Biochemistry answers for common weight loss questions: Sodium. (warning, long and nerdy)
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I remember when my parents went on a low sodium diet for hypertension. They cut out huge types of processed foods and of course lost weight (less food). So they chalked up their weight problems to sodium. When they discovered low or no sodium substitutes they added the foods back in and gained most, if not all of the weight back. But they still believe that sodium causes obesity and refuse to believe excess food intake has anything to do with it. Their doctor only told them to watch the salt, nothing else.3
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Sorry I hit woo by mistake, meant to tap Awesome! Darn phone. Thank you for this info!0
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This is awesome as usual aaron!0
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AND it should be noted that not enough sodium is also bad. Far more of my patients have low sodium levels than have high sodium levels. Your urine should be pale yellow, like straw. NOT clear (or dark). A gallon of water a day is a ridiculous idea for most people (too much water, too little sodium). 64-80 oz is perfect for most healthy individuals. This is a great post, @Aaron_K1233
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Interesting; thanks!
My cardiologist has actually told me to keep my sodium on the higher side since my BP tends to run low and I have vasovagal issues.0 -
Graelwyn75 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Graelwyn75 wrote: »I seem to have never, to my knowledge, had huge issues with sodium based water retention... I sweat so much when I train that I guess my body needs the salt. I always put a lot on my vegetables etc. It is bready, doughy things that cause me the most issues in terms of retention... it only takes one meal out of my usual and wham, I swell up. Really irritating when I take my trips to stay with my mother... lots of meals out and even something as simple as having some calimari and chips will swell me up. Never found a way around that issue so that would be a useful topic to cover... I do not get this issue with other carb sources.
Carbs get converted to glycogen as an energy storage molecule in muscle tissue and with glycogen comes a lot of water retention. Going from high activity where glycogen is depleted to a meal with carbs that replenish those stores could probably end up feeling like swell or bloat...but mostly localized to muscle tissue. If you are talking like a bloated feeling in stomach or gut not sure.
I mean if you are active you probably know what I mean about the glycogen already.
No, calves tend to swell the most, and usually when in London, I do not train the few days I am there.
Certainly not claiming to be diagnosing this medically or anything but that sounds like what I'd expect from glycogen stores. If you actively use your calves your body will pack glycogen in the muscle which comes with a lot of water. Your body sort of expects it to get used so it keeps putting it in there at a certain rate when it has fuel to store from. If you go from active to not active it can kind of overfill and swell the muscle a bit. Nothing bad about that other than feeling bloated or swollen.0 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »HellYeahItsKriss wrote: »So, This post was pretty awesome, i actually learned some things i didn't know and it has actually prompted a question... or a few haha
So lets say i have a day where my sodium is high, say 5000 mg, I know that i don't really have any issues with water retention staying within the default 2300, but i do retain once i start creeping up and up.. so.. back to 5000mg cause usually thats a typical number in sodium i hit when i over kill.. How many ml of water per mg of sodium would be good to drink to balance yourself? I am the type that retains water for at least 3-4 days after, if i drank this amount of water to restore balance, would that cut the amount of retention i experience down some, since i tend to pee pretty quickly after consuming liquids, Or would drinking enough water to balance out just cause issues?
Oh boy good question I don't know off the top of my head but I might look into that and try to respond. Off the top of my head I'd imagine the solution to the question is just to know the natural level of sodium that is considered balanced in your body and use that to figure out how much water.
The way it gets complicated is that water is required for lots of bodily functions not related to sodium like for digestion so not all the water you drink would be available for bringing the sodium to the desired concentration. So therefore whatever I'd calculate just off of the desired sodium concentration you'd probably need to drink more water than just that. How much more hard to say.
That said if you know how much water you need to drink when you have 2300mg sodium we should be able to calculate how much more water you'd need for 5000mg using that method. Just have to look up what the natural sodium concentration is in your body (ie weight of sodium per liter of water)
Okay I am at a computer now so I can look things up to try to give an answer. So here are the numbers I found that we need.
