The average stomach has a capacity of one liter, but superhuman Dickinson Oppong, from Ghana, is able to drink up to 4.5 liters in under 90 seconds. Crazier still is his capacity to spit it all back out from his stomach, like a human water fountain.
The adult human body is between 50% and 65% water, which makes the life-giving liquid vital to our survival. But drinking too much of it in a short period of time can kill you. The kidneys are unable to flush the extra water fast enough so the excess goes into the bloodstream diluting it and causing a potentially-deadly condition known as hyponatremia. Drawn to regions of the body where the concentration of salt and other dissolved substances is higher, water leaves the blood and enters the cells, which swell up like balloons to make room. While most cells can stretch without bursting, because they are embedded in flexible tissue like fat and muscle, that is not the case of brain cells. There is almost zero room to expand inside the skull, so water-induced brain edema or swelling can be fatal. But one man’s ability defies everything medical science teaches us about the dangers of drinking too much water too fast. 46-year-old Dickinson Oppong can down over a gallon of water in just a minute and a half, an impossible feat for the average human.
