Water Retention

Diuretic foods sound like a good idea if you’re trying to lose water retention or water weight. After all, no-one wants to take pills if they can help it.

But before you decide that diuretic foods are the best way to lose water retention, please be aware that they are not a cure. At best diuretics of any kind offer temporary relief. At worst they can be addictive and in the long term can end up making your water retention much worse.

You are probably cautious about them, which is why you are searching for information on diuretic foods rather than water pills (also known as diuretic drugs). But the fact is that anything which acts as a diuretic has the same effect on your body. It interferes with the natural hormones that keep your kidneys working in a healthy, balanced way.

The most powerful diuretic foods are actually drinks: tea, coffee and alcohol. All these items force your kidneys to go on excreting water even if you are becoming dehydrated. This is one of the most harmful things for your body. Dehydration in its early stages is not always noticeable. It may make you thirsty, but if you then consume more diuretic foods (drinks) you will simply stay dehydrated.

Diuretic Foods and Dehydration

If your body is constantly dehydrated, it can affect your ability to think straight, and in particular it affects your joints and your spine. Your bones need cartilage to stop them rubbing together. Cartilage is 90 per cent water. Dehydration makes cartilage shrink, and is likely to be one of the reasons why arthritis (swollen, painful joints) is such a common disease and also why backache is so common.

One of the worst effects of dehydration is to teach your body to hold on to water in your body’s tissues – preventing it from getting to the blood where your kidneys will grab and excrete it. Your tissues are where water retention collects and produces swellings, e.g. in your face, hands, feet, legs, ankles or tummy. Your body holds on to water here, to prevent these parts of your body from getting dehydrated. The more diuretic foods you consume, the worse this problem will get over time.

Diuretic Foods: The Solution To Water Retention?

Eating the right kinds of foods is often an effective solution for water retention. But these are not diuretic foods. They do not make your kidneys work harder. Some foods like dark blue and purple berries are great because they help to start healing some of the causes of water retention. But it is the overall balance of your diet, and sometimes the foods you don’t eat, which really makes a difference to a water retention problem.

Please do explore some of the other articles on this site, which tell you more about water retention causes, and about a book called the Waterfall Diet, which contains a self-test and plenty of other helpful information.

Water retention is often a sign that you need to pay some attention to what you are eating. It could turn out to be a blessing, because if you change your diet now, rather than just try to rely on diuretic foods, you may be able to prevent worse health problems from arising in the future.

Related posts:

1. Do You Have To Go On A Water Diet To Get Rid Of Water Retention?
2. How Do Diuretics Cause Water Retention?

Tags: diuretic foods, diuretics, kidneys, water retention