Why Drinking Too Much Water 'Can Be Harmful' for You
A 28-year old woman from California died from drinking too much water five years ago. The mother and wife of three kids participated in a water-drinking contest and afterwards her body was found in her home. The contest was called "Hold Your Wee for a Wii," sponsored by a radio show. The prize was a Wii video game to whoever consumed the most water without urinating.
The woman who died drank about 2 gallons in the contest. She, along with other contestants, showed noticeable signs of discomfort and complained about it, but the promoters just laughed at them.
This heartbreaking report shows the value of understanding why it can be dangerous to your health to drink too much water. If you ignore your thirst and try to take in a lot of water each day because they say it is beneficial for you, you actually put unwanted stress on your body.
It can be dangerous to force your body to take too much water in a short amount of time like what the contestants did in the drinking-water contest. Here is the reason why:
Your kidneys will find it difficult to remove enough water from your system to maintain the overall amount of water at a safe level.
The cells in your body will swell when your circulatory system becomes diluted with excessive water.
If this swelling takes place in your brain, the brain will get squashed since the flat bones of your cranium do not have much room.
Parents should pass this information on to their children. Dangerous drinking contests are not unusual among students in high school and college.
So what is the right amount of water should you ingest to best support your well-being?
The answer is based on several factors, such as your diet, environment, exercise, and habits. If you eat a lot of water-rich foods, like fruits, vegetables, and cooked whole grains and legumes, drinking plenty of water may not be necessary at all. If you avoid eating salty and seasoned foods, your need for water decreases even more.
Whatever your diet is, if you live in a warm climate or sweat fairly often because of physical activity, your body needs more water than a person who does not perspire often.
However, the best advice given by experts is to follow your sense of thirst. There are some people who do not agree that thirst is an effective indicator of the amount of water you have to drink, considering that people who are dehydrated do not feel a need to regularly drink water. But in most cases, those who are often dehydrated have gotten used to disregard a dry mouth.
The most important thing that should be learned from this is to avoid mindlessly consuming a lot of water every day without taking into consideration your sense of thirst, diet, habits, environment, exercise, and habits. And whenever you feel the need to drink water, keep in mind that you can also satisfy your thirst from whole foods that are loaded in water.
Please share this information with your loved ones, as a lot of people are frequently misinformed about this subject by mainstream media.