Distilled water would affect homeostasis?

Question

On mybio lab i cant figure out this question, please help. " When a person in the hospital is given fluid intravenously(an I.V), the fluid is typically saline(salt) solution with about the sam water concentration as human body tissues. Explain how the use of distilled water in place if this saline solution would expected to upset the patient's homeostasis. Your answer should refer to the process of diffusion." PLEASE HELP!!

Answer 1

Distilled water is hypotonic with respect to the body fluid of human. When distilled water is given to a patient instead of saline, the osmolarity of his body fluid will be lower. His kidneys have to remove the excess water, otherwise he may die. Not too long ago, a woman died of drinking too much water.

Answer 2

Question 1: diffusion. muscle activity and nerve signals are both neuronal processes, so synapses are going to be involved, which require membrane receptors. Homeostasis is largely hormonally controlled, and hormones are going to have surface receptors as well. Diffusion does not involve receptors. Question 2: regulates diffusion. It's a semipermeable membrane that allows diffusion of only small, uncharged molecules like O2, N2, and CO2. Everything else, even water to a high degree, is blocked and has to be transported across by proteins in the membrane. It doesn't produce enzymes (ribosomes do that), it's not made of sugars (it's made of phospholipids), and it certainly doesn't control reproduction. Question 3: diffusion. More accurately, it's caused by osmosis. I'm not going to explain osmosis here but suffice to say that water is going to flow into the cell by osmosis until the pressure inside the cell is so great that the membrane breaks. Question 4: I don't really like any of the options. It's certainly not the only direction they can move - they can keep circulating in the bloodstream. And it's not directed into a cell by the brain. The cell does need amino acids to make proteins, but just because the cell wants them doesn't make them go inside. I would think that the concentration of amino acids is always going to be higher in the cell than it is in the bloodstream - you're making and degrading proteins in the cell all the time inside the cell so you'll have a big soluble pool of amino acids there. Still, if you started to run out of amino acids for some reason, then they would get transported in from the blood. They can't diffuse, because the membrane is impermeable to amino acids, but they can be transported across. So I guess #4 is the best option.

Answer 3

Human blood is slightly salty and has a pH slightly above 7 (like 7.4 or so). Distilled water has no ions and has a pH of 7. A person will die if the pH of their blood drops very much, as would happen if the blood were diluted with distilled water. As for diffusion, the tissues of the body contain fluid with a variety of ions at about the same amount as blood. If the blood was diluted and the ionic content lowered, the fluids would try to balance out their ionic contents. To do so, water from the blood would diffuse into the tissues (only water can pass through the membranes, not ions) causing severe edema (swelling) and possibly death as fluids flood into places like the lungs and the sac surrounding the heart.
As more water was given through the IV, more water would flood into the tissues, this would not help keep the person from dehydrating, and could cause the person to die by oversaturating their own tissues-drowning in bodily fluids.

Answer 4

distilled water affect homeostasis