Drinking too much water can also be dangerous: watch out for hyponatremia

The intake of liquid has to be consistent with the intensity of exercise, environmental conditions and the thirst stimulation of our own body

During the summer season there is concern among runners to defend against dehydration, which can lead them to drink more than necessary. In extreme cases, excessive hydration can lead to the development of hypothermia, which is the reduction of blood sodium concentration below normal levels. It can occur during the exercise or in the following 24 hours.

In most cases,hyponatremia is due to excessive hydration during sports. It usually occurs in endurance sports, such as in the backcourt, but cases have also been described in other specialties, such as football, in which three school players died for this cause; they were told that they should be hydrated with large amounts of fluid to avoid cramping.

hyponatremia can manifest itself in very varied ways: it can produce mild symptoms, such as dizziness or nausea, to represent a medical emergency that can evolve very quickly with vomiting, headaches, disorientation, convulsions, coma, lung edema, and even , death if not treated properly.

What is the amount of liquid needed?

The intake of fluid depends on the intensity of the exercise and the environmental conditions. It is recommended to start any practice with an adequate state of hydration and during exercise you should drink always attending to the stimulus of thirst. In an exercise of sufficient strength and intensity, as a general rule, it is recommended to drink about 200 milliliters of water every 20 minutes, trying to avoid a weight loss greater than 2% of body weight.

Once the test or training is finished, the runner must drink an amount of liquid equal to 1.5 times the weight loss in kilograms.

We must take the environment into account and we must adapt our consumption to the temperature and humidity in which we are doing our practice. The higher the temperature and humidity, the greater the loss of fluid and the more abundant our hydration should be, although we must not forget that it is also advisable to perform adequate hydration when training or running at low temperatures and going warm.

In an exercise of sufficient strength and intensity, as a general rule, it is recommended to drink about 200 milliliters of water every 20 minutes

Hyponatremia is usually found in runners who overhydrate with hypotonic drinks (with a sodium concentration lower than that of liquids in our internal environment) such as water. It also occurs in tests of more than four hours, in athletes with a lack of experience in the test, insufficient training, who are too slow or have very low or high body mass indexes.

In asymptomatic cases, only observation is recommended in case of neurological symptoms. In any case, in mild cases, you can use hypertonic solutions orally (with a drink that has a higher sodium concentration than the liquids in our internal environment). Severe cases should be treated as a medical emergency with intravenous hypertonic saline and specialized emergency medical services.