How much of saliva is water?!
Question: How much percent of saliva from an average person's mouth is water? Or is saliva not water at all? Would it be possible to live on saliva a little longer drinking than no liquid at all? What does saliva actually in your mouth for? How is it formed? Thanks for helping if you can. If you can't answer all my questions, try answering a few you can answer.
Answers: How much percent of saliva from an average person's mouth is water? Or is saliva not water at all? Would it be possible to live on saliva a little longer drinking than no liquid at all? What does saliva actually in your mouth for? How is it formed? Thanks for helping if you can. If you can't answer all my questions, try answering a few you can answer.
You're talking about roughly 98% water. The saliva from the parotid gland is more watery than that from the sub mandiular and sub lingual glands.
It's plausible that if you could stomach drinking somebody elses saliva you could live off it.
The role of saliva is to protect the teeth and to form a bolus (ball of moist food that is easy to chew/swallow).
It protects the teeth by being super saturated with calcium, by raising the pH of the mouth back to a neutral level after eating and by breaking down the substrates bacteria feed on left after eating (amylase).
It is also full of IGA (immunoglobulin A) which helps to kill pathogenic bacteria that would give you a stomach upset.
It's formed by the 3 glands I mentioned (they are in pairs with one of each on each side of the mouth) and by minor glands in the cheecks and lips. When you eat (or think about it) the parasympathetic nervous system stimulates these glands to produce saliva by secreting water filled with a cocktail of ions and enzymes into their particular duct and out into the mouth.
Hopes that helps.