The oddly prophetic 2006 comedy film Idiocracy features an isotonic drink called Brawndo, whose marketing continuously refers to its electrolytes as a miraculous property. Brawndo is revealed in the film to be useless for agricultural irrigation, but yesterday perhaps a couple of Hackaday writers could have used a bottle or two. At the MCH hacker camp, the record heat of a Dutch summer under the influence of global warming caused us to become dehydrated, and thus necessitated a trip to the first aid post for some treatment. We’d done all the right things, staying in the shade, keeping as cool as we could, eating salty foods like crisps, and drinking plenty of liquids, so what had gone wrong?
Perhaps Club-Mate Should Have An Isotonic Version
The answer will probably be obvious to trained observers, we’d become deficient in those electrolytes. Our bodily stocks of sodium and potassium salts had become exhausted by sweat and all that extra water requiring trips to the toilet, so while we weren’t dehydrated in liquid terms we had exhausted some of the essentials to our cellular function.
The symptoms would have been easy to spot given the right training, but at a hacker camp it was too easy to attribute a headache and tiredness to a late night. For me the point at which it became obvious something was significantly wrong came when my thought processes started to slow down and my movement became a lot less easy. I’m a long-distance walker and cyclist, yet here I was walking like an octogenarian. If I’d know what to spot I might also have noticed that I had stopped sweating despite the heat. I found a friend (Thanks Gasman!), and together we made our way to the first aid post. MCH2022 first aiders were very efficient, and I was given a cup of oral rehydration salts which restored me to health in a matter of minutes.
This tale of personal woe is a cautionary one, but perhaps the real interest lies in what really happened. If we have any biochemists in the house no doubt they can expand in the comments, but sodium and potassium salts are essential to our nervous systems, and to our function at the cellular level.
Normally we have plenty at hand from our dietary intake to the extent that we excrete the surplus in our urine, but on our hacker camp field the problem was that we were losing salts through sweating in the heat faster than we could replenish them. The symptoms we were experiencing were the body frantically shutting down non-essential subsystems to keep going.
If Only Every Cure Was This Quick
So what was the miracle cure? Oral rehydration salts are a mixture of sodium and potassium salts plus glucose, which surprisingly doesn’t have a particularly salty taste. It’s a lesson in how quickly we take in water through our intestines, that their effect was so quick. I had enough sodium and potassium in my reserves to walk and think as normal, and I’d learned an important lesson. Eating a few crisps to get salt isn’t enough, on days like that I have to take electrolyte intake seriously, and be aware of the symptoms before they get that bad. Meanwhile I will be packing a few sachets of oral rehydration salts as part of my hacker camp kit, and I suggest you do the same.
Header: Simon Berry, (CC BY-SA 2.0).
Hyponatremia is relatively uncommon, even in those conditions and the crisps would have supplied more than enough. The problem was more likely hypokalemia, as muscular problems were present and crisps supply not a lot of potassium. Next time wash down the crisps with tomato juice. A good and tasty alternative for ORS is coconut water.
Way too much sodium, should have used half that and added some calcium citrate and magnesium for muscles function.
If that packet is for a liter, it’s pretty close to the formulation recommended by WHO.
(Same people who say that skittles are more healthy than milk or eggs)
I like my Berkey filter. I toss a dash of pink Himalayan mineral salt in the bottom every few fill-ups. Shilajit is also really nice. There is a collapse of competence in that field right now and it’s hard to talk about.
Berkey filters aren’t as good as social media influences would have us believe. Berkey filters actually likely add bad stuff to your water. They’re not legally allowed to be sold in California, and are not NSF certified, etc. Water filters are awesome, carbon based water filters are awesome, not just ones made out of Coated metal that isn’t stainless steel or titanium. It’s like drinking water out of a galvanized steel bucket.
Yes, I tryed myself a few times, trying to mimic Gatorade and other isotonics. The mix of both potassium and sodium end up with too much salty flavor.
I changed some of the table salt for potassium iodate and magnesium carbonate.
