Is it possible....
 

to drink too much water?? :confused: I have been on a "kick" where I am drinking nothing but water. I am determined to lose weight...and I think the biggest downfall for me is my sugar intake. so i have cut out all the sugary drinks and am ONLY drinking water (with the exception of my morning decaf coffee)....BUT allowing myself one day a week where I can have one or 2 of something else like tea or something like that well, I have this water bottle that I lug around EVERYWHERE with me. It holds roughly 34 ounces. I find myself drinking 3 or 4 of those a day. :eek: :eek: I have read that your body can only absorb 8 ounces every hour...so I assume that the rest is just flushing your body, right? but is it possible to over-do it when it comes to water?

just curious :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Yes, I think so...there was a woman that died actually a few months back because she participated in a radio station contest to see which of the contestants could drink the most water. She drank too much water, and died from complications it caused!

oh gosh...are you serious?????

hubby told me i am going to drown myself. he seemed serious but i took it as a joke

i wonder what is considered "too much"

weird!!

Here's the story:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A woman who competed in a radio station’s contest to see how much water she could drink without going to the bathroom died of water intoxication, the coroner’s office said Saturday.
Jennifer Strange, 28, was found dead Friday in her suburban Rancho Cordova home hours after taking part in the “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest in which KDND 107.9 promised a Nintendo Wii video game system for the winner.
“She said to one of our supervisors that she was on her way home and her head was hurting her real bad,” said Laura Rios, one of Strange’s co-workers at Radiological Associates of Sacramento. “She was crying and that was the last that anyone had heard from her.
It was not immediately know how much water Strange consumed.
A preliminary investigation found evidence “consistent with a water intoxication death,” said assistant Coroner Ed Smith.
John Geary, vice president and marketing manager for Entercom Sacramento, the station’s owner, said station personnel were stunned when they heard of Strange’s death.
“We are awaiting information that will help explain how this tragic event occurred,” he said.
Initially, contestants were handed eight-ounce bottles of water to drink every 15 minutes.
“They were small little half-pint bottles, so we thought it was going to be easy,” said fellow contestant James Ybarra of Woodland. “They told us if you don’t feel like you can do this, don’t put your health at risk.”
Ybarra said he quit after drinking five bottles. “My bladder couldn’t handle it anymore,” he added.
After he quit, he said, the remaining contestants, including Strange, were given even bigger bottles to drink.
“I was talking to her and she was a nice lady,” Ybarra said. “She was telling me about her family and her three kids and how she was doing it for kids.”

Yes, it's called water intoxication. But don't worry, you aren't there yet. :thumbup: You'd have to drink a whole lot more than you are.

I think you're just tired of it and want a little something more. :) How about a sugar-free drink like Crystal Light?

drinking too much water messes up your electrolytes! that is not a good thing. When i had my galbladder issue the doctors told me to drink powerade , gaterade, 7up and water. but it said dont drink too much water and said why which is stated above.

oh, i'm not tired of it yet. i actually have been enjoying it. :) but i have a friend that uses those crystal light pouches and adds them to her water bottle. hmmmm...i don't know...i like just plain water. i enjoy the occasional sweet tea but lately, all i want is water.

More info I found:

What the mother of three died from on the radio show was a condition called hyponatremia (meaning -- a potentially fatal disturbance in brain function that results when the normal balance of electrolytes (salt, potassium) in the body is pushed outside of safe limits by a very rapid intake of water. She drank nearly two gallons of water -- WITHOUT using the restroom -- in a short period of time.
It is safe to sip water throughout the day and drink water with every meal, but you must add food that contains a healthy amount of salt and potassium. Having ONE banana or kiwi can make a difference in your electrolyte balances. You will notice that you must use the restroom every 1-2 hours. This too keep the balance (water and salts) in check.
The difference in a healthy amount of water intake and doing the above, is that you stretch that amount of water over the course of 24 hours, 4-5 meals (containing some potassium and sodium), and USE THE RESTROOM when you need to.

There are many other tragic examples of death by water. In 2005 a fraternity hazing at California State University, Chico, left a 21-year-old man dead after he was forced to drink excessive amounts of water between rounds of push-ups in a cold basement. Club-goers taking MDMA ("ecstasy") have died after consuming copious amounts of water trying to rehydrate following long nights of dancing and sweating. Going overboard in attempts to rehydrate is also common among endurance athletes. A 2005 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that close to one sixth of marathon runners develop some degree of hyponatremia, or dilution of the blood caused by drinking too much water.

Hyponatremia, a word cobbled together from Latin and Greek roots, translates as "insufficient salt in the blood." Quantitatively speaking, it means having a blood sodium concentration below 135 millimoles per liter, or approximately 0.4 ounces per gallon, the normal concentration lying somewhere between 135 and 145 millimoles per liter. Severe cases of hyponatremia can lead to water intoxication, an illness whose symptoms include headache, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, frequent urination and mental disorientation.

In humans the kidneys control the amount of water, salts and other solutes leaving the body by sieving blood through their millions of twisted tubules. When a person drinks too much water in a short period of time, the kidneys cannot flush it out fast enough and the blood becomes waterlogged. Drawn to regions where the concentration of salt and other dissolved substances is higher, excess water leaves the blood and ultimately enters the cells, which swell like balloons to accommodate it.

Most cells have room to stretch because they are embedded in flexible tissues such as fat and muscle, but this is not the case for neurons. Brain cells are tightly packaged inside a rigid boney cage, the skull, and they have to share this space with blood and cerebrospinal fluid, explains Wolfgang Liedtke, a clinical neuroscientist at Duke University Medical Center. "Inside the skull there is almost zero room to expand and swell," he says.

