Originally Posted by jnbacon
A quote from the NY Times article on this topic:
" 'Everyone becomes dehydrated when they race,' Dr. Noakes said. 'But I have not found one death
in an athlete from dehydration in a competitive race in the whole history of running. Not one. Not
even a case of illness.'
On the other hand, he said, he knows of people who have sickened and died from drinking too much."
The problem seems to have appeared in recent years precisely because so many non-elite, i.e. average, competitors are entering these events.
This doctor is either very young and doesn't read much or he hasn't been paying attention I think. I never heard of anyone dieing of too much water until 5 years ago. Then and now it's extremely rare. Before that, for about 5 decades you would always hear/read about folks who died for heat prostration (if that's the correct term), sun stroke and other heat related afflictions. As a youg 5 or 6 yr old I saw a tennis player die. No one used to speak in terms of hydration, they spoke/wrote in terms of over heating.
Why is that? Because when you become dehydrated, you overheat because your blood thickens, the circulation slows (therefore it can't absorb heat from critical body parts) and the heat removal process (sweating) is impaired and eventually goes to zero. If i remember correctly, a test for heat stress was a hot, DRY skin.
Then the athlete folks learned why that happened. Hydration has been the issue discussed written about ever since. Heat related deaths are now very rare because of the public dialog on hydration.
Now that folks discovered hydration, they started to drink. Unfortunately, rather than become well informed about hydration and electrolytes, many relied on these poorly researched/written news articles and started drinking plain water to excess. There are folks out there who will jump on the latest information and figure if a little is good, then a lot is much be better. There are also the faddist folks who are never without a water bottle.
I read the amount of water that woman who drank herself to death had imbibed before she even started the race. I forgot the amount since it was some time ago. But it was surprising that should could actually start to run with that much water.
Al