Ashley Summers was on vacation with her family when she died from a rare complication caused by her sodium levels dropping rapidly
A Monticello, Indiana, mom of two has died after drinking too much water too quickly in a rare, but fatal case of “water toxicity.”
Ashley Summers, 35, was on vacation with her family on Lake Freeman over Fourth of July weekend when she landed in the hospital, according to a report on WRTV.
“They were out on the boat all weekend long,” her older brother, Devon Miller, told the news station. “She loved being on the water. She loved being on the lake.”
On Tuesday, July 4, Summers had reportedly felt dehydrated, saying she had a headache and felt lightheaded.
That’s when she began drinking a lot of water — in a short period of time.
"Someone said she drank four bottles of water in that 20 minutes. I mean, an average water bottle is like 16 ounces, so that was 64 ounces that she drank in the span of 20 minutes. That’s half a gallon," said Miller.
According to the Mayo Clinic, women should consume about 2.7 liters of fluids a day — about 91 ounces — with 20% of that coming from food.
When Summers got home, she passed out in her garage — and never regained consciousness.
"My sister, Holly, called me, and she was just an absolute wreck. She was like 'Ashley is in the hospital. She has brain swelling, they don’t know what’s causing it, they don’t know what they can do to get it to go down, and it’s not looking good,'" said Miller.
The cause: Hyponatremia — also known as water toxicity, which occurs when the amount of sodium in your blood is “abnormally low” according to the Mayo Clinic.
“Drinking too much water [can] cause the sodium in your body to become diluted. When this happens, your body's water levels rise, and your cells begin to swell,” the Mayo Clinic adds.
And for Summers, drinking too much water proved fatal.
"It was a shock to all of us when they first started talking about water toxicity. And it was like, ‘This is a thing?’" Miller told WRTV.
While rare, water toxicity can be fatal. The Cleveland Clinic cautions that some underlying medical conditions, and consuming alcohol — particularly beer — can increase your risk of it.
Also called “water intoxication,” the Nation Institute of Health noted that “early detection is crucial to prevent severe hyponatremia, which can lead to seizures, coma, and death.”
The Harvard School of Public Health noted that while athletes and those with kidney problems are more prone to hyponatremia, “women and children are also more susceptible to hyponatremia because of their smaller body size.”
Hypo, meaning low.
Na, the chemical symbol for sodium.
Emia, meaning low presence in blood.
Hypo-na-tremia, low sodium presence in blood.
Na, the chemical symbol for sodium.
Forgive my ackshualee-ing, but the "natr" part in hyponatremia comes from natrium, the Latin word for sodium.
Shit, I knew you had to be careful with water toxicity with kids, but I didn't really think about dangers to adults too. It's hot out there folks, be careful!
Its why gatorade is what it ia for athletes. The purpose of it is to hydrate the body and replenish the lost sodium from sweating profusely. The one time you should always be wary about drinking too much water is when its hot out, youre sweating and had no food(or at least, something with sodium)
Gatorade sucks ass, too much sugar
they now make a product marketed as gatorfit which is basically the same shit without all the sugar. It still has some sugar tho because the whole point of it is to utilize the sodium-glucose cotransporters in your intestines to absorb more water
There's also pedialyte which is oral rehydration solution marketed for kids but idk if it's cheaper or not
Pedialyte is pretty nice, they also make the only low-sugar ice pops I know of- the rest are either tons of sugar or super sweet sugar substitutes. The pedialyte ones are like 15 calories so they're mildly sweet, and are good hydration/cooling
Yeah pedialyte is good it's like legit medical treatment for dehydration and will save your life if you get the cholera. I just don't know if it's cheaper than the gatorade product (but it probably is)
Surprising if the gatorfit stuff is cheaper, since they sell pedialyte in much bigger bottles. But i guess one is marketed as a medical thing for kids and the other is a sports drank and you can charge more a premium for the former
Gatorade makes their own version of Pedialyte called Gatorlyte, which actually has a better electrolyte mix and comes in a zero sugar variety.
