From: Michael M. Butler (butler@comp*lib.org)
Date: Wed Jan 07 1998 - 21:15:54 MST
OK, here's the dope:
Straight seawater is too salty. Drink too much and the following things
happen:
Your body tries to piss more, because of the salt content--Seawater first
acts as a diuretic.
So you drink more, which drives your blood pressure up as your kidneys try
frantically to get rid of the salt.
At the same time, you are knocking off your intestinal flora. You get
diarrhea==even more fluid loss.
Eventually dehydration, renal-hepatic crisis and elevated BP (plus
heatstroke in the tropics) drives you crazy, shortly before you die.
People who run out of drinking water should have had a ROGA desalinization
pump onboard. Unfortunately, the cheapest one I've found sells for $500 at
West Marine, so it's not within the budget of a boat-person or refugee.
At 10:40 PM 1/7/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Arjen Kamphuis wrote:
>
>> Tea or soup is even better, water from snow is almost pure H2O and you
lose a
>> lot of minerals sweating all day. People in the himalayas often put salt
>> in their tea instead of sugar (also because it's cheaper).
>
>Anyone know the validity of the story that drinking seawater makes you crazy?
>Do people survive on a raft by drinking seawater, or do they have to catch
>rainwater? Maybe not drinking enough (sea)water makes them crazy?
>
>Robin HL
>
>
>
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