Terri Schiavo and iced tea

While reading various news stories about Terri Schiavo, I noticed that some of them mentioned that she drank a lot of iced tea:

Was the collapse probably because she was dangerously underweight, or because of all the liquids she drank? I would have thought the former, but I’ve read about the iced tea in so many different places, it seems like that might have been a cause.

I’m worried, if so- I’m trying to drink more water during the day :eek: Please, Dopers, tell me if I should be worried…

Terri Schaivo’s heart attack was attributed to low potassium, an essential electrolyte, brought on by bulemia. Tea and other caffine drinks are diuretics so it probably isn’t unreasonable to think that drinking such large amounts in conjunction with a poor diet and possible purging may have been a factor.

In addition to not getting a lot of potassium in their diets, people with bulemia often (ab)use diuretic medications. Most of those drugs cause excessive potassium loss in the urine.

Another factor that may have contributed was that many people who are dieting to such an extreme may have a deficiency of salt (i.e. sodium). The body’s response to this is to hold on to sodium but give up potassium.