Quote:
Originally Posted by reptogirl
well i would say being overweight it would be very hard to drink enough water to kill you, unless you have some pre-existing medical condition
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Even if this were true (and it's not), how would you know you had such a condition. Most water poisioning is due to sodium depletion, and the most immediate risk of sodium depletion - often the first and only symptom is cardiac arrest. By the time you experience symptoms, your life is in danger.
Yes, my mother did nearly die of sodium depletion from water intoxication. She was in reasonable good health for her age (and excellent health for her weight), but she did have mild high blood pressure so was on a blood pressure medication which depleted her body of sodium (most blood pressure medications do). She didn't eat an intentionally low-sodium diet, she just ate very little salt (for as long as I can remember, our family didn't use much salt - almost never at the table, and she always cut salt in recipes by half, or omitted it entirely).
She was only drinking a little more than a gallon of fluids per day (and that included coffee).
The symptoms come on suddenly, and are quite flu-like. My dad is a trained EMT, and the only reason he knew to call the ambulance was because he was quite suspicious of her mental state. She was more "out of it" than he would expect from the flu. Still, he didn't think it was serious, he just knew that he would not be able to help her to the car without hurting one or both of them.
At the hospital, the ER staff wasn't initially concerned until they realized her heart was beating irregularly. It took them about 12 hours to determine it was water intoxication (until recently it was so rare, even most kidney specialist didn't even see more than a case or two, it's becoming more and more common, probably due to dieting water myths (at least that's what the kidney specialist called in told us)
Mom was in the hospital for more than a week (you don't see that even in major surgery anymore), but it took that long to get her blood chemistry to safe enough level to release her. You can't just pour salt down a person to fix the problem.
The water intoxication caused kidney damage that will likely be permanent.
She was on a 2 liter water limit for three weeks, and then a 3 liter water limit for life (including every bit of liquid, even that with caffeine, because caffeinated beverages aren't nearly as dehydrating as is commonly believed).
The kidney specialist was amazing. He told me that I needed to make sure not to drink more than 3 liters of fluids myself (because I'm on the same blood pressure medication, and I eat a relatively low sodium diet, and my body doesn't hold on to sodium well).
He told me that 180 ounces of water (which was half my weight in ounces at that time) could be life threatening even if I weren't on any medications.
The doctor told us that almost no one needs more than 3 liters of water, and that he's seeing a rise in water intoxication cases, he believes because of the many dieting myths.
He said it was once rare for even kidney specialists to see more than one or two cases a career, and now most general practitioners have seen it more than once. Also patients tended to be (I also knew this, because I taught it in community college psych classes) extreme athletes, people with severe kidney disease, psychotic and OCD patients with water drinking compulsions, and people trying to flush their system to pass a drug screen (which doesn't work, by the way). But now most patients don't fit into those old categories. Many are young, healthy, with few risk factors (blood pressure medications weren't always considered a risk factor, because they thought the salt in the Standard American diet was more than sufficient to protect the person - and it does so long as they're not drinking large amounts of water, especially for long periods. The sodium depletion can be gradual).
He pointed out that if coffee were nearly as dehydrating as is commonly thought, people who drink only coffee would die of dehydration (they don't).
He also said that even beer and most alcoholic beverages "count" (except very high proof ones), in the Middle Ages the water was unsafe to drink (people didn't know the secret was boiling, but they boiled water to make beer), so everyone, including children drank beer and little else.
He said that obese people have more blood than thinner people, but not by much, and that our kidneys aren't bigger either, and as a result, a morbidly obese person doesn't need much if any more water than a thin person - maybe a little more, but certainly not two or three times as much as much.
He also said that urine color can be misleading (you can be dehydrated and have pale urine, and you can be overhydrated and have deeply colored urine), but that as a general rule it's a better guideline than most of the other water myths out there.
If you look at the water information, and where it's coming from - it's not generally coming from the medical community, but the medical community isn't exempt from being influenced by rumors. Even many general practitioners pass on "wive's tales" because the more often people hear "common wisdom" the more they believe it's true (and that's just as true for doctor people as the rest of us).
I know I'm ranting on this, and it may seem disproportionate to the risk (most people are eating so much salt, it really would be hard to drink enough fluid to be at risk), but at 3FC, we're not "most people." Weore more health-conscious than most, so we're at greatest risk for the myths. We are likely to be the people avoiding excess salt in our diets and exercising more.
But seeing what happened to my mother, and how close we came to losing her, with such little (as in no) advanced warning, it's just become a hot button topic for me, especially sinceI actually taught people that water intoxication was virtually impossible for a reasonably healthy person.
Water intoxication isn't common, but it's becoming less rare, and is only going to get more and more common with the water myths getting more and more extreme. As with coffee, at first it was cofee couldn't count for more than half of your water. Then coffee didn't count. Then you had to drink a cup of water for every cup of coffee - then two cups of water for every cup of coffee. It's like a game of telephone run amok.
Water water everywhere...
I guess I'll just drink as much as I can which is what I'm trying to do anyways but yea drinking half my weight in ounces seems a bit much since i have a hard time getting 2 quarts in me to begin with and that'd be like me drinking twice that much...
