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Chemistry Applications Essay Period 5 Mr. Ceccarelli 4 January, 2013 Most people worry about losing too much water from their bodies and experiencing dehydration, but little do they know they can drink too much water and experience a life threatening situation. This condition is called hyponatremia. Hyponatremia occurs when the level of sodium in the body is diluted from too much water in the blood. Sodium is important in the body at a constant level. The sodium is used to send nerve impulses to the brain. This is done by diffusion in cells where sodium and potassium are transported in opposite directions. One goes into the cell while the other is transferred out. This causes a high concentration of these ions in their relative location. With a high concentration the ions want to travel to a lower concentration and travel passively back into or out of the cell. This causes an electrical impulse to be sent to the brain. If a human drinks too much water the sodium levels in the blood become diluted.The normal blood sodium level in the body is 135 to 145 millimolar. Symptoms start to occur when that level drops to 125 millimolar. To solve this problem the cells in the body begin to have to water transported into the cells. This transport of water to the cells through passive diffusion called osmosis. During osmosis water passes through the cell membrane without doing any work. The water can only do this if a high concentration of water travels through the membrane to a lower concentration. Most of our bodies cells are able to handle this extra water and expand with no problem, but our brain cells aren’t so lucky because they are restricted from swelling to a certain point by our skull. The swelling of the brain can lead to many symptoms and can also lead to death. There are certain people who are very susceptible to hyponatremia. Marathon runners are in great danger of having hypothermia. The reason for this is that they sweat a lot when they run. Sweating causes the runner to loss salt from the body. At the same time the runner is drinking sodium free water which raises the level of water in the body while not replenishing the sodium levels as well. This leads to the lowered sodium levels and the swelling of the brain. [] Ballantyne, Coco. “Strange but True: Drinking Too Much Water Can Kill.” //ScientificAmerican.com.// ScientificAmerican.com, 21 June 2007. Web. 2 January 2013 Brown, Theodore. //Chemistry The Central Science.// Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, Inc., 2009. Print.
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