By KARA FOWLER
Staff Writer
A Caltech team created multiple reports in the journal called Nature. The report analyzed the science behind the brain. There are a few checkpoints the body goes through; However, this study was mainly focusing on one checkpoint. This checkpoint was near the liver. The liver is an important part because it checks if we drank enough water. To even reach the liver there is a couple thirst related checkpoints in the body.
The very first checkpoint would be when the water reaches your mouth. One of the authors and a Caltech researcher says it “gives your brain a refreshing feeling”. The brain can actually measure how much water you’ve drunk by gulping. Your brain will know when to stop drinking water from a trust-but-verify method.
The second checkpoint is inside your intestines. It’s to verify that you actually have drunk water, which takes a couple minutes to actually verify it’s water. The intestines are important for this process because it moves the water into the bloodstream.
There was another research process used on mice to study the vessels that carry the blood from their intestines to the liver. What they discovered is that there are cells that will be transmitted to the vagus nerve, it’s the nerve that runs from your gut to your brain, only when the animal has been hydrated. After this stage, it becomes a lot more complex.
They discovered that these cells weren’t actually sensing the water. The cells were only responding to a hormone that’s produced when the water reaches the intestines. This hormone also makes the contents less salty. This hormonal signal is telling the brain that we are drinking water. This discovery brings shock because it’s using a hormonal signal instead of sending a message back directly to the brain.
The brain finds this step one of the most important ones to understand what is going to be going to the liver.
The final step is the fluid intake near the liver. This is where blood pressure and plasma volume gets changed due to knowing the amount of intake. The brain also has areas around the brain to know how watery the blood is. This is a helpful factor in knowing how hydrated you are.