[pct-l] Thirst is the Best Water Gauge

[William Skaggs]

I'll try to respond to a few things at once:

1) I don't know anything about diabetes and wouldn't want to make
any suggestions about what a diabetic person should do.

2) Gookinade should be okay.  It has more potassium than you need,
so Gatorade is better, but Gookinade is not as bad as Powerade.

3) I'll repeat, the only thing you really need to be concerned about
(in addition to water, of course) is replacing the sodium you lose.
The other things that sports drinks do are icing on the cake.  (Well,
sugar provides calories that will help you keep going.)

4) In most cases, your body will let you know what it needs.  If 
something tastes unpleasantly salty, then you don't need that much
salt.  If you have a hard time choking plain water down, then you
probably need some electrolytes.

5) It is really difficult to die of dehydration.  Heat exhaustion is
another story -- it's relatively easy to overheat yourself on a hot
day.  But to die of dehydration, you pretty much have to stagger
around in midsummer desert heat for a couple of days with no water.

6) People are way too paranoid about staying hydrated.  This is mainly
a result of advertising by the people who sell hydration equipment,
just like the paranoia about giardia etc is a result of advertising
by people who sell water filters.  The human body can handle a *lot*
of water loss before it is significantly impaired.

I'm a hot-weather person, and have done quite a bit of desert hiking
and bicycling in 100+ heat, and my personal feeling -- not based on
any science I know of -- is that the body's ability to handle water
flucuations is a bit like a muscle -- it gets stronger if you exercise
it.  I generally don't drink until I am thirsty enough to be suffering.
I find that my ability to tolerate thirst gets stronger as the
summer goes on.

For what it's worth, it's interesting that T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence
of Arabia), in his book "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" about his experiences
with the Bedouin nomads, says that they generally did not carry water
when they traveled -- they would "tank up" each time they came to
a waterhole, and then wait until the next waterhole, usually several
hours later.  (When they traveled across really long stretches with
no water whatsover, they carried water.)

I don't advocate being stupid, but I do think that people generally 
worry more than they need to about this.

Best wishes,

  -- Bill
 

 
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