Many times as a child, we are told to drink eight glasses of water a day. It should be after a meal, as drinking water before will make you lose your appetite. Even as we grow old we are used to drinking as much water as possible as it says they cleanses are body and prevents dehydration. And that is still the case we believe today.
Most people today seemed to brush away the idea of too much is as bad as less when it comes to consuming water,because really, water can’t be that bad. It is the fountain of life people! So drinking too much should not be a problem. Or it should? That’s the issue. We are not aware of the possible repercussions when we drink too much water thanks to some “organizations with vested interest” sporting ads about drinking eight glasses of water. (They made us even guilty if we don’t reach the quota.)
There are multiple accidents caused by drinking too much water. One involved a 28-year old Californian mother who was found dead at home shortly after she participated in a water drinking contest “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” in which she drank two gallons of water. Laughed by promoters after showing signs of distressed, it just proves our ignorance when it comes to this thing. And that is still not mentioning the statistics of the number of athletes who died of the same reason.
So how does it work? Why do too much water can be detrimental? Our body is put into an unnecessary strain just because we brushed off our body’s innate signal (thirst) to follow what we thought is good for our body.
One major strain on our body is put in our kidney. When we drink too much water, our kidneys work overtime to flush it out and sometimes it can’t get out of our body fast enough. The water then leaves our blood and dispersed to areas in our body with a high concentration of salt and enters our cells (biology anyone?) making it swell. The swelling of the cells is dangerous more important to our brain.
If the cells in our body have extra space (in fats and muscles) to accommodate the added size, it is not the same on our neurons. They are tightly packed and rigid inside our skull sharing space with other fluids unable to hold the extra size (Wolfgang Liedtke, Duke University Medical Center Clinical Neuroscientist).
The condition of cells mentioned is called hyponatremia causes seizures, coma, respiratory, arrest stem herniation,and death (M. Armin Arnaout, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School chief Nephrology).
Hyponatremia is even more susceptible to happen to athletes. When we are under physical stress, to which athletes experience during games, our hypothalamus produces antidiuretic hormone secreted into our blood stream by our pituitary gland sending messages to our kidneys to hold the secretion of water. The conserved water plus the excessive amount we drink during that time will lead to exercise-associated hyponatremia or also known as EAH (Joseph Verbalis, Georgetown University Medical Center Chaiman of Medicine).
However, don’t stay away from drinking water even if your’e thirsty, as it is the best time to drink water. Stay attuned to the signal your body is sending to prevent such disastrous cases.
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