Here is my source: http://book.bionumbers.org/what-are-the-concentrations-of-different-ions-in-cells/
Okay so sodium in mammalian blood plasma is about 100 to 200 mM, lets call it 150mM. In comparison sea water is 500 mM. So your blood is really only about 3 times less salty than sea water. Not suprisingly when I looked up medical saline it looks like it is at a concentration of 154mM, which is right in line with the concentration in your blood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saline_(medicine). So if you are dehydrated and in a hospital they are going to hook you up to water that is only about 3 times less salty than sea water.
mM is a measure of concentration called millimolar. What 150mM of sodium means is that there are 150 milimoles per liter. A mole is a specific number of atoms. To convert that to weight we need to know the atomic weight of sodium which is on the periodic table and is 23 grams per mole which is the same as 23 miligrams per milimole. So what that means is 150 milimoles is the same as 150*23 = 3450 mg per liter. Wow, that is a ton isn't it. That is the amount of sodium in your blood right now. In comparison a liter of diet soda (that drink lots of people on here love to claim is high in sodium) has about 120mg in a liter...about 30 times less than what is in your blood. So yeah just a thought for people who claim soda is high in sodium. If you drink soda you are actually diluting the sodium concentration of your body, not increasing it.
Anyways, on to your question. You compared going from taking in 2300mg of sodium to taking in 5000mg. Lets pretend that the amount of food you eat is the same, its just much higher sodium content food. That would be an additional 2700mg of sodium. Given your blood has a concentration of 3450 mg per liter that would mean to take that 2700mg and put it at the same concentration that is in your blood you would only need to dissolve it in 780 mL of water. Call it an extra liter.
The reason though that we drink water and not salt water is because water is used for much more in our bodies than just solubilizing sodium so not all of the water you drink can be used to dilute out the sodium that you take in. All other variables held constant though yeah you'd only need to drink about an extra liter of water to hold that extra sodium in check...I think, based on the assumptions I made.9 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »HellYeahItsKriss wrote: »So, This post was pretty awesome, i actually learned some things i didn't know and it has actually prompted a question... or a few haha
So lets say i have a day where my sodium is high, say 5000 mg, I know that i don't really have any issues with water retention staying within the default 2300, but i do retain once i start creeping up and up.. so.. back to 5000mg cause usually thats a typical number in sodium i hit when i over kill.. How many ml of water per mg of sodium would be good to drink to balance yourself? I am the type that retains water for at least 3-4 days after, if i drank this amount of water to restore balance, would that cut the amount of retention i experience down some, since i tend to pee pretty quickly after consuming liquids, Or would drinking enough water to balance out just cause issues?
Oh boy good question I don't know off the top of my head but I might look into that and try to respond. Off the top of my head I'd imagine the solution to the question is just to know the natural level of sodium that is considered balanced in your body and use that to figure out how much water.
The way it gets complicated is that water is required for lots of bodily functions not related to sodium like for digestion so not all the water you drink would be available for bringing the sodium to the desired concentration. So therefore whatever I'd calculate just off of the desired sodium concentration you'd probably need to drink more water than just that. How much more hard to say.
That said if you know how much water you need to drink when you have 2300mg sodium we should be able to calculate how much more water you'd need for 5000mg using that method. Just have to look up what the natural sodium concentration is in your body (ie weight of sodium per liter of water)
Okay I am at a computer now so I can look things up to try to give an answer. So here are the numbers I found that we need.
Here is my source: http://book.bionumbers.org/what-are-the-concentrations-of-different-ions-in-cells/
Okay so sodium in mammalian blood plasma is about 100 to 200 mM, lets call it 150mM. In comparison sea water is 500 mM. So your blood is really only about 3 times less salty than sea water. Not suprisingly when I looked up medical saline it looks like it is at a concentration of 154mM, which is right in line with the concentration in your blood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saline_(medicine). So if you are dehydrated and in a hospital they are going to hook you up to water that is only about 3 times less salty than sea water.
mM is a measure of concentration called millimolar. What 150mM of sodium means is that there are 150 milimoles per liter. A mole is a specific number of atoms. To convert that to weight we need to know the atomic weight of sodium which is on the periodic table and is 23 grams per mole which is the same as 23 miligrams per milimole. So what that means is 150 milimoles is the same as 150*23 = 3450 mg per liter. Wow, that is a ton isn't it. That is the amount of sodium in your blood right now. In comparison a liter of diet soda (that drink lots of people on here love to claim is high in sodium) has about 120mg in a liter...about 30 times less than what is in your blood. So yeah just a thought for people who claim soda is high in sodium. If you drink soda you are actually diluting the sodium concentration of your body, not increasing it.
