Featured Image Credit: Getty Images / YouTube/Zack D. Films
When it comes to staying healthy, drinking plenty of water has always been at the top of the list. But it turns out you can have too much of a good thing.
That's because while water is vital to life, it can be incredibly dangerous if you have too much of it.
A short video by Zack D. Films shows what happens to your body when you drink too much water and it's left people terrified.
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The clip's caption asks: "Can you die from drinking too much water?"
The answer - yes.
It explains: "If you drink too much water, the excess will fill up your stomach and get absorbed into your bloodstream.
"This can eventually cause your braincells to swell up which pushes your brain into your skull and increases the pressure.
"Depending on your size, if you drink about six liters of water in a few hours, your brain would swell up so much that you could go into a coma and die."
The video left people pretty spooked after it was shared to Reddit's r/Damnthatsinteresting thread.
One person wrote: "Zack's animation should be in horror movies."
Another commented: "New fear unlocked: drinking too much water."
And a third shared their experience of getting sick from drinking too much. "While breastfeeding I drank nearly two gallons of water to boost production and suffered a seizure," they said. "Had no idea."
The process is explained further in Scientific American. According to the publication, drinking too much water can cause hyponatremia, which means there is insufficient salt in the blood.
If there is too much water in the system, the blood becomes waterlogged. It then gets drawn to regions where the concentration of salt is highest. It then enters the cells which swell to try and make room for it.
Most cells are able to stretch, but in the brain, the skull prevents this from happening. As a result, any swelling in the brain is incredibly dangerous.
M. Amin Arnaout, chief of nephrology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, says: "Rapid and severe hyponatremia causes entry of water into brain cells leading to brain swelling, which manifests as seizures, coma, respiratory arrest, brain stem herniation and death."
While drinking enough to cause hyponatermia is rare, it does happen.
Last year, mother-of-two Ashley Summers died from water intoxication not long after spending Independence Day weekend with her family.
The daycare worker had been complaining of symptoms of dehydration and could not drink enough water to satisfy her thirst, her family said.
Summers then ended up drinking the equivalent of four 16oz bottles of water in 20 minutes.
After returning home from a trip, she collapsed in her garage and never regained consciousness. She died from severe brain swelling.
So, while we're not telling you stop drinking water, like most things, it's important to enjoy it in moderation.
