A person who is forced to drink 20 liters of liquid per day

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Every day a 35-year-old resident of Bielefeld (Germany) Mark Wubbenhorstdrinks at least 20 liters of water. If he drinks less fluids, he will die of dehydration.

A man from a very young age suffers from a complicated diabetes insipidus, due to which the liquid passes through his kidneys instantly, without lingering in them at all, and immediately goes to the bladder.

If Mark is unable to drink the water, within just a few hours his body will literally dry out and the man will quickly die.

This illness has always accompanied Mark and now he is already accustomed to this "regime", but when outsiders find out that Mark constantly drinks and goes to the toilet, it terrifies them.

Diabetes insipidus is a very rare disease. It is detected in about one person in 100 thousand. The disease is associated with a dysfunction of the hypothalamus, or the pituitary gland, and is characterized by polyuria(secretion of 6-15 liters of urine per day) and polydipsia(thirst).

Mark always carries bottles of water with him and does not leave the house before drinking a couple of glasses. Even if he spends only an hour without drinking water, his lips will begin to crack from drying out, and then dizziness and absent-mindedness will appear.

Diabetes insipidus can occur at any age, but Wubbenhorst was unlucky enough to have it from birth. When he was a child, he tried to be optimistic and had many friends, but the more he interacted with normal children, the faster his spirit fell. The boy soon developed severe depression. He just didn't want to live like this anymore.

"I didn’t want to go to kindergarten, I didn’t want to go to watch the cheerful parade, I didn’t want to paint."

Mark starts each day by drinking a large bottle of water, and soon after that he goes to the toilet. The water in his body converts very quickly into urine. The hardest thing for him is at night. Even a healthy person is exhausted by frequent nighttime awakenings at the call of the bladder, and for Mark this is a real nightmare. According to him, he could never sleep more than 2 hours in a row.

In total, Mark visits the toilet 50 times in 24 hours.

At the same time, he finds the strength not to sit at home and not suffer powerlessly from his illness, but to go to work. Although this causes additional hassle and requires travel restrictions and a ban on flights.

In an interview with Neue Westfalische, Mark Wubbenhorst spoke about a time when he was on the verge of death. He stayed too long in the office that day, and when he took the train home at 10:30 pm, he realized that he had run out of water bottles. He was unable to buy water at the station, and on the way the train broke down.

By the time the train was repaired and Mark disembarked at his station, he was already suffering from severe dehydration. He was not feeling well and needed to drink some water immediately, otherwise it would have gotten worse. Fortunately, he met an acquaintance on the way, and he, knowing about his condition, provided him with water.