Why is water, compared to every other liquid, so vital? Exactly how much of us is water, and why is certain water intake vital daily?
In: Biology
Really the ultimate reason why humans and nearly every thing on Earth need water to survive is evolution. Water is the second most abundant thing “on” planet Earth besides air. So everything evolved with the basic fact that use of water would never be an issue.
Secondly water is good at mixing with things. It will easily connect with other molecules and that makes it useful for transporting stuff around your body. Without that intake that process becomes hard and slow. For example, if someone were to die from dehydration their blood would be like a thin syrup. Which in really means they died because their heart couldn’t pump that thick blood fast enough to keep the body alive.
First thing is that all other drinkable liquids have water in them. Second, we are made up of about 60% water. Third, all of our cells use water to help move their parts around. Without a good amount of water, they shrink and it gets harder for them to work. If they can’t work, then they can’t keep us alive.
The simple answer is to excrete wastes that are dissolved in water. Components of food you don’t need (mostly electrolytes such as salt, potassium), as well as the spent products from your cells (nitrogenous waste, uremic toxins), are removed from your body suspended in water via the urine.
Your body has to get rid of all this stuff every day so you don’t die. The problem is your kidneys can only concentrate so much of that stuff into each drop of water (future pee). It comes out that you have to drink a little less than 1L of water to carry all this stuff out of your body. For the sake of argument, let’s say you need 1L of water to do this.
If one person drinks 1L of water per day, they will be fine. If another one drinks 0.5 L of water, he will slowly die. If another one drinks 1L of water with a bunch of salt/potassium/nitrogenous wastes in it… he’s getting water that already has stuff dissolved in it, and his kidneys can’t really put more in there, and he’ll slowly die.
tl;dr. You don’t need water specifically, you need fluid without electrolytes in it.
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