You're probably wondering "why are you spitting out your water in this moment?"
and I'm definitely going to share that with you in this video and I'm going to
talk to you about how what's in that water is actually really important
as to how our body regulates water and then at the end of this video I'm going
to show you how you can do this with your kids to teach them all about
osmoreceptors. Stay tuned.
Welcome back my name is Tammy and this is NurseMinder
and on this channel we do everything nursing so if you're new here
consider subscribing below so that you get the next video when it's released.
Hey guys we're back and we're talking about
Osmoreceptors today. This is a third in the series talking about those parts of
the body that are helping to regulate our blood pressure. Now in a previous
video we talked about the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, one
of my favorites because it's so cool and before that we talked about
baroreceptors, those things that are measuring pressure. Well we have another
system that's actually measuring concentration and it's measuring salt.
We're going to do a little experiment later. What we're going to cover in this video is
where are these osmoreceptors located, what is their function, and how do they
communicate within the body to help us regulate blood pressure, so let's get
into that next. Okay so as I mentioned osmoreceptors are measuring salt
concentrations so you would think one place that we can definitively tell what
the salt concentration is is our tongue but that's not in fact where they're
located they're located in the brain so let me just draw a quick little picture
here. What we have here is a picture of the brain and the brain is actually
measuring the concentration of the solute we call it, the concentration of
fluids as it runs by. Consider it like the quality control reassurance dudes. Wow
I got lucky on that one I had no idea which glass I picked, that was the good
water. thank goodness. That would have been a really
funny bit and we're going to get into that a little bit but let's come back
here quickly first. So as the water or the serum that's the fluid in your blood
vessels travels past the hypothalamus, so there's my blood vessel and inside we
have all these particles called solutes when it travels past the hypothalamus
there are these things called osmoreceptors as I mentioned, they are the
quality control experts of the fluid in your blood vessels, and if it's too salty
the osmoreceptors will shrink and that will send a signal to the brain to the
hypothalamus and the hypothalamus will then set two things into action: one is
it will communicate to the posterior pituitary it has like a superhighway
it will send a message to the posterior pituitary and that will then release
antidiuretic hormone, also known as vasopressin. This will go straight to the
kidneys and it's going to save water; it's not going to, it's not going to
excrete as much water it's going to actually retain more water than normal
to help decrease the amount of salt going past those osmoreceptors. It's
not happy. It wants to dilute that fluid. The second thing is going to do is it's
going to initiate our thirst, our first response. That is like our emergency
911 get more water stat because that osmoreceptor is like Danger
Danger Danger and when the osmoreceptor is recognizing that it's too
salty it knows that the cells in the brain, the neurons, are also shrinking and
then they can't function effectively and so that is really why thirst is one of
our danger 911 receptors in the body. When you're
thirsty that is your 911 system alarming. Hello
this is 911 is your emergency? I need water
stat it's too salty in here! All right stay where you are, have dispatched ADH and
we will initiate the thirsty response. Now let's demo that with my glasses of
water and I'm going to show you how you can do this experiment with your kids at
home to teach them how osmoreceptors are working in the body, this should be
fun. Today we're talking about osmoeceptors
maybe you've heard of them maybe you haven't it doesn't matter if you know
about them what matters is your gonna know about them at the end of this video
and I encourage you to do this experiment at home as well and bring the
kids in on it teach them a little bit about their body and how amazing it is. I
know you're wondering what is this experiment. Well our osmoreceptors
will sense the salt concentration, yes that's right the salt concentration, and
I'm going to be drinking both these glasses of water to demonstrate how the
osmoreceptors work but before I do that ... Alright so if you're wondering how to
set this experiment up for your kiddies grab two little glasses put some water
in them and one glass is gonna remain untouched and the other glass go ahead
and pour a bunch of salt in there give that a good mix. So you can see how
concentrated this fluid is and this is really what the osmoreceptors are
looking for how concentrated, how much solute we call it, is inside that fluid
and if there's too much it's gonna make us want to drink water. That's our thirst
mechanism and then the second thing it does is it goes to the kidneys and says
don't get rid of that water we need it because we got way too much salt in the
system. This will settle down and you'll no longer be able to see the cloudy
color so they won't know which one they're drinking. Let's see. You can
already see it starting to settle, okay so that's starting to get clear now but
you can see there's a lot of solute on the bottom still so I'm going to give it
another stir
Mix that all up. Now eventually what that's going to look like is this one
here and sitting side by side it's pretty hard to tell that there's really
much difference. Just a wee bit left and you can see this one is trying to clear
up there's no more solute at the bottom of the glass it's all mixed in together
and in a few more minutes you won't even be able to tell which glass has all that
salt in. So they all look pretty similar it's hard to know that one is extremely
salty so this is a great setup, you now are ready to do your taste test. Glass
number one contents unknown but my tongue is going to be the osmoreceptor
in the hypothalamus and as this fluid goes past that
osmoreceptor it's like a quality control it's going to let me know if
this glass is suitable for consumption. Let's go. Alright I'm happy with that one
the osmoreceptors are not in any distress, they're not concerned with the
amount of water to salt in this particular sample. Sample number two as
this one goes past the osmoreceptor again we're pretending my tongue is the
osmoreceptor it will let me know whether this one is too low in salt, just
right, or too high in salt. Wish me luck. Oh my gosh that is so salty
my osmoreceptors like red-flagged danger!
I need to drink this good stuff to balance that out. WHOA. That is how your osmoreceptor
work in the brain. Okay so we've just finished exploring
what the osmoreceptors do, where they're located, and how they communicate, so
let's just do a real quick recap here. When we have high concentration of
sodium at the hypothalamus where our osmoreceptors are located
they will initiate two things: the thirst response as you saw in that demo and ADH
is going to be released from the posterior pituitary. ADH needs to go to
the kidneys where it's going to increase water re-absorption so we're not going
to pee out as much. Once that lowers our sodium concentration then this system
will stop. So that's the whole goal is to want to lower sodium concentration in
the fluid that's going past by hypothalamus. Well that was a fun little
experiment and I hope that really highlights just how important
osmoreceptors are and how they work for us to keep us hydrated. Now if you're
looking for some more videos I got some pretty cool ones popping up here on the
side. Don't forget to subscribe, join the nurse minder tribe and we'll see you in
the next video :)