• Question: WHY DOES THE BODY NEED WATER TO SURVIE

    Asked by horsesrule123 to Hywel, Joseph, Patience, Poonam, Rachael on 21 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Joseph Cook

      Joseph Cook answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Most of your body is water, around three quarters. Every cell in your body has a high proportion of water inside, and your blood is mostly water. But you lose water through various processes, like when you urinate or sweat, so it needs to be replenished. If you don’t keep replacing the water you lose, your body will stop functioning properly. Your blood will contain less water, giving you low blood pressure. Your cells will dry out, stopping them from working properly, and this will cause different problems in different organs around the body.

    • Photo: Poonam Kaushik

      Poonam Kaushik answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Water is vital for life. All known forms of life depend on water. Water is vital both as a solvent in which many of the body’s solutes dissolve and as an essential part of many metabolic processes within the body. Metabolism is the sum total of anabolism and catabolism. In anabolism, water is removed from molecules (through energy requiring enzymatic chemical reactions) in order to grow larger molecules (e.g. starches, triglycerides and proteins for storage of fuels and information). In catabolism, water is used to break bonds in order to generate smaller molecules (e.g. glucose, fatty acids and amino acids to be used for fuels for energy use or other purposes). Without water, these particular metabolic processes could not exist.

    • Photo: Dr Hywel Jones

      Dr Hywel Jones answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      I’m not a biologist so I think the best answer for this would come from the scientists in the evolution, genes or drugs zones

Comments

  • Photo: Keith

    Keith commented on :

    We need to drink so that we can pee. Sure, water is necessary as a solvent in which lots of metabolic processes take place, but we could have evoloved to be less leaky and so need to drink less. There is very little net chemical consumption of water. However, there are lots of waste products we need to get rid of, like urea (which is how nitrogen is lost from the body). The water is needed to carry the wastes through and out the kidney. So, we drink so much because we have to pee.

    By the way, if your kidneys fail, the urea can build up to fatal levels, even escaping through the skin to precitipate to form “uraemic frost”. Fortunately, kidney dialysis and transplants mean that this almost never happens now.