The science of saline – why can we drink pure water, but when we put water into our bodies in other ways, like an IV, must we add minerals to it?
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Pure water would dilute your blood and it’s electrolytes. Which would lead to a whole bunch of issues. I few years ago I went into the hospital unable to walk, stand, or even hold a glass of water. I was 30 years old and did powerlifting. The night before I was full strength had been benching 400+, so it was quite out of the blue. They found out I was extremely hypokalemic aka no electrolytes in my blood for whatever reason. So they started pumping me with potassium. The problem though is potassium burns like fire when it’s put into your blood. Normally they dilute it with saline which has the added electrolytes to lessen how much your blood is diluted, and this reduces the burning. Since my levels were so low they were afraid my heart would stop beating, I got no saline. Just potassium, Ativan, and dilaudid. Luckily after a few hours of being super out of it from all the meds, my body had enough potassium they could give me saline to dilute the potassium which took the pain from OMG my arm is on fire to wow this sucks. As I stayed longer I got more and more saline over the next few days as the levels recovered and they were able to bring down the necessary pain killers. However if they didn’t have saline with the extra stuff, they wouldn’t have been able to give me anything because it would dilute the blood more than it replenished the electrolytes.
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