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Watch out! Dehydrate put your life in risk
Oct 2017 Juan David Vélez Arredondo-- Dehydration is a very common method for weight loss in Taekwondo. There are reports in which more than 75% of athletes have used dehydration to give weight in competition.
It is common to see this in every competition in the world; but there are levels of dehydration that can cause serious injuries, poor performance or the worst: putting life at risk.
The dehydration of more than 2% of our weight will have an effect on performance, generating alterations in the body such as decreased reaction, sense of alertness and ability to think in a fight; it also decreases blood volume, so it will increase the cardiac output to be able to pump blood to the muscles, reaching fatigue much faster.
But when you lose by dehydration more than 10 to 15% of body weight, (example in a 70kg person would lose 7kg) not only is losing water, you lose sodium and other minerals, responsible for muscle contraction and that everything, including the heart and kidney, work correctly; This severe dehydration generates what is called heat stroke, where there is the possibility of cardiac arrest, since the heart is not able to maintain such a strong heart rate and finally collapses. Also after a severe dehydration may not recover all the fluid around the brain and any blow to the head will be more devastating because it does not have that cushioning.
In March of this year, Jordan Coe, a 21-year-old Scottish athlete, lost his life after severe dehydration in Thailand ; he had to lose three kilos for a Muay Thai fight that same afternoon, so he put on a thick coat and went running at a temperature of 36ºC. Unfortunately, all these conditions generated a cardiac arrest.
In 1996, just three months before the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Chung Se-hoon (22 years, 74 kg), considered the probable gold in the weight category of 65 kg in judo, was found dead in a sauna. The cause of death was a heart attack.
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