How does chlorine affect the human body?

Chlorine is best known to us as a substance that processes water. The characteristic unpleasant smell and the fact that the door handles, the floors and the toilet bowls are rubbed with chlorine - that's all we know about chlorine. How does chlorine actually affect the human body? Why do you need to treat them surfaces and throw them into the water? When does chlorine become dangerous?

A few words about the history of chlorine

This microelement - chlorine - was discovered in 1774 by Carl Scheele, a chemist and a Swede by nationality. He conducted chemical experiments with hydrochloric acid and suddenly smelled the smell, which reminded him of the familiar smell of royal vodka. Do not be mistaken, Karl Scheele was not a fan of alcohol. Royal vodka was called a solvent, which contained nitric and hydrochloric acid, capable of dissolving even the key to the apartment or the gold ring of his wife.

The scientist pricked up his ears and started experimenting further. He extracted green-yellow gas from the substance obtained and began to study its effect on other gases and liquids. So, chlorine was obtained - a complex substance that Sheele, and then his colleague Davy called chlorine (green-yellow in translation from Greek). This name has survived to this day in the US and England, and we have become shorter and understandable - chlorine. This name was also fixed thanks to the famous French chemist Gay-Lussac, whose experiments are being studied at school today by schoolchildren. This microelement took its rightful place in the periodic table under the atomic number 17.

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What is chlorine?

It is a substance, a macronutrient that enters our body with mineral salts, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium and other microelements. The first and simplest source of chlorine is rock salt, which was used by our ancient ancestors. Chlorine in the composition of rock salt helped to preserve the integrity and safety of fish and killed game. Salt as a source of chlorine, necessary for man, was extracted even in the times described by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who lived about 425 BC.

Chlorine is found not only in the store packs, but also in our blood, bones, intercellular fluid, and also the largest organ of our body - the skin. Just as it enters the body, chlorine is also capable of being excreted. About 90% of chlorine is excreted with the products of disintegration - by urine and sweat.

What for to the person chlorine?

Have you heard how often on television or less often - in the clinic doctors talk about the acid-base balance? Advertising buzzed about it all ears. So, the acid-base balance of the body is the exchange of sodium, chlorine and potassium. Very simple. All these three elements must necessarily be in the intercellular fluid, blood and bones (what we wrote above). Their ratio (doses) should be correct. If this compliance is violated, the person begins to get sick. If the exchange of chlorine in the body is disturbed, it immediately affects the well-being: swelling of the hands, legs, face may appear, the heart starts to work with interruptions, and pressure rises up and down.

All metabolic processes, which are supported with the participation of chlorine and other necessary macroelements, are called osmoregulation. Thanks to osmoregulation, the person maintains normal blood pressure, fluids and salts are well eliminated, and the ratio and amount of nutrients in the body are regulated. It is chlorine that scientists call an active osmotic macrocell because it is a constant participant in all these processes.

Chlorine is an element that is needed for good digestion. It helps to excrete gastric juice, thanks to chlorine, a good appetite is formed. If the acidity of the gastric juice in a person is increased, which leads to heartburn, the chloride in the body needs more, because its consumption rises. If a person suffers from diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, chlorine needs more, because the need for it increases.

Another useful role of chlorine is to help a person to keep water in tissues, that is, not to allow the body to dehydrate, lose moisture. Chlorine is also able to help remove toxins from tissues, helps the blood stay healthy, providing a good state of blood cells - red blood cells.

Sources of chlorine

Almost the entire daily norm - namely 90% chlorine - comes into the human body when it salt foods, that is, with salt. In products of chlorine it is small enough, much only in bread or cheese. Most of all chlorine enters the human body with chlorinated water. If a person drinks water from a tap, then chlorine can be even an overabundance. Interesting fact: although people are divided into vegetarians and meat eaters, neither those nor others have a shortage or an excess of chlorine due to the choice of foods. Even if people do not salt food or salt it a little, modern technologies presume higher doses of chlorides in the composition of the products themselves. 

The chlorine content of various products (mg / 100 g)

name	chlorine content
Rye bread	1025
Cheese	880
Bread white	621
Butter	330
Kidney Buds	184
Fish pollack	165
Cape fish	165
Fish hake	165
Fatty cottage cheese	152
White mushrooms	151
Cow's milk, 3.2%	110
Kefir, 3,2%	110
Egg	106
Milk is lean	106
Oatmeal	69
Beet	58
Rice	54
Potatoes	38
Carrot	36
Peas	35
Cabbage	24
Pears	eleven
Apples	5

 How much chlorine do we need per day?

For healthy people, 4000-6000 milligrams of chlorine per day is sufficient. But you need to consider that this includes chlorine, which is contained in ready-made food, in water, and in salt, which we throw into dishes. The maximum dose of chlorine - 7000 milligrams - still does not cause harm to humans, but it is impossible to consume such doses at all times - there will be an excess of chlorine. If a person is hot, he is actively engaged in sports and sweats (and chlorine is excreted with the products of decay), chlorine needs more. As with diseases of the digestive tract.

