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?
In: 480
It was my understanding that you should not drink pure water (distilled) on a regular basis.
The reason being that the body will deplete it’s own supply of minerals in order to add the missing minerals to the water. Over time that’s not good.
When you drink pure water, a lot of it it is *slowly* absorbed into your bloodstream, and some will pass through your digestive system.
When you inject water, all of it goes *directly* into your bloodsteam.
A sudden intake of something into your blood (including water) can be a shock to your system.
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.
I mean you really can’t/don’t drink “pure water”. Ever.
Any drinking water has mineral content still in it. The distilled water you see in the stores alongside drinking water is different, this is pure H20, used for things like CPAP machines. I’m not sure what exactly will happen if you only drank distilled water but it wouldn’t be good lol.
Water that’s salinated, be it medical grade or just salt water from the sea, has a much, much higher saline content than what we drink that’s why your body can’t tolerate it.
I’m pretty sure we can’t safely drink pure water?
I remember watching a show where scientists were testing it and the water actually was stripping minerals out of the person’s body.
Also have found a link to confirm.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://advancedwaterinc.com/ultra-pure-water/&ved=2ahUKEwiZhuPBw-n6AhUN0HMBHUrBDssQFnoECAwQBQ&usg=AOvVaw1wvO_NOMAwU3AUyAVkoUD1
Latest Answers