Have you run the numbers to make sure you aren’t getting too much iodine? Google points to 1.1 milligram per day as “the Food and Nutrition Board of the US Institute of Medicine set a tolerable upper intake level”). This is probably much less than the quantites you use as beverage flavoring.
(This limit works out to about a teaspoon per _decade_ of potassium iodate, but the Safety Data Sheet says Lethal Dose LDLo for acute toxicity is about 5 teaspoons in one dose for a normal-sized adult, so there is a large gap between ‘may be harmful’ and ‘fall over dead’.)
You make it sound like potassium and sodium are a good thing. For some it’s not. Somehow I creeped up three years ago, and I got an injection and a glass of chalky liquid. But I was on dialysis at the time.
And when I got dehydrated, it was a couple of days hooked to an IV.
Gatorade is out there, though I have no medical knowledge to know if it’s what’s needed.
For those trying to burn off calories (such as yours truly) I favor drinks like Propel[TM] for electrolyte replenishment without the sugar(calories).
But, it probably won’t work for you my Canadian neighbor.
Water’s also a good thing, but that doesn’t mean you want to drown in it.
Cheap ramen noodles in a pinch. Seen it in action multiple times.
Water washes out those electrolytes. So does beer. Thin, watery beer can be especially sinister in the heat because you can drink it constantly and it keeps your calories up. Let this be a warning.
Do this for a couple days and some people will even have a seizure. It’s not good. Formulated packets are the best, a bowl of crappy Ramen noodles does wonders, also in minutes. In the ER, it’s a whole procedure, and the timing and order of the fluids, electrolytes and sugars are of critical importance.
Not a good thing?
They’re necessary ingredients required for keeping a human body alive. One cannot live without them.
(in the proper amounts, of course)
If your diet includes enough (or just) vegetables you won’t get these kind of problems that easily as they are a good source of potassium. There are also table salts that are a combination of NaCL+KCl. eating meat with NaCl is really bad for electrolyte balance.
Herbivores can’t stop preaching. It’s what makes them such great company.
Did Kalle say they were a herbivore, what has their diet got to do with the statement they made? I don’t find it preachy, but I don’t find it completely accurate either. While they recommend eating “enough… vegetables”, there are a lot of people with deficiencies and a reduced ability to absorb these minerals and have to supplement them in their diet through other means. Anecdotally, I know someone who has a B12 deficiency and is not a vegetarian/vegan, but has a condition that reduces their ability to absorb B12. Personally I think some people are very quick to judge somebody who does not eat meat, whether they are “preaching” or not, there is a negative bias towards someone who offers a dietary comment when that person has a different diet.
Do you have a personal relationship with ‘Jesus’?
Yeah, pro life and pro truth is the way baby… with healing, peace, teaching, rebuking, coaching, correcting, following laws and doctrines, etc. as the thing to do for standardization of the human being naturally.
Anyways, I use distilled water for my tea and add with the tea bag sauce pot/pan some potassium bicarbonate and magnesium chloride. I then dilute 50% with spring water for other minerals, mainly calcium and iron I guess.
I tend to never use NaCl as salt only and typically use Lite Salt that’s iodinized and 50/50 KCl/NaCl if not KCl only. I figure since humans might of ate more plants generations back… not a bad idea to have more carbonates and of potassium intake.
Ideally, each person can have a genetics type test with confirmation of human nutritional requirements so we each know what our limiting nutrient issues can be. Sucks, isn’t main stream medicine due to quack jobs profiteering off ill I guess due to ill legal thinking attorneys… the other professionals degree’d, licensed and unique company entity… at least in the U.S. Not that all are malicious and progress for better nurturing isn’t happening.
It’s funny when saying “eat more vegetables” is a controversial take and “preachy”
With the current prices for ground beef, I’ve been eating more vegetables just out of my own thriftiness.
Ors drinks taste like crap. Milk works wonders, more widely available. Also have a jar of potassium chloride just a tiny bit of water so i dont have to taste it for long. If an ors tasted good, nobody would ever get dehydrated. Unfortunately they all taste horrible amd make me want to upchuck.
Speaking of octogenarians, hyponatremia is very common among the elderly and it’s estimated that up to half of people over 60 suffer from some level of sodium deficiency. Chronic low sodium levels cause cognitive impairment which resembles dementia.
