Sad case of desperation for Wii.

Its common sense that when you feel enough is enough, you should stop, however its common sense also that water is good for your body and I don't think 95% of the human population even knows you can die to this! Including me, I was shocked to see this and looked it up, I'll be careful with my water consumption from now on. Both sides have excellent points but lets face it, if you have no education of the matter you will think "I'm full, I don't think I can take this anymore but I have to force myself for the sake of my kids. I will feel sick for awhile no doubt though.." I don't think it even crossed her mind this could be fatal.

The planners of this contest should be sued, or fined at the least. When you are planning a contest like this, you should seriously look up the health hazards before you go trough with it, for crying out loud!

Now 3 kids are without theyr mother, and rest of her family is surely missing her. Single doctor could have saved her life. They should have had some expert there who would ask from the contestants how they are feeling between the drinks, if any of the symptoms arise take them to medical treatment. I am certain if there would have been some expert there explaining the health hazards in front of the contestants, no one would have lied if they are feeling good or not. No machine is worth dying for.
 
This sort of thing happened quite a few times because people were at clubs on Extascy. They know that Es screw up your body's ability to regulate temperature properly, so they were told to make sure they were drinking enough water. They drank and drank, figuring they'd better be not trust what their bodies were telling them, and died from water poisoning.

The human body, though pretty adaptable and resilient can quite easily get screwed up. Too much or too little salt or water, even breathing too heavily can change the chemistry in your body and give you undesirable effects.
 
tongue_of_colicab said:
Sugarcoat said exactly whats on my mind. You DO notice it when you drink way to much water. Just rty to drink 1liter of water in 5 minutes. You probably cant even get it in (warning 1) and when you do you definitly feel that you have drunk more than enough (warning 2). Besides that I do think its common sense that to much of anything isnt good for you.
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Have you tried this? I can quite easily down a couple of pints of water in 1 or 2 minutes, especially if I have a hangover ;) If its a bad hangover I will have another pint but drink it slowly. Thats over 1.5l the first litre or which is drunk in under 2 minutes. Might make me feel a bit full but I definately dont get any "warning" signs. I would expect if I drank too much then I would vomit, not die :oops:

I would imagine there are quite a few people out there who would not realise that rapid deep breathing before swimming underwater could kill you.

Having said that, IMO the radio station was directly responsible for her death and an investigation needs to be undertaken to assertain whether this was due to a lack of proper procedures or failure to follow procedure.
 
tongue_of_colicab said:
Sugarcoat said exactly whats on my mind. You DO notice it when you drink way to much water. Just rty to drink 1liter of water in 5 minutes. You probably cant even get it in (warning 1) and when you do you definitly feel that you have drunk more than enough (warning 2). Besides that I do think its common sense that to much of anything isnt good for you.
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I remember one time, as a kid, I chugged down 1 liter of water in 1 minute, and I didn't notice any warning signs.

Also, it might not be the same, since it was coke (but water would be just as easy to drink), but as a teenager, I once drank 1.5 liter (0.4 us gallons) of coke in 2-3 minutes without noticing anything at all, and I could've drunk more, but I was out of coke...
 
I must have weird stomach than because I cant even drink 3 glasses of water without my body saying that I should atleast slow down a bit :p

I guess everybody is right more or less. The radiostation was wrong for not getting a docter but I also think the woman should have used her head a bit more. I heard se drunk over 4 liters of water, a bit common sense would tell you that it might not be very health.
 
It's all about moderation, almost everything is bad for you if you have too much. I remember a few years back white bread being bad for you, and maybe it is if you eat 3 loaves per day, but no ordinary person does, just as no one normally drinks such large quantities of water.

Just a shame the poor woman died, but maybe now since this is making headlines, it will open peoples eyes a little more about the dangers of pushing yourself beyond what seems appropriate, whether you think it might just make you sick or worse, it's better not to find out the hard way what will happen
 
SugarCoat said:
once again, if you're FORCING your body to do something its telling you not to, thats going against common senses.
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But much of our society actually has us ignoring those natural signals fro the body, to the point we're educated to mostly ignore them. People feel ill and want to stay in bed, but drag themselves off to work (sometimes, although I dare say the inverse is more common!). People feel sleepy yet carry on working or driving. People eat until their full, and then go and order dessert, and take an Alka Seltzer afterwards. Actually paying heed to all those natural feelings is something that doesn't happen.

Furthermore, ignoring them even proves beneficial at times. A runner runs untli their legs ache and their body is communicating to them 'give it up already!' but they keep running, and that improves their fitness. Marathon runners only manage it because they ignor those natural signals. Similarly we've all known times when our body is telling us we need to take a Wii, but there isn't the opportunity. Rather than go in our pants, with ignore our bodily nature without coming to any harm.

