01 November 2007

Water, water everywhere, but how much do you drink?

The Honolulu Marathon is one month away and talk of hyponatremia is coming up again. There was an article in the Honolulu Advertiser today and it kind of bugged me. The guy who wrote if is a family practice doctor. Now I'm not degrading that but he is not a sports doctor so......

He talks about blood tests done on 2 women who died during a marathon and it really raises a lot of questions in my mind. He says not to drink at every aid station and only drink when you are thirsty.

I'd really like to know exactly how much these women drank at the aid stations. Did they drink a gallon at each one?? I walk through the aid stations so I can drink but even so I only manage to consume a few ounces at a time. I just don't see how you could over drink during a marathon. Of course, if you over drink before that might be part of the problem.

I was told years ago that you really can't hydrate during a race. You need to be hydrated for the day or two before the race so you go into the race with a full tank. I don't drink much before a race but I do drink at every aid station. Hmmmm.......

I do know they are questioning the old adage that by the time you're thirsty it's too late. They are starting to think that your thirst works just fine. That's interesting. I always wondered why your thirst didn't work right. All the intricate systems in your body that work perfectly yet your thirst doesn't. That always struck me as weird.

In other news, it seems home prices on Oahu have creeped up again. Maybe it's finally time to call a realtor and see what's out there. But then there's the whole big island thing.... It's too hard to make decisions.

1 comment:

Ellie Hamilton said...

I've been wondering about that, too, amid all the new findings. Thirst should work, if we can recognize it. I wonder if by drinking to *prevent* thirst we dull the mechanism to where we don't remember what it felt like. Kind of like hunger.... we eat when we're not hungry because it's time to eat or because there's food there or we want something in our mouth (or, even, because what we really are is thirsty, but we don't recognize it.) To the extent that we have trouble recognizing the feelings of hunger and fullness. *Sigh* Maybe we should just have left well-enough alone.....

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