Can Drinking Too Much Water Kill You?
Yesterday I wrote a post on how to prevent yourself from becoming dehydrated while exercising in the 
heat.
The techniques are fairly simple to stay healthy and have plenty of energy to exercise for as long as you want. However, there are always a handful of people who have seen the media frenzy over drinking too much water…
Have people died from water intoxication and hyponatremia?
Yes, but the number of total cases that have been recorded is only in the hundreds and the vast majority of those instances occurred with marathon runners who had just completed a four hour marathon.
So while I don't discount the fact that you can consume too much water, your likelihood for doing any harm is negligible. In most cases you'd have to be really sweating profusely and depleting your body of a lot of sodium. This specific group of endurance athletes can just add some Gatorade or other electrolyte formula to their water which they can sip throughout their workout.
For the rest of us, we can breathe a sigh of relief and let go of the fear that water is dangerous.
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Posted by: Kat | Jul 22, 2008 2:03:17 PM
I just hope that people drinking all this water think to filter it first. I hate to sound like I'm on a hobby-horse, but agribusiness has so contributed to harmful run-off into our planetary water sources that most rural towns in the US have to add chlorine to tap water just to make it safe...and even then I question the safety of chlorine, because we might as well be drinking swimming pool water in that case.
I for one, detest the taste of chlorinated water, and use a Brita pitcher to cut down as much as I can on the stuff. And the reason I use a pitcher is I have a moral objection to constantly putting plastic water bottles into the landfill.
Posted by: Kathy Joyce | Jul 21, 2008 7:58:13 AM
I think it's rare to die from drinking water excessively although I did read of someone dying from such an occurance in the news recently. As a rule you should be drinking about 2 litres of water a day, and in the hot weather or if you exercise you should increase that amount. Drinking water can also help you to lose weight as it keeps you feeling full and raises the metabolism slightly.
www.weightlossdietingtips.com
Posted by: Tom Seabourne | Jul 18, 2008 7:26:39 PM
Hyponatremia should not be taken lightly. Consider the "dieter" who rides her bike to the gym, lifts weights, takes a kickboxing and spinning class and drinks ONLY water for fear of the calories in sports drinks. Furthermore, her caloric intake is low and she has heard that "salt is the enemy".
Thirty percent of the finishers of the Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii are hyponatremia.
For further information on water intoxication, Google the studies of Dr. Timothy Noakes.
