What happens if you don't have enough chloride?

Answer 1

Deficiencies of chloride are rare. Low chloride (hypochloremia) may result from water overload and excessive loss of sodium, such as heavy sweating during endurance exercise, and in cases of prolonged vomiting and diarrhea. Less commonly, it occurs from wasting conditions, and in cases of burns over large parts of the body. However, chloride deficiency does occur, it may result in a life-threatening condition known as alkalosis, in which the blood becomes overly alkaline. Your body works hard to maintain a constant balance between alkalinity and acidity. Symptoms of alkalosis include muscle weakness, loss of appetite, irritability, dehydration, and lethargy. When infants are fed chloride-deficient formula, many experienced failure to thrive, anorexia, and weakness in their first year of life.

Answer 2

You can get too much chloride if you eat too much salt and potassium chloride; however, the adverse health effects of such diets are attributed to high sodium and potassium levels, two other electrolyte minerals to which chloride is often attached. Excess chloride is normally excreted in the urine, sweat, and bowels. In fact, excess urinary excretion of chloride occurs in high-salt diets. Chloride toxicity is rare in humans except in the case of impaired sodium chloride metabolism, for example, in congestive heart failure. Another situation in which increased blood levels of chloride are seen include diseases of improper waste elimination, which occurs in kidney diseases. Healthy people can tolerate large quantities of chloride, provided that they drink enough fresh water. Excessive intakes of chloride can occur in people with compromised health in addition to an unhealthy diet.