You can drink preworkout with little salt in it to be more efficient during workouts. But if you drink sea water before a workout, you’ll die. Why?
In: Biology
Your body uses salt to control how much water is in different parts of your body. It also uses water to control how much salt you have in your body. It’s a complicated balance.
As you sweat, you lose water and salt. Drinking water with a low level of salt helps you replenish what you’ve lost. But ocean water has WAAAAAY too much salt, about 3x as much as your body likes. Your body will use up a lot of water removing the extra salt, and you’ll end up dehydrated.
It isn’t really that salt hydrates you, it’s that your body needs salt to function and salt is one of the things the body loses when you become dehydrated (for example by sweating). The symptoms typically associated with dehydration are in part caused by a lack of electrolytes such as salt.
But in general the body doesn’t want too much salt in it. Your kidneys will work to get rid of excess salt, but they’re only so efficient. If you drink sea water they’ll be overwhelmed and you’ll have, physiologically speaking, a very bad time
the concept here is called homeostasis, our cells are actively trying ot balance out the amount of water and salts inside themselves to facilitate cellular operations and part of the mechanism that regulates this relies on the fact that levels of salts inside and outside of the cell will naturally attempt to equalize. the presence os salts is the mechanism used ot balance this out.
as you perform strenouos activites you are losing both water and salts that you can replenish by drikning water and can assist with a small dosage of these salts that enable a smoother stabilization.
problem is with sea water you have WAYYY too much salt and the physics involved will pull the water out of the cells in a futile attempt ot equalize causing dehydration and putting salt level as such dangerous high level your kidneys have no chance ot be able ot deal with without causing damage.
Homeostasis. Your body is constantly trying to maintain balance. Sodium helps retain fluid that your body needs, but too much sodium can actually pull the water out of your cells and dry you out. Too little or too much is bad either way and can cause serious electrolyte imbalances. It can mess with your blood pressure, brain, body and other organs inside like kidneys. Remember, pretty much anything can be a poison, it’s all about the dose. Even water which you need and is good for you can be fatal if taken too much too fast.
You need some salt for your body to function.
There is that phenomenon called osmosis. When you have a permeable membrane, such as a cell membrane and you have water with different concentration of dissolved salt on both sides, the water will cross the membrane and try to make both sides to have the same concentration.
So, when you drink something that has less salt content than is an inside of a thirsty cell, the cell can absorb that water. If you drink something that has more salt content, the cells in contact with that drink will lose their water.
Our body has an optimal salt concentration in its cells. If you drink water with a lower salt concentration, your cells will be able to absorb that water. If you drink water with a higher concentration of salt, your cells will lose water.
The extremes on both ends are potentially deadly. If you drink too much fresh water at once, you dilute the salt inside cells, and they may die. If you drink too much salty water/eat solid salt, your cells will lose too much water and may die.
Body needs to maintain not only certain amount of water and salt present, but also a specific balance between them to be upheld. If this balance is lost (having in body comparatively too much salt or too much water), you will feel bad, and in extreme cases there can be damage to your body.
When you exercise, you are going to sweat (also exhale much). You lose much water and some salt this way. You need to replenish them, and in the right balance. Seawater is too salty, it will make the balance even worse. Water without any salt can also flip the balance in bigger amounts – and you will want bigger amounts when you sweat stuff out. Water with some salt is exactly what you need.
You need a balance of salt. Too much and you have to use water to flush it out (urine). Too little and your can’t hold enough (hyponatremia)
Homeostasis bro. You are a bag of liquids that needs to be the right mix of chemicals. When your body does work it excretes water and salt, it needs you to put back in the same mix of water and salt (Gatorade). If instead you put in seawater that is wayyyy to much salt. Your body then uses a lot of water to dilute the salt, now your body is in dire need of water, no more salt.
This is also the reason babies can’t drink water. Babies are teeny tiny bags of chemicals; it’s too easy to dilute the baby.
Because sea water has a shit ton of salt. There is around 34g or salt or around 2 tablespoons in a liter of sea water.
The recommender daily intake of salt is 2.3g so even a small glass of sea water has already more than this.
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