The problem is that the dietary guidelines are too strict on sodium – so when people are put into care homes, they’re given food which basically lacks salt, and they become demented.
Also B vitamin deficiency causes dementia symptoms.
So, give them beer and sausages.
There was a Danish study that found the lowest mortality for people consuming between 2.6 – 4.9 g/day which is what most people already do, whereas the CDC guideline is less than 2.3 g/day and less than 1.5 g/day for people over 50.
It’s yet again one of those cases where researchers were observing people eating 8-12 grams of salt a day and dying of high blood pressure, so they concluded that less is better, therefore even less is even better. Linear-No-Threshold modeling makes for bad predictions.
“Hey Dude, don’t take it bad!”
(Apologies to the Beatles)
I wasn’t challenging your statement, just merely supplementing it.
B^)
So was I.
Problem with NaCl is that its effect varies from person to person, the amount that most would find salty but tolerable will have th BP shoot into the skies in a person sensitive to NaCl. When you are young, this is hardly an issue, but once past your 30´s it will bite you in the arse at some stage. Untreated, it leads to an early grave.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
Most people don’t have issues with sodium unless they develop particular health problems. It’s actually quite the opposite: as people age, their sodium retention tends to go down because of hormonal reasons, and because of common medications given to the elderly.
https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2000/0615/p3623.html
“Cross-sectional studies suggest that hyponatremia may be present in 15 to 18 percent of patients in chronic care facilities. A 12-month longitudinal study showed that more than 50 percent of nursing home residents had at least one episode of hyponatremia. Similarly, cross-sectional studies suggest a 1 percent prevalence of hypernatremia”
IFF you’re young and healthy, neither the sodium nor the potassium is a particular hazard, and a quick approximate dose will often do wonders and at worst might stress the kidneys a bit.
However, hyperkalemia is a nontrivial hazard for people with chronic kidney disease, diabetes, congestive heart failure, or is on potassium-disruptor meds such as certain blood pressure lowering drugs.
Depending on the situation, giving such people electrolyte boosters may make the problem worse. Someone arriving at the first aid point with heat exhaustion or dehydration symptoms might easily have more than one of these hazards (causality is complex, but these problems often correlate together). They may be young, and might not show any obvious sign of medical issues. Giving such a person potassium can possibly trigger an immediate heart attack, especially if kidney problems allowed them to become fluid dehydrated while retaining excessive potassium. It’s something that first aid personnel need to keep in mind during such events, and first-order analysis of symptoms is often misleading.
A friend recently ended up in serious distress from something similar; a change in doctors had resulted in increased potassium supplementation (the symptoms for insufficient and excess potassium are similar, and for some reason the doctor didn’t order a blood test). The result would have been fatal, but an eagle-eyed lab tech spotted fatal potassium levels while processing unrelated lab work, called him up and told him to avoid ALL potassium, drink copious water, and go to the ER.
Fortunately, the body doesn’t aggressively store potassium, so all of his potassium-related symptoms returned to normal within 24 hours. His blood potassium levels had been well above the usual lethality threshold.
If he had gone to a summer event and gone to the first aid station, his symptoms would have closely matched what they would expect from heat exhaustion, and they would likely have given him electrolyte supplements. In that case, he would have almost immediately had a heart attack, and the EMTs would have needed calcium injections and an auto-defib to keep him alive until they got him to the ER. Potassium-induced arrythmia doesn’t usually respond to CPR alone.
Ironically, my friend had been scheduled to go see the original doctor the next day, to figure out why the potassium supplements weren’t working, and to evaluate increasing the dose.
Its called pallegra. And can also reseble skitzophrenia.
Doctor abram hoffer treated much of this with large dises of niacin. Works wonders. Im ptetty sure most people should try it. Especially people with ptsd, anxiety, depression, alcoholism, etc.
I can personally attest to the very real benefits. Been used in AA for literally decades.
