Whilst drinking water to hydrate, how does our body know when to stop drinking and we don’t drink too much?
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Its pretty hard to overdrink water. You would have to consume alot for that to happen. Normally you feel sated just like you would with food and stop.
It doesn’t in the immediate moment you’re drinking, but your body can regulate water well enough that you would have to drink much more than is comfortable to overhydrate that way.
Over the course of the following minutes, the water is absorbed into your bloodstream, which increases the volume of your blood. Your kidneys detect the increase in volume, up-regulate the amount of water in your urine, and release a hormone that is picked up by your brain that reduces the signal of thirst.
You stop feeling thirsty once you are hydrated, but people can still drink too much and it can kill you!
I have diabetes insipidus due to a pituitary tumour. This means my body can’t regulate water intake. I take a drug called desmopressin that helps a bit but it doesn’t last all 24hrs. So I take it at 10pm to stop me peeing all night and get some sleep but by about 2:30pm next day I start to get unbelievably thirsty, this makes me drink lots of water/juice/tea etc which then makes me pee literally minutes later. My body just doesn’t know ho to manage it..
Normally your body is like a bath. If it’s too full it takes out the plug for a while and if it’s too empty it turns on the taps. Thus you keep level. This is done by a hormone called adh that your pituitary gland excretes. When you have DI, the gland doesn’t work and the taps are on while the plug is open all the time. It’s bloody horrible. No cure either so I hope you never find out first hand what it’s like..
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