Constantly thirsty man has to drink 20 litres of water a day or he will die of dehydration

In Germany there lives a man who is constantly thirsty and has to drink 20 litres of water a day, or risk dying of dehydration.

Marc Wübbenhorst has something called nephrogenic diabetes insipidus, and though it's got 'diabetes' in the name, it's not connected with type one or two of that disease.

In essence, his kidneys don't respond properly to the hormone vasopressin, which helps your kidneys balance the amount of fluid in your body.

While his body makes enough of the hormone his kidneys don't respond as they should, meaning too much fluid that his body could use ends up getting flushed out in his urine.

TLC UK

As a result, Marc has to drink a lot, styling himself 'Germany's thirstiest man' and pop off to the loo a lot as a result.

He's got to drink about 20 litres of water a day so he needs to be quaffing the stuff about every hour and a half, while his toilet breaks happened with similar regularity.

Unfortunately this meant lots of waking up in the middle of the night to pop to the loo before getting back into bed and returning to sleep.

While he's drinking 20 litres of water a day he's also making about 18 to 20 trips to the toilet as well, and you can only imagine the disruption that'd have on your life.

TLC UK

"I'm always tired at work, that's a side effect," Marc said in 2019 when he spoke to TLC about his condition.

"Sometimes when I go to work I come back very exhausted, I go to bed and sleep then and sometimes it lasts."

In a video he did with them, Marc went to Berlin for an experimental treatment of diuretics, which are meant to increase the amount of salt and water passed by the kidneys.

While passing more water is the last thing Marc wants, reducing his body's salt was suggested as a possible solution for bringing down the number of times he has to urinate.

Fortunately the treatment was able to wrangle some of the side-effects of Marc's condition, meaning he was able to sleep for longer periods of time during the night, which as a result helped lift his exhaustion.

While he still needs to drink a lot of water it's ended up being an improvement on his situation, and provided him with some relief from waking so many times in the night.

Topics: Health

Joe Harker

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

@MrJoeHarker