How do doctors treat severe over-hydration (like the famous water drinking contest)?
In: Biology
Doc here.
TLDR- fix it in a reasonable time through various things like saltier IV fluids, meds that make you pee out water, and stopping drinking water. Doing it cautiously without killing you.
You’re basically a big fragile bag of various salts and water and you gotta pour in and drain out the right mix at the same time without allowing the bag to form wrinkles or tear else you’re disqualified from the game of life. Remember to praise your kidneys for regulating your ability to be a hydrohomeboy.
Overall, it depends on a few things: new (acute) or been like this forever (chronic) plus how far off is your blood from normal concentration.
The key in every case is to identify where your “normal” is and aim to get you there safely in a reasonable timeframe, else we shrivel up and kill your brain and other stuff in the process like seizures, heart stuff, etc.
If your blood is severely diluted from normal, we check your blood electrolytes (sodium, potassium, magnesium, etc.) frequently and probably will give you some tasty salty water through an IV. Care is taken not to correct your sodium concentration too fast else it will cause a lot of problems (e.g. osmotic demyelination syndrome). Other electrolytes can cause other problems but I’m just gonna talk about sodium.
If it ain’t as severe and you have time on your side, we employ a variety of techniques depending on a few things like – how concentrated with other stuff are you? Do you drink a lot of beer and alcohol? you taking meds? how much fluid/water is in you? are your kidneys actually working?
These things include:
Diuretic medications. The dreaded “water pill” will make you pee like a race horse. Your blood can’t be full of too much water if you pee it all out.
Stop drinking water. A true hydrohomie knows there’s more to water than just the water.
Taking in salt is a little tricky because “water follows salt.” People tend to forget that. Remember that super salty meal that you ate and now your hands and feet feel puffy full of water? Ever notice how salting meat pulls out the liquid? Adding salt can potentially pull in more water into the mix.
These are just a few of the things we can use to fix what people do to themselves.
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