To explain: How does a cholera patient produces 12 liters of excess watery feces despite ingesting only 500 grams of solid food and 1.5 liters of water in a day.
Introduction: Cholera is an infectious disease caused by intake of food or water contaminated by a bacterium called Vibrio cholera. In cholera patients suffer severe watery diarrhea, dehydration, death if untreated.
Explanation of Solution
A cholera patient suffers from severe diarrhea and can discharge up to 12 liter of watery feces in a day, in spite of ingesting much less amount of food and water.
The reason for this is that the fluid that is discharged from the body in cholera and other diarrheal diseases is not just contributed from unabsorbed ingested foods and fluids. The large volumes of watery feces is due to body fluid that exits from interstitial fluid and cellular plasma compartments into the intestinal tract across the intestinal wall due to dehydration. This contributes a large quantity of fluid that is lost as watery feces, and such high loss of fluid can be fatal if untreated. Therefore, patients of diarrheal diseases must be given large amounts of fluids either as oral or intravenous intake to help them survive.
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