How can drinking sea water kill us if we can eat salt and drink water?
In: Biology
“Drinking sea water” doesn’t kill you, but deyhdration does.
Typically if you’re in the position of drinking seawater, you’re about to die of thirst (marooned, lost at sea, a few other literally nightmarish scenarios).
Saltwater dehydrates you (the salt is saltier than the water is watery, if that makes sense).
If you’re already dehydrated, drinking salt water hastens the effects of dehydration. Your cells will try to maintain an equilibrium between salt and water. If you put salt water in yourself, the cells will keep the salt but purge the water. Then they dry up and you die.
So, if you’re already dehydrated, drinking salt water makes that process happen faster, hastening the effects of dehydration.
This is to say that if you go drink a glass of sea water, you probably won’t die, but if it so happens that that’s all that’s available, you’re probably fucked anyways and the sea water will help you along. Which, let’s be real, would probably be fine at that point. I can’t imagine anything worse than being lost at sea.
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