Why can’t a high sodium diet be offset by the consumption of a lot of water?
In: Chemistry
your entire body works very hard to try to stay balanced, and the process is more complicated than simply throwing out the bad and keeping the good.
you can think of it as a puzzle where you want everything as even as possible, but you arent allowed to have any empty slots. if you want to throw out sodium you need to fill the spot the sodium is in with something else similar enough to fit there. if you want more calcium you need to try to throw out something in a calcium shaped spot.
while drinking water after ingesting too much sodium helps with short term symptoms such as dehydration or cramps, it usually does not supply the necessary pieces to fill in the sodium spots when sodium is thrown away. those still need to be taken from elsewhere.
so a large excess of sodium long term heavily taxes the body by causing a loss of other similar nutrients that cant be absorbed since there are no open spots for them, heavily taxes organs like the kidney that are trying to move sodium everyday when it doesnt have enough puzzle pieces to keep up with the consupmtion, and can eventually cause even further unbalances as other puzzle pieces have to be reshuffled to attempt to balance with the sodium.
p.s. the reason water retains with sodium is because your body is struggling to find pieces to trade out with the sodium and must keep it. the water is kept as well to prevent those immediate issues of sodium like dehydration and cramps etc. but doesnt fix the core issue.
***tldr having a very high amount of sodium is like playing a game of tetris with a ton of one piece and hardly any of the others. your body tries to adapt but eventually you end up with more and more pieces on the board that are sodium and no way to get rid of them. while water can help short term with sodium consumption it doesnt give your body the needed pieces to clear a board full of sodium, and instead fills the board up even more as a piece that glues itself to sodium.***
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