Excessive water consumption killed Bruce Lee

When Bruce Lee died in Hong Kong on July 20, 1973 at just 32 years old, he was already a martial arts legend and an audiovisual star.

His death enlarged the legend, even more so when the causes of his death were never clarified.

The actor in movies like

and

and in series like

or

is still today a philosophical reference (he merged thought and physical form) and a cinephile.

BMW's 2006 ad with his monologue

(Actually, part of the

He recovered his aura for the new generations, and his fans defend him against attacks like Quentin Tarantino's in

in which he made fun of his fighting style (the character played by Brad Pitt defeats him without consideration).

But the botch of his autopsy, which only pointed to a cerebral edema but not to the causes that caused it, encouraged all kinds of theories about his death, including conspiracy theories, which pointed to the triad, the Chinese mafia.

Until this week: a study published in the December 2022 issue of the

He maintains hyponatremia as the main hypothesis of his death, "the inability of the kidney to excrete excess water," it reads.

The study was carried out by a team of seven doctors from the Department of Nephrology and Hypertension of the Fundación Jiménez Díaz in Madrid.

More information

What did Bruce Lee have to continue to fascinate us?

In the study you can read: “Hyponatremia is common, being found in up to 40% of hospitalized people and can cause death in healthy young people.

The fact that we are 60% water does not protect us from the potentially lethal consequences of drinking water at a rate faster than our kidneys can excrete.

Ironically,

Lee made the quote 'I know water, friend' famous,

but the excess of water seems to have killed it ultimately."

María Vanessa Pérez Gómez, associate specialist of the Nephrology Service and one of the researchers behind the study, notes by phone: "We did not expect such an impact, although we did want people to understand the importance of the kidneys in health."

On the day of his death, Bruce Lee was working on

, which would premiere five years after his death.

He visited the leading actress, Betty Ting Pei, at her home in Hong Kong.

Late in the afternoon, Lee suffered from a terrible headache, so her partner gave her a pain reliever, Equagesic.

Her brain swelled by 1%, going from 1,400 grams to 1,575.

Bruce Lee was pronounced dead at 10:15 p.m.;

three quarters of an hour later, the actor's producer and partner, Raymond Chow, published a statement in which he lied about the place of death: he published that the star had died at his home with his wife, Linda C. Emery, who corroborated this version.

They were afraid of rumors.

In the autopsy, no reference was made to the cannabis that was in his body, although years later the doctors present confessed it.

Actor Steve McQueen kisses the grave of Bruce Lee at the funeral held in Seattle in 1973. Seated in the background, Lee's widow, Linda C. Emery, and their children Brandon and Shannon.Getty

Bruce was born in San Francisco (California), although his parents returned to Asia, to Hong Kong, when he was a child.

There he began to train at the age of 13 and practice the Chinese martial arts of Tai Chi, with his father as a teacher, and later Wing Chun with the master Ip Man. He began in the cinema playing children and adolescents From a very young age, he appeared in films playing children and later adolescents, until he returned to the United States at the age of 18 to study Philosophy at the University of Washington.

In Seattle he married and had two children, until, already established as a martial arts teacher and a shining star on television thanks to his character as Kato in

He moved to Los Angeles, where he taught famous people such as James Coburn and Steve McQueen, and became friends with Chuck Norris and Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

In the US he was doing well, but he hadn't quite caught on because of racism and his pigeonholing.

In the famous television interview on December 9, 1971, on the Pierre Berton

(where the excerpt from the BMW ad with "Be water, my friend" comes from) in Hong Kong, where the actor had moved, Lee he talks about it all and tries to haggle over his status as a movie star, despite being well aware that he is.

His films broke the record for highest-grossing film worldwide three times:

(1971),

(1972) and Rage

(1972).

Everything was cut short with his death.

Dr. Pérez Gómez explains that they have not received new information, but rather have analyzed "and reinterpreted all that documentation available to everyone."

Among them, that the actor only had 1% body fat (the percentage recommended by the World Health Organization is 10-20%), that he had just lost 10 kilos due to stress from filming

who was 1.71 meters tall and weighed 60 kilos.

"To this we must add other considerations that confirmed that he could have suffered this water intoxication," he recounts.

Bruce Lee, shortly before his death.

“Hyponatremia is reached either by a huge punctual intake of liquid or by another way, which is what we believe happened with Lee.

And it is not that you drink an exaggerated form of water once, but that you accumulate risk factors that make it difficult for your kidneys to eliminate water.

For example, the actor drank a lot of water, his diet was based mainly on liquids, such as carrot juice, he ate little and consumed a lot of marijuana, which causes great thirst, opioids for his pain, and diuretics such as Furosemide.

Excessive exercise, as was the case with him, can cause increased production of antidiuretic hormone, making it difficult for you to eliminate water.

A few weeks before, he had already suffered another cerebral edema accompanied by acute renal failure.

At that time, his urea [toxic organic substance that is expelled through urine and sweat] was 92 mg/dl”.

Above 40 is already alarming, 100 is deadly.

“If you added a large intake of water to that that day, we already have hyponatremia.”

How much water did Lee drink?

“We will never know, and besides it is not important for the result.

Each person is different.

It is good to drink liquids, but I insist: each human being is different, each diet —if you eat a lot of fruit, which contain a lot of liquid— affects it in a different way, and of course, it would be necessary to calculate how many solutes you ingest: I am referring especially to salt ”, replies the doctor.

“What we want is for people to understand the importance of healthy diets, risk factors and kidney care.

The kidneys not only clean, but also produce an anti-aging hormone, another that prevents anemia, and vitamin D, essential for bone health.”