Welcome to Brainstuff from house stuff works dot com where smart happens. Hi am merciall brain with today's question, what are electrolytes? For example, when you see a commercial for Gatorade or some of their sports drink like that and they talk about electrolytes, what are they talking about. An electrolyte is a medical scientific term for salts, specifically for ions. The term electrolyte means that this ion is electrically charged.
For example, your body fluids things like your blood, your plasma, the lymph that's flowing through your lymph nodes are very similar to seawater. These fluids contain a lot of salt, also known as sodium chloride. The electrolytes and sodium chloride are the sodium ion and the chloride ion. When you drink salt and it dissolves in why or it splits
into these two charged ions. As for your body, the major electrolytes include sodium and chloride, which we just mentioned, potassium, calcium, magnesium, bicarbonate, phosphate, and sulfate. These electrolytes are important because they're what your cells, especially your nerve, heart and muscle cells, used to carry electrical impulses through nerve fibers. When you exercise heavily, though, you lose electrolytes in your sweat, particularly sodium and potassium.
These electrolytes have to be replaced to keep the electrolyte concentrations of your body fluids constant. So many sports drinks have sodium chloride or potassium chloride added to them. They also have sugar and flavorings to make these ions taste better. Another example where electrolyte drinks are important is when an infant or a child has a chronic vomiting or diarrhea problems, say, because of an essenal flu virus. When children vomit or
have diarrhea, they lose electro lights. Again, these electro lights and the fluids have to be replaced to prevent dehydration and seizures. Therefore, drinks like pedia Light have sodium and potassium in them, just like the sports drinks do. However, pediatricians don't recommend giving sports drinks to a sick kid because sports drinks usually have a lot of sugar, and sugar isn't particularly good for a sick kid. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
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