People can die from drinking too much water. There is a psychological condition that causes people to drink an unhealthy amount of water. Also, marathoners have died from drinking too much water.
So - is water dangerous? Well yeah, because you can drown in it. But to the average Joe - not really. Not in the Western World!
The reason why people can die from too much water is quite interesting. Without getting too scientific, basically, too much water can cause your cells to swell up too much and become imbalanced. The sodium that is necessary for cell function starts ’swimming all over the place’ and it could lead to all sorts of horrific things like: irregular heartbeat, fluttering eyelids, fluid in the lungs and most scary - brain swelling. If it gets to the stage of brain swelling, its pretty serious. A saline-like solution needs to be administered as fast as possible to get the cells to balance themselves again, or it could very quickly cause death.
Now - apparently a healthy adult’s liver can process up to 15 liters of water a day. Thats loads. That is around 60 glasses. Give or take a few. The recommended water intake is around 8 glasses. For goodness sake, don’t go and drink sixty glasses of water. Death by water isn’t so much because of the amount of water - its about the time frame. If you drink a whole lot all at once, its pretty much drowning yourself. Not nice.
Hyponatremia (water intoxication) is very very rarely seen in normal people. When it does occur, it is in babies under 6 months old, and athletes. The reason it occurs in babies is because they are fed bottled milk formula which is dissolved in too much water. And athletes - they run too hard too fast and then drink too much too quickly - saturating their cells and depleting their already reduced sodium level in the cells. This is why it is a good idea to drink sports drinks during a long bout of exercise - they have sufficient sodium in them to keep cells functioning properly.
So I’ll repeat some earlier advice: don’t drink too much all at once. Sip all day in small amounts and make sure you are drinking enough. If you exercise, up your intake a bit - and lessen it if you’re just sitting around. Listen to your body. If you feel hungry, you are most likely more thirsty than hungry - so have a drink before you chow down. You’ll do yourself no end of good! Just be sure that you have clean water - and take care when you go to undeveloped countries as the facilities aren’t necessarily there to ensure perfectly clean water. Make sure you drink enough!
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