Here’s a small experiment you can run on yourself right now. Think back over today, and count the glasses of water you’ve actually had.
For a lot of people, on a hot afternoon, the honest answer is: fewer than you’d have guessed. And here’s the part that matters — you probably haven’t felt especially thirsty about it. That’s not carelessness. It’s one of the quietest changes of getting older, and almost nobody warns you about it.
A few days ago I wrote you the first half of this: how to keep your home cool and safe when a heatwave hits. This is the other half, and it’s the one I think surprises people most — because it’s happening on the inside, where you can’t see it, and where the alarm you’ve trusted your whole life has gone quiet.
The Signal That Stops Working
For most of your life, thirst was a reliable messenger. You got low on water, you felt thirsty, you drank. Simple.
With age, that messenger gets slower and quieter. Researchers describe it as a “blunted thirst sensation”: an olde…