Spanish researchers shed new light on the death of Bruce Lee, the famous Chinese-American actor credited with popularizing martial arts in the Western world: Lee may have died because he had too much water in his body.
Bruce Lee died in Hong Kong in 1973, when he was only 32 years old. The exact cause of his death is unknown, although the autopsy revealed cerebral edema.
In a text published in the December edition of Clinical Kidney Journal, a team of nephrology researchers from Madrid proposes a new hypothesis: in the light of their analysis of the information already available, Bruce Lee could according to them have suffered from hyponatremia, a condition caused by an excess of body water compared to sodium which can lead to cerebral edema. “In other words, we propose that the inability of the kidneys to excrete excess water killed Bruce Lee,” they write.
The actor had several risk factors for hyponatremia, including a habit of drinking lots of water, especially on the day of his death. He was also taking little solute. According to his wife, Linda, Bruce Lee no longer ate solid food in the last months of his life, making do with carrot and apple juice.
Bruce Lee also used cannabis (which increases thirst), drugs that affect the ability of the kidneys to eliminate water, alcohol and painkillers. He had also previously suffered from an episode of cerebral edema and had a history of kidney failure. Physical exercise could also have contributed to hyponatremia, according to the researchers.
Since the death of Bruce Lee, several theories have been put forward to explain his death, such as hypersensitivity to Equagesic (a drug that combines aspirin and anxiolytic), heat stroke and even an assassination plot by the Italian, Chinese or American mafia.