Salt intake guidelines are wack, especially in a historical sense and when compared across cultures. “Common knowledge” has been driving sodium RDAs down with very little, if any decent clinical data, save for the very few outliers who’s blood pressure DOES respond to salt intake. It’s not representative of the human population as a whole. Not enough salt can crunk your kidneys if you’re fanatical about your diet. It’s hard to pull off, but people get frightened or crazy and cause serious problems from completely avoiding salt in their diet.
Now sugar…. This is a great rabbit hole for the hacker community. There are all kinds of systems and feedback loops, receptors, organs, fun stuff to read about, just make sure they’re actual medical papers. You’ll never f✓©€ with a donut again.
I’m not a biochemist, but am a paramedic. For serious dehydration, oral rehydration with electrolyte solutions is vastly preferred over IVs (providing the patient is alert enough to swallow and can keep it down). Our IV solutions are an isotonic mix of water and electrolytes—”normal saline” is a mix of sodium chloride and water but is out of balance with our bodies’ natural mix of electrolytes and acidity. Normal saline is very acidic. So-called “balanced solutions” have lower sodium and chloride contents and add in potassium, magnesium, and sometimes other ions. Oral rehydration solutions are similar but also include glucose which is key for absorbing sodium in the intestines.
The body requires a precise balance of sodium and potassium in every cell to maintain cell shape. Nerves conduct signals by changing the voltage potential of the cell using controlled shifts in sodium, potassium, and chloride. Muscles work similarly, with the shift in ions allowing calcium ions to enter, which then causes the muscle to contract and relax.
We lose all of these electrolytes when we sweat, and just drinking water isn’t enough to rehydrate. Large drops in electrolyte levels lead to all kinds of terrible problems.
There is a huge note of caution with using any of these kinds of solutions when in renal failure or on dialysis. The body manages electrolyte levels using the kidneys, and someone with renal failure or otherwise requiring dialysis can easily end up with toxic levels of potassium, leading to heart failure and sometimes death. Not having any kind of bloodwork or lab values to gauge how much oral rehydration to consume is risky.
There’s a big difference between oral rehydration mixes and gatorade or other sports drinks—most do not have enough electrolytes to treat serious dehydration. There are a number of commercial oral rehydration products out there, and its worth comparing them to the WHO standards to ensure they have adequate electrolytes. We’ve done a lot of intense outdoor training in Texas heat, and we’re huge fans of Ceralyte, which exceeds the WHO standards and are used by a number of military organizations (which is where we learned about it). It uses a rice-based carbohydrate that is supposed to work better, but most noticeably results in a drink that is easier to consume and easier to keep down when severely dehydrated.
Thanks very much for this, exactly the answer I was hoping for.
There’s a link for that!
B^)
https://ceraproductsinc.com/collections/ceralyte
The web search also listed That Auction Site and Bezo’s Barn as sources.
So what I constantly heard as an announcement was: “drink more water”, but they should also mention: keep eating regularly (and not only the delicious waffeln).
Next to the regular unhealthy stuff, we also had sports-drinks (from the on-camp grocery store); they may not be miraculous, but at least it has some additives that pretend to be OK (next to the bulk of glucose). Also small portions of chips/crisps were at our village, so when you’re not feeling yourself, don’t grab a nut bar, grab something savory.
In short: drink more water, keep eating.
Koolaid powdered flavoring has gone unobtanium here, which annoys me greatly as I make up my own “bug juice” for high exertion summer activities.
Basically, it would be the flavoring, 2/3 the amount of normal sugar, sodium split between salt and bicarbonate of soda, and potassium salt from “no salt” seasoning. Which would keep me on my feet.
Now they only have liquid flavoring, presweetened, and the just add water sugared mix… which I would use at 2/3 ratio, but when you’re trying to cover the taste of something a bit awful with a flavor that tastes awful when too dilute it doesn’t really work out.
I need to do some extra work on the sugar thing though. I should have my sugar dialled right back (metabolic syndrome risk) and don’t really want to consume any uneccessary, but when it comes to hydration, the sugar improves fluid uptake. I am having a hard time figuring which substitutes do the same thing and their relative potency. I am unconvinced it’s got right in commercial sports drinks.. (Even the sugared ones aren’t right, oversugared to hide the taste.)
