Time to pass through

[Ember]

How long does it take liquid to pass through the body?

[MargeB]

Are you talking the pizz?

[fly258]

For me,  water takes about 3 hrs during the day but the fifth pint of beer of the evening takes about 3 mins.

[Ember]

Flu 258 thank you for your input,(or should I say output) I did have a serious reason for asking this question and your experience is often mine.   Cheers

[silly moo]

Liquids don't actually pass through the body in the same way as solids.
The water is absorbed into the bloood stream from the digestive tract, which in turn passes through the kidneys. Kidneys basically filter the blood and water is removed and then passes out through the urethra.
Not sure how long this takes in total - but from kidneys to bladder takes minutes only.

[newtron]

I had a homework problem like this once.  The question was : "What is the residence time of water in the human body?"  In other words, what is the average amount of time that a each omolecule of water spends in the body?  You can calculate the residence time with the following equation:

residence time= stock/flux

So assuming steady state (input equals output) and that the average adult contains approximately 37 litres of water and drinks approximately 2.5 litres a day. the residence time of water in the human body is  about 14.8 days.

I got the above numbers from a random website, so I don't know how accurate they are.  Also, this solution assumes a well mixed system.

[newtron]

And by silly moo's description of how water is processed in the body, it appears that it is a well mixed system. 

[lizzierose]

so when i go for a pee after I've drunk loads of tea and its hotter than usual thats proabably just me being silly and psycologically weak. I kinda new already but it always amused me in a small way