Why do elderly people refuse to drink sufficient fluid?

It’s often the case that they’re anxious about leaks, and/or getting to the loo on time, or at all, if there are mobility problems.

Hardly any of the residents in my DM’s care home would drink plain water, so in addition to tea and coffee they were given small glasses of weak squash throughout the day. Plus there were plenty of ‘watery’ foods - soup, stewed fruit and custard, jelly and ice cream, etc.

you need to get your husband involved here. it is his father after all. what about the chair he sits in, does it have a waterproof covering on it and is it washed every day. does his bed have a waterproof matress protector on it? get him a load of trackie bottoms and make him change in the middle of the day, dh has to force him into the shower and just tell him he is stinking!! I had a patient that refused to take a bath, stating that he had one last month! we had to force him into the bath to give a good wash and put clean pyjamas on him before letting him into the hospital bed! he stank to high heaven!

OP I have similar issues with my 87yo DM - she is prone to UTI which may (although no confirmation) stem from dehydration. She has a few cups of strong tea a day, rarely any water more than a few sips. She will drink juice though. When I am with her, I give her squash which she will happily drink.

It is all the reasons pp have said. At that age, it's very hard to change the habits of a lifetime. She doesn't drink much water because ..

1 - she doesn't move a lot and doesn't get warm (always cold) so doesn't often feel thirsty
2 - she has always drank tea primarily
3 - poor mobility and energy, so reluctant to have lots of toilet visits
4 - she doesn't really believe it's necessary (different from your case)

I am 49 and grew up drinking Ribena - consciously drinking water became a thing in mid 90s when I was at uni (and had dozens of fillings by then!). But I think carrying around water bottles came later really.

I think you have to do it by stealth OP and let's face it a swig of cold, plain water isn't all that appealing. I'm not in the UK but are there low sodium versions of Bovril, Cup-A-Soup type things?
I've googled a bit but I'm too tired from my own elderly mother's teeth drama to do deep research tonight. (See elderly parents threads passim - in the style of Private Eye.)
I think you will, through trial and error hit on some way to get fluids into him. Even cooked vegetables? My 84 year old mum has a fascination which borders on a fetish for runner beans.

Good luck and let us know how you get on.

Brilliant idea, I wish I had thought of that with my MIL, but I did not.

Have been through this with MIL, who lived with us. Same. I was so exhausted with the anticipation of imminent hospitalisation, hospitalisation itself, then discharge after an insufficient course of IV ab, with a subsequent re-admission, because the infection (surprise, surprise, was deep-dwelling and the 5 day IV ab course was not enough) that all I wanted to do was to get a good night's sleep. In the end I just begged, went to her room and begged her to have a drink and my dc helped me with it - when I was away working (I travel a lot), they would make sure they would ask her to have her 2L a day (in addition to coffees, teas, etc.) She was not always able to get to the toilet fast enough not to have a few drips, hence nappies at night. Basically, she would not have done it by herself, myself and my dc ensured she did it, by begging.

A few glasses of alcohol FREE beer twice a day will do it! Add lemonade for a shandy. Why not try that if he enjoys a drink but is not allowed it because of his illness.

I don't think that is true of all elderly, I drink water all day, always have a glass full and when it's empty, I fill it up again. I love water.

This company make a sweet for dehydration. It was developed by someone who was devastated that their Nan ended up in hospital with dehydration. They are 95% water.

I used to buy them for my Dad. They are expensive, but did the trick when I was struggling to get fluids down him. If you do a little research you may find some things on the market that are a bit cheaper.

www.jellydrops.com/

What I also found with my Mum was a small glass that she could gulp down (not the best way to drink water but needs must) and I could make sure she drank it. So she would have lots of little glasses throughout the day. Sometimes a big glass of water they forget to pick it up and sip.

Good luck because it is not fun and a constant battle.

There was glasses of water available at my infants and junior school. Any other time we had a drinking fountain in the toilets in infants. In juniors it was a tap in the toilets that said drinking water next to it.

People with an active stoma can have very high fluid losses and do need lots of fluid to make up for that.

Most people don't have stomas though, and have kidneys that are perfectly capable of doing their job of concentrating urine. Anyone drinking three litres of expensive mineral water a day is literally pissing away money.

Jellydrops.com. Bloody expensive but designed for people who do t like drinking fluids.

Would he drink milk? Milk is better for hydration because it stays in your system longer. You can get those hydration sachets I got some for my daughter after a bowt of vomiting. You can also get jelly hydrating drops for.

We had a rabbit that didn't drink a lot of water. But vet advised to give him lots of veggies that have water in cucumber etc and he got most his fluids from that. Fluid foods like soup and yoghurt as well.

Maybe it depends where you lived. I was never brought up to drink loads of water and certainly never carried water bottles around with me. Although everyone brought a packed lunch to school (primary and high school), no one brought a drink with them. If you were thirsty you had a sip from the bubbler and that was it.

He might just genuinely not feel thirsty so doesn’t feel like he needs to drink?

I heard on the radio that there is a very tasty alcoholic free stout, would that do?
No alcohol.

3L is a huge amount, especially if he's never been a big drinker. Can you try not to focus on the end goal straight away and just build up to it slowly? Does he still have good hand strength and grip? If not, what if you put the water in smaller bottles, that are easier and less heavy to hold, like the 330ml kids' water bottles? Or use glasses that are easy to grip?

Could plain milk or milkshakes be an alternative drink for him? Or home made smoothies made from frozen fruit and water/milk?

It's also worth remembering, as others have highlighted, that some of the fluid we need comes from food.

https://www.bupa.co.uk/newsroom/ourviews/ten-water-rich-foods-hydration

Other than this, I don't think you can do much, OP. He needs to want to do it for himself and, if he doesn't, well, it's his choice.

Even people in their mid 40s weren't brought up to have bottles of water and to drink two litres a day etc.

We definitely were - am mid 40s and when we were small kids my mum used to have bottles of diluted squash with her everywhere we went (very diluted warm squash was what everyone drank in the 80s) — but by the 90s we were carrying bottles around school every day as teens (usually just reusing plastic 1L drinks bottles rather than all the nice water bottles today); but we would freeze them and carry them around school all day for ice water as they melted. Same for always having water at meals and so on. I’d say it was around the end of the 80s/beginning of the 90s that the water thing was already taking off.

@Disscombobulated OP would he drink a nice flavour of diluted squash, eg different flavours of Robinsons like lemon barley water or interesting fruit squashes?

I would go with food with lots of fluids, so soup as pp suggested, would he eat yoghurt, that's fluid rich, will he eat hot vegetables with a meal? I'm awful at drinking water but do try to eat lots of veg for the water. I also love a hot ribena. McDonald's milkshake? Obviously not very healthy but may be worth a go.

Bottled water is readily available in the UK- but it's not true that the tap water is 'heavily chlorinated' anyway- the levels are some of the lowest in the world.

It's usually having to get to the loo - be that an issue with mobility, speed getting there, incontinence, pain when mobilising.....

I get what you're saying, but it likely won't change
I see this every day (I work in a nursing home)

But 3L is a LOT,even for someone a lot younger, are you sure on the amount?

Or rather, when you were growing up, people had some commonsense, and drank when they felt thirsty.

A drink with meals (which in the 70s were highly unlikely to be manufactured crap with loads of salt, but probably contained vegetables and fruit), plus a few cups of tea and coffee is probably all you need in moderate temperatures when you're not exercising hard.