Four major causes of body dryness and countermeasures

For most northern regions, the heating season from winter to early spring is often also a time when indoor air is particularly dry. And in spring, high winds are frequent, rain and snow are scarce, and the air humidity is relatively low. In this climate, many women feel that their mouths are dry and their throats are sore when they wake up in the morning. Others will feel hot and dry on their bodies, dry skin and even dry eyes. In such environmental conditions, drinking water is naturally an important thing. Instead of waiting until you are thirsty, you should take the initiative to hydrate before each meal and between meals. However, many others say that drinking water does not solve the problem of thirst at all, nor does it make the skin and eyes feel more moisturized. It's time to divide the situation and see what exactly is causing the dryness (disease states may cause dryness in the body, but this is not part of our discussion).

Four major causes of body dryness and countermeasures

Insufficient body moisture

If the body's discomfort is simply due to a lack of moisture, then it is time to consider whether the way of hydration can be adjusted. Pure water is often not the best for hydration because it passes quickly through the digestive tract, into the bloodstream, and then is excreted from the kidneys, nourishing the throat and digestive tract mucous membranes for a very short time. In contrast, water containing small amounts of carbohydrates (such as sugar, starch, and various plant gums) is much better. If they have an osmotic pressure lower than that of the blood, they can play a role in hydration. Since carbohydrates are a hydrophilic substance, they attract many water molecules, slowing the absorption of water and preventing them from being excreted quickly. This gives more time for the mucous membranes of the digestive tract to feel moisturized and more time for water to remain in the body. Among the small molecule sugars, fructose is the best in terms of moisture absorption. Its affinity for moisture is much higher than that of glucose and sucrose. It can even absorb moisture from the air, catching water molecules to itself and "absorbing moisture". In natural honeys that do not crystallize easily, such as wattle honey and acacia honey, the main component is fructose. This is a great hydrating drink when you add warm water to the honey and make it lightly sweet so that it has a low osmotic pressure. Even if you feel particularly thirsty drinking plain water, drink this light honey water, small sips slowly swallow, you will feel much more comfortable, and the dryness of the mucous membrane of the mouth and throat is significantly relieved. Fruits also contain a lot of fructose, such as grapes, pears, bananas, persimmons, watermelon, etc. are rich in fructose. Compared to small molecules of sugar, large molecules are more effective. In addition to starch, there are many plant gums in food. Because a small amount of a little gum can play a significant thickening effect, the principle is precisely because they bind a large number of water molecules in aqueous solution, forming a high viscosity state. For example, the common daily life of silver ear soup, which contains silver ear polysaccharide; oats contain beta-glucan; Yunnan has a kind of saponaria, the inner membrane of the pod, which is rich in gum, cooked out especially sticky, is also the same principle. These sticky soups allow moisture to stick to the mucous membranes for a long time, and the throat and digestive tract feel moisturized. At the same time, because they cannot be digested by the body, they can carry moisture all the way to the large intestine, allowing the stools to add moisture as well, making them softer and avoiding dryness. Therefore, the traditional practice of drinking silver ear soup for hydration is scientifically justified. Foods rich in collagen are beneficial in reducing the dryness of the skin for similar reasons, in addition to promoting a relationship with collagen synthesis, as it is also a highly hydrophilic macromolecule.

Improper diet

The second cause of dryness lies in an improper diet, eating too much spicy, rich, salty and dry food, which increases water consumption. People know that salt has a strong water-absorbing effect, pickled food with salt will be out of water, in fact, our body is the same. If the dishes taste too heavy, or consume too much processed food containing sodium, after the salt enters the blood vessels, it will raise the osmotic pressure of the blood, so the water molecules in the tissues will be attracted to it and enter the blood vessels. The result is that the blood volume increases and the blood pressure rises while the water in the tissues decreases, which naturally causes dryness. The kidneys then work to remove salt from the urine to keep the blood volume and osmolarity back to normal. However, salt leaving the body takes away a lot of water, making the body drier and at the same time increasing the burden on the kidneys. Although chili does not increase the osmotic pressure of human blood, it will make the skin blood circulation faster, the body heat up and sweating increase. This will likewise lose body water. Therefore, in wet and cold weather conditions, such as winter in Sichuan and Hubei, eating chili peppers is a very suitable diet plan. However, in the dry north, this kind of eating can be harmful to the body if it is not moderated. Fried foods like food, such as fried peanuts, fried sunflower seeds, a variety of roasted nuts, originally low moisture food, and then processed at high temperatures to remove the moisture, forming a very dry state. The proteins contained therein are hydrophilic substances, and they are very eager to snatch back the moisture lost in processing. Therefore, once these foods enter the mouth, the moisture in the mucous membrane of the mouth and throat will be mercilessly taken away, so that people's throat and mouth become dry. At the same time, these fried foods often have a very high salt content, for the delicate mucous membranes, it is simply to add insult to injury. Many people find their lips, tongues and throats turn into a cured meat state after eating a lot of melon seeds, which is particularly unpleasant for this reason. Therefore, despite the high nutritional value of nuts and seeds, they should not be eaten indefinitely, and try to choose products that are not overly roasted and dried, and have less salt.

