If salt is edible and water is, why is drinking saltwater not good for you? Like sometimes you have to swish warm saltwater around in your mouth and getting ocean water in your mouth is okay so why us drinking it bad?
In: Biology
Human bodies aren’t designed to be able to drink salt water safely. Our kidneys process the water we drink, and remove excess water or salt in the form of urine. The saltiness of ocean water is much higher than our kidneys can handle, and causes the whole kidney system to stop working right. Drinking much salt water can result in kidney damage. Other animals have different tolerances. For instance marine mammals like whales are obviously able to cope with ingesting salt water just fine. This is the result of adaption. Having kidneys which are capable of handling salt water takes extra energy, so animals which didn’t routinely drink salt water didn’t evolve this capability, because it would have been wasted. We evolved from apes which didn’t spend a lot of time in the ocean (we evolved in the forests and savannas of Africa, far from the ocean).
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