Ideally my mix would also contain some magnesium, but getting it cheap in a form that stays dissolved is a challenge I have not yet solved, so I pop an extra capsule on hot days.
I have a huge rant at the universe in general from time to time over the sodium thing too, the upper limit for olds/cardiovascular conditions is real close to the minimum amount required for survival. I can’t do high sodium, but I need at least adequate sodium dammit, there’s few kind of “medium sodium” options in things, it’s either two teaspoons of this is your entire ration for the day (god knows how, that makes it half salt by volume.) or if you eat this all week for every meal you still won’t get a full days worth. Saying that, I’m on about snuck in sodium, the stuff that’s SUPPOSED to be salty, like chips and pretzels etc, they have cranked back the sodium in, so you’re feeling about half a teaspoon short, and how many chips do you need to eat to level up??? 3 family bags, wat? gah! back to just swigging a bit of salt in a glass of water and hoping you don’t hurl. Though workaround for “need something really salty but not gross” now is to dissolve a stock packet or cube in water and add a couple of spoons of soy sauce, beefy beef tea, but a hot drink, not ideal in melty weather.
Yes, those tiny bottles of concentrate have taken over. I tried some, but after I disliked the aftertaste.
Even Tang in powdered form seems harder to get. Gatorade comes in powdered form, better than lugging home bottles.
They were really worried about high blood pressure, but it turns out I now suffer from low blood pressure. So I’m off the blood pressure pills.
Yes, I’ve tried the powdered gatorade, but has the disadvantages of practically no price break, compared with bottled that is typically “on sale” at some store or other whereas the powder never is. Also it’s oversugared, but if you dilute it more, it’s under-electrolyted.
I am also aware that those packages of electrolyte as shown in header pic do exist in the market, but the way they exist for private individuals is by being astoundingly overpriced. Med people maybe have suppliers that get them down to the pennies per unit price, but I’ve tried to find them somewhere that would ship less than a pallette full for reasonable money and all I find is insane markups.
“Med people maybe have suppliers that get them down to the pennies per unit price,”
Maybe true, here in the USA, the mfgrs have to CYA from malpractice lawsuits.
For making your own drink power, you can find bottles of liquid flavoring at ethnic grocery stores meant for making desserts or in crafty places for flavoring hard candies. A little bit, such as that which clings to a toothpick could flavor a lot of sugar. A little bottle will last a very long time.
Grocery stores these days really want to sell you packages of practically nothing but water and air (or of empty calories) for all the obvious reasons. They sell shelf space to the highest bidder, meaning the most profitable, which leaves their shelves full of mostly junk.
You can make this at home.
“World Health Organization ORS Recipe:
3/8 tsp salt (sodium chloride)
¼ tsp Morton Salt Substitute® (potassium chloride)
½ tsp baking soda (sodium bicarbonate)
2 tbsp + 2 tsp sugar
Add tap water to make 1 liter
Optional: NutraSweet or Splenda-based flavoring of choice to taste”
I usually add some citrus, a lime or lemon… Or better yet half a cup of OJ and leave out the sugar. There are a lot of adaptations of this all over the web and packet galore out there. I also keep some “Banana Bag” packets around in my vehicles for emergencies like this.
My go to drink for hot weather is made with half lemonade powder(countrytime) and half Gatorade powder(lemon-lime), don’t premix, the powders tend to separate and you lose the balance. It tastes good, and is dilute enough you can drink it all day. Once a day milk of magnesia tabs never hurt either. Gets me through Pennsic every year.
Remember kids: If you don’t need to pee, you need to drink!
I’ve always understood a half teaspoon of salt in a pint of orange juice is a simple but close substitute if you’re not at the emergency level of dehydration. Anyone able to confirm or refute?
It will lack the Potassium Cloride, it’s also required to re-hydrate your body
And for the measurements, i don’t know how much a pint and half tea spoon is. Could be a little more salt, by looking at the WHO recipe.
A pint is 1/504 hogsheads.
A teaspoon is 1/48384 hogsheads.
It’s important to be helpful.
I just love metric folks playing stupid over measurements that aren’t precise in the first place. There’s pints and teaspoons all over the world, and they’re very similar in size.
