Brief Answer:
There are different kinds of dehydration depending on cause of it and water/sodium intake

Detailed Answer:
Hello,
Thank you for asking at healthcaremagic.

I carefully read your question and understand your concern.

Dehydration is loss of body fluids by different causes. I don't know exactly what caused your family member to loose fluids but the most common cause is vomiting and diarrhea and heat exhaustion (excessive sweating).

For dehydration to happen water in the body should be depleted but on the other hand water and sodium are in balance in the cells and outside of them. Sometimes a person might loose more water than sodium and this causes dehydration with high sodium (hypertonic dehydration) like it happened the first time. Sometimes he might loose water but a lot of sodium also so he might have low sodium dehydration (hypotonic dehydration) and many times a patient might loos equivalent amounts of water and sodium and is caused isotonic dehydration.

What causes the different kinds of dehydration is the cause of diarrhea and also if a patient substitutes water and sodium at equivalent amounts when he has diarrhea. This is why it is very important that when a person has diarrhea and vomitting or excessive sweating, not to take only water but Oral Rehydration Solutions that give the sodium and water in equivalent amounts.

So to conclude:
- there are different types of dehydration depending on the cause of it and the loss of water compared to sodium
- elderly people are very prone to dehydration so it is very important to discuss this with the patient and help him prevent this
- when needing to substitute fluids it is very important to take water and sodium at the same time, the best way is through ORS mentioned above.


I hope this is helpful and answers to your question but please feel free to ask if anymore clarification is needed on this.

Kind regards,
Antoneta Zotaj, MD

---