Drinking is essential, especially in summer, when an increase in external temperature doubles the loss of water in our body, but we must not overdo it, otherwise the body reacts.
It is good for everyone to always take into consideration the amount of water to be taken daily, which varies according to age, sex, physical constitution and physical activity.
The WHO (World Health Organization) recommends it as essential for our health and also as a cure-all for reducing urinary infections, kidney stones and the risk of bladder cancer. We must also pay attention to the food we introduce, in fact fruit and vegetables naturally contain liquids, so they must still be considered when calculating our needs.
Doctors recommend drinking at any time of the day, but the ideal is as soon as you feel the stimulus of thirst, sent by the hypothalamus; if you drink constantly, however, the brain’s ability to send this signal is altered. As for the type of water, if you do not suffer from particular diseases, you can safely drink tap water, controlled and ecological, as it makes us produce even less waste.
Drinking too much water, however, can create health problems, even serious ones, and you risk becoming an “aquaholist” , that is, suffering from a real addiction , with the need to constantly take liquids.
Speaking in these terms of a harmless substance like water, if not essential for our life, may seem somewhat strange and incredible, but this phenomenon exists and should not be underestimated.
In recent times we hear often and everywhere about addictions, both the more classic ones (such as alcohol , smoking, substances ), and the more recent ones (such as gambling , internet , sex / pornography , shopping ), with their specific characteristics ; addiction to water makes no difference and fully reflects all aspects: craving (irrepressible desire, research), tolerance , abstinence , up to fatal outcomes due to overdose .
Precisely for this reason, it causes various types of problems, discomfort and suffering to those affected, as if it were an addiction to another substance and, therefore, requires serious and targeted care and therapies.
The most curious case jumped to the news concerns a 25-year-old English girl, J. Jarvis, who regularly and compulsively drinks about 6 liters of water a day, up to, at certain times, to 16. She declares to a famous magazine that she she had a “passion” for water since childhood, but she had never considered this “habit” of hers a problem and was absolutely unaware of the risks she ran; medical visits have ruled out for her specific organic diseases such as diabetes (which prompts the sufferer to drink a lot), also because, in reality, compulsive drinkers do not drink so much for a real feeling of thirst , but under a push, a need compulsive.
The girl, in fact, says: “ I don’t drink water because it’s good for me, but because I like it. And I thought it was the last way in the world to harm my health. I’ve been doing it since I was little and I lost count of how many times my parents took me to the doctor because they thought I was diabetic: but nothing, I’m healthy “.
It seems that the famous British journalist and chef Nigella Lawson also suffers from it and she too has only recently become aware of it; other well-known names, but less fortunate, are the marathon runner David Rogers who died in 2007 of water intoxication, and the actor Antony Andrews who narrowly avoided the same fate, but remained in a coma for 10 days.
British researchers (the phenomenon seems to be more present or, at least, more found for now in Anglo-Saxon countries), in fact, in addition to having coined the term, have amply demonstrated how this habit can cause disturbances and imbalances.
First of all, we sleep less and badly: when we sleep our brain secretes an antidiuretic hormone that regulates the functioning of the kidneys and prevents us from getting up during the night to urinate, but if the level of fluids in our body exceeds a certain limit, the hormone becomes inactive; moreover, you sweat more: in the heat it is natural that there is a little hyperhidrosis, to disperse heat, but by drinking more than necessary the sweating increases exaggeratedly, as a reaction to be able to get rid of excess fluids; finally, the blood changes and dilutes too much, resulting in an electrolyte imbalance, ie an alteration in the concentration of sodium and potassium, two essential minerals for our health.
The decrease in sodium, called hyponatremia or hyponatremia (from the Latin term “natrium”, ie sodium), or even more rarely hyponatremia, is the most serious consequence; it can occur in a chronic or acute form and, in medicine, it can also depend on other factors, such as kidney, heart disease and also on situations such as the abuse of diuretic drugs and the loss of mineral salts due to vomiting and / or diarrhea (these events may be typical in subjects with eating disorders).
The symptoms are varied: fatigue, muscle cramps, headache, difficulty concentrating, respiratory failure, up to more serious cases such as convulsions, hemiparesis, cerebral edema and even death; neurological problems seem to occur more frequently in acute hyponatremia.
The treatment obviously changes according to the triggering cause and the severity: if the disorder is mild, it is generally sufficient to stop the harmful habit (eg drinking too much water, using diuretics, etc.); if, on the other hand, the problem is consolidated, it is necessary to resort to specialized medical care.
As for the possible psychological explanations of this disorder, various hypotheses have been formulated: it can be a real Addiction (where the “substance” is, in this case, water) or an Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorder , in when it satisfies various criteria, or it may be a symptom within a more complex pathology, such as an Eating Disorder (e.g. subjects with Anorexia Nervosa who drink to excess to control the sense of hunger, others with Bulimia introducing plenty of fluids to make self-induced vomiting easier).
In sub-clinical situations, it can be a behavior that is undertaken in the mistaken belief of purifying and / or losing weight, perhaps learned and supported by misleading news that is popular on TV, magazines, websites.
Although at first glance it may seem simple, it is not a habit that can be abandoned alone and without effort: like all psychological disorders it needs special treatment followed by a psychologist-psychotherapist (it must always be kept in mind that it is a mere organic disease); given that the same difficulties are encountered as for other addictions and / or obsessive-compulsive disorders , a course of cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy is therefore suggested , the most suitable and effective in these cases, which is based on techniques widely tested and guarantees, in a short time, a significant improvement in the quality of life of the person.
