What does chloride do in your body?

Chloride is a negatively charged ion in your blood, where it represents 70 percent of your body's total negative ion content. As the primary negatively charged ion in your body, chloride serves as one of the main electrolytes. Along with potassium and sodium, chloride helps conduct electrical impulses when dissolved in bodily fluids. Potassium and sodium become positive ions as they lose an electron when dissolved, and chloride becomes a negative ion as it gains an electron when dissolved. A positive ion is always accompanied by a negative ion. That's why there's a close relationship between sodium, potassium, and chloride. Electrolytes are distributed throughout all your body fluids including your blood, lymph, and the fluid inside and outside cells. The negative charge of chloride balances against the positive charges of sodium and potassium ions in order to maintain the balance of particles in your blood.

In addition to its functions as an electrolyte, chloride combines with hydrogen in your stomach to make hydrochloric acid, a powerful gastric fluid responsible for breaking down proteins, absorbing other metallic minerals, and activating intrinsic factor, which, in turn, absorbs vitamin B12. Chloride is specially transported into your stomach, in exchange for another negatively charged electrolyte, bicarbonate, in order to maintain electrical neutrality across the stomach membrane. After your stomach uses chloride for hydrochloric acid, some of it is reabsorbed by your intestine back into your bloodstream, where it is required to maintain the fluid volume.

Your red blood cells and your blood plasma constantly exchange chloride and bicarbonate to regulate pH balance and transport carbon dioxide, a waste product of respiration, from your body. Along with sodium and potassium, chloride works in your nervous system to help transport electrical impulses throughout your body, as negatively charged chloride moving into your cells causes nervous electrical potential.