I was looking at digestion times of different foods and they had waters time as instantly. How?
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Digestion and absorption aren’t necessarily the same thing, I think.
Digestion implies how much time it takes your body to break down (digest) the food into the appropriate nutrients which are then absorbed by the body.
Water is good to go off the bat, no digesting necessary – just starts getting absorbed.
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This has to do with the process called osmosis.
Simply put, osmosis is the movement of water across a semi-permeable membrane. Emphasis on semi, since this lets water pass through freely, so how does water know where to go? Well, it DOESN’T let other particles through (most importantly ions like sodium and potassium).
This creates a concentration imbalance (called a gradient) which “forces” water to move into or out of the cell, depending on the area of highest solute concentration (lowest water “presence”).
This means that when water is in contact with the intestinal cells, it freely (and “instantly”) flows into them; while other molecules like proteins or carbohydrates need to be digested first, aka broken down into simpler, smaller, more easily absorbed nutrients (aminoacids for proteins and monosaccharides for carbs).
Water doesn’t need such digestion, and it’s also the reason why lactose intolerant people get diarrhea: lactose (a carbohydrate) isn’t digested properly, thus increasing the concentration of insoluble particles and “forcing” water to come out of the cell and eventually come out of.. Uh.. You know.
Water is not digested (it’s not broken down). Water mostly passes through your stomach and into the blood over the course of a few hours (if it’s just water, a lot is absorbed pretty quickly), but some of it invariably travels through the intestines and is slowly absorbed over the course of a day or two. How much goes which way depends a lot on if there’s food involved at the same time.
The water is never fully absorbed instantly, but the process of absorbing it begins instantly because no time or energy is used to digest it (break it down).
It isn’t.
I’m a distance runner, and I can personally confirm to you that, when it’s hot, I sweat out water faster than my body can absorb it. If I drink a bottle of water every two miles I’ll eventually fill up my stomach and won’t be able to keep running, but can still wind up underhydrated.
When you drink water, it goes down your throat and into your stomach. Your stomach has special cells that can absorb the water and send it to your body’s cells. The cells use the water instantly, like a sponge soaking up water.
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