration Symptoms and How to Avoid Them, From a Dietitian

In this article:

Most of my clients know they need to drink water daily to stay healthy and hydrated. Many have a basic understanding of dehydration as lacking enough fluid in your body and feeling thirsty, sluggish, or irritable. It can happen on a hot day or when you’re sick.

However, dehydration can get serious, and it definitely goes beyond those basic symptoms and scenarios. In this guide, you’ll get my dietitian’s detailed breakdown of dehydration, including its symptoms and side effects, tips to prevent dehydration and deal with it, and why I often recommend Live it Up Vital Minerals to clients as a way to efficiently hydrate and aid in their daily performance.

Below, you’ll learn:

What is dehydration?
What are the symptoms of dehydration?
How to avoid dehydration
Dietitian tips for staying hydrated
Boost your hydration with Live it Up Vital Minerals
Dehydration FAQs

What Is Dehydration?

Dehydration occurs when your body loses more fluids than it takes in. It can be caused by not drinking enough water, excessive sweating, fever, vomiting, or severe diarrhea. For these reasons, it's most likely to occur on a hot, humid day, under extreme exercise, or when you're ill.

Without enough water in your system, your body can't properly keep you functioning. This includes regulating your temperature, moving nutrients around, and moving waste out. There are three levels of dehydration recognized by healthcare providers:

Mild dehydration can be handled quickly by drinking more water or an electrolyte drink.
Moderate dehydration treatment requires an IV in an urgent care, emergency room, or hospital.
Severe cases of dehydration involve serious symptoms and require emergency medical treatment.

What Are the Symptoms of Dehydration?

There are many different signs of dehydration, and they can vary depending on the age of the individual and the severity of the issue. Keep your eye out for the following.

1. Thirst and Dry Mouth

Feeling thirsty is one of the first and most obvious signs of mild dehydration. This is your body's way of telling you it needs more fluid before things get worse. The sensation of thirst can become more extreme the more dehydrated you become.

When you're dehydrated, your body also produces less saliva. This can make your mouth, tongue, and lips feel dry and may even make eating and speaking more difficult or even cause a dry cough.

2. Dark-Colored Urine

When you're properly hydrated, your urine should be odorless and pale yellow in color. When you're dehydrated, your urine is more concentrated and will be released in smaller amounts. It will also get darker and stronger-smelling the more dehydrated you become. This is because there's less water in your bladder to dilute the urine.

3. Less Frequent Urination

Urine is one way that fluid leaves the body, and having less fluid to release means less urine. This is an important symptom to monitor in small children and infants. If you notice fewer than six wet diapers a day for infants or no wet diapers within eight hours in toddlers, dehydration may be the cause. If you’re an adult and are not urinating at all, this is a symptom of severe dehydration.

4. Headache

It's not clear why dehydration causes headaches, and this isn't a symptom every individual will experience. You might experience pain in any part of your head or throughout it, and physical movement can make it worse. Dehydration headaches may come with confusion, nausea, or vomiting. If you're only mildly dehydrated, your headache should dissipate within a couple of hours of drinking a few glasses of water.

5. Wrinkled Skin

Not to be confused with dry skin, which involves a lack of oils and often causes irritation, dehydrated skin is caused by a lack of moisture and is usually a sign of serious dehydration. Dehydrated skin loses its elasticity and may look dull or wrinkled. If you pinch the skin on the back of your hand and it doesn't snap back into place, you're likely dehydrated. You can also try this test on your cheek, chest, or abdomen.

6. Dizziness

Your blood is mostly water. The more dehydrated you are, the less fluid you have circulating through your bloodstream, and the lower your blood volume becomes. This can prevent adequate blood flow to your brain, causing dizziness, weakness, or lightheadedness.

7. Fatigue

Dehydration has been shown to increase fatigue and decrease alertness. Tissues throughout your body have less of the essential fluids they need to function when you're dehydrated. This includes your muscle and brain tissue. The result may be sleepiness and irritability. If you become so tired that you find yourself confused, you may be severely dehydrated.

8. Muscle Cramps

When you're dehydrated, your body will use what fluids it has available to maintain the function of your most vital organs, meaning it won't use as much for certain muscles like those in your lower legs. Exercising or straining those muscles while they're dehydrated can lead to muscle cramps, commonly referred to as a "charley horse."

9. Food Cravings

Our brains often mistake thirst for hunger, and many people experience cravings as a result of dehydration. These cravings can vary by individual, but commonly involve sweet, sugary foods due to their calorie content.

Dietitian Tip: Drinking more water can naturally suppress your appetite, at least temporarily. This can be helpful if you're trying to eat less between or during meals.

10. Chills or Fever

Proper fluid intake helps with body temperature regulation. When you’re severely dehydrated, your blood vessels may contract to conserve heat, slowing your circulation and possibly causing chills or fever.

How to Avoid Dehydration

The best way to avoid dehydration is to drink fluids often enough throughout the day, especially:

During warm weather
Before and after you exercise
When spending time outdoors

Dehydration can also result from a lack of electrolytes, which are minerals that help move fluid in and out of cells. To help with dehydration symptoms while they’re still mild, drinking a hydration electrolyte drink like Live it Up Vital Minerals can help you feel better faster than drinking water alone.

