How does your body know when you're full of water?

But a glass of water after the previous four is not.

These different reactions occur thanks to our brain, which ensures that we do not drink too much or too little water. Each of these two scenarios would be dangerous to our bodies.

But how does your brain know when to start or when to stop drinking water?

A new study of mice suggests that a mysterious element in your intestines can play a role in predicting how much water it takes to satisfy your body.

Then you instantly alert your brain, which in response decides how thirsty you are.

In 2016, a group of researchers at the University of California, San Franciso (UCSF), found that when mice drink fluids, mouth and throat send signals to the brain, which then shuts off brain cells that detect thirst.

These <x0-cells of thirst” are found in the region called hypotalasmus, which regulates thirst, blood pressure and other body processes.

The mouth and throat start sending signals to the brain right after we have a drink. Although it usually takes 10 minutes to one hour to get water into the water flow and to circulate through the thirst cells across the body. So the brain needs to find a balance, because if it sends these signals at very high speed, then you will not drink enough water.

How the brain can do that is a question that researchers seek to answer.

In a new study, the team of researchers has put optic fiber and lens near the hypothalamus of the mouse brain, which allowed them to look and measure when those neurons turn on and off.

When they gave the mouse salt water, scientists found that the thirst neurons stopped sending signals almost immediately. But, in about a minute, these neurons flared up again.

Finally, researchers implied that if these findings can be proven in humans, then we can have great benefits.

For example, researchers confirmed that our ability to regulate thirst decreases with age.

Thus, older people are unable to hydrate regularly, causing medical problems, especially during periods of intense heat.

It is also known that a large number of marathon runners tend to overuse in a race. The reason for this is not clear, but it may be related to the weakening of the feeling we talked about earlier, that sense of intestines that send receptors to the brain.

Although mice and humans clearly distinguish in the structure of their brain, the hypothalamus remains the same in both scientists.

The team also found that the thirst signals travel along the main route of the signal between the brain and the intestines, or the vagus nerve. When researchers cut this nerve in a later experiment, the thirst neurons did not return when the rats started drinking.

Although they don't know for sure, the team thinks the signals come specifically from the small intestine, which is the place that is more closely related to the vagus nerve, and is also at the exact time in the digestive process to activate those nerve appetites a minute or more after drinking water.

For their next project, the team hopes to find the origin of the signal.