Water is life.
But now,
we're turning off the faucet.
No more water for you.
If you stopped drinking water,
No, really,
why would you do that?
Stop.
This is WHAT IF,
and here's what would happen
if you stopped drinking water.
Water does more than power life.
It's the majority of you.
Humans are 50 to 70% water.
This liquid helps structure your body
on a microscopic level,
creating cells and fueling their chemical reactions
to deliver nutrients.
On this planet and in your life,
nothing would be possible
without good ol' H20.
So, what if you went cold turkey
and stopped drinking water for good?
Giving up water would be a death sentence.
But before you turn into a pile of dust,
your body will go through some other radical changes.
In the first few hours,
your thirst would be minor.
This would be the easy part.
Throughout this whole process,
you'd need to slow down and take it easy.
You don't want to sweat out
the water left in you.
You need every drop of this precious substance.
And your body knows that too.
Your organs would hold on tight
to the water inside you.
That means your kidneys would stop sending
as much water to your bladder,
causing you to pee much less.
And without water in your cells
to help move nutrients,
your blood would become thick and sluggish.
Over the next two days,
your heart rate would increase rapidly
to maintain normal oxygen levels.
Your body would be fighting to stay alive.
By day three,
4% of your body weight would disappear,
but you aren't looking good.
Your blood would become so thick and concentrated
that your skin would shrivel up like a raisin.
Since you don't have any more water
to sweat out,
the smallest amount of heat
could overwhelm your system.
And with your blood pressure falling,
you would struggle to stay conscious.
If you faint now,
you may want to stay asleep.
That way,
you could avoid the real pain about to come.
On day four without water,
non-vital organs, like your kidneys and gut,
would be receiving very little blood.
Cellular waste would build up in your system,
and those toxins would make your muscles sensitive and inflamed.
Every move would have you reeling in agony.
You'd be so dehydrated,
that the simplest tasks would be impossible
as your brain would slowly
be losing cognitive function.
You're so thirsty and exhausted.
Should you,
I don't know,
drink your own pee to stay alive?
“Nope.”
No. Again, stop.
That's not going to help.
At this point,
your urine would be so filled with waste
that your body would have to work even harder to filter it.
Every liquid in your body
would now be a toxic slurry,
slowly poisoning you.
By day five,
you'd have lost 10% of your body weight in water.
Your liver would be about to stop working entirely.
And the rest of your organs
would be reaching critically hot temperatures.
And at this point,
you likely haven't had a bowel movement in days.
Wait, what?
Well, all this time,
your large intestine was soaking up
any water that was left,
leaving you constipated.
The cartilage in your joints
would be so dry
that it would be hard to move even an inch.
At this point,
you'd be regretting this awful decision.
I mean, if you were still alive.
So how can you recover?
You’d have to check into a hospital fast.
Doctors would need to rehydrate your body
with an IV in order to get electrolytes and sugar
back into your system.
In two to three days,
you can recover from this extreme.
But the damage might last a lifetime.
Your kidneys would be shot
and possibly diseased,
and you'd have urinary tract infections.
You might even have to live
the rest of your life with hypertension and intestinal failure.
Dehydration is a serious problem
that could lead to startling chronic health problems.
But what if you went overboard in your recovery?
What if you only drank water for the rest of your life?
Well, stay right here,
because that's a story for another WHAT IF.