Vitamin A deficiency

The third reason for dryness is because of vitamin A deficiency. This is because vitamin A is necessary for the synthesis and repair of epithelial tissues, and if it is severely deficient, the resistance of the skin and mucous membranes decreases, the mucus and sebum secreted by the surface decreases, and the immune function of the mucous membranes decreases. This condition not only brings a sense of dryness, but also reduces the resistance of human mucous membranes, making them susceptible to various infectious diseases of the mucous membranes such as pneumonia, measles and enteritis, which are more pronounced among children. Vitamin A deficiency also has a manifestation called echinoderma, which is characterized by dry and keratinized epidermis, protruding hair follicles, and rough and tingly skin to the touch. If your skin is particularly dry and white lines are evident when you scratch it with your fingernails and the keratin peels off, you may want to reflect on whether you have a vitamin A deficiency problem. If your eyes often feel dry and you can't see as clearly at night as you used to, that's even more confirmation that you may have a vitamin A deficiency. When it comes to dry eyes, I'm afraid computer and cell phone users are familiar with it. Many people often take a variety of eye drops, but the effect is very little. People do not know that using computers and cell phones, which are appliances with strong light intensity changes, or watching too much TV or iPAD, will overconsume the body's vitamin A and make it more prone to deficiency. Typical deficiencies of vitamin A are night blindness and dry eye disease, which can lead to blindness in severe cases. In Southeast and South Asian countries, tens of thousands of children are still blind due to dry eye disease. In fact, the Chinese diet is quite susceptible to vitamin A deficiency, a fat-soluble vitamin that likes to coexist with cholesterol and is found in liver, kidneys, high-fat seafood, egg yolks and cream. Unfortunately, these foods are consumed in small amounts by the nation, and offal and egg yolks are often not eaten, and milk is drunk skimmed. Carotene in plant foods can also be converted into vitamin A in the body, but only orange and dark green vegetables are rich in carotene, such as carrots, squash, sweet potatoes with red hearts, and leafy green vegetables with blackened leaves such as spinach, kale, and sweet potato leaves. As long as the vegetables are cooked and consumed, they only need to be eaten with other foods containing fats to absorb the carotenoids, without adding a lot of oil for frying or using fatty meat for stewing. If dry eyes have already occurred, it is best to take vitamin A capsules or cod liver oil directly along with food supplements. This is because the conversion of carotenoids is slow and varies from person to person, while vitamin A is absorbed and utilized quickly. Many women report that their dry eyes feel significantly better after taking vitamin A. However, care should be taken not to take too much per day to avoid accumulative toxicity. Take 1-2 capsules of 10,000 IU per day when you have a dry feeling in your eyes, and then just take one capsule 2-3 days after you have basically returned to normal. At this time, you may find that the dryness of the skin has also improved.

Insufficient rest

However, hydration and vitamin supplementation will not solve everyone's problem, because there is another part of people whose problem lies in insufficient rest. Many people have experienced that if they stay up late often, their bodies feel irritated and hot, and their skin and eyes feel particularly dry. Traditional health care classifies this condition as "internal heat". This may be because the body should have rested and slept at night, the body temperature decreased, but if in a state of staying up late, the body temperature will continue to rise at night, increasing the loss of body water. Moreover, the timely repair and renewal of the skin and mucous membranes are affected by staying up late, and water retention is also reduced. In this case, the best measure is to rest in time. After staying up late, the next day and the third day should go to bed earlier, so that the body can recover in time, the skin's moisturization gradually returns to normal, and the eyes can also return to their original clear and bright state.