Is there such a thing as drinking TOO MUCH water? I drink quite a bit of water.... close to 120 oz a day. This doesn't include the diet soft drink I have at dinner time or the coffee I have in the morning. I have an office job and I'm a full time student, so I sit a lot. I make exercise a priority, getting up an hour earlier each morning to work out. Still, I have found that my ankles & feet are swelling. I watch my sodium intake and blood pressure. My blood pressure is normal. I have also had my sugar tested and it is normal. What could be causing this swelling? My sister thinks I'm getting too much water but I didn't know there was any such thing.

I cannot imagine that this amount of water could be dangerous. Especially if you are overweight

usually water acts like a diuretic flushing you out....not causing you to retain...

How old are you? When is the last time you had a full physical where they checked your heart/kidneys etc?

Sitting a lot could be the culprit as well. try to find opportunities to elevate your legs whenever possible. Maybe those compression stockings might be useful?

when your sugar was checked was it a part of a bunch of other labs? were any of the other values off? If your serum sodium level is normal then you are probably not overhydrated.

do you pee alot? tmi? lol

Kat, I'm not sure what all my numbers were, just that they were "normal". I know, I know, I should have gotten a copy of the tests, but I didn't. I'm 36 & the last time I had a full physical, well... it's been a long while ago. I do have a leaky heart valve but it has never caused me any trouble. I'm not medicated - the only medication I am on is for hypothyroidism. I kind of thought, after I posted this, that the sitting could be the issue.

sometimes valve problems can cause the heart to not be as effective at circulating blood causing fluid to flow out of the vessels and into the surrounding tissue-->swelling. I would go to the doc and make sure this is not what is happening. there are medications that can help your heart be more effective.

Yes it is possible to drink too much water. I'm a psychiatrist and it is not uncommon for some of my patients to develop a syndrome usually associated with taking medication for schizophrenia in which they are thirsty all the time and drink excessive amounts of water and it can cause their electrolytes to get messed up. It can get serious. This is relatively uncommon but the short answer is yes, there is such a thing as too much water. I doubt your 120 oz is going to get you into trouble at your current weight but you may need to adjust as you lose weight. If you are unsure, ask your doctor.

My mother was hospitalized for water intoxication or "water poisoning" drinking only about 120 ounces of fluid per day. The fluids were removing too much sodium from her blood. However a prescription blood pressure medication and a low sodium diet contributed.

The kidney specialist called in, told us that water intoxication is becoming more common as dieting habits increasingly include very large amounts of water. He told us that except for some high-performance athletes, that virtually no one "needs" more than 3 quarts of fluid a day, but that up to a gallon usually is harmless unless a person has a risk factor (for my mom, it was the blood pressure medication).

Also, are you drinking/eating fluids besides water and are you counting them in the 120 ounces, because ALL moisture counts. It's entirely untrue that coffee "doesn't count." Coffee is not nearly as dehydrating as it is rumored to be. If it were, Mom's kidney specialist pointed out, people who drank only coffee would die of dehydration (and they don't).

not to get off topic but i read an interesting study about coffee where they found that coffee makes you pee more frequently (because it causes bladder spasms) however, the AMOUnt of fluid peed out was the same as with just drinking the same volume of water. In other words, it supports what Kaplods said about it not being a diuretic. People just THOUGHT it was because it made them take more trips to the bathroom.

no, there's no such thing. i did a research on this a year ago and you basically have to drink gallons and gallons of water right after each one. The only way to ''drink too much water'' is to drown. I dont know how much you weigh right now, but the heavier you are, the more water you should be drinking anyways if you are trying to lose weight.

by the way, can someone pls show me how to get one of those weight trackers thing at the end of ppl's reply?? I think it's very motivating but today is my first day on here and i'm not quite too sure on how this works. thanks

I have followed zeusmeatball and he is on this website and he drinks between 1 and 1 1/2 gallons of water and a gallon of green tea daily!!

Hmmm...not sure but interesting to read all the posts. My issue is the complete opposite. I have problems increasing my water intake. I always feel sick when I drink water and although I know I need to increase it just don't feel like I can keep water down. Especially plain...so I end up having to add flavour to it. This way I can drink like 2 glasses of water.

Not too good.

I've had issues with swelling off and on for years. Initially it was caused by medication and every time since has been caused my one medication or another. The last time I had swelling I decided to narrow down my medications to figure out which one was causing it...Tylenol! Simple Tylenol that most of us do not think twice about taking! Double check with your doctor to see if anything at all that you take whether OTC or Rx could cause this swelling. Good luck!

This is NOT true. It can happen, and it does. Even to people who are otherwise healthy. Because the SAD (standard amaricam diet) is so high in sodium, it is very rare (because the danger of water poisoning is almost always from removing too musch sodium from the blood - sometimes other electrolytes, but most often sodium. With too little sodium, the heart stops functioning properly and the person has a heart attack).

There are many factors that contribute to how prone a person will be to sodium depletion.

It can happen several ways. Drining HUGE quantities of water, quickly is one of them, but it can also happen by drinking a more moderate amount "too much" over time.

In the past, it was only seen almost exclusively in

1. extreme athletes, mostly marathon runners (they're losing a lot of electrolytes through sweating, and replacing water - even with electrolyte-added fluids like sports drinks sometimes doesn't replace the sodium fast enough).

2. people trying to flush drugs out of their system to pass a drug screen
(this is the gallons and gallons quickly method).

3. mental patients such as schizophrenics and OCD patients. The meds cause the sensation of a dry mouth, and it can trigger a water drinking compulsion (this is usually the "moderately extra" fluids over a long time, that causes more and more sodium depletion until there's not enough left).

4. people with undiagnosed kidney disfunction.



It is NOT something most people have to worry about, but because it is being seen in more and more healthy people, anyone who does drink more than 3 quarts of water a day, takes blood pressure medications, especially on a low-sodium diet (or whole food diet, without added salt) should at least be familiar with the signs and symptoms of water intoxication/sodium deficit.

It's very flu-like and comes on suddenly, so many people assume they have the flu. It's what my family thought. If my dad (a former Emergency Medicat Technician for a volunteer ambulance service) hadn't been suspicious of the confusion my mom was exhibiting, they would not have gotten her to the emergency room, and she probably would have died with even a couple hours delay. As it was she was in the hospital more than a week (and when does THAT happen anymore. They discharge you the minute it's safe to send you home).

My mom did have high blood pressure, and was on medication, but she was otherwise healthy. She did not have underlying kidney disease, and she was not drinking gallons a day. The kidney specialist said it probably took months for the "extra water" to flush out enough sodium to make her sick.