heat stress relief.

Lets say you have a heat injury such as exhaustion, but you are drinking plenty of water. You vomit, but its mostly clear water as your stomach is full. How can you get the body to absorb the water faster to prevent the injury?

or are you just S.O.L.?

Also while im at it, How long would you say it takes the average person to climatize to an area? If your only there 1-2 weeks, can you acclimitaze? If not again, are you just S.O.L.?

The medics will give a more technical answer but an IV is the best way to rehydrate.

The fitter you are the easier it is to aclimatise, I forget the timeline now but its quite short IIRC.
 
Lets say you have a heat injury such as exhaustion, but you are drinking plenty of water. You vomit, but its mostly clear water as your stomach is full. How can you get the body to absorb the water faster to prevent the injury?

or are you just S.O.L.?

Also while im at it, How long would you say it takes the average person to climatize to an area? If your only there 1-2 weeks, can you acclimitaze? If not again, are you just S.O.L.?


Your first sentence doesn't make much sense. If you are drinking plenty of water then you probably don't have an heat injury. That's what an heat injury is - the heat has caused an inbalance/shortage in your fluids, basically.

However if you mean to say, you have a heat injury and you're drinking to replace and you vomit, then IV is the way to go for replacement. Like Pardus says, IV is the quickest way to replace, period.

LL
 
One week after we hit the ground in Saudi, our CI section received a new soldier to their section, right out of Huachucha.

One week after that, he was medevaced out of our camp and country, to Germany. He suffered complete kidney failure and was on dialysis last we heard. Can't even remember his name.

What I do remember is that he ignored everybody and failed to drink the requisite amount of water necessary to survive in the desert, especially in those first few days that your body is getting acclimated. It got to the point that his NCOs started to threaten him with UCMJ action.

In the end, it didn't matter. Dumbass got a one way ticket home and a lifetime of either being hooked to a machine or a kidney transplant. Either way, he was fucked.

Drink water, people!
 
One week after that, he was medevaced out of our camp and country, to Germany. He suffered complete kidney failure and was on dialysis last we heard. Can't even remember his name.


....
 

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With acclimatization - hardening up is best done by smartening up.
If you have the time - 1 week of normal activity with lots of water/elctrolyte replenishment will get you ready for dropping your fluid intake slowly. Each person is different - if you sweat a lot - you need to drink a lot. If you don't pee enough, you aren't getting enough fluids to flush the junk out of your system. If you are peeing dark yellow or brown from lack of fluids - you have a problem.
 
There are plenty of witch doctors here, so I'll defer from passing my deep, deep knowlege of drinking, and therefore, being dehydrated at key times.

Oh yeah, having said that, plan ahead.
 
There are plenty of witch doctors here, so I'll defer from passing my deep, deep knowlege of drinking, and therefore, being dehydrated at key times.

Oh yeah, having said that, plan ahead.

I gotsta go with SGM here.

I drank 1 canteen of water per 12 mile ruckmarch with no problems. I hate water but always had plenty.

Your metabolism will dictate when you need to drink water or whatever you choose to drink and nothing else. Experience with the green tick on your back will let you know how much and when.

:2c:}:-)
 
PO and IV hydration actually have equal efficiacy. In fact, there is good military data that using the gut is the best physiologic way to stay hydrated. NG tubes as a method of hydration are sometimes used to this effect.

This being said, if you are vomiting, or cannot tolerate oral fluids for some reason, or are so dehydrated that you aren't going to chug 3L of fluids, then an IV is the way to go.

Doc :cool:

P.S. I agree prevention is the key -- plan ahead, so you won't be left behind!
 
I question for those in the know...

I read that sea water diluted with the same amount of fresh water (50/50) is safe to drink.