Anyways, on to your question. You compared going from taking in 2300mg of sodium to taking in 5000mg. Lets pretend that the amount of food you eat is the same, its just much higher sodium content food. That would be an additional 2700mg of sodium. Given your blood has a concentration of 3450 mg per liter that would mean to take that 2700mg and put it at the same concentration that is in your blood you would only need to dissolve it in 780 mL of water. Call it an extra liter.
The reason though that we drink water and not salt water is because water is used for much more in our bodies than just solubilizing sodium so not all of the water you drink can be used to dilute out the sodium that you take in. All other variables held constant though yeah you'd only need to drink about an extra liter of water to hold that extra sodium in check...I think.
Haha, wow.. Thank you for taking the time for that, I will give that a try next time i sodium binge and let you know how long before i see my current weight again. Although i will probably just use tap water, those bottled waters are expensive enough as it is lol..
As a visual comparison of your brain and my own.. This post is a great display of your brain and its impressiveness and this photo is me.. hahaha
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Aaron_K123 wrote: »NoxeemaJackson wrote: »I have thought about doing this on the regular, that is why I made the title I did "Biochemistry answers for common weight loss questions: Sodium" so that if it is popular at all or people find it useful I might do another that is "Biochemistry answers for common weight loss questions: XXXX" for another topic, probably answering where your weight actually goes when you lose weight. Don't want to commit just yet though, not sure if this sort of long-winded technical description is something people actually want. If it stays up for a while or gets a lot of discussion I might do another.
I would really enjoy this!0 -
AND it should be noted that not enough sodium is also bad. Far more of my patients have low sodium levels than have high sodium levels. Your urine should be pale yellow, like straw. NOT clear (or dark). A gallon of water a day is a ridiculous idea for most people (too much water, too little sodium). 64-80 oz is perfect for most healthy individuals. This is a great post, @Aaron_K123
Yeah the issue I think is that at somepoint well-intentioned health gurus looked at the general populace and saw (especially in the United States) that along with obesity tended to come high sodium levels and high blood pressure given many foods were high in sodium and overeating often went with too much sodium for the amount of liquid people were drinking. I mean I think on average that is true, or it certainly used to be true. As such the health gurus said unto the masses, if you want to improve your health lose weight, lower your sodium intake and drink more water. The last two things being meant to help lower the sodium concentrations in people's blood to help deal with high blood pressure.
Problem is people just take that like it is general advice and will take it to extremes. Sodium is bad, so avoid it...always get low sodium foods and never have sodium in beverages drink only water. And when you drink water, get 8 cups a day...no 16 cups a day...no 1 gallon a day...no 1.5 gallons a day, the more the better. Oh crap there is 40mg of sodium in a can of diet coke? Well better avoid that huh. (40mg is less than 2 grains of salt http://www.traditionaloven.com/culinary-arts/cooking/table-salt/convert-grain-gr-to-sodium-na-milligram-mg.html). I just cringe when I hear people say they avoid soda because of the sodium content.
So yeah, now suddenly there are a lot of people with very low sodium levels and low blood pressure because health gurus gave out advice without the reasoning behind it which meant people just assumed that meant sodium = bad, water = good when in fact its a balance and neither are good or bad.7 -
HellYeahItsKriss wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »HellYeahItsKriss wrote: »So, This post was pretty awesome, i actually learned some things i didn't know and it has actually prompted a question... or a few haha
So lets say i have a day where my sodium is high, say 5000 mg, I know that i don't really have any issues with water retention staying within the default 2300, but i do retain once i start creeping up and up.. so.. back to 5000mg cause usually thats a typical number in sodium i hit when i over kill.. How many ml of water per mg of sodium would be good to drink to balance yourself? I am the type that retains water for at least 3-4 days after, if i drank this amount of water to restore balance, would that cut the amount of retention i experience down some, since i tend to pee pretty quickly after consuming liquids, Or would drinking enough water to balance out just cause issues?
Oh boy good question I don't know off the top of my head but I might look into that and try to respond. Off the top of my head I'd imagine the solution to the question is just to know the natural level of sodium that is considered balanced in your body and use that to figure out how much water.
The way it gets complicated is that water is required for lots of bodily functions not related to sodium like for digestion so not all the water you drink would be available for bringing the sodium to the desired concentration. So therefore whatever I'd calculate just off of the desired sodium concentration you'd probably need to drink more water than just that. How much more hard to say.
