HYDRATION

[bbishop]

Thank you Dave,  just checking the drinks I'm taking to Lords today - ½ pint water, ½ pint dilute lemon squash, ½ pint dilute lemon juice.  The latter two contain sugar so I've added a pinch of sea salt to the latter.

 

Bill

[PatB]

The recomended minimum for outdoor workers here (shade temp easily exceeding 40 C on a daily basis in summer) is a litre per hour.  In most cases it's wise to supplement this with a spoon or two of rehydration formula (basically salt with a few other odds and ends as noted upthread) every so often.

 

In reality most workplaces are pretty sharp in ensuring noone suffers from dehydration.  Even office buildings have urine colour charts on the toilet walls.  However it's a different matter for leisure activities. As a motorcyclist I've suffered problems with dehydration even on relatively short rides in high summer, as have many of my fellow riders; particularly dangerous because, in addition to the physical effects, it robs you of your faculties as effectively as alcohol.  The only way to manage it effectively is to have a drinking tube rigged up so you can repleish on the move because one's rate of fluid loss can become so great that it's simply impractical to stop sufficiently frequently to keep up. 

[bingley hall]

What did people do on hot days before the internet?

[bbishop]

Interesting day at Lords; Australia successful at start and end, England in the middle.  Finely balanced.  We had fewer patients with heat related issues than expected, people were wearing hats and drinking water.

 

So keep taking the fluids.

 

Off to Lords in a minute.

 

Bill

[DDolfelin]

"office buildings have urine colour charts on the toilet walls"

 

Yes, we have them in the UK too.

Mostly to measure height.

[pointstaken]

Bump - to remind everyone to follow the sensible advice.

 

Dennis

[Sidecar Racer]

A Glass Of Wine

Don't you just love when science is applied to life experiences?

To my friends who enjoy a glass of wine, and those who don't, and are always seen with a bottle of water in their hand:

As Ben Franklin said:
- In wine there is wisdom,
- In beer there is freedom,
- In water there is bacteria.

In a number of carefully controlled trials, scientists have demonstrated that if we drink 1 liter of water each day,
at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli (E. Coli) - the bacteria found in feces.

In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of poop annually.

However, we do NOT run that risk when drinking wine & beer (or rum, whiskey or other liquor) because alcohol

has to go through a purification process of boiling, filtering and fermenting.

Remember:
Water = Poop
Wine = Health
Therefore, it's better to drink wine and talk stupid, than to drink water and be full of sh1t.

There's no need to thank me for this valuable information, I'm doing it as a public service!    

[bike2steam]

Beer was still being drunk in foundries etc in the 50 and 60s, possibly later. I don't know but I expect the H & S at work Act led to it being phased out (OMG! acohol in the workplace!). A very hazardous industry of course, but I wonder if there was much effect on safety  from a few pints of mild spread over the day. My great grandfather was a foundryman in West Bromwich and apparently had a ferocious thirst.

 

Pete

Given the low alcohol content of mild ale it was probably 'sweated out' over the course of a working day. When I lived, and worked in the Black Country, in the 60's,quite a few foundries, and hot-stamping works had small mild only pubs next door, but most died out in the 70's.

[Fat Controller]

Given the low alcohol content of mild ale it was probably 'sweated out' over the course of a working day. When I lived, and worked in the Black Country, in the 60's,quite a few foundries, and hot-stamping works had small mild only pubs next door, but most died out in the 70's.

We used to share a flat in Stoke with a 'placer'- the person who would walk into the still-hot kiln and place the ware for firing. He used to reckon on downing eight pints at the end of his shift to replace what he'd sweated out. Pubs immediately adjacent to works exits were common in heavy-industrial areas; quite often there were close links between the brewery owners and the factory owners, as in Felinfoel Brewery and Llanelli Steelworks, with members of the same family on the boards of both.

[PhilH]

In a number of carefully controlled trials, scientists have demonstrated that if we drink 1 liter of water each day,

at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli (E. Coli) - the bacteria found in feces.

In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of poop annually.

 

 

 

Whoa....that's a big dollop of misinformation.

 

The UK water supply industry is one of the most highly regulated in the UK. Drinking water is basically mild disinfectant specifically designed to ensure that it is bug free.It is sampled at source (continuously and automatically), at reservoirs (by samplers) and randomly at customers premises.

 

Any ongoing deviation from compliance (which consists of a whole raft of standards from turbidity, temperature through to presence of nitrates, chemicals etc. ) is taken very seriously and is reportable to the DWI (Drinking Water Inspectorate), the government watchdog set up to regulate the industry. 