In this case, it was a competition of endurance. What if instead of a drinking competition it had been running? All these people were running. All had aching legs and wanted to stop. All knew each other had aching legs. They're all thinking to themselves 'if I can just last a bit longer than the next person, I win,' and so put up with the pain, pushing themselves past those natural limits. On the whole, in a such a case, all that'd happen is they'd get a good workout. The repercussions for pushing themselves past their body's alerts to stop is a couple of days of aches and pains.

Instead of running, it was drinking water. Everyone drinks loads of water every day. It's not high on the list of dangerous substances. So when it's a competition, you think to yourself 'If I can take just one more glass of water than that person, I win.' And it's only one more glass of water. Sure, you're feeling ill, and your body is telling you it'd be a good idea to stop, but you decide to keep going anyway...

It's a matter of knowing your limits. Going back to marathon runners, in the London marathon it's not uncommon for a few people to drop out from over exertion, and even die. Does not common sense tell us that when they were feeling the pain, they should have dropped out? Didn't they ignore their body's own warnings? Yet there's tens of thousands of other runners doing just that. It's about pushing your limits. It's about ignoring those messages. Common sense, by the definition of reacting to your body's alerts, would see no-one completing marathons. Whereas instead we have thousands of people ignoring that 'common sense' to no detriment.

The problem here, IMO, wasn't ignoring the signals. That's common practice. We don't live truly natural lives in tune with our natural bdy balance. Far from it, people on the whole tend to compete against their natural whims. The problem was not knowing the limits and dangers. If the woman was aware that...8 bottles of water could be fatal, but she chose to drink that much against her feelings, that's her fault. If she just felt a little queezy, but trusted it wasn't dangerous, she could have naively pushed herself too far, as the competition was all about pushing oneself.

For me, the fault lies clearly with the competition. It should have been a matter of endurance where you have to push yourself, wherein there was no risk of being pushed too far.
 
For me, the fault lies clearly with the competition. It should have been a matter of endurance where you have to push yourself, wherein there was no risk of being pushed too far.
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IMHO thats impossible. If you ask someone to push him/herself there is always a change that the person will push himself to far before you notice it. Though it could have been avoided in this case.

I also think the comparison with the marathon runner is a bit off. Your outside can take alot more of a beating than your inside. Its hard to push your outside beyond the limit while it is not that hard to push your inside beyond its limit. Its just alot more easier to damage. You can wreck the outside of your car and it will still work. Trow in the wrong gas and its done for.
 
But if you were to push someone to say, balance on one leg, when they go to far, they just get an achy leg. Or if they lift weights, the worst that happens in they pull a muscle. I'm reminded of a World's Strongest Man competitor who rupture his muscle from straining it too hard. He pushed himself beyond his limits, but can recover. There's plenty of alternative competitions that aren't going to kill the competitors!
 
I find it amazing that people's common sense notion is that water is harmless. Do you think oxygen is harmless too? Breathing is harmless? You can die by hyperventillation.

Our cell biology works within very narrow parameters of temperature, pH, pressure, etc. Any action that upsets that can cause severe health problems.

Even if you never learned basic cell biology, you could reason that if lack of water causes death, one should atleast entertain the notion that too much would be bad as well. I am not personally aware of how dangerous hotdog earning contests are, for example, but IMHO, rapid eating and forcing of large amounts of food into the GI tract can't be all good, especially over the long term,
and I would never engage in them. At the very least, if you had an unknown ulcer, you might cause excessive bleeding.

The radio station should be sued into oblivion for running a contest and not even checking to see if there would be any health complications. They are liable. It's like asking someone to drink a poison, without checking to see if the lethal dose would be reached.

However, the women in question goes up for a Darwin award IMHO. I'm sorry, but the ultimate common sense is to not put excessive amounts of anything into your body. People are aware, for example, that excessive alcohol can lead to alcohol poisoning during binge drinking, yet they still do it, why? Because people think that the risk isn't that high, and that they won't be one of the unlucky ones.

People who play around with ice and cold stunts are also playing with fire. Hypothermia can overtake a person very quickly.
 
It was of course stupid of the woman to drink more water than she was capable of handling safely but it was also irresponsible to hold a competition that could easily end up having severe health repercussions for the competitors.

Holding a drinking water competition isn't so bad perhaps but holding a drinking water competition where people are barred from letting their bodies purge the excess sort of crosses the line.

If this had been a booze drinking competition people would have automatically known it was dangerous and unhealthy. However just because it was water most of us don't react the same way.

Perhaps we're lucky not more people died.

And if this doesn't spawn a lawsuit I'll eat my hat.

Peace.
 