That said if you know how much water you need to drink when you have 2300mg sodium we should be able to calculate how much more water you'd need for 5000mg using that method. Just have to look up what the natural sodium concentration is in your body (ie weight of sodium per liter of water)
Okay I am at a computer now so I can look things up to try to give an answer. So here are the numbers I found that we need.
Here is my source: http://book.bionumbers.org/what-are-the-concentrations-of-different-ions-in-cells/
Okay so sodium in mammalian blood plasma is about 100 to 200 mM, lets call it 150mM. In comparison sea water is 500 mM. So your blood is really only about 3 times less salty than sea water. Not suprisingly when I looked up medical saline it looks like it is at a concentration of 154mM, which is right in line with the concentration in your blood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saline_(medicine). So if you are dehydrated and in a hospital they are going to hook you up to water that is only about 3 times less salty than sea water.
mM is a measure of concentration called millimolar. What 150mM of sodium means is that there are 150 milimoles per liter. A mole is a specific number of atoms. To convert that to weight we need to know the atomic weight of sodium which is on the periodic table and is 23 grams per mole which is the same as 23 miligrams per milimole. So what that means is 150 milimoles is the same as 150*23 = 3450 mg per liter. Wow, that is a ton isn't it. That is the amount of sodium in your blood right now. In comparison a liter of diet soda (that drink lots of people on here love to claim is high in sodium) has about 120mg in a liter...about 30 times less than what is in your blood. So yeah just a thought for people who claim soda is high in sodium. If you drink soda you are actually diluting the sodium concentration of your body, not increasing it.
Anyways, on to your question. You compared going from taking in 2300mg of sodium to taking in 5000mg. Lets pretend that the amount of food you eat is the same, its just much higher sodium content food. That would be an additional 2700mg of sodium. Given your blood has a concentration of 3450 mg per liter that would mean to take that 2700mg and put it at the same concentration that is in your blood you would only need to dissolve it in 780 mL of water. Call it an extra liter.
The reason though that we drink water and not salt water is because water is used for much more in our bodies than just solubilizing sodium so not all of the water you drink can be used to dilute out the sodium that you take in. All other variables held constant though yeah you'd only need to drink about an extra liter of water to hold that extra sodium in check...I think.
Haha, wow.. Thank you for taking the time for that, I will give that a try next time i sodium binge and let you know how long before i see my current weight again. Although i will probably just use tap water, those bottled waters are expensive enough as it is lol..
As a visual comparison of your brain and my own.. This post is a great display of your brain and its impressiveness and this photo is me.. hahaha
I mean I wouldn't really try to go off my math or anything that was just for fun and to attempt to answer but I was making assumptions and I can't guarantee I'm like 100% right, go off urine color if anything. If darker than straw drink more water, if lighter than straw then drink less water or feel free to have more sodium. Hydration and sodium intake go hand in hand.5 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »I have thought about doing this on the regular, that is why I made the title I did "Biochemistry answers for common weight loss questions: Sodium" so that if it is popular at all or people find it useful I might do another that is "Biochemistry answers for common weight loss questions: XXXX" for another topic, probably answering where your weight actually goes when you lose weight. Don't want to commit just yet though, not sure if this sort of long-winded technical description is something people actually want. If it stays up for a while or gets a lot of discussion I might do another.BrookeLynn18 wrote: »I would really enjoy this!
I'd have fun writing others if people are interested. Biochem or molecular bio perspective on weight loss or myths/misconceptions associated with weight loss. Not sure if forum posts are the right format or a blog, or maybe some sort of sticky area if that is of interest to the moderators/admins and people would like it (not to sound overly arrogant just a thought)9 -
Oddly, my urine color is only slightly darker first thing in the morning, even with the 5000mg sodium days, It also doesnt seem to take much to change the color, i had to drink 1.5L of water for a pelvic ultrasound the other day and my pee was pretty much clear for the first few pees lol..0
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HellYeahItsKriss wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »HellYeahItsKriss wrote: »So, This post was pretty awesome, i actually learned some things i didn't know and it has actually prompted a question... or a few haha
So lets say i have a day where my sodium is high, say 5000 mg, I know that i don't really have any issues with water retention staying within the default 2300, but i do retain once i start creeping up and up.. so.. back to 5000mg cause usually thats a typical number in sodium i hit when i over kill.. How many ml of water per mg of sodium would be good to drink to balance yourself? I am the type that retains water for at least 3-4 days after, if i drank this amount of water to restore balance, would that cut the amount of retention i experience down some, since i tend to pee pretty quickly after consuming liquids, Or would drinking enough water to balance out just cause issues?