The need for chlorine for children in milligrams is from 300 mg at the age of up to 3 months to 2300 mg at the age of 18. In more detail, the children's doses of chlorides can be considered in the table.

The need for chlorides, mg per day

floor	0-3 months	4-6 months	7-12 months	1-2 years	2-3 years
boys	300	450	550	800	800
girls	300	450	550	800	800

Pupils and Preschoolers

Preschoolers	Junior school	Secondary school	Teenager
3-7 years	7-11 years old	11-14 years old	14-18 years old
1100	1700	1900	2300

What threatens a person with a lack of chlorine?

If chlorine in the body is not enough, violated its acid-base balance, carbohydrate metabolism. A person can lose hair and crumble his teeth, the skin ages and is sharply covered with wrinkles. Dehydration may occur, when it dries up in the mouth, a person can vomit, tear, disrupted the process of urination. Kidneys and the gastrointestinal tract can no longer function normally, this breaks the work of other organs. The lack of chlorides in the body can lead to loss of strength, balance and appetite. Such people begin to complain about drowsiness, memory failures, inability to concentrate.

As it turned out, as a result of experiments conducted by scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology in 2012, chlorides are necessary for the normal activity of nerve cells. Experiments on mice have shown that the lack of chlorides in the body can lead to overexcitation of nerve cells and aggravation of such dangerous diseases as epilepsy.

The reason for the lack of chlorine in the body can be low-salt or salt-free diets, especially long, more than a week. The state of health in the absence of chlorine worsens even more if a person previously suffered from hypertension or poor kidney function.

A person is able to reduce the concentration of chlorine in the body when he takes medications without a doctor's supervision. These can be laxatives leading to dehydration, diuretics (diuretics), corticosteroids (steroid hormones that produce the adrenal cortex). If the chlorine in the body is too small and its quantity is dramatically lost, a person can fall into a coma and even die.

What threatens an excess of chlorine in the human body?

Dr. Price from Saginoh clinic writes that chlorine is the main killer of our days, which prevents one disease, but immediately causes another. It relates the chlorination of water to the general deterioration of human health. "After the chlorination of water began in 1904, a modern epidemic of heart disease, cancer and dementia began," says Dr. Price. Is it so?

On the one hand, untreated water causes - how much would you think - up to 80% of all diseases in the world. If we drink unrefined water, the aging process comes in third faster than if we were drinking purified water. That's how important it is to properly perform just one point of our diet - to drink normal water. And it is usually cleaned with chlorine. Is it correct?

Scientists in Finland and the United States have proven by research that liver cancer and kidney tumors in 2% of cases is due to excessively chlorinated drinking water. This is not such a big percentage compared to the diseases of the immune system - because of the high chlorine content, our immune system suffers in 80% of cases, and with constant drinking of chlorinated water all internal organs suffer.

For example, with increased doses of chlorides, obtained from drinking water, a person more often begins to suffer from bronchitis and pneumonia - first of all, respiratory organs suffer. But the water continues to chlorinate, although it has long been proven that chlorine today does not destroy all harmful microorganisms - most of them remain alive-healthy, continuing to poison our body with toxins. These toxins, interacting with chlorine, can cause disturbances at the genetic level.

On our body can affect not only aqueous solutions, but also couples of chlorine. They are more dangerous. It is very good that the tendency of chlorination of clothes and beds, which used to be used in everyday life, has stopped today. The chlorine vapor that a person inhales at a high concentration can cause a burn of the esophagus and throat mucosa, disrupt the respiratory rate, although such situations are rare. In the risk groups - people working in hazardous industries, in the chemical industry, in the textile industry, as well as in working with cellulose and with pharmaceuticals. Chronic diseases of the respiratory and digestive organs among such people are not uncommon.

Symptoms of an excess of chlorine

• Chest Pain
• A thin, dry cough
• Irritation of the mucous membrane of the throat
• Dry mouth
• Diarrhea
• Lachrymation
• Cutting and dry eyes
• Headaches (often severe)
• Heartburn
• Nausea
• Violation of gas formation
• Gravity in the stomach
• Frequent colds with high fever
• Swelling of the lungs

Sources of an excess of chlorine can be not only a large dose of salt or chlorinated water that you drink, but also the usual bathing in the shower. If you often take a hot shower with an excess of chorus, then a person gets through the skin a much higher dose of chlorine than with drinking chlorinated water. And the amount of toxins that get into the blood with such a bath increases 10-20 times.

Water can be cleaned of chlorine in several ways. First of all, throw in it activated charcoal for 15-30 minutes. Or as a last resort, boil and stand water within a day - but this way is less effective, besides, when boiling in water all useful substances, first of all, mineral salts are destroyed.

Chlorine in the body must be, only its dose must be controlled, so that your health always remains on top.