system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why do our bodies seemingly waste water through urination when water is essential for life? Is there not a better way to excrete urea than wasting something crucial to our survival?
gpt
Yes, water is essential for life and yes, too much water can kill you. 

That being said, the kidneys are incredibly efficient at saving water and they respond to several feedback systems in your body to help regulate this. 

Nitrogenous waste can be excreted as urea or uric acid. Urea is water soluble while uric acid is not. Birds and other animals that lay eggs excrete nitrogen waste products as uric acid since this is not water soluble and takes less space (in an egg, the developing embryo is going to need to dispose of wastes and has limited space and water to do so). The trade off is that converting urea to uric acid is more metabolically expensive.

In humans uric acid can build up in the disease process of gout. We run into problems with uric acid forming crystals in our bodies due to the low solubility. These crystals can deposit in joints or other tissues leading to pain and deformity.