Did actor and martial arts legend Bruce Lee, who once said, “Be water, my friend,” die from drinking too much water? That’s the theory put forward in a new research paper.
The study, published in the December 2022 edition of the Clinical Kidney Journal, puts forward the idea that the The Way of the Dragon and Enter the Dragon star’s cause of death was “from a specific form of kidney dysfunction: the inability to excrete enough water to maintain water homeostasis, which is mainly a tubular function. This may lead to hyponatraemia, cerebral oedema, and death within hours if excess water intake is not matched by water excretion in urine, which is in line with the timeline of Lee’s demise.”
Lee died at 32 years old in 1973 under “mysterious circumstances.”
The abrupt nature of Lee’s death has been a matter of fervid speculation for decades, with some fans over the years even hypothesizing that the star was assassinated. A 2018 book, “Bruce Lee: A Life,” hypothesized that he died of heat exhaustion, but the current study did not find that temperatures were abnormally high that day. The study hypothesized that although he had not consumed a huge amount of water, his kidneys were potentially not able to handle even normal amounts of fluid. In addition, he had reportedly been existing on a near-liquid diet of mostly juices.
Lee is survived by his daughter, Shannon, who did not appreciate how her father was depicted in Quentin Tarantino’s self-proclaimed best movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
(Via Variety)