Bruce Lee may have died due to high consumption of water, new study reveals
File photo of Bruce Lee
Nearly 50 years after Bruce Lee's sudden demise, new reports have emerged that the actor and martial arts icon may have died due to a kidney ailment called hyponatraemia. Lee died on July 20 1973 in Hong Kong with officials stating that the cause of death was cerebral oedema- which is basically death due to brain swelling.
A recent study conducted by a group of kidney specialists in Spain stated that Lee possessed “multiple risk factors for hyponatraemia,” meaning an abnormally low sodium concentration in one’s blood, citing the actor’s “chronic fluid intake,” use of marijuana (which increases thirst) and documented factors that may have interfered with his kidney’s function, such as prescription drugs, alcohol intake and a history of injuries to the organ.
The study was published in the December 2022 edition of the Clinical Kidney Journal.
“We hypothesize that Bruce Lee died from a specific form of kidney dysfunction: the inability to excrete enough water to maintain water homeostasis… . This may lead to hyponatraemia, cerebral oedema and death within hours if excess water intake is not matched by water excretion in urine,” the paper concludes.
“Given that hyponatraemia is frequent, as is found in up to 40% of hospitalized persons and may cause death due to excessive water ingestion even in young healthy persons, there is a need for a wider dissemination of the concept that excessive water intake can kill.”
For years, Lee's sudden death has been subjected to severe speculations with some fans even believing that the star was assassinated.
The 2018 book, “Bruce Lee: A Life,” claimed that he died of heat exhaustion, but the current study did not find that temperatures were abnormally high that day.
According to the study, the star had indeed consumed a huge amount of water but his kidneys were potentially not able to handle it. In addition, he had reportedly been existing on a near-liquid diet of mostly juices which further damaged the kidney.
