Is it true that drinking too much water can kill you? If so, why? In lamends terms please?

Answer 1

Water intoxication (also known as hyperhydration or water poisoning) is a potentially fatal disturbance in brain function that results when the normal balance of electrolytes in the body is pushed outside of safe limits by a very rapid intake of water.[1] Normal, healthy (both physically and nutritionally) individuals have little to worry about accidentally overconsuming water. Nearly all deaths related to water intoxication in normal individuals have resulted either from water drinking contests, in which individuals attempt to consume several gallons over the course of just a few minutes, or long bouts of intensive exercise during which time electrolytes are not properly replenished, yet massive amounts of fluid are still consumed.

Answer 2

Unfortunately, it can kill you but only if you drink, like, 8 or 9 gallons of it, if you are an adult. Water is good for you so don't get dehydrated. Your body is made up of mostly water. but when it gets too much then it can cause problems. Never drink more than you are used to unless you feel thirsty. Water is the source of all life. Too much of something can kill you.

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

If you drink large quantities of water, after about a week, you will begin to flush vital nutrients and protiens out of your body through the urine.

And the other writer is correct also. Drinking a lot of water all at once can essentially drown your organs. A fraternaty pledge in Chico, California did this just a few years ago while pledging for a fraternaty at Chico state.

Answer 5

Basic physiology and osmosis. The kidneys can only process so much water over a given time. If you drink more water than the kidneys can process, your blood dilutes. The diluted blood creates an imbalance (more salt in the surrounding cells than in the blood). To relieve that imbalance, water from the blood starts entering the salty cells. This causes the cells to swell.

Answer 6

yes it is. a girl died in a water drinking contest. she had drank like 2-3 gallons of water!


Too much water can seriously kill ya :O

Answer 7

Haven't you heard about the lady trying to win the WII and died because she drank too much water? It saturates the electrolytes in your body. That was actually a theory as to what happened to Terry Schiavo too, but they said it was from drinking too much iced trea.

Answer 8

I can almost guarantee its bullcrap. I think the only way drinking water can kill you is one of two ways:

- if your drowning and consume too much water and
- if you drink too much alcohol and then try to 'so called' flush it out with water, this can actually flood your body and kill or harm you as it has happened to a young girl but very rare

So no this is bull cos think about it, you are going to the toilet more so what you take in is going straight back out!

Answer 9

Drinking too much of anything can kill you. But, you have too like drink so much water to kill you. Trust me the only way to kill your self is if you force it and force it..its just like drowning.Trust me, if you think your drinking too much water, your not. The max you should drink each day is like.....um maybe......10 gallons

Answer 10

I've heard this too, especially if your working out or playing sports. I thought water was the best thing for your body!