Hours after competing in a radio station contest to win a Nintendo Wii, 28-year-old Jennifer Strange was found dead in her California home. The station's "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" challenge awarded the game system to the contestant who could drink the most water without having to take a trip to the bathroom. According to preliminary autopsy reports, Ms. Strange apparently died from drinking too much water too quickly, resulting in a condition called water intoxication.

At its most basic, water intoxication occurs when a person drinks so much water that the other nutrients in the body become diluted to the point that they can no longer do their jobs. You've probably heard the term electrolyte before. Many sports drinks provide electrolytes in addition to fluids. Electrolytes are simply salt ions, atoms with an overall positive or negative charge. Cells use electrolytes to move fluids and nerve messages into and out of cells and throughout the body. Without electrolytes, the body can't function. Water intoxication causes an electrolyte imbalance. This imbalance affects concentrations of the ion sodium, and it leads to a condition called hyponatremia.

In cases of water intoxication, it is extreme hyponatremia that can ultimately cause coma and death. If it's caught early, treatment with IV fluids containing electrolytes can lead to a complete recovery. But, if left untreated, hyponatremia is fatal. Water intoxication is basically one form of hyponatremia. The condition can also be caused by excessive sweating, prolonged dehydration and other diseases and conditions.

So, what exactly happens when someone dies of hyponatremia as a result of water intoxication? The severe sodium imbalance causes massive cell damage. Sodium is a positively charged ion, and its role in the body is to circulate the fluids outside of cells. As a result, sodium helps regulate blood pressure and maintain the signals that let muscles operate properly, among other things. Cells actively maintain a precise sodium concentration in the body. Inside the cell, there are more electrolytes; outside the cell, there is more water. Cells keep sodium levels healthy by moving water and electrolytes into and out of the cell to either dilute or increase sodium levels in body fluids. But when someone drinks a tremendous amount of water in a short period of time, and the water does not contain any added electrolytes, the cellular maintenance system can't handle the level of sodium dilution that occurs.

The result is that cells desperately try to increase the sodium concentration in body fluids by taking in tremendous amounts of water. Some cells can swell a great deal; others cannot. Brain cells, which are packed tightly inside the skull, can end up bursting with the pressure of the water they are taking in.

The exact amount of water you would have to consume to suffer from water intoxication is unknown. It varies with each individual. Symptoms of water intoxication include nausea, headache, muscle weakness and convulsions. In severe cases, coma and death come fairly quickly as a result of brain swelling. The condition is quite rare in the general population, but in distance athletics, it's a known risk. Athletes try to avoid it by drinking sports drinks instead of water during training and events.