How do Humans maintain osmotic balance?

Answer 1

Just googled this myself to for a paper i'm doing.

Humans obviously have a fair bit of sodium in their bodies, if inbalanced it can create a high level of sodium in the body; this can't then just enter the bells and organs so it must be filtered out.

This is done through the kidneys mostly as they filter it through several times using a series of tubes that then filter out as much water back into the system as possible. The salt then enters the bladder along with the urine and is excreted this way.

Other ways that we lose salt is through sweat, if we are sweating, we are losing water and therefore need to lose more salt. This is why sweat often tastes salty.

Too much salt in the body can cause issues such as high blood pressure and lead to a higher risk of CHD's.

In summary we maintain an osmotic homeostasis through sweating out salt, urinating and filtering in the kidneys.

Answer 2

Osmotic balance is achieved by the moving of water from a high concentrated area to a low concentrated area. This happens automatically because of the need to reach equilibrium, which occurs when both sides are equally balanced. Osmotic diffusion will continue to occur until this state is reached.