Lack of Strong Thirst Signals Leads Elderly to Drink ...(ls from the body Egan explained. For exa...),Health

"When muscles are weaker, there is less sensory input telling you have eaten or drunk as much as you have," Egan said. Signals come from other areas of the body, such as the back of the throat, and that is also less sensitive with age, the study noted.

The study concluded that "scheduled drinking may be a strategy to reduce the risk of dehydration in older people, although care should be exercised to avoid excessive water intake and the associated risks of cerebral swelling."

The findings are published in this week's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The work of Egan and his team of scientists from Melbourne and San Antonio, Texas, is one of many studies of thirst in the elderly, said Neil E. Rowland, a professor of psychology at the University of Florida and a thirst researcher. "These studies have had two different results: That elderly people experience less thirst and consequently drink less fluid, or that elderly people experience just as much thirst but still drink less," he said.

"This paper is important because it's really the first study that looks inside the brain to try to find out what might be different" about the thirst mechanism in older people, Rowland said.

The study is also interesting because it looked at the cingulate cortex, a region of the brain that hasn't been studied widely by thirst researchers, he added.

While the findings are important to basic science, they don't have immediate practical consequences, Rowland said. "The authors suggest controlled drinking programs so that [older people] take more drinks across the day. That doesn't follow from this particular research. Those sorts of programs have been around for a long time."

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