“Millions of years of evolution has made it so that when we really need it, we’ll drink,” he says. Thirst may be enough, according to Kemper.
How many ounces in a shot how to#
How to assess your own hydration status is also up for debate. Older adults are most vulnerable to chronic dehydration, data suggest, but how common it is remains unclear. Questions about hydration and vaccine response fit into a bigger set of questions about how much water we need, how to measure dehydration, and whether we need to be intentional about drinking in general. “The bottom line was, it didn't make a difference,” Kemper says. Extra drinking, he found, didn’t change their likelihood of getting dizzy or feeling like they were going to pass out. Based on evidence that people are less likely to faint if they drink water before donating blood, Alex Kemper, division chief of primary care pediatrics at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, in Columbus, Ohio, assigned hundreds of people between the ages of 11 and 21 either to drink up to two cups of water in the hour before their shot or to act as usual.
In about one out of every thousand vaccine doses given, shots trigger a vasovagal reaction that causes dizziness, lightheadedness, and sometimes passing out within the first 15 minutes. Water-drinking is also unlikely to help with fainting. “Water does not influence immune function.” “The notion that drinking lots of water can help you avoid side effects of the COVID vaccine sounds ridiculous,” says Gleeson. When researchers assigned runners to drink more and maintain hydration during their runs, however, their immune systems showed the same level of suppression compared with runners who got dehydrated. White blood cells include the T cells and B cells that find infectious agents, formulate a defense, and develop antibodies that recognize and remember them. Prolonged exercise, such as marathon running, is known to cause a rise in stress hormones that can reduce white blood cell function for several hours and make runners more susceptible to getting sick right after a long effort, says Michael Gleeson, an emeritus professor of exercise biochemistry at Loughborough University, in the United Kingdom, who studies nutrition and immune responses to exercise. Research with endurance athletes raises doubts about water’s potential to influence the immune system at all. “It’s part of the cache of healthy behaviors that promote a healthy immune system.” “Water is not the magic bullet that’s going to give you this optimal immune response,” Sharma says. And plenty of experts argue that, outside the context of excessive heat or endurance exercise, healthy adults easily get enough liquids through food and beverages-even if they feel under the weather for a day or two after a vaccine shot.Īnd while water might play a role in preventing kidney stones and recurring urinary tract infections, for people trying to maximize their immune response while minimizing side effects, water is unlikely to do the trick on its own. And some research suggests that people feel more pain when they are dehydrated, says Jodi Stookey, a nutrition epidemiologist formerly at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, in California.īut drinking too much is also a health risk, studies show, causing sodium levels to drop and leading to headaches, fatigue, seizures, even death. In people, dehydration could be one of multiple stressors and poor health behaviors that delays the production of antibodies, she adds. Studies in frogs (a distant relative to humans) suggest that extreme dehydration could suppress the immune system, making it harder for cells to signal each other, says Sonia Sharma, an immunologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, in California. Researchers have conflicting opinions about water’s role in all of it.
On a shorter time-scale, the vaccine also causes the “innate” immune response, which is responsible for side effects some people feel after they get their shots. It’s a complicated question to sort out, in part because the immune response follows two main paths: In the long-term, it helps the body mount lasting defenses against the virus. Scientists have not conducted randomized trials to see how drinking-or not drinking-water before getting your injection might affect antibody levels or other immune responses. Here’s what we know about how water might influence your vaccine response and general health, based on the evidence available. Water-chugging also won’t reduce the chances of fainting for people who are prone to lightheadedness with needles. The problem: There is no evidence that drinking extra water can help ward off the sore arms, body aches, and fevers that some people experience after getting their COVID-19 vaccine shots. The advice comes from neighbors, magazine articles, clinic websites, even nurses: drink a lot of water before and after your COVID-19 vaccine to help ward off side-effects.