Woman Dies for a Wii

[Teuthida]

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/01/13/woman-dies-of-water-intoxication-after-radio-contest/

[Ginkasa]

Wow, those people in the comments are jerks...

Anyway, did she die from holding her wee too long, or drinking too much water? I don't really get it... Was she supposed to drink a lot of water for the contest?


*shrugs and walks away*

[Angrist]

Maybe holding your urine for too long can cause too much water in your body, because the urine can become more concentrated. She died of water poisoning, 1 military guy in the comments explains what happens, something with water in the brains.

[Xantar]

She died of hyperhydration. It's rare, but you can in fact die from drinking too much water.

*puts on glasses and pulls out blackboard*

You see, your bodily fluids are mostly made of water but they also have a lot of electrolytes (mostly salt). This is very important because your body cells are also filled up with water and a certain amount of salt. The amount of salt inside and outside your cells has to be regulated very closely because if there's (say) too much salt outside the cells, then the water inside will go out to try to dilute the salt. Water rushing out of your cells = shriveling cells = bad.

In this case, the opposite happened. She drank too much water, so her bodily fluids had a very low concentration of salt (and other electrolytes). So there wasn't enough salt outside the cells which caused the water outside to rush into the cells to try to restore balance. When enough water gets pumped into a cell, it bursts like a balloon.

You'd have to drink A LOT of water for this to happen to you, but this is basically the reason why Gatorade advertises that it has lots of electrolytes in it. When doing extreme physical activity, just water alone won't replace the salt you lose when you sweat.

This PSA brought to you by my Biology class and the Wikipedia

[Teuthida]

I used to be (and thus now far too careful) afraid of water poisoning after getting headaches and other odd feelings from drinking too much. Most cases involve a large quantity but one can poison oneself with as little as 1.8 liters of water in a single sitting for someone with a low-sodium diet or 3 liters for a person on a normal diet. One time I truly thought I was dying and downed as much salt and potato chips as I could to try to fix myself. Long story short, I didn't die.

[bobcat]

It's funny when you hear people say "you can drink as much water as you like, the more the better". So I tried it as I'm going to the gym and taking creatine you need to drink a lot of water. Sometimes if I had too much, I felt sick, had headaches was weird.

Goes back to the "everything in moderation" saying.

[Happydude]

most people that "OD" on extacy (sp?) actually die from drinking to much water.