The Danger of Drinking Salt Water

Drinking water is absolutely essential to life. You cannot exist more than a few days without drinking water. If you are lost in the woods, you look for the nearest water. If you are lost on an island, or in a desert, you do the same thing. If you are lost at sea, however, there is danger in drinking salt water.

Understanding the Danger of Drinking Salt Water

You probably know there is danger involved in drinking salt water, but if you are like many, you cannot explain the danger. After all, we drink water and we eat salt. We need water to live, and we need salt to live. Why not put the two together?

We do indeed need salt to transport nutrients and oxygen through the body. We need salt to send nerve impulses to and from the brain. Salt helps muscles move, and that includes that very important muscle – your heart.

Drinking salt water, however, is entirely different. Salt water is not the same as the salt on your table. Drinking salt water is a matter of taking in other compounds and elements and minerals called salts. When you are drinking salt water, you are drinking things like Epsom salts, potassium salts, and iodine salts.

Ocean water is about three times as salty as your blood, making it impossible for your blood and cells to metabolize safely.

What Happens to People Drinking Salt Water

In short, if you take a lot of salt into your body by drinking salt water, your metabolism will shift into crisis mode. Water will flood out of every cell in a vain effort to dilute the salt and cleanse the body of it. The cells need water, though, and this outward flood leaves them dangerously dehydrated. The flipside of the problem is that blood cells are dangerously overworked in their effort to carry the excess water and salt down to the kidneys.

Drinking salt water can rapidly result in seizures, unconsciousness, and even brain damage. The overwhelmed kidneys will simply shut down, causing death.

A Safe Way of Drinking Salt Water

The states of California and Florida have achieved some success at desalinizing seawater. A few towns in those states are removing salt from seawater and making it into safe drinking water. This process costs the towns about 5 times what other cities pay to treat freshwater supplies, but there is hope that technology will improve, making this process available to irrigate deserts – and certainly to supply coastal cities with an additional water source.