Why does salt water dehydrate you, but saline/sodium chloride/electrolytes hydrate you?

590 views

Why does salt water dehydrate you, but saline/sodium chloride/electrolytes hydrate you?

In: Chemistry

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

In order for your body to get rid of salt, it needs to dilute it with water. The more salt you consume, the more water you need to dilute it. Normally it is not an issue, since you dont consume too much salt.

Seawater however contains so much salt. So if you drink one glass of seawater you are going to need more than one glass of water to dilute that salt. This means that the water inside of the seawater is not enough to dilute the salt in the seawater, so your body is going to have to get water from other places in your body to dilute the salt, leading you to lose water, and you dehydrate.

Added bonusfact:

The reason diarrhea is dangerous is because it also dehydrates us. This happens because your body is “flushing” itself to get rid of something inside the body. The body takes water and floods your colon and the pressure on your colon makes you have to go poo.

This is dangerous because your body does not care about your hydration, it will prioritize diarrhea. So if you are already dehydrated and eat something bad your body will still flush your colon. So if you got diarrhea make sure to drink enough to replace them liquids!.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Ok so it’s a foundation principle in physiology that water follows salt. So, ingest lots of salt, like salt water, and the water will leave your cells to flow to the high salt area.

Now saline solution is water that has salt added to it to match to normal concentration of salt in your blood. So we are introducing normal fluid to the body that’s dehydrated, which causes water to enter your cells, since the dehydrated cells have a higher salt concentration than the saline fluid.

Electrolytes, like Gatorade, key off a type of cell transporter in your intestines that moves salt and glucose together. They activate this transporter to move the salt and glucose into your body, out of the intestines, and cause water to passively enter the blood, leading to hydration

Hope this helps

Anonymous 0 Comments

Electrolytes… don’t hydrate you. They just make it so that hydrating isn’t counterproductive. Your body needs sodium and potassium ions for your nervous system to send and receive electrical signals, but you lose some when you sweat, which is why sweat is salty. The idea behind drinking in electrolytes is to replace the ones you lost through sweat. Otherwise, if you just drink plain water, you just further dilute whatever electrolytes you already had.

Salt water – by which I assume you mean ocean water – has *waaaaay* more salt than sports drinks, way more than you need to replenish. The high concentration of salt causes water in yours cells to bleed through out to equalize the solute concentration on either side of the membrane. Your body interprets this as not having enough water which makes you feel thirsty.

Anonymous 0 Comments

If you drink Salt water like Sea Water then your body now have too much salt, in order to get rid of it your body uses its available water in your system to pass it through the kidneys and kick it out therefore leaving you dehydrated.

Normal water on the other hand has very minute and necessary amount of salts which is exactly what our body needs to function and it hydrates us.

Also, pure water as in 100% H2O or commonly known as Deinionized water is also going to leave you dehydrated as such water have absolutely zero salts. Such water will draw out salts from your system leaving you dehydrated.

tldr: Both Salt water and Pure water (with zero salts) are bad and will leave you dehydrated.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s the concentration of salt that’s key.

Saline is .9% salt while ocean water is 3.5-3.8%

Your body needs a small amount of salt to function, but Ocean water has so much salt dissolved in it that it overloads your body, so your kidney’s have to filter it all out which in turns uses up more water than you put in.