Not to be anal, but one should preferably weigh the ingredients. Volume based measures are not precise. Yanks have the grain, the rest of the world can use grams.
I’ve heard a proverb: “A centimeter is the mason’s millimeter”.
“Yanks have the grain, the rest of the world can use grams.”
So, you’re saying that the rest of the World is “going against the grain”?
B^)
I prefer my recipes in mole …
Why the frack should be care to even learn all those obsolete units in the first place?
Like delimiters?
B^)
Oranges are high in potassium, but since it’s not legally required, a lot of suppliers are dicks about listing potassium content on beverages and foods consistently.
It can’t be simpler for these purposes. A quart is a liter and a pint is a half-liter. Teaspoon (tsp) is 5ml and tablespoon (tbsp) is 15ml. Now never ask again!
And a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down!
-Mary Poppins
Teaspoons don’t actually come in standard sizes, there’s only a nominal conversion for the average size.
And how you measure a “teaspoon”, is it heaped or flat, on something in between, is up to you.
How can there be 13,500 mg of glucose AH and only 13,000 mg total of carbohydrates?
A professor of mine was apparently at Florida when they were developing Gatoraid. The amount of glucose in there is (or at least was, ages ago) engineered to promote the fastest uptake of Na and K etc. he knew this because they tested it by giving him the drink, waiting a period of time then putting in a nasogastric tube to pump out what was left, therefore measuring the absorption rate.
And of course, their rival college invented a sports drink and included their team name in drink!
Alas, it seems that fewer people were eager to drink “Seminole Fluid”!
B^)
Same as ‘Almond Milk’ vs ‘Nut Sweat’.
Warning NOT A MEDICAL ADVICE.
Lots of Apfelschorle and tap water should be enough for healthy beings of us “ugly giant bags of mostly water” (tng 1×18).
Well yes if you’re also gnawing on cured sausage all day. The saltpeter and salt in that will work.
German children are 37% Apfelschorle by volume.
(It’s half-half apple juice and club soda.)
“Club soda” = bubbly carbonated water.
Water comes out of the ground naturally fizzy in many springs and wells here in Germany.
Club soda sounds so exclusive and hoighty toighty – but it’s just fizzy water.
Downside is dissolving of teeth by acidic water. But worth it. Brush with fluoride toothpaste.
Never ever order water in Germany. They will bring you a bottle of fizzy, salty water that costs more than a beer. Just don’t do it.
Also they charge to use public toilets, pee behind the building.
America has pay toilets too – they’re called “Starbucks”. They’re like the European ones, except you pay twenty times as much and get a latte thrown in.
I’m deeply in love with my soda carbonators.
Having the luck of living in an area with soft water is really nice. Compressed CO2 is cheap, delivered by mail, easy peasy lemon squeezy.
A lot of grocery stores sell solid/forzen CO2 at a significant discount compared to cylinders. Use a refillable cylinder and add store bought CO2 by weight. If you don’t trust your scale and the safety valve on the cylinder you can always underfill.
Gatorade is my go-to. Don’t know how it compares to ORS, but it works to kill the headaches I used to get after working up a sweat (something I can do by thinking hard…bad genes). My wife swears all I need is water, but I sweat so much that water is not all I need. Salty snacks don’t do it either, because they only provide NaCl, not the other electrolytes I sweat out.
Yeah, I know, TMI. But Gatorade made a huge difference in my ability to get outdoors and exercise.
Knowing the symptoms of heat exhaustion and heat stroke is really important these days.
Heat exhaustion: headache, nausea, faintness, dizziness, fatigue, rapid pulse, low blood pressure when standing, heavy sweating, muscle cramps. Move into shade, stop activity and rest, drink water or sports drinks. If conditions worsen and body temperature increases to over 104F or 40C, seek medical help or call 911.
Heat stroke: high body temperature (>104F >40C), headache, altered mental state/confusion/erratic behavior, alteration in sweating, nausea/vomiting, flushed skin, rapid breathing, racing pulse. Seek immediate medical help or call 911.
Keep in mind that victims may present only some of the listed symptoms, but may still require medical care.