 

Certainly the presence of any organism such as E coli would result in the immediate shutdown of the works / reservoir concerned, thorough investigation as to cause, appropriate remedial action, not to mention a mountain of paperwork. If negligence on behalf of the water company is proved then heavy fines are imposed as well.

 

How do I know this - it's the day job.

 

So, to sum up, UK tap water is one of the safest foodstuffs around - a lot of money, time and infrastructure is expended to ensure that it is so, and remains so.

[AndyB]

The way to tell if you are adequately hydrated (euhydrated) is to check the colour of your urine. You should aim to pee clear at least once a day. That's the advice we used to dish out in the RAF survival section, anyway. 

 

As importantly you should ensure that sweat can evaporate from the skin surface to cool you down. So, loose clothing and air movement from a fan.

 

If you're wondering why you can't sleep at night in the heat then the answer lies in evolution. The daily temperature rhythm (circadian rhythm) which shows a gradual reduction in body temperature from the late afternoon/early evening has become fundamentally linked to our preferred sleep pattern (i.e. sleeping at night, awake in the day). These two traits are now fundamentally linked. Sleep onset can only occur once brain temperature has fallen a fraction of a degree. In hot / humid weather heat loss from the body is much slower and in turn brain temperature falls more slowly. Hence sleep onset is either delayed or prevented altogether. Again, use a fan to shed some heat.    

 

By some of the earlier comments about appropriate fluids to ingest one slightly strange survival technique advocated in the 50s/60s if you crash landed in the desert was to eat the local snails; lots of them. The lab tested this idea out by blending a load of them up and getting a Flight Lieutenant to drink them for a week. It worked fine, although no-one could get close enough to him to ask what they tasted like. Phew!   

 

All the best, Andy

[PatB]

Whoa....that's a big dollop of misinformation.

 

 

Erm, I'm pretty sure it was a humorous build-up to the punchline of a joke rather than intended to represent factual information.

 

Especially given that 1kg of e. coli to 365 kg of water would be rather a high bacterial load anywhere outside the laboratory.

[PhilH]

Erm, I'm pretty sure it was a humorous build-up to the punchline of a joke rather than intended to represent factual information.

 

Especially given that 1kg of e. coli to 365 kg of water would be rather a high bacterial load anywhere outside the laboratory.

 

Possibly, but there are those who would take this as fact and think twice about taking on enough water in this weather - not a good thing.

[DavidB-AU]

Certainly the presence of any organism such as E coli would result in the immediate shutdown of the works / reservoir concerned, thorough investigation as to cause, appropriate remedial action, not to mention a mountain of paperwork. If negligence on behalf of the water company is proved then heavy fines are imposed as well.

Also while there are abut 700 strains of E. coli, most are harmless and live in the healthy intestines of humans and other animals.

 

You are more likely to ingest pathogenic E. coli in a swimming pool or from improperly cooked meat than from drinking tap water in a developed nation. Untreated water from a stream, pond or lake is a very different matter. There are much more dangerous bacteria than E. coli, such as giardia and cryptosporidium.

 

In any case, boiling water the water is sufficient to kill any bacteria. You're unlikely to be ingesting bacteria in tea or coffee. Unless of course you use unpasteurised milk.

 

Cheers

David

[PhilH]

 

There are much more dangerous bacteria than E. coli, such as giardia and cryptosporidium.

 

 

bestnerdy voice/

 

Cryptosporidium is a pesky little b*gger which is highly resistant to normal UV / chlorine treatment. It lives in its own little eggshell called an oocyst, and just refuses to be zapped. However, where this oocyst will break down is in the stomachs of us humans, where it causes all sorts of gastric nightmares including, unfortunately, death amongst the vulnerable, including the elderly, very young and the infirm.

 

Now, it's difficult to quantify and exactly pinpoint where problems are caused by this nasty little bug, so what water companies do is look at their sources , usually crypto is associated with underground sources such as boreholes and wells. They look at topography, extent of aquifers, land use etc., and come to a conclusion that there is a high risk of crypto.

 

What they have to do then is spend a few million to construct a microfiltration plant with massive pumps to suck the water through membranes to strain these awkward blighters out of the water. It's costly but pretty much 100% effective.

 

/nerdyvoice off

[Sidecar Racer]

Whoa....that's a big dollop of misinformation.

 

 

Hi Phil ,

 

 thats why I put  the ' joker ' at the end . I know our water is totally safe these days , as it is in

most places now . I do remember  the days when you were not supposed to drink local water

abroad though .

 

 Apologies to anyone who took the post seriously .   

[Catkins]

What did people do on hot days before the internet?

They went down the pub!