Running and Hyponatremia

Saturdays is usually the scheduled day for my long run of the week. Well yesterday was a record high 102F in San Diego and hence I decided to postpone the run to Sunday morning. Now getting up early in the mornings is not exactly my cup of coffee. So after a couple of snoozes on my cell, I managed to drag mysefy out of bed by 6:55 am. By the time I was ready to start the run it was 7:30 am and already pretty hot, tough the sun was still not out. I knew it was going to be a long hot run, so I took along a bottle of ice-cold water. How I managed to drag myself through the 8-miles in the ever increasing heat is not the point of the post tough I would say the water was definitely my savior.

This is about an article in sports section of the NY Times that caught my eye just after I got back. It was titled "New York Runners Warned About Too Much Water" and talks about a medical condition called hyponatremia which marathon runners are susceptible to. Hyponatremia also known as "water intoxication" is the opposite of dehydration tough the symtoms are the same. It is caused due to low blood sodium, and can occur when long distance walkers and runners lose sodium thru sweat but are unable to replace it. It can be accenuated by continuing to drink large amounts of water and losing further sodium through urination. The article describes a near death experience of Mark Robinson during the 2004 Boston Marathon, who was treated for dehydration when he actually was suffering from hyponatremia. Here is a related article from the NY Times and an article on hypontremia from wikipedia.

My inferences :

* Drink only as much water as needed, do not overdrink.
* Use water to splash on your head, face etc. to keep cool.
* Drink gatorade instead.
* Avoid running in direct sun as far as possible; evenings are better, specially if you lazy in getting up early just like me :)
* Who said SALT was BAD for health ;)