Isotonic Hypertonic Hypotonic (EASY!)

Here is the easiest way to remember what isotonic, hypertonic, and hypotonic means for nursing school. Seriously, you don't want to miss this. All right, so your body always wants to stay in balance, right? So if you don't get enough sleep or don't eat enough food, you get a little cranky, right? You're out of balance. Well, the same thing goes for all of the cells in your body. They want to be in balance. Balance. And there are two key factors at play here. Water or fluid and solutes. So water obviously is water. And solutes means all of those little particles floating around in the blood, like sodium, glucose, and potassium. So let's keep these two things in mind as we go through this. So your body cells need a proper balance of solutes and water. If there's too much of one and not enough of the other, it's out of balance and the cells get very unhappy. So the first fluid that we're going to talk about is isotonic solutions. So isotonic solutions means that it's in balance. Fluid and solutes aren't shifting any which way inside or outside of the cells. When you think isotonic, I want you to think, I so want to stay here in balance. So isotonic means ISO want to stay here. There's a proper balance of water and solutes. There's nothing shifting any which way. So when you give a solution that's isotonic, that fluid is going to stay. Stay where you put it. So remember, I so want to stay here. It doesn't cause fluid to shift inside or outside of the cells. It keeps the cells in balance. Now let's talk about hypotonic. When you think of hypotonic, I want you to think about little hippos. So from now on, I'm going to call it hypotonic. I'm actually going to call it hippotonic. Because I want you to think of hypotonic cells as cute little hippos because they are big and round and bulky. They have a lot of flu. Because here's what's happening in a hippotonic solution. There is a lot more water inside that solution compared to the solutes. So it's really, really diluted. And when a diluted solution encounters the cell, all of that extra water wants to move into the cell to restore balance. So cells want there to be a proper balance of water and solutes. So when you add a lot of water or a diluted solution, like a hippotonic solution, that Water is going to cell and make them look big, big, big and chunky like a hippo. So when you think hypotonic solution, think hypotonic. Now let's talk about hypertonic solutions. So hypertonic makes the cells look like super hyper because they burned off all that energy and now it's really itty itty itty bitty skinny. It shrinks. It was super hyper. It danced around everywhere and now it's lost all of that fluid and all of that weight and it a skinny little cell. So hypertonic solutions are filled with solutes. They have so many solutes compared to the water inside of it. When that super concentrated solution comes in contact with that cell, the cell says oh man, here, have some water. And gives all of its water away. It goes and dances around and loses all of its water. Or at least that's how I like to think about it, as cells dancing around everywhere. So when you think of hypertonic, think hyper as in the cell was super and it danced around everywhere and lost all of its water weight. It gave it all of its water away. So if this was a super helpful explanation for you and do you want more videos like this one? Write love in the comments below and subscribe to this channel so you don't miss out on any other nursing school tips or tricks that we've got coming up for you now. If you need more help with learning fluid and electrolytes in nursing school, you will definitely want to jump into the nursing SOS membership community where of course we have a whole fluid and electrolytes course to help you learn all about these things for nursing school. Now click on the next video we've got for you to help you rock nursing school and become the nurse that God created only you to be. I will see you over there.