Thoughts?
 
sorry about the delay. I was just in FL for 2 weeks and was called a heat exhaustion casualty. I was drinking from my camelbak all morning. We ran the obstacle course and I pushed myself for a good time which i got. We stopped and ate lunch before moving to the LRC course. I had finished at least 3/4, probably more of my camelbak, I drank 2 20 ounce gatorades by then and keep going downhill. I sat down and didn't participate in the course. I was feeling like shit, headache, weird kinda disoriented effect on my eyes. Just miserable. I was coherent and I was sweating. I finally got sick and vomited. The first was my spaghetti MRE, the 2nd 3rd and 4th or however many I did. Was clear so I assume the camelbaks worth of water I had been drinking for the last couple hours. Seems like my body just wasnt processing the water into my system quick enough which caused me to go down and eventually vomit the water i had in my stomach back out.

I am no doctor but that is my interpretation of it. I was told my veins were still large and visable, not retracted. I had moist cool skin when I got to the TMC. I took 2 bags of fluids and then they were ready to release me. After standing for abotu 10 minutes I got sick and vomited bile. I stayed the night for observation, returned to my unit the next day and was fine from that point on.

I am now labeled a heat casualty.

Hope that clears my statement up.
 
We stopped and ate lunch before moving to the LRC course. I had finished at least 3/4, probably more of my camelbak, I drank 2 20 ounce gatorades by then and keep going downhill. I sat down and didn't participate in the course. I was feeling like shit, headache, weird kinda disoriented effect on my eyes. Just miserable.

Considering of course that none of us actually saw you and could eval your symtpoms in person (plus I will defer to our resident "doc with a glock") I was wondering if there could also be a component of gut flu or food poisioning to this scenario. Just the 2 cents of a nurse who's triaged many gut bugs over the years
 
1/2 ocean water 1/2 fresh water... eeew. The salinity of the ocean is much higher than that of gatorade, you would need to dilute it much more fresh water than that. And if you have that much fresh water why are you drinking ocean water anyway? LOL.

I agree with Hoosier Annie... sounds like a GI bug -- not heat illness.

Doc :cool:
 
1/2 ocean water 1/2 fresh water... eeew. The salinity of the ocean is much higher than that of gatorade, you would need to dilute it much more fresh water than that. And if you have that much fresh water why are you drinking ocean water anyway? LOL.

Doc

We need a shaking head smilie.

Eeew is hardly the scientific answer I was looking for. Gatorade? :uhh: focus Doc lol

Lets try this again...I had read that if needed i.e. survival situation etc... that it was OK/safe to drink sea water if it is diluted 50%

I trust that answers your last question.
 
The salinity of salt water is too high to be safe for human consumption. It would need to be diluted with such a large quantity of fresh water, that it would make more sense to just drink the fresh water. You would need to dilute each part sea water with 70 parts fresh water to make it drinkable. Therefore to make 500 mL of sea water drinkable (i.e. the amount in a poland spring bottle), you would need to dilute it with 35 liters of fresh water.

Doc :cool:

From http://www.onr.navy.mil/Focus/ocean/water/salinity1.htm :

"Different bodies of water have different amounts of salt mixed in, or different salinities. Salinity is expressed by the amount of salt found in 1,000 grams of water. Therefore, if we have 1 gram of salt and 1,000 grams of water, the salinity is 1 part per thousand, or 1 ppt.

The average ocean salinity is 35 ppt. This number varies between about 32 and 37 ppt. Rainfall, evaporation, river runoff, and ice formation cause the variations. For example, the Black Sea is so diluted by river runoff, its average salinity is only 16 ppt.

Freshwater salinity is usually less than 0.5 ppt. Water between 0.5 ppt and 17 ppt is called brackish. Estuaries (where fresh river water meets salty ocean water) are examples of brackish waters.

Most marine creatures keep the salinity inside their bodies at about the same concentration as the water outside their bodies because water likes a balance. If an animal that usually lives in salt water were placed in fresh water, the fresh water would flow into the animal through its skin. If a fresh water animal found itself in the salty ocean, the water inside of it would rush out. The process by which water flows through a semi-permeable membrane (a material that lets only some things pass through it) such as the animal's skin from an area of high concentration (lots of water, little salt) to an area of low concentration (little water, lots of salt) is called osmosis.