Oh boy good question I don't know off the top of my head but I might look into that and try to respond. Off the top of my head I'd imagine the solution to the question is just to know the natural level of sodium that is considered balanced in your body and use that to figure out how much water.
The way it gets complicated is that water is required for lots of bodily functions not related to sodium like for digestion so not all the water you drink would be available for bringing the sodium to the desired concentration. So therefore whatever I'd calculate just off of the desired sodium concentration you'd probably need to drink more water than just that. How much more hard to say.
That said if you know how much water you need to drink when you have 2300mg sodium we should be able to calculate how much more water you'd need for 5000mg using that method. Just have to look up what the natural sodium concentration is in your body (ie weight of sodium per liter of water)
Okay I am at a computer now so I can look things up to try to give an answer. So here are the numbers I found that we need.
Here is my source: http://book.bionumbers.org/what-are-the-concentrations-of-different-ions-in-cells/
Okay so sodium in mammalian blood plasma is about 100 to 200 mM, lets call it 150mM. In comparison sea water is 500 mM. So your blood is really only about 3 times less salty than sea water. Not suprisingly when I looked up medical saline it looks like it is at a concentration of 154mM, which is right in line with the concentration in your blood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saline_(medicine). So if you are dehydrated and in a hospital they are going to hook you up to water that is only about 3 times less salty than sea water.
mM is a measure of concentration called millimolar. What 150mM of sodium means is that there are 150 milimoles per liter. A mole is a specific number of atoms. To convert that to weight we need to know the atomic weight of sodium which is on the periodic table and is 23 grams per mole which is the same as 23 miligrams per milimole. So what that means is 150 milimoles is the same as 150*23 = 3450 mg per liter. Wow, that is a ton isn't it. That is the amount of sodium in your blood right now. In comparison a liter of diet soda (that drink lots of people on here love to claim is high in sodium) has about 120mg in a liter...about 30 times less than what is in your blood. So yeah just a thought for people who claim soda is high in sodium. If you drink soda you are actually diluting the sodium concentration of your body, not increasing it.
Anyways, on to your question. You compared going from taking in 2300mg of sodium to taking in 5000mg. Lets pretend that the amount of food you eat is the same, its just much higher sodium content food. That would be an additional 2700mg of sodium. Given your blood has a concentration of 3450 mg per liter that would mean to take that 2700mg and put it at the same concentration that is in your blood you would only need to dissolve it in 780 mL of water. Call it an extra liter.
The reason though that we drink water and not salt water is because water is used for much more in our bodies than just solubilizing sodium so not all of the water you drink can be used to dilute out the sodium that you take in. All other variables held constant though yeah you'd only need to drink about an extra liter of water to hold that extra sodium in check...I think.
Haha, wow.. Thank you for taking the time for that, I will give that a try next time i sodium binge and let you know how long before i see my current weight again. Although i will probably just use tap water, those bottled waters are expensive enough as it is lol..
Oh, one more thing I should have mentioned. The amount of water I said, one liter, would be the amount needed to balance out the sodium...you'd retain all that water. If you wanted to start flushing sodium out of your body and decrease the amount of water you were retaining you'd want to drink much more than that. Like probably twice as much.1 -
HellYeahItsKriss wrote: »Oddly, my urine color is only slightly darker first thing in the morning, even with the 5000mg sodium days, It also doesnt seem to take much to change the color, i had to drink 1.5L of water for a pelvic ultrasound the other day and my pee was pretty much clear for the first few pees lol..
Yeah I mean it doesn't take all that much water to offset it. People way overkill with the water sometimes.0 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »HellYeahItsKriss wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »HellYeahItsKriss wrote: »So, This post was pretty awesome, i actually learned some things i didn't know and it has actually prompted a question... or a few haha
So lets say i have a day where my sodium is high, say 5000 mg, I know that i don't really have any issues with water retention staying within the default 2300, but i do retain once i start creeping up and up.. so.. back to 5000mg cause usually thats a typical number in sodium i hit when i over kill.. How many ml of water per mg of sodium would be good to drink to balance yourself? I am the type that retains water for at least 3-4 days after, if i drank this amount of water to restore balance, would that cut the amount of retention i experience down some, since i tend to pee pretty quickly after consuming liquids, Or would drinking enough water to balance out just cause issues?
