Originally posted by Becca
Serp and Liokault- Those are good examples of extreme situations. Thanx. Do you know of any normal situations, though?
No. No one dies over overhydration in normal circumstances. Only the extreme.
Taken from the TIMESONLINE
Drinking pints of water can be bad for you
By Nigel Hawkes, Health Editor
ADVICE to athletes to drink lots of water can be dangerous and should be ignored, according to a sports scientist.
Excessive drinking of water can lead to hyponatraemia, a condition in which salt levels become unnaturally diluted. The actor Anthony Andrews, who is appearing in My Fair Lady in the West End of London, recently suffered the condition after drinking 17 pints of water a day in hot weather.
He is recovering but others have not been so lucky. At least seven deaths and more than 250 cases of the condition have been reported since the maxim “drink as much as can be tolerated” became fashionable, Timothy Noakes says in the British Medical Journal.
Professor Noakes, from the University of Cape Town and the Sports Science Institute of South Africa, says the drinking fad was started by an article in a medical journal in 1969 which gave no real evidence.
Since then a series of studies, many funded by sports drinks manufacturers, have fostered the idea that athletes should replace all the fluid they lose. It has also been claimed that during exercise the sense of thirst cannot be trusted, so athletes should drink fixed amounts — up to, or more than, a litre an hour — rather than simply satisfying their thirst.
None of those claims is soundly based, he says. Those most at risk from overdrinking are women marathon runners who run slowly and may drink up to 15 litres in a five-hour race. A woman died in the 2002 Boston marathon after following that regime.Professor Noakes says that drinking should follow “the personal dictates of thirst” — typically half a pint to a pint of fluid an hour in most forms of exercise.
The recent adoption of such guidelines by USA Track and Field, the governing sports body in America, “provides a hope that this sad scientific aberration has finally run its tragic course”, he concludes
lol @ 17 pints and 15 liters! See. You have to be an idiot.
not necessarily an idiot. just ignorance will do. 
Here’s a link to the original article by Noakes.
Bravo!!!
Liokault- I didn’t think you could produce something that sound to support your point of view. It’s still extreme, though, not normal.
“… a condition in which salt levels become unnaturally diluted”
That’s what I call taking a good idea and making it very wrong. I’d bet most of those who suffer from that condition are on very specialized diets that they think will help them achieve their goals. Many of them probably didn’t consult a dietition before starting it. And not all dietitions know how to formulate an athlete’s nutritional needs.
A normal, well ballenced diet provides all the salt and electrolites a body needs. Drinking enough to keep yourself hydrated (not two to three times that amount) will provide just the right amount of water your body needs.
Ok we are talking about taking in huge amounts to effect your health in a big negative way but how much would u need to effect your performance in a sport?
The problem is not in people on special diets, but in people who follow guidelines that have been pushed for the last 20 years even though there’s no evidence to support those guidelines.
From the article:
"These guidelines make four assumptions. Firstly, that all the weight lost during exercise must be replaced if health is to be protected and performance is to be optimised, since, as the guidelines state, the greatest threat to health and wellbeing during prolonged exercise, especially when performed in the heat, is dehydration.6 Secondly, that the sensations of thirst underestimate the real fluid requirements during exercise. Thus athletes must be told how much to drink during exercise. Thirdly, that the fluid requirements of all athletes are always similar so that a universal guideline is possible. Fourthly, high rates of fluid intake can do no harm. Thus athletes are now advised to replace all the water lost through sweating (that is, loss of body weight), or consume the maximal amount that can be tolerated or drink 600-1200 ml per hour.5
But none of these ideas is evidence based.2 3 In particular, there is no evidence that athletes must drink “the maximal amount that is tolerable” to optimise performance and prevent medical consequences. Thus the hyperbolic statement, “If strenuous exercise is undertaken by hypohydrated subjects, the medical consequences can be devastating,” has no factual basis.7 Nor is it proved that all the weight lost during exercise must be replaced immediately, since the resting human may carry a fluid reserve of about 2 litres.2 3 Nor were prospective trials undertaken to ensure that these guidelines are always safe. Thus it was not then appreciated that unrestrained drinking, either at rest8 or during exercise9 can have fatal consequences.1 2 8–12
The first reports of hyponatraemic encephalopathy in athletes, army personnel, and hikers appeared shortly after the change to this new “drink the maximal amount that can be tolerated” dictum."
There’s something called Water Intoxication that happens when you super-saturate your cells with water. There were these people on TV who were doing it… you get like a high from it. They were drinking around 4 gallons (if I remember correctly) a day. Holy crap, I would live on the toilet.
The reason you lose water weight if you drink a lot of water is cuz your body works like this: When you’re not drinking water a lot, your body holds on to what it has. It’s like, oh crap, I need to retain this so I don’t dehydrate. When you drink a ton of water throughout the day, your body is comfortable letting go of all of it because it expects more to come in.
It’s kind of like how you can gain weight by not eating enough.
IronFist
Originally posted by IronFist
There’s something called Water Intoxication that happens when you super-saturate your cells with water. There were these people on TV who were doing it… you get like a high from it. They were drinking around 4 gallons (if I remember correctly) a day. Holy crap, I would live on the toilet.
They do that on purpous?!?:eek: That’s proof that idiocy is the mother of all invention. Can’t drink yourself to death with booz? Just use water! :rolleyes:
The problem is not in people on special diets, but in people who follow guidelines that have been pushed for the last 20 years even though there’s no evidence to support those guidelines.
It’s both. Sometimes they are put on that special diet by physitions, like in the case of liver or kideny failure. But more often they discide that since too much sodium is bad, then little or none is good. Then they slam as much water as they can. hence the condition Lipcault spoke of.