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Although Rare, You Can Die From Drinking Too Much Water, And It Just Happened to an Indiana Woman
With the prolonged summer heatwave, a caveat to rehydrating must be made.
You can get too much of a good thing. You could have asked Ashley Summers, but sadly she died after drinking too much water. The Indiana woman was out on a lake celebrating the Fourth of July with her family and felt “dehydrated.” She drank nearly one-half gallon of water in 20 minutes. Summers fainted in her garage and was rushed to a hospital, where doctors told the Summers family their loved one died from water toxicity.
Although rare, it can happen, and everyone needs to know why. Water toxicity or intoxication can happen when we rehydrate with water only. When dehydrated, water is the principal substance that needs rapid replacement. But it is not the only one. When we sweat, we also lose important, and vital, electrolytes. Electrolytes are essential minerals — like sodium, calcium, and potassium — that are vital to many key functions in the body.
Symptoms of electrolyte imbalance are similar to dehydration: Fatigue, headache, nausea, blood pressure changes, muscle cramps, low energy, and simply not feeling well. Electrolytes are essential to optimal nervous system function, heart, kidneys, and muscles. If they are not replaced, but water is, the blood…