Oh boy good question I don't know off the top of my head but I might look into that and try to respond. Off the top of my head I'd imagine the solution to the question is just to know the natural level of sodium that is considered balanced in your body and use that to figure out how much water.
The way it gets complicated is that water is required for lots of bodily functions not related to sodium like for digestion so not all the water you drink would be available for bringing the sodium to the desired concentration. So therefore whatever I'd calculate just off of the desired sodium concentration you'd probably need to drink more water than just that. How much more hard to say.
That said if you know how much water you need to drink when you have 2300mg sodium we should be able to calculate how much more water you'd need for 5000mg using that method. Just have to look up what the natural sodium concentration is in your body (ie weight of sodium per liter of water)
Okay I am at a computer now so I can look things up to try to give an answer. So here are the numbers I found that we need.
Here is my source: http://book.bionumbers.org/what-are-the-concentrations-of-different-ions-in-cells/
Okay so sodium in mammalian blood plasma is about 100 to 200 mM, lets call it 150mM. In comparison sea water is 500 mM. So your blood is really only about 3 times less salty than sea water. Not suprisingly when I looked up medical saline it looks like it is at a concentration of 154mM, which is right in line with the concentration in your blood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saline_(medicine). So if you are dehydrated and in a hospital they are going to hook you up to water that is only about 3 times less salty than sea water.
mM is a measure of concentration called millimolar. What 150mM of sodium means is that there are 150 milimoles per liter. A mole is a specific number of atoms. To convert that to weight we need to know the atomic weight of sodium which is on the periodic table and is 23 grams per mole which is the same as 23 miligrams per milimole. So what that means is 150 milimoles is the same as 150*23 = 3450 mg per liter. Wow, that is a ton isn't it. That is the amount of sodium in your blood right now. In comparison a liter of diet soda (that drink lots of people on here love to claim is high in sodium) has about 120mg in a liter...about 30 times less than what is in your blood. So yeah just a thought for people who claim soda is high in sodium. If you drink soda you are actually diluting the sodium concentration of your body, not increasing it.
Anyways, on to your question. You compared going from taking in 2300mg of sodium to taking in 5000mg. Lets pretend that the amount of food you eat is the same, its just much higher sodium content food. That would be an additional 2700mg of sodium. Given your blood has a concentration of 3450 mg per liter that would mean to take that 2700mg and put it at the same concentration that is in your blood you would only need to dissolve it in 780 mL of water. Call it an extra liter.
The reason though that we drink water and not salt water is because water is used for much more in our bodies than just solubilizing sodium so not all of the water you drink can be used to dilute out the sodium that you take in. All other variables held constant though yeah you'd only need to drink about an extra liter of water to hold that extra sodium in check...I think.
Haha, wow.. Thank you for taking the time for that, I will give that a try next time i sodium binge and let you know how long before i see my current weight again. Although i will probably just use tap water, those bottled waters are expensive enough as it is lol..
Oh, one more thing I should have mentioned. The amount of water I said, one liter, would be the amount needed to balance out the sodium...you'd retain all that water. If you wanted to start flushing sodium out of your body and decrease the amount of water you were retaining you'd want to drink much more than that. Like probably twice as much.
Ahh, okay, i will keep that in mind and maybe ill only need to wait a day or two instead of 4 or 50 -
@Aaron_K123 Is homeostasis in humans a very narrow range of saline concentrations or is homeostasis frequently observed to be amenable to life across a fairly wide range of saline concentrations? To put that in numerical terms, what's the median value and what's one standard deviation?0
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JeromeBarry1 wrote: »@Aaron_K123 Is homeostasis in humans a very narrow range of saline concentrations or is homeostasis frequently observed to be amenable to life across a fairly wide range of saline concentrations? To put that in numerical terms, what's the median value and what's one standard deviation?
@JeromeBarry1 Good question. Off the top of my head I don't know the answer to that although my immediate assumption is that it will be a pretty tight range. Much like pH or body temperature things that are homeostatically regulated in our bodies tend to be around values that are required biologically for our operation. Those tend to be pretty tightly controlled and pretty standard across all of humanity.