This is also why humans (and nearly all mammals) cannot drink salt water. When you take in those extra salts, your body will need to expel them as quickly as possible. Your kidneys will try to flush the salts out of your body in urine, and in the process pump out more water than you are taking in. Soon you'll be dehydrated and your cells and organs will not be able to function properly."
 
Haha that WAS a stream of consciousness post...

In my previous posts I noted that gatorade needs to be diluted 50% to be a practical rehydration solution. This is more due to the sugar content than the salinity. That is where gatorade came from in my former post...

Doc :cool:
 
With acclimatization - hardening up is best done by smartening up.

I wish I had saved the article, I think it was in Outside magazine, with a table that showed exactly how much water the human body required for survival in the desert, factoring in such things as temperature, shade, how many miles walked (per night), body weight, etc.

The one thing that was stressed, though, was that there was no such thing as rationing your water, lowering your intake to make it last. You either had enough to survive or you didn't, it was that simple. It would take very little time to find yourself royally fucked if you found yourself short of the wet stuff.

So in a movie like Lawrence of Arabia, where Peter O'Toole tells his bedouin guide that he'll drink when the guide does, he's taken the first step toward dehydration and his (quick) eventual death. Made for a good movie moment, but it was totally unrealistic.

Water is life.
 
Thank you Doc for the scientific answer, that's what I was after even If I don't nessasarily accept what you wrote :D

I'm talking particulary about a survival situation not day to day living to make my intent clear.

This is old I know but this is what I was getting at...


THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF Clinical Nutrition
JULY 1970
Editorial
VOLUME 23 NUMBER 7

Mariposa, Salt, and Thirsting

This leaves the third alternative of
mixing small amounts of sea water with an
insufficient amount of fresh water. Although
a steady state cannot be obtained
because the salt of sea water cannot be
excreted without obligating extra water,
survival may be extended and the ability
to function retained.
There is ample
record of man drinking sea water in certain
locales. In some parts of the ocean,
salinity is lower than in others, especially
at the mouths of the large rivers and in
relatively isolated portions fed by fresh
water (e.g., the Black Sea). Reduction of
salinity b only 20% appears to make sea
water potable at least in small amounts.

It is curious that, despite a vast amount
of effort and study of water requirements
and the renal concentrating mechanism,
there is no clear unanimity of opinion as
to how much, if any, mariposa is physiologically
sound.

MILTON E. RUBINI, M.D.
Editor-in-Chief

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/23/7/861.pdf
 
Pardus,

I guess if you are going to die and have no other choice, you do what you can do. It is an interesting concept that there may be a small amount of sea water that one could drink and be able to survive without causing kidney failure. But this theory is wildly untested, and only a few researchers have done limited investigations into it.

Interestingly there is a French doctor who was adrift at sea for 65 days -- Alain Bombard -- to prove that one could survive on sea water. However, he also drank rainwater and ingested water from fish.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/obituaries/24bombard.html

http://www.caske2000.org/survival/survivesea.htm

I'm not convinced that drinking sea water is a good idea in any circumstance, but there is no really good data either way, so hey maybe you are right you do what you can in a survival circumstance.

If it were me however, I would exhaust my freshwater supply first before I took to drinking sea water. I would also try to collect rainwater, or catch and eat fish. I would leave sea water as my last resort.

That being said... let's just hope neither of us is ever shipwrecked!

Doc :cool:
 
That being said, I don't want to sound...disgusting, but would your own urine be a more viable source of hydration than sea water?

I understand that there are toxins, but the question would be, what is the better alternative?
 
That being said, I don't want to sound...disgusting, but would your own urine be a more viable source of hydration than sea water?

I understand that there are toxins, but the question would be, what is the better alternative?

The question is kind of moot because if you are thirsty/dehydrated you aint going to be pissing enough volume to do much good any way.

Though there is a famous SAS guy who survived on his urine during WWII in the North African desert.

I'll see If I can dig that up.
 
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