In general, the recommended daily water consumption for adults is about 3.7 liters for men and 2.7 liters for women. However, because we can absorb water on its own, in other beverages, and in foods, there is no one perfect daily dosage of water for everyone. While about 20% of our daily fluid intake comes from food on average, those who eat more fruits and vegetables will get more fluid than those who don't.

Did You Know? Not all fluids can help with hydration. Drinking sodas, alcoholic beverages, or caffeinated drinks can actually cause or worsen dehydration.

Tips for Staying Hydrated

Aside from drinking water regularly, I encourage my clients to stay hydrated through a number of other methods:

Eat foods with a high water content. These include cruciferous and leafy greens like kale, spinach, and broccoli, which are included in the formula for Live it Up Super Greens. Other fruits and veggies that provide lots of water are cucumber, lettuce, celery, tomatoes, zucchini, summer squash, asparagus, bell peppers, mushrooms, strawberries, and watermelon.
Focusing on electrolyte balance is another hydration strategy that's ideal for both extreme hydration needs and everyday hydration. Supplements like Live it Up Vital Minerals are designed to replace lost electrolytes lost in fluids naturally during these activities. They can also help with cramps after dehydration in a way that plain water cannot.
In extremely hot weather, front-load fluids and prepare frozen fruit as snacks (like melon cubes and berries). Drink more before heading outside to help minimize the risk of dehydration, since thirst often lags behind dehydration.
Proper hydration is crucial for immune health, so being extra diligent while traveling and during cold and flu season can help support your immune resilience.
Hydrate before and during your workout, rather than just replacing lost fluids afterward. This will help keep your cells hydrated and maintain performance while exercising.
Create a sleep routine, with water before bedtime and right when you wake up. This can support your sleep quality and help you wake feeling refreshed.
If you're on prescription medications or have certain medical conditions, you may be at higher risk of dehydration and electrolyte imbalances. Speak with a healthcare professional about your hydration needs.

Boost Your Hydration With Live it Up Vital Minerals

If you need a convenient way to stay properly hydrated and include more electrolytes and hydrating minerals in your daily diet, I highly recommend Live it Up Vital Minerals. This electrolyte hydration drink powder hydrates you more efficiently than water alone, using specially balanced quantities of key minerals like calcium, potassium, and vitamin C with sodium.

As a dietitian, I like that it also contains less salt than many competing electrolyte drinks, providing the right levels for the average American diet and making it suitable for daily use. There's no added sugar, fillers, or colors, and it comes in delicious flavors to give you options each day.

Dehydration FAQs

Learn more about dehydration and how to stay ahead of it below.

What are the side effects of dehydration?

By the time you're experiencing symptoms of dehydration, you're likely also experiencing its side effects.

Nausea or dizziness is a result of low blood volume from lost fluids.
Fatigue and cramps come from a lack of fluid in bodily tissues.
Left untreated, dehydration can become severe and lead to serious complications, such as heat injury or heat stroke, impaired organ function, and even low blood volume shock. All of these problems are potentially life-threatening.

Seek medical attention if you’re concerned about severe dehydration.

How long does it take to rehydrate your body?

If you're dehydrated, the amount of time it takes to rehydrate your body will vary by the severity of your condition. For most people, you can treat mild dehydration within ten to fifteen minutes after drinking a few glasses of water, a hydration drink, or sports drinks. Full recovery can take several hours, though it may take up to a full day in moderate dehydration cases. For severe dehydration symptoms, you'll need immediate medical attention and potential IV therapy within a day or more for full recovery.

What can be mistaken for dehydration?

Other conditions have similar symptoms or side effects that make it easy to mistake them for mild to moderate dehydration. These include heatstroke or heat exhaustion, concussion, anemia, and depression. Shared symptoms across these conditions include headache, dizziness, dry mouth, confusion, nausea, muscle cramps, and fatigue.

How do you test for dehydration?

You can have dehydration diagnosed by medical professionals, who may conduct a urinalysis, as well as blood tests to check electrolyte levels and kidney function. However, you can assist your provider by monitoring for common dehydration symptoms, including dry mouth, dark urine or no urine, wrinkled or inelastic skin, fatigue, dizziness, and confusion.

What illness makes you dehydrated?

You may become dehydrated if you contract an illness that causes you to vomit or have diarrhea. The body loses an excessive amount of fluid through these functions. Sweating too much is another cause for dehydration, and may occur if you have an illness accompanied by fever.

What part of your body hurts when you are dehydrated?

Your body will not always hurt when dehydrated, but some individuals may experience pain. Common areas include muscles, which tend to cramp, as well as joints, the back, kidneys, eyes, and the head. Your back, in particular, may hurt because the discs in your spine that act as cushions between vertebrae are mostly made of water. When you're dehydrated, these discs can dehydrate due to fluid loss.

References

About the author:

Rachel Gargano, MS, RD, CSSD, CBS

Rachel is a registered dietitian based in Contra Costa County, California, with over 15 years experience. She specializes in whole-body wellness and plant-based nutrition, helping people understand the dynamic interplay between food and health so they can live life to the fullest. When not helping others, she enjoys spending time with her kids, being physically active, and tending to her abundant household plants.

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