According to a recently published study, drinking too much water can lead to agitation, confusion, delirium, and in some instances, even to a person's death.
The condition called exercise-associated Hyponatremia is a serious health risk that has killed 14 football players and marathon runners, University Herald reports. This is due to excessive liquid intake of water and energy drinks during training and competitions.
Drinking too much water dilutes sodium in the body and overwhelms the kidneys, which leads to damaging of cells. Severe cases of exercise-associated Hyponatremia can lead to death.
Symptoms include dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and headache, to more serious effects such as mental state shifting, seizure, and coma.
According to researchers at Loyola University Health System, people should only drink water when they are thirsty and not until their urine turns clear.
"Using the innate thirst mechanism to guide fluid consumption is a strategy that should limit drinking in excess and developing hyponatremia while providing sufficient fluid to prevent excessive dehydration," the study published in the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine suggests.
Common in athletes, researchers have also concluded that drinking too much fluid does not combat muscle cramps, heat stroke and fatigue.
"Muscle cramps and heatstroke are not related to dehydration," Loyola University Medical Center sports medicine physician James Winger stated. "You get heat stroke because you're producing too much heat."
The guidelines also added that infusing saline solution with sodium content three times higher than the normal concentration can treat a patient with exercise-associated hyponatremia.
Although drinking water only when thirsty is advised for adults, this recommendation does not apply to younger children. Another study says parents should not wait until the kids are thirsty.
"Children don't have a highly developed thirst mechanism, so they're especially vulnerable to becoming dehydrated," said UNC Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health's Nutrition professor, Dianne Ward. "So parents need to remind their children to drink water."
