Woman drinks so much water she dies (1 Viewer)

[PhillJones]

She wasn't allowed to pee until she quit. No doubt she did go pee afterwards but by then the kidneys had too much catching up to do. Certainly, not peeing can cause brain edema, same as drinking too much and flushing all the sodium out of your system can.

 

[Chris Lockwood]

> She drank 2 gallons.

In what amount of time? If it was a quart per hour, it would take 8 hours to drink that much... did she stay in the contest that long? Any idea how long it ran?


> She wasn't allowed to pee until she quit. No doubt she did go pee afterwards but by then the kidneys had too much catching up to do.

That was my point- that not doing what her body was telling her to do was the bigger problem.

 

[Brian D H]

True. But since the 'winner' and the other competitors survived I was simply speculating that her kidneys weren't processing it fast enough.
1) I'm sure it's much safer to have all that water in your bladder than in your bloodstream (which would explain everyone else's survival). It may be uncomfortable, but urine in your bladder is not throwing off your electrolyte balance.
2) Maybe she came so close to winning because her bladder wasn't that full. I was frankly surprised that a woman could hold her bladder that well. I'm not trying to be sexist, but in my experience women can't hold it as well simply because their bladders have less room due to the proximity of the uterus and the short length of the urethra. Inefficient kidneys would explain her second place finish and her death.

 

[Chris Lockwood]

How big is a human bladder? I doubt it can hold a gallon or more of liquid, so if the person isn't urinating, once the bladder fills, wouldn't the rest of the liquid be in the stomach or elsewhere in the digestive system?

If I drink a quart of water, I usually feel like a bathroom break, which tells me the bladder probably isn't too big... and just look at how large a gallon jug of water is and imagine the bladder being that big... I don't think so.

Maybe the others who lasted but survived had eaten more before the contest or were bigger and so their bodies could handle more excess water or whatever... do we know if they were allowed to eat during the contest?

 

[Allen Hirsch]

This was a stunt by a Sacramento radio station, and that frat hazing death was at Chico State only a few years ago (which HAD to have been widely publicized in the Sacramento area, since Chico is just a few hours north of there).

Apparently, someone called in to "warn" the station during the contest that they could cause water poisoning, "like that kid who died in college". One of the radio personalities said, "no, there was other stuff involved", implying drugs or other dangerous acts had to contribute, that water alone wouldn't cause that.

Upshot: at least 7 radio staff were fired after the death, and that morning show was pulled altogether.

 

[PhillJones]

Wikipedia says it's about 500ml. Seems a bit small to me. Anyway, it isn't two gallons, that's for sure. The excess water would be in the blood stream and lead to increased blood volume and low electrolyte levels. Maybe in this extreme case water was backed up (osmotically speaking) into the digestive system. At any rate, having watery blood messes up the osmotic gradients in the brain and causes it to swell. I know this can happen if you don't pee for a long time (like a week) even if you don't drink too much water. So I would guess that her bladder was full to capacity, like everybody else's in the competition.

One of the most disturbing parts of the audio that was posted is that the poor woman complains of a headache and is slurring her speech. These are two early symptoms of edema. Whether her brain was already swelling or she had a headache for a different reason I don't know, but it's pretty chilling.

 

[MarkHastings]

I was gonna respond before and ask where water actually goes (does it go right to the bladder or to the stomach?) but after looking at other sites (on urination), the bladder actually gets filled by the kidneys, so I assumed that water gets absorbed into the body or (as Phil mentioned) the blood stream.

Which I guess makes sense. The term dehydration doesn't mean that your stomach is not full of water, it means that your body is, so the water has to be going all over instead of right to the stomach/bladder...Sweating alone suggests that it had to get to the sweat glands at some point.

 

[JeremyErwin]

Biochemistry is most succinctly described as "organic chemistry using an aqueous solvent.". Each cell is essentially a little bag of water, with various molecules and ions floating in it. Much of biochemistry is dependent on the relative concentrations of these ions, and when there's two much water, the reduced concentration of these ions (sodium in particular) impedes various chemical reactions.