Dr. Mercola April 25 2007 62,220 views
The 22-year-old London marathon runner David Rogers, a fitness instructor who completed the race in less than four hours, collapsed after he crossed the finish line. He was rushed to the hospital where, sadly, he died.
Rogers died as a result of hyponatremia, a lack of sodium in his body that can be caused by drinking too much water.
He was the ninth athlete in the 27-year history of the London marathon to die. Almost 60 of this year's more than 36,000 runners ended up needing hospital treatment. Ambulance volunteers treated more than 5,000 runners, generally for heat exhaustion and dehydration.
Dr. Mercola's Comment:
About five years ago, I warned about the perils of drinking too much water in connection with the deaths of three U.S. military trainees. Unfortunately, many forget or have never learned this tragic lesson.
Drinking too much water is dangerous because your body has a fixed upper limit of fluid that it can process. Once you exceed that limit, any excess water then goes to your bowel, which pulls salt into it from the body, diluting the concentration of salt in your blood.
Your heart requires a very precise amount of salt (sodium) in your blood, and once that level falls below a certain threshold it will either beat irregularly or stop beating altogether.
Once again, the important point worth making here is there's a big difference between optimizing your health by drinking the right amount of water and overdoing it. What's important is to let thirst be your guide when it comes to water. In general, depending on your size, your body can process slightly more than a glass of water per hour.
A simple guideline that is easy for everyone to follow is to look at the color of your urine. If you are not taking a multivitamin with vitamin B2 (which will falsely color your urine bright yellow) then an ideal color for your urine would be a very light yellow. The brighter and darker it is the more dehydrated you likely are.
That being said, drinking enough water is one of the most simple, basic, and important health steps you can take. Your Body's Many Cries for Water is an excellent review of the benefits of drinking the proper amount of water.
Remember, the quality of the water you drink is just as important to your health as the quantity -- a good reason to stay away from water coming from your tap or a bottle.
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Why in the world would anyone give this comment a thumbs down??? I just bumped you up +.. if anyone has a problem with this comment why don't they tell us why?I think you bring up a good point to keep in mind.. I just got done running and half way though I drank a glass of water.. apparently too much because I started to get cramps and felt like I drank too much water at the time...
One very important aspect that is never addressed is the type of water they drank!! I would suspect that all water deaths have been caused by distilled or RO water. I think the lady drinking for the Wii was drinking Aquafina (distilled/RO), and I bet the military guys were too!
Plus she only weighed about 100lbs (it looks like) so dinking 2 gallons would be 4 times her recommended daily levels; to make matters worse she did not urinate the whole time!! Yes if you drink a lot of water you want to allow your kidneys to catch up or you can have trouble overloading the system, especially with distilled or RO water. I really think this is what caused her death, but the media just wants to give water a bad name, that’s why it was blasted all over the media.
Nowhere on earth does de-mineralized water occur naturally.. Distillation and Reverse Osmosis Systems produce de-mineralized water with an acidic pH. Prolonged consumption of distilled or de-mineralized water can lead to mineral deficiency. Water by nature has to balance itself and when minerals are stripped from water, it causes the pH to drop and water to become acidic. It then seeks to balance itself (a basic law of nature) and does so by taking on minerals, primarily calcium. If we consume de-mineralized water, it will actually pull its “balancing minerals” from our own body. Very bad for health.. If I were using an RO unit to filter my water I would add Himalayan Crystal Salt to it before drinking. This will give your water life giving properties, and an abundance of minerals. I add up to 1 teaspoon per gallon, or a small pinch to a glass. I think the right amount is just below a level where you can taste salt in the water... It should just taste like smooth, soft water. I'm not completely sure if this would raise the PH enough but I suspect it would..
Stay away from standard processed salt it is not healthy.. this devitalized salt can cause problems. Salt in its natural form is in symbiotic relation with the body. Do more research:http://www.mercola.com/forms/salt.htm
*RO output – TDS 11ppm / PH 5(Amount of salt per gallon - approximate change in water)Add ¼ tsp Himalayan Salt - TDS ~350ppm / PH 6Add ½ tsp HS - TDS ~680ppm / PH 6.5 Add ¾ tsp HS - TDS ~950 / PH >6.5ADD 1 tsp / Gal. - TDS = ~1340 PH = 7 neutralIn my experience using 1 tsp/gal all the time will cause the feeling of too much salt; you kind of have this weird feeling like if you drank some sea water or something.?. Water begins to taste salty - and this amount and above would only want to done on a strictly temporary basis! IMOI find that 1/2 - 3/4 tsp/gal is the sweet spot. Find what is best for you, but I can recommend a 1/2 tsp/gal as the standard. It has been said that the best waters have an average TDS range of 5-700 I believe, 1500 max.