To prevent water intoxication, avoid excessive drinking of plain water, excessive sweating, and take sports drinks with sodium during high-intensity exercise. Increase sodium intake before a competition and avoid nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Symptoms include nausea, cramping, confusion, coma, and death.
The main ways to prevent water intoxication include taking care to avoid drinking an overabundance of water and avoiding excessive sweating. If you’re participating in high-intensity exercise, you may also do well to drink sports drinks that contain significant amounts of sodium. Similarly, in the days leading up to a competition that will involve a good deal of physical effort, you may do well to increase the amount of salt you consume. You may also find it helpful to avoid medicines referred to as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, as they have been associated with an increased risk of this serious problem.
Most people are well aware that water is good for the human body, but they may not be aware that consuming too much of it can actually prove harmful. If you drink too much plain water, whether it’s spring, filtered, or tap, it can lower the amount of sodium in your blood. Eventually, this can lead to symptoms such as nausea, cramping, or confusion. When the condition becomes very severe, coma and death can also occur. Therefore, one of the best ways to prevent water intoxication is to make sure you don’t drink an abnormal amount of plain water.
You can also prevent water intoxication by avoiding excessive sweating. When you sweat excessively, your body actually loses a lot of sodium through your skin. This can cause an alteration of the sodium concentration in the blood. If you don’t take steps to replace this sodium while you’re losing it, you could be suffering from water poisoning.
If you are engaging in strenuous exercise, heavy sweating is a natural result. You may feel the urge to drink more water due to your hard training. To prevent water intoxication in such a case, you may find it more beneficial to consume sports drinks that have a significant sodium content. While you may feel tempted to replace fluids lost through exercise with cold water, this won’t help prevent water intoxication and is likely to make your risk even worse.
If you know you have a competition coming up or will be starting an exercise routine that involves heavy exertion and sweating, you can prepare and work to prevent this health issue in advance. For example, you might do well to start eating foods that contain sodium several days before you begin your extreme training or competition. Interestingly, you may also choose to avoid medicines referred to as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, such as ibuprofen, as they have been associated with an increased risk of water intoxication when used by athletes.
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