The Signs, Symptoms and Treatment for Water Intoxication Essay

Clinical Term PaperHave you ever wondered if it is possible for someone to drink too much water? In a simple answer, yes. Drinking too much water can cause you to have a condition that is known as Water Intoxication. Water intoxication is mostly common in infants under six months old, but it can also affect adults and sometimes even athletes. An infant can get water intoxication by just drinking several bottles of water, or from the parent diluting their formula too much.When water enters the body, the water gets absorbed by the cells. That would usually be normal, but when too much water has entered into the bodys cells, the surrounding tissues will swell and puff up with the excess fluid. The bodies cells hold a specific kind of concentration, so the leftover water that your body didnt absorb starts to take out the sodium from the cells and puts it out to the serum (a liquid that separates out in attempt to keep the blood a liquid) to try to bring the necessary concentration back to its normal level. As more and more water starts to gather together, the bodys sodium starts to drop. Another way the body tries to get the electrolyte level back to normal is for the extra water, that never got to got absorbed, to rush into the cells through osmosis. Osmosis is the movement of water across a semipermeable membrane from higher to lower concentration. Not only water, but electrolytes try to move across the membrane of the cell in attempt to level off the concentration. At that point, at any time, the cells could swell large enough for them to burst open.Some symptoms of water intoxication or overhydration is fatigue, headache, confusion, nausea, vomiting, irritability, restlessness, muscle spasms or cramps, seizures, and unconsciousness. In very severe cases that have been reported, water intoxication has been known to lead to comas, or even death.There are many ways of treating...