10 Sodium Uses in Human Body – Compounds and Deficiency

Sodium is one of chemical element with the atomic number 11. It is a soft and reactive metal. Being in group 1 of the periodic table, sodium is an alkali metal. It is 6th most abundance element in earth and exist in various minerals like sodalite, salt (NaCl), and also feldspar. This element was first found by Humprhy Davy in 1807. You can’t find this element in natural occurance. Instead, it must be prepared from compounds. Sodium is an important elements for animals, plants and also human being.

In this article, we will talk further about how sodium gives our body a healthy way to function better. Human body needs sodium to execute several function and to smoother up some process in our regulation. Therefore, it will be healthy for us to take considerable amount of sodium every single day. But, there is also a danger for consuming too much sodium, so you have to be careful not to over consume it.

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Below are the list of sodium uses in human body and how your body can benefits from such daily intake of sodium, be it in the form of sodium chloride (table salt), or any other form of it.

1. Sodium Maintains Human Blood Pressure

Even though too much sodium could leads to danger, consuming healty amount of sodium is necessary. One of the main reason is that because sodium could maintain the blood pressure of our body. The normal amount of sodium in our body should be between 135-145 mEq/L (3.10 mg/nl to 3.34 mg/ml).

Sodium is attracting and hold water so that it can regulate normal amount of blood pressure. However, when you consume too much sodium, it could attract excessive amount of water. If this happens, your blood vessels wont be able to bloated and following the excessive water. This could leads to high pressure blood and of course, it is not healthy for us. Because of that, it is encourage for you to consume just enough amount of sodium so that you can reap the benefits of it, but never overdo it.

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2. Controlling The Muscle and Nerves Function

Muscles and nerves require electrical currents to be able to function properly. Both of these essentials part of our body generates electrical currents by controlling the flow of electrically charged molecules, including sodium. Electrical currents could stimulates muscle cells to be contracting and therefore, works properly. On the other hand, nerves need these electrical currents to be able to communicate with other nerves. When electrical current is needed, cells allow the positively charged sodium ions entering the cell.

3. Controlling The Fluids Balance

The amount of sodium in the blood has close relation to the the amount of water in the body. Sodium is an electrolyte, and it helps regulating the amount of water that is transporting in your body. According to the research by several research facilities, when you consume too much sodium, your water amount in the body will be decreasing and this is not healthy for your body.

However, when you consume too little sodium (on the contrary), your body would contains excessive amount of water and this results in the bloating. Both conditions of too little and too much sodium won’t be good for you and your body, so the balance intake of this particular substance is very necessary to maintain the healthiness of your body.

Below, we will explain the disease that you can adapt when you have too little or too much sodium in your body. These conditions are called hyponatremia and hypernatremia.

4. Sodium Maintain digestion and heart system 

When you consume good amount of sodium (not too lack but also not too excess), your body will easily digest anything you eat before. Of course, this can’t be extended only to sodium. You have to eat healthy food and working out regularly if you really want to see the effects of it. Other than that, when you consume the right amount of sodium, your heart will be healthier and the risk of getting heart failure will significantly be slimmer.

5. Sodium makes your kidney healthy 

Sodium could actually makes the processing of food in your kidney easier. We probably knows that healthy kidney means healthy us. This is due to the fact that a healthy kidney could make our body fresher and we feel good in doing our day to day life. When our kidney is crappy, you will feel crappy too. Fatigue, headache, stomachache, are just several risk you will have to overcome if you have sick kidney. This could be prevented from consuming just enough amount of sodium so that your kidney could function properly.

6. Sodium saves you from muscles cramp 

Here is sodium uses in human body. If your body lacks sodium, your body will experiencing muscle cramp and let’s be honest – this is very bad for you. You will feel pain in your muscle area and uncomfortable in your whole body.

7. Sodium controls your sweat

This particular substance could actually make your body temperature low and this results in less sweat. When you lack sodium, there is no extra substance that could bind your excess water and oil and this could result in excess sweating. You probably don’t want to come to your date with extra smell body odor, right?

8. Sodium keep your kid on track 

If your kid is those type of kid that is really hard to consume food, they probably have low sodium blood. Lacks of sodium could makes your appetite lack also. If you wanna ‘cure’ your kid and makes them eat their food happily, make sure you pay attention to their sodium intake!

9. Sodium saves you from those unnecessary headache 

If you have headache all over your head (Like many of us do), you might wanna check on your sodium intake today. Did you eat enough sodium? When you consume enough amount of sodium, you could be very well saved from those unnecessary headache because this substance has ability to control and regulate your blood pressure so that your body could avoid those dizziness.

10. Sodium gives you energy to do your activities

When you consume enough sodium, your body will essentially have enough back up to make sure that you have enough energy necessary to run your day – all day long!

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The Lack of Sodium Effects

Indeed, there many sodium uses in human body, that’s why it would be danger if we lack of sodium contents.

1. Hypothermia

If you ever catch yourself working out and decided to drink a lot of water, that is good. Water could actually helps our body in so many good ways. However, you also need to watch out before you consume these lots amount of water. Drink an excessive amount of water in short periods of time can cause something called hyponatremia (also known as water intoxication).

When you are drinking a huge amount of water, your body will absorbing those water and this also means that the amount of sodium in your blood decreasing. It will be healthy when you have balance amount of sodium and water in your body, but too much water without sodium could actually leads to danger. The diluted sodium could make your body cells swelling and all kinds of ‘wrong’. You don’t want to do that to your body, for sure. Check out further informations in below explanation to learn further about Hyponatremia causes, symptons and treatment.

If it’s about hyponatremia, the best way to cure it is to prevent it. Educate yourself related to this matter. When you are having high activities or intensive work out, you could try and take precautions in the way you are drinking water. You can also consider drinking sport water before doing any activities that is demanding. One thing you should always remember is that you need to drink water in moderation.

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2. Hypernatremia

Hypernatremia is a symptoms of high sodium blood in human body. When our body consume too much sodium and not enough water to balance it, this particular disease will occur. You can definitely feel several major symptoms such as feeling thirsty. This disease is not particularly dangerous but if it is not treated properly, it will very quickly become a more serious conditions.

Inadequate water intake could cause this particular disease to occur to human body. Especially in elderly, you could find people with difficulty to process water into their body. Another case is in patient that has excessive amount of urine combine with insufficient water intake. This could leads to hypernatremia also. When you are loosing so much water from your body due to sweating so much and having excessive amount of urine, you will likely feeling dehydrate, which means that the amount of water in the body in decreasing while the amount of sodium increasing, leading to imbalance conditions in your human body.

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