From the sample sentence for 直後
そのランナーは、ゴールの直後に水不足によって倒れてしまった。
I wanted to see how this differs from 脱水 but didn’t find any native material. Would both words be interchangeable in this sentence or would the nuance be different?
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Wouldn’t the nuance difference be the same (or similar) in English? I feel like dehydration and having a lack of water are different things.
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Probably others can answer it better, but my sense is that 「脱水症」over just「脱水」is probably the usual way to express that someone is suffering the effects of dehydration in a medical context. Maybe sentences like this work:
- 脱水症状で倒れた
- 脱水症状になって倒れた
- 脱水状態で倒れた
To me it sounds very clinical, but if you want to build your own intuitions, you could do a google search and see what articles come up. The types of sites might offer perspective.
「水分不足」is the everyday way to express dehydration, or literally “insufficient hydration”. If you look up definitions of 「脱水症」you’ll probably see that it is defined using 「水分不足」。「水分」refers to your water intake. 「不足」or 「足りない」mean “insufficient”. So
- 水が足りなくて倒れた
- 水分不足で倒れた
Lastly, there’s 「みず不足」. This I guess could mean dehydration, but it also means “water scarcity” in an ecological sense. Neither 「脱水症」nor「水分不足」have that connotation. I worry that 「 水不足で倒れた」sounds a bit less common than the above. Was that the real example?
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This looks like a typo for 水分不足 as 水不足 commonly refers to ‘water shortage’ as @mjberends mentioned. I’ll go ahead and correct it 
(Edit: 脱水 has a meaning of an abnormal lack of water, but I don’t think it’s commonly used by itself in daily conversation since it’s a medical term. That said, like @mjberends said, it’s natural to say things like 脱水症状, 脱水状態, or 脱水症 (which sounds a bit more clinical). In everyday life, when people say just 脱水 on its own, they are often talking about the spin-dry cycle of a washing machine.)
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