What do you think has happened to Elise's ECF volume and osmolarity over the past 3 days? Will this lead to a change in the volume of water in the cytosol of her cells? Explain.

Video transcript

Hey, everyone. Let's take a look at this question together. Amelia was suffering from prolonged vomiting because of which the cells lining the gastrointestinal tract started to cremate. What effect will this typically have on the extracellular fluid? Is it? Answer choice. A decreased volume and decreased osmolarity. Answer choice B increased volume and increased osmolarity. Answer choice C decreased volume and increased osmolarity or answer choice D increased volume and decreased osmolarity. Let's work this problem out together to try to figure out which of the following answer choices explains the effect that the prolonged vomiting will have on the extracellular fluid. So, in order to solve this question, we have to understand what would occur from prolonged vomiting and its effect on the extracellular fluid. And we can recall that vomiting typically leads to a loss of fluids and electrolytes. And since we have a loss of fluids and electrolytes from that prolonged vomiting, there is a decrease in the extracellular fluid volume. And we know that those lost fluids and electrolytes have a lower osmolarity when compared to the rest of the extracellular fluid, which tells us that the loss of those fluids and electrolytes from the extracellular fluid, which results in a decrease in extracellular fluid volume decreases the overall volume. However, osmolarity increases slightly as the solute concentration increases since the volume of fluid decreases, while the solute amount stays the same, resulting in the solute concentration in increasing since the number of solutes stay the same but the amount of fluid decreases. So we know that we have a decrease in volume due to that loss of fluids and electrolytes. And we have increased osmolarity since osmolarity increases as the salute concentration increases. Which means that answer choice C is the correct answer as it has the correct pair of decreased volume and increased osmolarity and all other answer choices are incorrect. I hope you found this video to be helpful. Thank you and goodbye.