Sleep and Hydration

I am wondering tonight about the connection between sleep and water. I have been traveling and getting very little sleep. Like last night, when I went to bed a little after midnight and got up at 3:30 so I could catch a 6:00 am flight home, in time to teach and preach in church this morning.

I was realizing that when I'm sleep-deprived the next best thing is to drink a ton of water. In the car, on the way home from the airport (God bless the off-site parking people who pass out free drinks as you leave!), I wondered if that is because the water helps return oxygen to my blood. But I doubt that it's quite that direct.

Lack of sleep does lead to de-hydration though, pretty directly. The weird thing is the other end of that.

I was supposed to have a meeting with the elders of my congregation about a somewhat difficult situation. I seriously considered cancelling it, because I was afraid I would cry through the whole thing. It is an emotional thing for me, but not really that much. It's just that when I'm sleep-deprived, crying is about the most natural thing for me. (Perhaps we never grow out of infancy as far as we think?) And since I didn't want them to think I am more upset than I really am, it seemed risky to have the meeting in my current state.

Since there was no other good time to do so, we went ahead with the meeting, and it was fine. Better than I expected, in fact. I only cried a little bit, near the end. And actually, though they're not really doing what I wanted (if I even knew what I wanted them to do), I'm feeling pretty fine with where we ended up for the moment.

But wouldn't you think, if my body's already de-hydrated from sleep-deprivation, that it would avoid crying, since that's just going to make it worse? I guess it really is more complicated than that.

I suppose I should do the truly prudent thing now, and go to bed! Perhaps with a glass of water.