Mother-of-two dies after drinking two litres of water in 20 minutes on a family holiday
3 August 2023, 18:57
An American mother died after drinking too much water on a family trip with her husband and two daughters.
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Ashley Summers, 35, died from water toxicity – a rare consequence of drinking too much water too quickly – on a Fourth of July weekend in Indiana.
On the final day of the trip, her family said Summers was suffering from a headache and feeling dehydrated. Her brother, Devon Miller, told WRTV, Summers “felt like she couldn't get enough water.”
She drank around two litres of water in 20 minutes, according to Miller. “That’s half a gallon. That’s what you’re supposed to drink in a whole day,” he added.
Summers was taken to the hospital having returned from her holiday and falling unconscious in her garage.
Doctors then diagnosed her with water toxicity, also called hyponatremia, as a result of drinking too much water and not enough sodium.
“It was a shock to all of us. When they first started talking about water toxicity. It was like, this is a thing?”
The Summers family was in a popular tourist destination in Indiana, Lake Freeman, and were on a boat excursion when Summers started to feel dehydrated.
“She loved being on the water,” said Miller.
Water toxicity occurs when the body's organs, especially the kidneys, are overwhelmed by water and unable to popular regulate the balance of fluids.
Sodium helps address this balance, adjusting the amount of water reabsorbed into the blood or excreted through urine.
