Can Drinking Too Much Water Hurt You

Drinking too much water will hurt you IF you drink it too fast. In actual fact it's not generally how much water you drink, but how quickly you drink it!

Recently a woman died during a radio contest from consuming too many bottles of water in a very short time frame. Her brain and organs swelled so badly that she could not recover. If she had drunk that same amount of water over the course of a whole day rather than within just one hour, she would still be alive today.

Healthy adults can process around fifteen liters of water per day through their kidneys. This is way beyond what just about anyone would ever drink, but it shows you how much water you can drink if you wanted to!

Keep in mind that you do gain a lot of water from food and other drinks and that you excrete water through exercise and general movement.

Water intoxication occurs when there is a dilution of sodium in the body from drinking too much water. This can happen in infants under 6 months old as well as in athletes. Babies get intoxicated by drinking too much water with their formula. Athletes can suffer from drinking too much water if they don't also replace electrolytes.

This is why drinks such as Gatorade are so popular, as it replaces water and electrolytes at the same time.

Most people struggle to drink more than 8 glasses of water per day. If you try very hard, you can manage 3 or 4 liters. So 15 liters is a massive ask for someone who is relatively inactive. This means you are in very little danger of ever drinking too much water.

Drinking too much water certainly is possible, just very improbable!

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