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
Osmosis.
A bit of salt can be incorporated by the body and will help with water retention. A high concentration of salt can’t be taken up and will literally pull water out of cells.
Your body is a little salty. I don’t mean it’s mad at you – I mean the fluid inside your body (blood, lymph, intracellular fluid, etc.) has some salt in it. You have to maintain a certain level of saltiness in order to function well, because all your cells use salt. Your brain in particular uses the atoms that are in salt in order to generate electricity (because salt atoms, when you dissolve them in water, become electrically charged).
When you sweat (or vomit, or have diarrhea, for that matter), you lose both water and salt. So, to make up for this, you have to consume both: water and salt. In acute situations, when you are severely dehydrated, it is often important to replenish both your water and salt quickly. Not only because your body needs the salt, but also because being salty on the inside helps your body draw water in as well (water likes to go where salt is, for reasons we shan’t get into here). So, in those situations, it can be helpful to drink a solution of water and salts, rather than plain water.
However, too much salt is bad for you, as it draws water out of your cells. So, if consume a lot of salt, your body has to get rid of it. But your body cannot selectively dump out salt and nothing else. It has to get rid of the salt by making urine. So, if you consume too much salt, you end up losing more water by peeing it out, than what you drank. And if you consume *way* too much, then the salt ends up pulling too much water out of your cells before your body can get rid of it, and this can be lethal.
It is worth pointing out that, in the context of exercise, it’s rarely necessary or even helpful to drink liquids with added salt. Unless you are doing an intense workout where you sweat a great deal (e.g. a long run on a hot, humid day), you don’t need it, and it won’t make you perform better by any appreciable amount.
As with nearly anything the quantity is important… Our body needs certain amounts/ratio/ranges… Too much or too little and it takes effort to compensate (of it can’t compensate, you die)
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