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Comment by superted | Hacker News Reader

I drank something between 4-6 liters of water in a couple of hours time last summer, and ended up with fever and throwing up excessively for the remainder of the day. I was more or less knocked-out for the next couple of days. So I can definitely tell you that drinking too much fresh water in a short time frame is anything but healthy...

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Strictly speaking, you can't know if drinking the water did that. It could just as well have been food poisoning or heat stroke, or you might have been dehydrated prior to drinking that water.

Your kidneys can only excrete 1L/hr under optimal conditions. So you were a victim of water intoxication, but were very lucky you didn't die. People died for drinking much less water than you did.

Being in poor physical shape probably had more to do it.

People drink litres of pop at a sitting too without much effect on them other than being obese.

Read up on water intoxication deaths of marathoners and discover why your simple idea is wrong.

I did I went to Mayo Clinic and NIH websites and the gist of it is too much water results in rapid loss of sodium and your body's cells swell up with excess water.

Drinking litres of pop such as low sodium would also be dangerous according to the descriptions given at those sites, so many people these days just drink pop and lots of it.

Any on-going health problems such as poor health in a person would increase the risk of a serious condition such as water intoxication.

It's probably why there is some sodium in bottled water.

You're also sweating about 1L/h, and are probably respirating a fair amount of water (through your breath) as well.

2-3L/h of consumption isn't of itself excessive, though if you're keeping that up for a period of time, I'd include some electrolytes.

It sounds like you experienced water intoxication and/or hyponatremia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyponatremia

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