What exactly is a diuretic and its relationship to dehydration
I keep reading statements like this (this one from a BBC news article, talking about alcohol and mangoes), and get suspicious that there is a misunderstanding somewhere:
It acts as a powerful diuretic, causing you to urinate more, meaning you become dehydrated.
It seems to me that it would be one of these:
It acts as a powerful diuretic, causing you to urinate more, meaning your bladder gets emptied more often, but otherwise not altering the water levels in your body. Diuretics are mainly a problem just before bed and on long car journeys.
Or:
It acts as a powerful diuretic, meaning more of your body's water gets redirected to the bladder, even more than the water in the diuretic drink, and so you end up with a net loss of water in the body.
I thought "diuretic" had the former meaning (you want to empty your bladder more often) but I'd love to have a proper medical reference, or see some solid scientific research.
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A diuretic increases diuresis, which means it causes your kidneys to excrete more urine. It has nothing to do with your bladder and both of those definitions you quote are wrong, especially the one saying it doesn't alter the water levels in your body. Diuretics definitely reduce the water levels in your body; that's the most common reason for taking them. The second quote is wrong by saying they cause water to be redirected to the bladder. There's no redirection involved. Water is removed from your system the same way whether you take a diuretic or not. It's simply removed faster with a diuretic.
Wikipedia has a good summary of their medical uses:
In medicine, diuretics are used to treat heart failure, liver
cirrhosis, hypertension, influenza, water poisoning, and certain
kidney diseases. Some diuretics, such as acetazolamide, help to make
the urine more alkaline and are helpful in increasing excretion of
substances such as aspirin in cases of overdose or poisoning.
Diuretics are often abused by those with eating disorders, especially
bulimics, in attempts to lose weight.
The antihypertensive actions of some diuretics (thiazides and loop
diuretics in particular) are independent of their diuretic
effect.[citation needed] That is, the reduction in blood pressure is
not due to decreased blood volume resulting from increased urine
production, but occurs through other mechanisms and at lower doses
than that required to produce diuresis. Indapamide was specifically
designed with this in mind, and has a larger therapeutic window for
hypertension (without pronounced diuresis) than most other diuretics.
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