Yes, It's Possible To Drink Too Much Water — And The Health Effects Are Severe

Are you hydrating enough?

There are now so many ways to get and track your fluids — from customizable Stanley tumblers to in-home IV services to apps that remind you to chug a few extra ounces every hour — that it’s easy to worry you’re not getting enough fluids.

But is it possible to be too hydrated? And what happens if you are?

That’s what we — Raj Punjabi and Noah Michelson, hosts of HuffPost’s “Am I Doing It Wrong?” podcast — asked Colleen Muñoz, director and co-founder of Hydration Health Center at the University of Hartford.

Listen to the full podcast by pressing play:

“[Drinking too much water] is a real thing,” Muñoz, who is also an associate professor of health sciences at University of Hartford, told us. “[It doesn’t happen] as often as you would think, relative to somebody who is underhydrated — that’s definitely a more common scenario — but it’s something we need to pay attention to.”

The main issue with ingesting too much water or other fluids is that it can dilute the electrolyte content of our blood. Electrolytes (in this case we’re mostly talking about sodium, but also potassium, magnesium, chloride and calcium) must remain “in balance in order to maintain healthy blood, heart rhythm, muscle function and other important functions.”

When these electrolytes “get out of whack,” it can cause nausea, vomiting, headaches, muscle cramps and even death.

“If they get too dilute, we start to have some pretty severe ramifications, largely related to our nervous system… [including] brain swelling, coma, [and then] death… and pretty quick,” Muñoz warned.

This happened to a woman in Los Angeles in 2007.

“It was pretty soon after the first Nintendo Wii came out and one of the radio stations had some competition — I