Drinking Too much Water Not Good For Brain, Reveals New Study

With the amount of research going on out there and it’s bizarre findings, one can only wonder if soon alcohol and Tobacco will be deemed good for health. Apparently, every notion that we have nursed so far have been challenged. After the study that revealed childhood Leukaemia has a link with children growing in germ-free environment, here is a new one about drinking too much water. They say, over hydration or excess fluid accumulation can lead to dangerously low sodium levels in the blood or result in brain swelling. The results of the study were published in the Journal Cell Reports.

see also: Five benefits of drinking water empty stomach.

Charles Bourque from the McGill University in Canada says “ Hyponatremia, a life threatening condition of brain swelling occurs in common pathological conditions, including brain injury, sepsis, cardiac failure and in the use of drugs, such as MDMA (ecstasy)”.

It wasn’t certain how Hyponatremia occured but the study found that a defect in the hydration sensing mechanism of the brain could be the reason behind. The researchers said that brain’s hydration sensing neutrons could not elect hydration in the same way they detect hydration.

Overhydration activates Trpv4 – a calcium channel that can be found in glial cells, that act to surround hydration sensing neurons. It is a cellular gatekeeper implicated in maintaining the balance of water in the body. The results showed that overhydration is first identified by the Trpv4 channel which triggers the release of a type of amino acid known, taurine, which acts as a trip wire to inhibit hydration sensing neurons.

“Our study shows that it is in fact glial cells that first detect the overhydrated state and then transfer this information to turn off the electrical activity of the [hydration sensing] neurons, Preclinical models of hyponatremia will be used to examine if the mechanism we report is affected in this condition with the long-term objective of designing new treatments or diagnostic tools” explained Borque.

Now drinking water has lot of benefits. The results, even if its true is only about drinking ‘too much of water’. Let’s not ditch the good habit of drinking adequate quantity of water.