And arrange with your friends to keep an eye on each other while you’re outdoors in this heat.
Not the same stuff, but this is what I use to carry in an mint tin for my water bottles (1 full tin = 2 32oz water-bottles or one hydra-pack). Most of this is from home-brewing supply stores:
1 Tbsp Fructose sugar
1 Tsp Sea Salt
1 Tsp powdered sugar
1/4 Tsp citric acid
1/4 Tsp milk sugar
Now, considering that most of the above is a clear or white crystalline solid and I was normally bicycling near a national border, it is probably obvious why I stopped carrying it on my bike.
on the farm as a kid we had bottles of switchel made for the day of working in the heat. Lots of recipies online but basically some ginger, vinegar, salt and some form of sugar in water. surprisingly refreshing and you could add some potassium etc if wanted. No keeling over allowed while picking up straw bales in the field then unloading into the barn!
Straw bales!
You kids had it easy! In my day it was alfalfa bales!
And if we were thirsty, we had to squeeze water out of a rock!
B^)
The Romans were big on vinegar as a drink and wine that went vinegar. And half n half with water. I think someone selling Coca Cola could have owned the empire.
The romans were also really big on flavouring their wines with lead salts. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
Lead acetate is the best lead
People here at Hackaday tend to over-engineer things… (SCNR)
Just drink ‘Apfelschorle’ (apple spritzer) or every now and then an alcohol-free beer; and eat a sausage or two (vegan version should be fine too)…
Club Mate and sushi will help you through every hacker camp. Prevention is better than curing ;)
Milk and beans, and you can have the tent to yourself at night!
B^)
I went on a hike a long time ago and on the return leg of the journey my partner at the time was experiencing some of the same symptoms, even with plenty of water, at the time I assumed it was tiredness but regular breaks didn’t help much. It wasn’t until a few years later on a cycle in hot weather that I felt the same and water wasn’t helping so I stopped and bought an isotonic sports drink and it was almost as immediate a change as the author describes, literally felt as immediate a cure as I have ever felt. Seeing that the additional electrolytes in the drink were most likely the magic ingredient I bought a few sachets to keep in my kit for the next time and they have helped me tremendously (particularly after a bought of gastroenteritis)!
Pocari Sweat > Gatorade
I’ve tried that. It tastes better than its name would imply.
When I was a kid back in south Louisiana, the offices at the company my dad worked for had a salt tablet dispenser right next to the water cooler. Toss down a salt tablet, drink a cup of cool, refreshing, plain water.
The tablets weren’t simple salt, of course. They were a mixture of different salts and minerals your body needs when you are dehydrated. The tablets were a sort of off yellow color, where pure table salt would have been white.
That was back before Gatorade was a thing.
The US Army canteen pouch used to have a small pocket sewn on the side for carrying salt tablets. I don’t recall the date, but I recall when the orders came down to stop using the salt pills.
First time in my life I hear that crisps are good idea in heat. You should rather focus on fresh fruits and vegetables. Be careful with mineral water – you can overdose minerals. Don’t drink sweet drinks – glass or two of juice is fine but your body needs water to process sugar.
In the not so distant past noone even heard about those fancy cures yet they hiked in heat (with no ultralight equipment) and survived.
I do preciate having those salts at hand but I blame AC, fast food, easy accesssible snacks and coffe for bad habbits in out of comfort temperatures.
Yeah, idiot Romans, paying their troops in salt like it was necessary or something *rolls eyes*
At no point I said salt is unnecessary. Also today salt is cheap and you can find it it any meal and most processed food products (one water manufacturer in my country advertive it as low sodium). Not to mention that modern hacking is not even half as exhausting as being a Roman solider. Mineral water (the real one – not those potable products that sometimes are simply reverse osmosis products) is easy accessible (romans did not have that luxury) and rich in all necessary elements to the point you can overdose them.
What was the rate of kidney failure? They would not blame it on marching in the heat.
