Can You Overdose on Water?

The new eating plan I am on right encourages the drinking of a LOT of water for health. Allegedly, large amounts of imbibed water help to "clean out the ateries" and "flush the system." Pretty much gobbeldygook from what I can tell, but I have read elsewhere that most Americans don't drink enough water to meet the body's daily needs. Especially since most of us tend to get that water in the form of highly sugared or highly caffeinated beverages. Luckily, I have always been a big water drinker, so it has been no problem for me.

But now, another Blogger site "Precautionary Tales" points out a new danger that some doctors are seeing: water overdose!!!

This is a panic inspired by a panic. For years, we have been told by health 'experts' that we don't drink enough water. As the Mirror story notes, 'Some experts claim dehydration is to blame for everything from heart disease and cancer, to asthma and depression'. It is a fine line between drinking the two litres of water we supposedly need, and the three litres which could potentially kill us. But, as Professor Heinz Valtin wrote in the American Journal of Physiology in 2002, it is 'difficult to believe that evolution left us with a chronic water deficit that needs to be compensated by forcing a high fluid intake'. In other words, our bodies are extremely good at controlling the amount of water in our blood at any time. While 'water intoxication' is possible, it is also very rare. If we drink too much, we are likely to spend rather longer than we need going to the toilet, but that's about it. A radical solution might be to suggest that people should drink some water when they feel thirsty. But where's the public health education programme in that?