According to the Associated Press, the researchers surveyed 488 participants in the Boston Marathon in 2002 and found that 62 of them, that is, more than one eighth of the participants, were out of balance in the proportion of water and salt because they drank too much water or sports drinks, and three of them were seriously out of balance. A 28-year-old woman died after the game. This condition is called hyponatremia because too much water leads to a low proportion of salt in her body.
Leslie Bonci Qi, director of sports nutrition at Pittsburgh Medical Center, said: "The more water, the better, but this statement is hard to understand." Endurance athletes have long been warned of the danger of dehydration, so they often drink more water than usual in training on the day of the competition. The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday.
The research team led by Dr. Christopher Ou Man, a cardiologist at Harvard Medical School, took a blood test on the participants of the Boston Marathon at the end of the race and collected some information, including the athletes' condition, competition time and water consumption.
Low intake syndrome is most likely to happen to runners who gain weight because they drink a lot of water during running. They gained about 4.5 pounds, from 1 to 1 1 pound. The thinner the runner, the higher the risk, but even drinking sports drinks with very little salt can't improve this situation.
Bunsy and Ou Man said that a good way to solve this problem is to have athletes weigh before and after training. If they gain too much weight, they must reduce their water intake until they reach a correct balance point, and they must start doing so long before the match day. The goal is to get just enough water intake to supplement the water loss after sweating.
The symptoms of hyponatremia include confusion and dozing at first, and quickly develop into seizures, trance, coma and death.
With the increasing popularity of endurance sports, there are more and more cases with severe symptoms. In recent years, low tolerance has led to the death of several amateur marathoners, including participants in the Marine Corps Marathon.