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When Bruce Lee said “Be water, my friend” (Be water, friend) he did not mean that we swell up to ingest the liquid element until we liquefy, but rather that we strengthen our ability to be flexible and adapt to the circumstances of life. life. However, fate sometimes hides cruel script twists, and a team of researchers from the Jiménez Díaz Foundation in Madrid has discovered that the cause of death of this martial arts myth was kidney failure due to hyponatremia, which occurs due to incorrect hydration that generates excess fluid that the kidneys cannot process.
When Bruce Lee died on July 20, 1973 at just 32 years of age, the autopsy determined that he had suffered cerebral edema, but the new study carried out by specialists from the Nephrology and Hypertension department of the aforementioned health center and that has been published in the Clinical journal Kidney Journal puts forth a new hypothesis: “that the cause of death was cerebral edema due to hyponatremia. In other words, we propose that the kidney’s inability to excrete excess water killed Bruce Lee. In this regard, Lee had multiple risk factors for hyponatremia that may have included chronically high fluid intake.”
The study exposes a list of the possible causes to which the death of Bruce Lee was attributed, considered the most influential martial artist in history – three of the films he starred in broke the record for the highest grossing film three times in the entire world. world: Karate to the death in Bangkok (1971), Oriental Fury (1972) and The Furor of the Dragon (1972)–, including hypersensitivity to a drug he took to relieve the headache he had the day of his death, a revenge by the mafia (Chinese, Italian or American), cannabis or cocaine use, a family curse, an epileptic attack, or a heat stroke, all of which are highly unlikely and have not been proven.
Hyponatremia: the risks of excessive water consumption
In their study, the researchers have warned about the serious consequences that excessive water consumption can have: “Hyponatremia is frequent, since it is found in up to 40% of hospitalized people and can cause death in healthy young people. The fact that we are 60% water does not protect us from the potentially lethal consequences of drinking water at a rate faster than our kidneys can excrete. Ironically, Lee made the quote ‘I know water, friend’ famous, but too much water seems to have ultimately killed him.”
“The fact that we are 60% water does not protect us from the potentially lethal consequences of drinking water at a rate faster than our kidneys can excrete”
In statements to the newspaper El País, Dr. María Vanessa Pérez Gómez, an associate specialist in the Nephrology Service and one of the researchers who participated in the study, explained that they do not have new information on the circumstances of the death, but that they have analyzed “and reinterpreted all that documentation available to everyone”. For example, that the actor only had 1% body fat (the percentage recommended by the World Health Organization is 10-20%), that the stress of filming Operación dragón had made him lose 10 kilos ( he was 1.71 meters tall and weighed 60 kilos), and that: “To this must be added other considerations that confirmed that he could have suffered from this water intoxication.”
“Hyponatremia is reached either by an enormous punctual intake of liquid, or by another way, which is what we believe happened with Lee. And it is not that you drink an exaggerated form of water once, but that you accumulate risk factors that make it difficult for your kidneys to eliminate water. For example, the actor drank a lot of water, his diet was based mainly on liquids, such as carrot juice, he ate little and consumed a lot of marijuana, which causes great thirst, opioids for his pain, and diuretics such as furosemide. Excessive exercise, as was the case with him, can cause increased production of antidiuretic hormone, making it difficult for you to eliminate water. A few weeks before, he had already suffered another cerebral edema accompanied by acute renal failure. At that time he had urea [sustancia orgánica tóxica que se expulsa a través de la orina y del sudor] at 92 mg/dl” (from 40 it is already alarming, and above 100 it is deadly). “If you added a large intake of water to that that day, we already have hyponatremia.”
It is not possible, however, to know how much water Bruce Lee drank. “We will never know, and besides it is not important for the result. Each person is different. It is good to drink liquids, but I insist: each human being is different, each diet –if you eat a lot of fruit, which contains a lot of liquid– affects it in a different way, and of course, it would be necessary to calculate how many solutes you ingest: I am referring especially to salt ”, replies the doctor. “What we want is for people to understand the importance of healthy diets, risk factors and kidney care. The kidneys not only clean, but also produce an anti-aging hormone, another that prevents anemia, and vitamin D, essential for bone health.”
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