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KIRKSVILLE, MO --
What's one thing you never leave home without these days?
    
Your water bottle, of course!
    
But can too much water be a bad thing?
    
That's the topic you voted to learn more about in our Facebook Story of the Day.
    
As it turns out, it is possible to drink too much H2o.
    
Drinking a lot of water in a short amount of time can cause water intoxication, which can be fatal.

“Your body's going to have to deal with that stress all at once versus if it happened over a longer period time, say all day, so if you're outside working aggressively in the yard, it's 100 degrees, then putting in that extra water as the day goes on is going to give you much less problems than if you stop at noon and go inside and drink one half gallon or a gallon of water,” said Justin Puckett, D.O.

Too much water will wipe electrolytes, like sodium and chloride out of your body, and can ultimately lead to brain swelling.

Signs of body stress from water intoxication include confusion, personality changes, nausea, and vomiting.

Cases of water intoxication have proved deadly in water drinking contests and hazing.

“It's something that's very dangerous and life threatening so even though we don't see it very often, using water as a part of an initiation process or a hazing process could have fatal outcomes and is something that should be strongly discouraged,” Puckett said.

The average healthy person drinks between 64 and 80 ounces of water per day.
    
But your body can handle more water than that as long as you're eating a well-balanced diet to replace the lost electrolytes.