Horrifying simulation shows what happens to your brain if you drink too much water
A simulation shows what can happen if you drink too much water.
Most of the time we spend worrying about our water consumption is given over to us not drinking enough of the stuff.
Of course water is a pretty strong contender for the most important chemical in life as we know it even existing in the first place - without it life on Earth simply would not be possible.
That's not even taking account of how it's also advisable for us to drink plenty of water as an important way for us to stay healthy in the first place.
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But the poison comes when you have too much of something, and while you may need a lot of water to cause problems, that doesn't mean that drinking too much water cannot be very dangerous in itself, as the video shared to YouTube by @zackdfilms demonstrates.
Drinking a very large amount of water in a very short period of time can result in something called 'water toxicity' or 'water poisoning', yes, you read that correctly.
You would need to do this over a short period, as over longer periods your body would naturally tell you to go pee and expel the excess.
WebMD describes this is something that happens when there is too water in your body's cells, including those particularly important cells in your brain.
Taking on more water can cause cells to start swelling, which is not great with some parts of your body, but with your brain this can be extremely bad.
Because your brain is contained inside your skull, your brain cells swelling can cause pressure to build up in the brain as your brain presses against the inside of your skull.
At first this can cause symptoms such as headaches, drowsiness, or confusion, but as it increases further it can start to cause things like a low heart rate or high blood pressure as well.
While it is rare to die from drinking too much water, it is possible.
To be clear however, this is most to occur if someone is doing something highly unusual like participating in a competition to drink the most water.
Alternatively, people can also drink too much water after taking ecstasy.
It might also happen if you are doing extreme exercise and are worried about dehydrating, or if you take medication which can affect this as well.
Unfortunately, people have died as a result of drinking too much water.
One tragic case saw a woman die after entering a water drinking contest called 'Hold Your Wee for a Wii', where the winner would be given one of the Nintendo consoles.
Jennifer Strange, 28, had entered the competition back in 2007, and would die shortly afterwards, with assistant Coroner Ed Smith saying in a preliminary investigation that there was evidence which was 'consistent with a water intoxication death', NBC reports.
Laura Rios, a coworker of Jennifer's, said at the time: âShe said to one of our supervisors that she was on her way home and her head was hurting her real bad."
She added: âShe was crying and that was the last that anyone had heard from her.â
Kit Roberts