Click here to visit the new home of that's fit!

Hot on HuffPost Healthy Living:

AOL.com
MAIL

En Español

That's Fit

Send Feedback

Are you drinking TOO MUCH water when you exercise?

Posted on Jun 22nd 2007 8:18PM by Rigel Celeste

Filed Under: Diet & Weight Loss, Fitness

As much preaching as we all hear about not drinking enough water and how most people live life chronically dehydrated, it's interesting to know that it's possible to drink too much water -- especially when exercising -- and more people do it than you might think. Endurance exercisers are the only ones really at risk, and the problem (called hyponatremia) happens when you drink in more water than your kidneys can excrete. Potentially fatal, it's not something to take lightly, but it is easy to avoid: just respect your own personal "thirst" meter and drink only when your body says you need to.

Source

2 Comment

Tags: dehydrate, dehydrated, dehydrating, dehydration, drink, drinking, hydrate, hydrated, hydration, hyponatremia, water

Around the Web

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Sol Invictus 6-22-2007 @ 11:47PM

Actually you can drink all you want, as long as it has some salts in it. Gatorade or Vitamin Water is fine. Hyponatremia occurs because you sweat out a lot of salt, and you replace it with pure water. This changes the extracellular environment, making it hypotonic, so the cells take in water and expand. When the cells run out of space to expand, they put pressure on the brain, and thats where you die. Kinda like meningitis.

PFT 6-23-2007 @ 4:40PM

"...just respect your own personal 'thirst' meter and drink only when your body says you need to."

Not necessarily. Most people can not properly differentiate between the body's signal for being thirsty and the signal for being hungry. Thereby many people eat when they should be consuming liquids.

The chronically dehydrated are potentially chronically over eaters.