Although I don't know what the median and standard deviation is directly I imagine that the medical field can tell us something about it. If we then look up what it is to be high sodium or low sodium medically speaking that might give us an idea of the range.
Hyponatremia is the medical condition for having low sodium. It is apparently defined as sodium concentrations less than 135mM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyponatremia). Apparently getting below 120mM can cause seizures and coma.
Hypernatremia is high sodium levels. It is apparently defined as sodium concentrations above 145mM with severe cases being above 160mM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypernatremia)
So what that means is if you are below 135mM or above 145mM you are considered to have a medical problem, below 125mM or above 160mM and it is life threatening. I imagine that applies to all humans. So yeah it seems like it is very tightly regulated and it is a very narrow range. With that range I found it is a bit odd that medical saline is 154mM instead of 140mM, I'm sure there is a reason for that but I don't know it.
As for what the median and standard deviation of the current population is I don't know, I'd have to see if there have been any studies that have attempted to answer that. A quick google search revealed this study looking at sodium levels in 400 people (which I haven't read only skimmed)
https://watermark.silverchair.com/ajcpath21-0831.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAAa4wggGqBgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggGbMIIBlwIBADCCAZAGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQMN_bsSP5-rBtSZXuLAgEQgIIBYRFaxJTA3tuIYOzIGt9MlPWwigSsFM4XrE1FEUn6JalqWH2_e8t_puBGFAfEucytlWdXiHo9ltI4RDHHYQYv83I1QA3guMzycCODtGsYdA02MkWo4gTBnVMtjs_khHxsQx2g86Jt13KFv0jj3js96-ntQJWHgFrx166ZPatCq7OUOldS3sSpL1DBnhVPhbfchjir3UDSGjX_Bo4Gok_uZXxEsae3pnmIO2fWvlkUxUWTfdj95PD49pqiO7vDKrZC0bW2Hcw0NbIBXLh7jezOv0A9WKMSmK0cUFfsu85mYa0xi8H2aIELK7aHoJ_8n39iw58JTZu6VmRZhtCgBYugA_k12cYrXGFTtWsqzl8-cls4iXY3SCMqmjvlvbWOTM-rlJG5w3eG-nr164ooXGeoOVGtet3KWwIr5KRO8D4LcMdLufRU8SpwkfiIMIXPEucJhuQ4RBEtu1DeGpJZrYz3uhEm
They found the range to be 135 to 155 mM with a mean of 144.7mM and a standard deviation of 3.81mM with 70% falling within the mean +/- stDev.
Again that seems like a tight range so yeah both my assumptions and everything I looked up thusfar suggest that the range of sodium concentrations in human blood is quite narrow and doesn't range much.
Think of it like body temperature. Most people are 98.6 degrees within a narrow range. If your temp goes above 101 you are considered to have a fever, above 104 a high grade fever and if you get to something like 108 you are dead. That is pretty much true for all humans, I think sodium in your blood works the same way.
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So what that means is if you are below 135mM or above 145mM you are considered to have a medical problem, below 125mM or above 160mM and it is life threatening. I imagine that applies to all humans. So yeah it seems like it is very tightly regulated and it is a very narrow range. With that range I found it is a bit odd that medical saline is 154mM instead of 140mM, I'm sure there is a reason for that but I don't know it.
Figured out why medical saline is 154mM when blood sodium is 140mM on average. It is because medical saline is trying to mimic the overall osmolarity of blood plasma. Osmolarity is the total number of solute particles per liter deterimined by all disolved ions and solutes and although sodium is the major one in blood there are others. So although your blood likely has around 140mM of sodium it also has other dissolved ions which means its osmolarity is up around 154mM because I guess there are about 14 molar equivalents of other solutes in plasma. Rather than make a medical solution that has the exact amount of each of the hundreds of different solutes in blood plasma they just use sodium to get it to be the same osmolarity.
Osmolarity is what actually determines which way water would travel between two solutions seperated by a barrier that is permeable to water but not solutes. That is why it is important that what they put into you by IV has the same osmolarity as your blood, to avoid having pressure that would cause water to come either into or out of cells. In my original explanation I didn't get into that because it seemed overly detailed and sodium is the main factor in determining osmolarity in physiological solutions.
This is what I meant by saying my "technical" description is really also oversimplified.5 -
So if i drop 3 lbs overnight you’re saying its not fat that i lost?1
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