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Hyponatremia - Dehydration’s Alter Ego
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Introduction
Often times, including articles here at Hiker’s Corner, we discuss the need for proper hydration. Typically focusing on dehydration with suggestions that imply you should drink fluid at some sort of interval regardless of thirst in order to "stay ahead" of your thirst and prevent dehydration. Could there be a possible severe condition lurking in the shadows of this philosophy? Dehydration does have an evil twin known as hyponatremia.
The Alter Ego Unveiled
Hyponatremia is essentially the over hydration of the body during exercise lasting for four hours or more. This includes endurance activities like marathon running and even hiking.
The body tends to loose a great deal of its sodium content from sweating during these activities. When consuming water only, this level of salt becomes greatly diluted. Symptoms are often fairly similar to that of dehydration, making its diagnosis somewhat difficult.
The Symptoms
The symptoms of hyponatremia can include seizures, headaches, fluid in the lungs(pulmonary edema), and respiratory arrest. This condition can be fatal in some cases.
What You Can Do
Hydration is indeed very important during strenuous activity. Beginning your day already hydrated is the best way to start. Once you’ve achieved proper hydration (indicated by clear urine) you can take small drinks of water only when thirsty. Utilizing sports drinks can help replace the sodium and electrolytes lost from sweating during your activity.
The USATF provides information for understanding hydration along with what has changed and why. You can check out this information at usatf.org.
Some of the information for this article was derived from the USATF website and was written by Mark Allen of Hiker's Corner.