“I drink more than 5 liters of water a day, I urinate a lot, but I don’t have diabetes”: is this a symptom of a mental disorder? | Health | Magazine

A great desire to drink water and, as a result, an increase in the number of trips to the toilet to urinate are not only symptoms of diabetes. Excessive thirst may indicate a mental disorder.

“He drank more than 5 liters of water a day” and said he “wanted to cleanse his body.” This is a case report of a 41-year-old man whose family noticed that urine production had increased significantly, reports Scielo.

Five reasons to drink water throughout the day

At the age of 16, the patient was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. At about 39 years old, he began drinking 5 liters of water a day.

Cielo notes that this forty-year-old man had psychogenic polydipsia.

Access Medicine points out that psychogenic polydipsia “commonly occurs in patients with a psychiatric history.

What happens if I am very thirsty and urinate frequently, but I do not have diabetes? Other diseases with similar symptoms

Hyponatremia, as the Mayo Clinic explains, “is when the level of sodium in the blood is too low.”

Patients with psychogenic polydipsia “do not know or recognize excessive water intake.” says Access Medicine.

Scielo says polydipsia is excessive fluid intake; but “in the absence of a primary organic, pharmacological, or toxic disorder, it is called psychogenic polydipsia (PP). Among patients with PP, the most common diagnosis is schizophrenia.

They note that “only the group patients with polydipsia hyponatremia develops, followed by a clinical picture of vomiting, convulsions, weakness, headache, confusion, etc.

This environment reminds that it is considered as normal limit A person needs to drink 3 liters of fluid per day.

How much water do you need per day? Approximately 3.7 liters for men and 2.7 liters for women.

Mayo Clinic citing the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

Psychogenic polydipsia, according to Dialnet, “is no longer common in patients with anxiety and mood disorders.”

When drinking too much water can cause death

Studies cited in Scielo report that psychogenic polydipsia occurs in “at least 20% of hospitalized chronic psychiatric patients and half have hyponatremia.”

The Cochrane Network says effective treatment “is essential as such high fluid intake can lead to hyponatremia, which in turn can lead to coma or even death.” (HEY)

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