Videos promising better skin, more energy or fewer headaches after upping daily water intake routinely spread across TikTok.
Under one popular video showing a woman’s skin “transformation,” the comment section took a sharp turn: users claimed she was risking water poisoning and dangerously low electrolytes.
Such reactions raise a reasonable question. Can someone without underlying illness actually harm themselves by drinking more water than usual?
According to researchers interviewed by the Danish Videnskab.dk, including professors Niels-Henrik von Holstein-Rathlou and Per Svenningsen, the answer is generally no.
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They explain that the human body is built to keep fluid and salt levels stable, even when intake swings up or down.
What the kidneys can handle
The kidneys, they note, can eliminate large amounts of fluid over the course of a day.
A person with normal kidney and heart function may excrete close to twenty liters in 24 hours, and roughly a liter per hour at rest.
Long before reaching harmful levels, most people would simply become uncomfortable from constant bathroom trips.
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True water intoxication, known medically as hyponatraemia, occurs only when fluid intake repeatedly overwhelms the body’s ability to maintain sodium levels.
Symptoms like nausea, headache or cramps happen when sodium becomes too diluted.
But for a healthy person, this would require extreme, sustained overconsumption or attempting to drink large volumes within a short window, which typically triggers vomiting before anything dangerous develops.
When hydration does become a problem
Overhydration is usually linked to medical conditions that prevent the body from removing excess fluid, such as severe heart, liver or kidney disease.
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Electrolyte loss can also matter, but mostly after intense sweating, vomiting or diarrhoea, not from ordinary drinking.
The researchers add that electrolyte supplements are unnecessary for most people because food already supplies what the body needs.
Outside of illness or heavy exertion, they recommend a simpler guide: drink when you’re thirsty and stop when you’re not.
Source: Videnskab.dk.
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