How is it that cordials, juices, sodas that are made of over 80-90% water don’t seem to hydrate or quench thirst unlike drinking pure water?
In: Biology
Quite simply it’s because they don’t fix your hydration levels quite like water. Much like salt water, that 5% sugar uses a good amount of water to metabolize. You might only get half of that 90% water to the parts of your body that need it.
I don’t find drinking plain water thirst quenching at all. No idea what you’re posting about.
Let me try: Taking your example of 80-90% water, the drink would then be 20-10% “other stuff”. These other things are what makes you thirsty. Your body would normally have even less than that amount of “other stuff”. So you average out to more than what you started with, making you thirstier!
All the excess sugar and sodium acts as a diuretic and speeds up the urination process making you more dehydrated over time.
They do, just not as much.
This is because filtration in the glomerulus in the kidneys is decided by osmotic pressure, and that osmotic pressure is decided in part by the presence of larger molecules like sugar in the blood. All of those things contain a lot of sugar and other large molecules that increase osmotic pressure on the side of your blood, thus pushing more water out of your blood and out as urine.
Caffeine (a diuretic) causes you to lose the free water in your body similar to what taking a water pill would do. Although, if you have a tolerance to caffeine, the effect is diminished. Also, the sodium and sugar content will contribute to dehydration as well.
Think of it like playing Uno, you’re trying to get rid of your hand but more comes in frequently. “Pure water” is a turn where you discard but don’t draw. Everything else ranges from discarding and drawing some, discarding as much as you’re drawing, to drawing even more than you’re able to discard.
Water’s Ph level is pretty close 7 or essentially the ‘middle ground’, thus it doesn’t take much for water to be too alkaline or too acidic.
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