No they make gatorlyte but that still has too much sugar lol the "gatorfit" thing has much less
Yes, I know the regular Gatorlyte has 12g of sugar, (which is less than a banana), but like I said, they have a zero sugar variety that is only 3g of carbs and has magnesium, unlike the Gatorfit.
You want some sugar to activate your sodium-glucose cotransporters in your intestines, so a "0 sugar" sports drink isn't gonna do that
If you can find it, Pocari sweat is the best electrolyte thing I've tried.
That's got like 6g of sugar per 100ml but the gatorfit shit has 1g in the whole bottle. You need sugar and sodium to activate the sodium glucose cotransporters but you don't need THAT MUCH sugar, and what I am talking about is entirely separate from replenishing electrolytes (which it also does)
Also why you should consider taking salt pills. I just did a 5 hour hike in 105F heat index this weekend and was taking a salt pill every 90 minutes.
Maybe I'm not understanding something, but isn't this the reason sports drinks exist? To replenish fluids and sodium?
I think a bit of glucose assists the body take up salts but yeah, sports drinks go wild with sugar
It's easier for me to carry my hydration bladder plus some salt pills on a 5 hour hike than to carry my hydration bladder plus a couple sports drink bottles. Plus the sugar, as someone else said. You could bring some salty snacks and get the salk that way, too.
I was totally relying on electrolyte pills during an absurdly hot and drunk week at one point and started getting really kinda loopy and weirdly sick: I have no idea who thought low-sodium electrolyte pills were a good idea but I hate them. Once the "okay this is spot on for hyponatremia" clicked I downed a straight teaspoon of table salt and was right as rain in an hour.
Holy shit half a gallon? I had no idea you could just die from that little water
she had to have been pretty light, right? that's a crazy small amount of water for poisoning
I think that's gotta be part of it. I'm also maybe thinking that the thing that was making her feel sick initially was low sodium or too much water, and she maybe confused it with like a dehydration migraine or something. So maybe the half gallon tipped it into deadly territory? Fucked up
Pretty unsettling, I regularly work outside in the summer and drink a lot of water without replenishing salts, maybe it’s just as simple as stirring a tablespoon into a gallon or sth
I’m sure if you eat food along with hydrating you also replenish the sodium
Also, drinking the water over the course of a few hours so you're sweating and peeing a bunch out throughout the day
First time I ever heard of water intoxication was "wee for wii" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jennifer-stranges-family-awarded-165-million-in-wee-for-wii-contest-death/
Jennifer Strange, a 28-year-old Rancho Cordova, Calif. mother of three, died of acute water intoxication in January, 2007 after the challenge to see which contestant could drink the most water without using the restroom. A Nintendo Wii video game was the prize for winning the "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest.
I first heard about it with that story too, and I never thought it could happen willingly. I thought you'd have to really try and ignore all your body signals for it to happen.
This one is scarier because it wasn't a dumb challenge, she was just thirsty and her body didn't make her stop.
This almost happened to some friends of mine while working at a summer camp in a heat wave. Luckily the food there is loaded with sodium so nothing serious happened. It's a real tricky one because the early symptoms are similar to those of heat exhaustion.
remember folks, if you need to get hydrated, drink water in small amounts at a time, spread out throughout the day
I see so many people make the mistake of not drinking water all day and then suddenly remembering they need to hydrate and downing a big glass of water and thinking they'll be good, but that's not how hydration works.
Surprised not to see this already, but careful when you're rolling. One of the ways people die from this is, they're concerned about dehydration when they're dancing for hours and hours so they drink too much water to compensate.
During the height of the Ecstasy scare, when everyone was chugging 3 litres a day because the media taught them that it would kill you immediately if dehydrated a lot of kids were hospitalised. Most lived, since if you're healthy your body will usually manage with a bit of help and paramedics were around.
I get acid reflux if I drink over one liter of water, how do you just keep going after that
Weird. That almost exclusively happens to people doing stupid tiktok challenges.