Why do hospitals inject saline into your bloodstream instead of just water?
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Your blood is not just water. It is a mix of water, salt, and of course many other things. But at the very basic level, the right balance of water and salt are extremely important to your body functioning. Salt and water want to mix and will push across certain boundaries in your body to accomplish this. Too much water will try to force its way into your cells to mix with the salt in your cells. Too much salt will suck water *out* of your cells to mix with the salt in your bloodstream. Some cells like plant cells and your own kidney cells are designed to compensate for an incorrect balance of salt and water and stop the movement of water that would occur as a result of this. But the rest of the cells in your body are not prepared to handle this – they expect your blood to have the proper salt levels and if this is wrong there are bad effects. The hospital isn’t “making your blood salty”, they are keeping it how it’s supposed to be
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