For as long as I can remember, I've been mildly dehydrated. My lips are always chapped. My skin isn't quite soft and smooth. When I was really little, my lips would crack and bleed, and I'd pick at them, ignoring the taste of blood. I didn't really care, all the way through high school. I had more important things to worry about, like trying not to scare off all the neurotypical people*, learning the rules of society, and trying to figure out who and what I was.
I still dealt with a lot of that in college, but then and afterwards, I had more time to enumerate the various abnormal things about myself. Many of these I either can't change or don't consider a negative, but the dehydration is definitely a negative.
I pointedly started drinking more, and mostly water. Up to and in excess of the debated "8 glasses a day" figure. The main result of this was much more frequent trips to the restroom: a side effect I could do without. Once an hour or so after drinking a couple glasses just seems excessive. Having read that petroleum-based lip balms actually dry your lips over time, I switched to alternative based balms, like beeswax.
These measured helped some, but not enough. I still had chapped lips. Long hours in hot conditions at one of my summer jobs seemed to help, but the job ended and those hours were too unpleasant to consider for a full time job. I went in for minor surgery at one point and was hooked up to an IV. The experience was interesting, but not as interesting as waking up post-surgery to find I had normal-person lips. I poked at them and idly wondered about salt and water levels, but several hours later, they had gone and I had my chapped lips back.
I tried experimenting with sports drinks for their salt, to no avail. I'd more or less given up on the matter, until a friend gave me some herbal tea. It was health tea, calling itself a detox and healthy liver function promoter. I scoff at popular health trends, and "detox" just screams "health fad" at me. But my friend didn't want it, and I dislike waste, plus I like that friend a lot. We share a fondness for tea. So out of respect, I made myself a cup. And promptly gagged, because it tasted very strongly of black licorice. Yuck. Stubbornly, I drank the rest and went back to work, trying to forget the taste as fast as possible.
Which is probably why it took me an hour to realize I felt rather bloated. I was retaining the water I'd drunk, rather than it running a footrace through my system to await expulsion. Curious, I drank more water and a second cup of tea (using the old tea bag). Still nasty, but the effect stuck, and for several days. For the second time, I had normal-person lips.
I talked to my friend, who knows tons about herbs, and she told me several ingredients in the tea might be responsible, but to try the dandelion root first. So today after job training, I went to the grocery store and bought the only box of dandelion root tea I could find. The effects of the "detox" tea aren't as impressive as they used to be, which makes me worry that it was only a fluke, but there's still an effect, I think. In any case, this is my only lead. I shouldn't waste it.
*what? People can be flighty. One too many hints of "this person is really different from me," and off they go, wanting the illusion of normalcy.
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