German man drinks 20 litres of water a day to stay alive, but it can also kill him

Human beings need water to survive and while excess of anything isn’t good, some people with rare conditions feel otherwise. While not drinking water causes health problems, for some people it can lead to a nightmare.

36-year-old German architect Marc Wubbenhorst has to drink at least 20 litres of water a day to stay alive which means he can’t even sleep for more than two hours. The man suffers from a rare disorder called diabetes insipidus and is always thirsty due to urinating excessively.

He has to urinate almost immediately after drinking water since is body cannot hold water. He sleeps only for a couple of hours at night because he has to wake up to rehydrate without which he won’t be able to survive.

Wile Marc can only go without water for an hour, the high consumption of water is also dangerous for him. Drinking too much water also comes with a risk of water filling the brain and this has proved fatal in a handful of cases.

The architect meanwhile intends to raise awareness about the disability since he even came across doctors who had to look it up. Without water Marc has problems concentrating and later gets a fever followed by losing orientation.

He is also at a risk of dying from water intoxication called hyponatremia which happens when too much water causes sodium levels in the blood to decrease dramatically proving fatal for a person. A mother of three in California died in 2007 after drinking six litres of water in an hour for a competition.