Thus, brain edema, or swelling, can be disastrous. "Rapid and severe hyponatremia causes entry of water into brain cells leading to brain swelling, which manifests as seizures, coma, respiratory arrest, brain stem herniation and death," explains M. Amin Arnaout, chief of nephrology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Where did people get the idea that guzzling enormous quantities of water is healthful? A few years ago Heinz Valtin, a kidney specialist from Dartmouth Medical School, decided to determine if the common advice to drink eight, eight-ounce glasses of water per day could hold up to scientific scrutiny. After scouring the peer-reviewed literature, Valtin concluded that no scientific studies support the "eight x eight" dictum (for healthy adults living in temperate climates and doing mild exercise). In fact, drinking this much or more "could be harmful, both in precipitating potentially dangerous hyponatremia and exposure to pollutants, and also in making many people feel guilty for not drinking enough," he wrote in his 2002 review for the American Journal of Physiology—Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology. And since he published his findings, Valtin says, "not a single scientific report published in a peer-reviewed publication has proven the contrary."

Most cases of water poisoning do not result from simply drinking too much water, says Joseph Verbalis, chairman of medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center. It is usually a combination of excessive fluid intake and increased secretion of vasopression (also called antidiuretic hormone), he explains. Produced by the hypothalamus and secreted into the bloodstream by the posterior pituitary gland, vasopressin instructs the kidneys to conserve water. Its secretion increases in periods of physical stress—during a marathon, for example—and may cause the body to conserve water even if a person is drinking excessive quantities.

Every hour, a healthy kidney at rest can excrete 800 to 1,000 milliliters, or 0.21 to 0.26 gallon, of water and therefore a person can drink water at a rate of 800 to 1,000 milliliters per hour without experiencing a net gain in water, Verbalis explains. If that same person is running a marathon, however, the stress of the situation will increase vasopressin levels, reducing the kidney's excretion capacity to as low as 100 milliliters per hour. Drinking 800 to 1,000 milliliters of water per hour under these conditions can potentially lead a net gain in water, even with considerable sweating, he says.

While exercising, "you should balance what you're drinking with what you're sweating," and that includes sports drinks, which can also cause hyponatremia when consumed in excess, Verbalis advises. "If you're sweating 500 milliliters per hour, that is what you should be drinking."

But measuring sweat output is not easy. How can a marathon runner, or any person, determine how much water to consume? As long as you are healthy and equipped with a thirst barometer unimpaired by old age or mind-altering drugs, follow Verbalis's advice, "drink to your thirst. It's the best indicator."

i wouldnt drink more than the daily recommended if i was you.

which is 1/2 your body weight in ounces, right?

so, I weigh 143 so half my body weight would be roughly 72...so i would need about 72 ounces a day.

yeah...i'm drinking more than that :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

this thread is making me thirsty for water...

well...that makes sense!

hehe...i think i've had enough for today LOL

go have a beer-the game's on ;)

Dont tempt me ;)

Yes, also some fraternity party, I believe the guy OD on water because they replaced booze with water instead. This I heard a while ago, not sure if I got the facts straight. That is insane , indeed.

Unless you're a dialysis patient or have congestive heart failure, you're not drinking too much water. I drink at least 2 gallons of water a day and have never had a problem with it (which is a little more than twice what you're drinking now).

omg lol!!

your only supposed to drink like 8 glasses of water a day.

Also i was even told by the doctors not to drink too much water because it messes up the electrolytes in your head. I dont actually know how much you would have to drink to find this out but i wouldnt test it. I think powerade and gatorade puts electrolytes back in.

You asked so i told lol. We didnt say how much water could hurt you, all you asked was can too much hurt you. And the answer is YES IT CAN lol!

if you want to follow the info givin here then thats your choice lol!!

I think mostly it is if you drink to much water in a short time. Be careful, I had a friend who ended up in the ER with a severe headache cause by drinking to much.

On most diets they suggest 8 glasses a day of water ( 8oz glasses) I drink th8 of the bottles though on my special k diet, they r convenienient!

read the rules ....
 

I believe that was because she was not allowed to go to the bathroom for a designated amount of time ...
drinking 8 oz of water each hour for 8 hours is recommended by most doctors.

http://chemistry.about.com/b/a/257677.htm
Woman Dies from Drinking too Much Water
CNN reported on a woman who died Friday from drinking too much water. Jennifer Strange (28) was participating in a radio station's "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest to see who could drink the most water before having to go to the bathroom. The condition that results from over-hydrating, hyponatremia, sometimes is seen in infants who are given bottles of water to drink (not a good plan) and also in some athletes who drink as much water as they can before exercising (e.g., marathon runners).

It's important to stay hydrated, but how do you know if you're overdoing it? One of the first signs of water intoxication is swelling. If your fingers start to get puffy where your rings become tight, that could indicate a problem.
Other symptoms of hyponatremia are nausea and dizziness. If you experience these symptoms and suspect water intoxication, stop drinking more water (that part should be obvious) and seek medical attention. Eat some food to replace the electrolytes (salts) that are being diluted by the water.

Even if you go to the bathroom it is still dangerous to drink large amounts in a short period. It causes loss of electrolytes.


Water intoxication is a condition where the body’s level of sodium has been rapidly diluted with too much water. It is also known as hyponatremia or hyperhydration. Sodium is an important electrolyte that helps regulates the body’s fluids. When the body’s sodium level is changed rapidly by drinking a lot of water, the extra water then causes the cells in the body to swell and malfunction.

Mandee maybe this is what was causing those headaches you were/are having??? I wish I could drink more water..
Be careful girl..

no, i've only been doing this the last few days :) my headaches have almost gone away. i still get light ones but nothing like the migrane-type ones I was getting.

but it is good to know that too much water is bad :) I will try and stick to my 2-3 water bottle fulls a day :) surely that is ok :)