Yikes... The most I've drunk in a day was 8L of tea over the span of 10 hours with food somewhere in between...
 
i must have a weird metabilism, im always thirsty
if im home i drink 10-14 liters of water a day
+ 6 liters of coffee (down from 8 liters from a few years ago)
true i do piss at least twice an hour
 
The problem isnt with drinking alot of liquids over the period of a day or hours, the problem is with drinking 2 Liters or more in 10-15minutes time.


Furthermore, ignoring them even proves beneficial at times. A runner runs untli their legs ache and their body is communicating to them 'give it up already!' but they keep running, and that improves their fitness. Marathon runners only manage it because they ignor those natural signals. Similarly we've all known times when our body is telling us we need to take a Wii, but there isn't the opportunity. Rather than go in our pants, with ignore our bodily nature without coming to any harm.

In this case, it was a competition of endurance. What if instead of a drinking competition it had been running? All these people were running. All had aching legs and wanted to stop. All knew each other had aching legs. They're all thinking to themselves 'if I can just last a bit longer than the next person, I win,' and so put up with the pain, pushing themselves past those natural limits. On the whole, in a such a case, all that'd happen is they'd get a good workout. The repercussions for pushing themselves past their body's alerts to stop is a couple of days of aches and pains.

Instead of running, it was drinking water. Everyone drinks loads of water every day. It's not high on the list of dangerous substances. So when it's a competition, you think to yourself 'If I can take just one more glass of water than that person, I win.' And it's only one more glass of water. Sure, you're feeling ill, and your body is telling you it'd be a good idea to stop, but you decide to keep going anyway...
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Its not the same thing Shifty. When you're running and your legs begin to hurt, thats from the build-up of lactic acid due to a lack of oxygen being delivered (which itself wont kill you), you can ignore this, but eventually your body will give out from fatigue. Anyone whos been forced to run, or especially sprint, knows that their legs begin to falter after they've gone past their limit.

Forcing liquid down your throat is entirely psychological. You can ignore what your brain is telling you completely. If you're sprinting and you push yourself past your limit theres a good chance you're going to take a spill on the ground when your legs give out. One you can override, the other your body is going to stop you from doing if enough stress is applied.

Any way you cut it, drinking down 2 Liters of water in a short amount of time just isnt natural, and doesnt feel good, infact it feels terrible. Thats common sense. Again the only exception where its a legitimate case is when severe dehydration is a factor because your body doesnt give off any warning signs until after you've consumed it. The same can be said about food and starvation.
 
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SugarCoat said:
once again, if you're FORCING your body to do something its telling you not to, thats going against common senses.
Click to expand...

tongue_of_colicab said:
Sugarcoat said exactly whats on my mind. You DO notice it when you drink way to much water. Just rty to drink 1liter of water in 5 minutes. You probably cant even get it in (warning 1) and when you do you definitly feel that you have drunk more than enough (warning 2). Besides that I do think its common sense that to much of anything isnt good for you.
Click to expand...

DemoCoder said:
I find it amazing that people's common sense notion is that water is harmless. Do you think oxygen is harmless too? Breathing is harmless? You can die by hyperventillation.
Click to expand...


Your body doesn't necessarily tell you to stop in the case of water. Drinking 1L of water in a couple of minutes is quite easy to do, and if I'm thirsty and/or have an empty stomach it doesn't feel odd at all.

People see eating contests all over the place, from the local fair to international competitions, with people eating everything from pies to tongues, and the general media view is that while these people may get fat, and may vomit, the serious medical complications are quite rare (and though they do happen, life threatening complications are even more rare).

Is it any surprise, then, that people might assume that water, the liquid of life, which most of their body is composed of anyway, might be the safest thing to consume in large quantities? Demo, not everyone who has had an education including something like cell biology, and I'd guess that few of those who have would have been able to reason through cell function to conclude that water can be toxic without someone telling them, assuming they remembered anything learned in college in the first place.

In the absence of strong physiological warning signs, I don't find it strange or ignorant at all that someone might consume too much water before realizing it, especially if their mindset is on winning a competition. In fact, I'd guess that most people might have a thought run through their head that says "well, doctors tell you to drink as much as you can (never heard one give a limit), people eat tremendous amounts of other stuff that has to be much worse for you than water, and if a radio station is having this in a competition it must not be dangerous..."

IMO, I can't fault someone for not being informed enough. It's not a trivial physiological process that makes water toxic (any more than is the case for O2), this wasn't taught openly in schools in the past, doctors and nutrionists don't regularly give warnings about the dangers of water overconsumption, not everyone can be expected to have heard about frat hazing incidents, and physiological warnings aren't consistent throughout the population.

Hopefully news about this will spread and alleviate one of the above problems.
 
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