Pointe Magazine reported on what dancers need to know about dehydration featuring insight from Kathleen Davenport, MD, spine and sports medicine physiatrist at HSS. 

For dancers, summer means sweat. Even if you’re not performing outdoors directly in the sunshine and heat, you still might end up soaking your leotard by the end of the day.

Our bodies are mostly made up of fluid, so when we sweat out significantly more than we replace, that can impact everything from our muscles to our brain, our heart, and even our gut. “As we get out of balance, everything is affected,” said Dr. Davenport.

In severe situations, dehydration can sometimes make people start sweating profusely or stop sweating at all. “That’s something that we see more commonly in extreme outdoor athletes,” Dr. Davenport shared. “But if you take dancers who are not used to training in the heat and put them in a festival all day long in the sun, it could happen.”

Even if things don’t get that intense, just a little fatigue from minor dehydration could potentially lead to injury, Dr. Davenport warns. Dehydration also raises the risk of heat illnesses like heat exhaustion and heatstroke.

Read the full article at pointemagazine.com.