-
Asked by bsykes to Amy, Drew, Julia, Kimberley, Sara on 19 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by kclark.
-
Kimberley Bryon answered on 16 Jun 2011:
When we sweat it isn’t just pure water it is also lots of minerals including sodium. It is these minerals that makes it taste salty.
-
-
Drew Rae answered on 16 Jun 2011:
Hi bsykes. One of the jobs of sweat and urine is to remove minerals from the body that we don’t use. Urine tastes salty too (but is a lot more disgusting to lick up, so I’m not talking from experience).
-
Sara Imari Walker answered on 17 Jun 2011:
hey bsykes! Gross, but interesting! Kimberley and Drew have basically covered it – sweat is salty because of the minerals dissolved in our body fluids including sodium and calcium. It is the sodium (Na) and calcium (Cl) that make our sweat taste like table salt (which is just the solid NaCl).
I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t want to check out Drew’s factoid with a taste test, yuck!
-
Amy MacQueen answered on 17 Jun 2011:
Hey guys!
As these folks said sweat is salty because of its mineral constituents (the stuff that makes it up). However it also does a pretty good job for us as well as cooling us down and getting rid of minerals – it is part of our “first line of defence”!! 🙂 Our skin is our physical barrier between us and the outside world – it stops the bad stuff getting in and the good stuff getting out! And what you also know is that there are sweat glands in the skin secreting sweat.
What is cool about sweat is that it contains bactericidal enzymes (that means they’re toxic to bacteria) as well as minerals…so your salty sweat is also helping in maintaining your defence against bad bacteria and helping prevent you getting sick.
Neat huh? pretty useful stuff! 🙂
-
Julia Griffen answered on 19 Jun 2011:
It contains alot of inorganic material that our body need to get ride of.. e.g sodium… table salt is sodium chloride.
Comments