3/24/2019 update
I keep thinking of things that I believe others should know. After just writing about aspartame and then water, in moderation, I remembered this.
I keep thinking of things that I believe others should know. After just writing about aspartame and then water, in moderation, I remembered this.
Water is life. Our bodies are anywhere between 55% and 78% water. Our brains are about 85% water. Even our bones have water. Our blood is composed of water. Our brains and spinal cord are bathed in a fluid based on water. I could go on and on.
Our bodies are also complex organisms requiring just the right balance of electrolytes like calcium, sodium, magnesium and potassium, for example. When one gets dehydrated or binges and purges or drinks too much water, this electrolyte balance goes out of whack and our bodies become susceptible to things like seizures, heart attacks, coma and kidney failure to name a few things.
Long distance runners (which I was for many years so have kept up on this) and others exercising for a long time have experienced this when they suddenly feel faint or dizzy or nauseous, pass out, quit urinating, get muscle cramps, have heart attacks, or worse, die. Runners and those who exercise in other ways can also experience the opposite when they ingest too much plain water without enough electrolytes and glucose in the solution. Some of the symptoms are similar, actually, and can be confusing to doctors. This is important to those of you whose children participate in track and field, football, soccer and other sports.
For those with children with bulimia and anorexia, monitoring them becomes critical and forbidding them to exercise heavily until they reach a more stable state becomes very important.
Those with bulimia or who take laxatives purge away this electrolyte balance. Vomiting reduces the amount of electrolytes in one part of the body so the body turns to its stores in other areas to try to regulate back to normal. In the process, the amount of sodium, for example, in the blood stream is reduced. When this happens, organs like the heart aren’t bathed in the appropriate balance and physiologically, the heart starts to react negatively, beating irregularly, for example.
Others water load to gain weight or to trick their bodies into believing that they are full and don’t need food. Water loading is dangerous, too.
Often, as many of us parents have discovered, the person with bulimia must be rushed to the hospital and given IV fluids to re-balance their electrolytes and restore their fluid levels to normal so their kidneys and other organs including their brains can function.
A danger our family discovered is something called central pontine myelinosis.
I’ve linked this so the reader can learn more details. Basically, if the sodium levels are corrected too quickly during intravenous rehydration with an increased level of sodium in the bloodstream, the person is in danger of serious nerve/brain damage. By some miracle, this did not happen to our family member possibly because her body had become accustomed to the fluctuations that had been occurring for years. There is now some question about long-term effects appearing later. The person needs to be monitored. Note that if an individual is suffering malnutrition, like many people with eating disorders are, the body is more susceptible to this.
Make certain that the ER doctors monitor your loved one constantly and administer the IV fluid for a limited amount of time. Don't hesitate to ask questions.