How to Handle Hyponatremia According to Experts

Hyponatremia is an abnormally low level of sodium in the blood; associated with dehydration, and generally occurs in athletes. Sodium is the electrolyte that helps to regulate the quantity of water that is in and around your cells.

Hyponatremia ca occur as a result of an underlying medical condition or because an individual drinks too much water during endurance sports which results in the sodium in your body becoming diluted. When this happens, the water levels in your body rise and the cells begin to swell. This can cause various mild to life-threatening health problems.

In February this year experts came together at the Third International Exercise-Associated Hyponatremia Consensus Development Conference in Carlsbad, California to address exercise-associated hyponatremia (EAH) and came up with a set of guidelines that were published in the peer-reviewed Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine in July 2015.

EAH can be very serious and the reports note that at least 14 athletes, including football players and cyclists, have died as a result of the metabolic condition since 1981. This may not seem like a huge number, but it was totally unavoidable.

So what was the outcome of this meeting of the minds of a 17-member expert panel representing four countries and nine specialties, including sports medicine, body fluid homeostasis and exercise physiology?  According to the group it is:

“Using the innate thirst mechanism to guide fluid consumption is a strategy that should limit drinking in excess and developing hyponatremia while providing sufficient fluid to prevent excessive dehydration.”

So essentially they are saying is “Use your body’s own innate thirst mechanism to guide your fluid consumption.” Wow, I cannot believe that it took 17 experts, so many hours and so much money to say what basically boils down to “drink when you are thirsty!”

According to the Mayo Clinic, “If you have moderate, chronic hyponatremia due to your diet, diuretics or drinking too much water, your doctor may recommend temporarily cutting back on fluids. He or she also may suggest adjusting your diuretic use to increase the level of sodium in your blood.”