The Amazing Hydration Diet sounds like an elixir an old timey quack doctor would sell out the back of his wagon at a carnival. However silly sounding, it’s really a trendy diet that was recently popular with folks in Britain.  Licensed nutritionist Barbara Nash suggested her chubby client, Dawn Page, take a little bit off by drinking excessive amounts of water—nearly 10 glasses a day.  Sure, it seems refreshingly healthy for a diet when compared to the all-you-can-eat-meat Atkins diet, the cabbage soup only diet, and prepackaged low fat foods, but in actuality life-giving water can also kill. Apparently, there is such a thing as water intoxication.  Not as fun as plain intoxication and sadly, a Californian woman died last year from a water drinking contest to win a Nintendo Wii.  Luckily, Dawn Page survived her hydration detox, including all of the vomiting and the epileptic fit it induced. 

Unfortunately, Mrs. Page, a mother of two, had to quit her job because the detox left her permanently brain damaged and she now has trouble with her memory, concentration, and speech. Mrs. Page and her husband are now leading a crusade to stop these detoxes, which have been used for thousands of years, but have never been proven to work and are not endorsed by medical science. The Page’s have even put their pocketbooks where their mouths are, and sued and then settled out of court for roughly $1.6 million.  Why would anyone give up that much dough?  Because the Page’s refused to sign off on a liability waiver since the nutritionist claimed the puking and headaches were all part of how the diet worked.  Now, knowing what those warning signs really meant, they want to raise awareness about the expert-endorsed dieting fad and expose the dangers of water detoxing. So, let this be a lesson to us all—being rich and skinny isn’t worth it, if it costs you your mind. [BBC]