As an Australian I find this story hilarious. BTW a long life pack of low fat milk will be better for you than any sports drink or powder. I also suspect that I know what your problem really was, so if anyone else reading this has headaches and gets dizzy etc., go and get your blood pressure checked ASAP, then consider all diet and lifestyle changes needed to manage it if it has spiked, other than the medication they may prescribe you as that should be the choice of last resort. Hibiscus tea for example will keep you hydrated and lower that blood pressure. I won’t detail what is messing with your blood pressure because you probably don’t want to hear that message, you may find it very inconvenient as it has nothing to do with the weather.
Here in the USA, “shelf milk” hasn’t caught on. I did buy a couple of litres/quarts at a dollar store a couple of years ago.
I wish it was more available.
Nasty hyper-homogenized milk is the standard at wallyworld.
It’s pretty bad, but will last forever.
Just to clarify, did you mean hyper-pasteurized?
Yeah, my bad.
Ah yes, the infamous UHT. Otherwise known as ‘Ultra Horrible Turtle’ milk…
Is what you call hibiscus tea, what we call Foster’s?
B^)
They don’t drink that piss, it’s a regional cheap beer at best.
It should be noted that the Fosters brewed in Canada is even worse. Same as the other ‘imports’ (kingfisher) license brewed there.
Yeah yeah, nah.
Nothing wrong in BP medication. Generally speaking its affordable and it massively prolongs the life expectancy for individuals with high BP. Considering BP are hereditory, one does well in having oneself checked if grandparents/parents were/are diagnosed. When I got prescribed medication, I was experiencing severe dizziness when driving, some minor headache and a tightness in the throat region, sort of similar to wearing a tie too tightly. When measured my BP was at its worst 205/176, which medication brought down to a very manageable 125/83. No amount of lifestyle changes would have been able to give results rapidly enough. So, get diagnosed and if you are in bad shape, get medication and worry about lifestyle changes later.
No reason to worry about lifestyle changes later. You can start thinking about what changes to implement the second after you arrange to pick up the medication. Those aren’t in anyway exclusive. Also, they are hereditary but also very sensitive to diet and exercise. With the same genes and a different regimen you can have vastly different outcomes. You’ve only one body to live in, but vastly there’s more you can do with it than just letting your genes decide.
Do your research, you will find that you have overlooked some important truths by favouring a single straw man example that is far from typical if you consider all people that the subject is relevant to, at least you qualified that with the “bad shape” clause. Start your prevention early and you may never end up in bad shape during your natural lifespan.
I was going to remove an invasive White Mulberry tree and decided to just trim back and use as a grafting base for other varieties when I get the time again. My first attempts last year all failed, though I’ll try again this fall and next spring (I didn’t get to this spring). Then when reading into more, I figure I’ll have to this season trim some leaves off and dry for tea as reads like the tea lowers blood pressure and has some other health benefits.
I have some Hibiscus moscheutos and am now wondering what the medicinal effects are.
I use half and half daily with my tea, I forgot to note that above. Bummer Aldi’s jacked their price up from $1.55 to $2.38 for a quart. Been wondering about powdered milk maybe as an alternative. I was using Nestle Nido and a range of Goat Milk brands when on the road travelling more as my creamer.
Crazy how in the U.S. (and maybe elsewhere) how the ingredients of many, if not most, creamers are complete rubbish… I suppose most other products are the same.
The info on wikipedia with regard to plant based meds is totally corrupted by big pharma influences, sadly you have to hit the actual research papers to find out the truth about how effective some natural products actually are and how much safer compared to commercial products, and therefore how self sufficient you can be in your healthcare. Funny about that eh?
Some watermelon would make the trick too… ;)
IF you drink when you’re not thirsty you can get hyponatremia (your existing sodium levels get diluted with excess water) and this causes your brain to swell. This causes a headache. If you’ve been drinking a lot of water due to heat, have a headache and are not thirsty you should consider this potentially fatal consequence of overhydrating
Consuming extra sodium and other minerals can reverse this problem caused by drinking too much water.
Dude, dehydration means you need more *water*. It may or may not go along with the need for more electrolytes. That you mention the dumbness of society and people in it at large and then proceed to fumble basic understanding of your own physiology is very unfortunate. You just need to take things more seriously, I am sure you are quite capable of understanding these things.