by Cody Lundin
Signs and Symptoms of Dehydration
Early or Mild to Moderate Dehydration
Headache
Irritability
Dizziness or lightheadedness
Excessive thirst
Nausea / loss of appetite
Dry mouth, cracked lips
Mild disorientation and confusion
Fatigue / lethargy
Decreased urine output / dark-colored urine
Muscle weakness
Flushed, dry skin
Late or Severe Dehydration
Extreme thirst
Very dry mouth, skin, and mucous membranes
Severe confusion and disorientation
Severe muscle cramping in the arms, legs, back, and stomach
Lack of sweating
Convulsions
Fainting
Bloated stomach
Heart failure
Sunken dry eyes with dark rings and few or no tears
Dry, wrinkled skin with a lack of elasticity
Rapid and deep breathing
Low blood pressure
Rapid, weak heartbeat
Delirium, unconsciousness, and death
Situations or People with a Higher Risk for Dehydration
Infants and Children
Worldwide, diarrhea-induced dehydration is the leading cause of child mortality. Children are especially susceptible to dehydration due to their smaller body weight, higher turnover of water and electrolytes, and lower sweating capacity.
Elderly
Older adults are more susceptible to dehydration due to a less acute sense of thirst and a reduced ability to respond to temperature changes and internal water conservation. Older people may also forget to drink and may have chronic illness or dehydration side effects caused by medications.
Sick People or People with a Chronic Illness
Fever, diarrhea, and vomiting seriously dehydrate the body. (It's estimated that, globally, diarrhea causes 4 million deaths per year.) The higher the fever, the more dehydrated you'll become. Having a simple cold also enhances dehydration, as you feel less like drinking. Chronic illnesses such as diabetes, kidney disease, cystic fibrosis, adrenal gland disorders, alcoholism, and others further dehydrate the body.
Living at High Altitudes
High altitudes of 8,000 feet or more cause dehydration, as the body attempts to compensate for the elevation by rapid breathing (lost water vapor in the breath) and increased urination.
Exercise
Increased physical exertion causes the body to sweat. High humidity levels increase sweating and decrease the evaporative cooling of sweat. Humidity levels of 70 percent or greater impede the sweat/evaporation process altogether.
Hot/Dry and Cold Weather or Climates
The hotter the outdoor temperature and the drier the climate, the more the body will sweat to preserve its core body temperature. Cold, dry air pulls water from the body's warm, moist lungs at a frightening rate, up to one quart per hour in minus 40 degrees F (minus 40 degrees C).
Cramped Quarters
Close, cramped locations, common in survival shelters, use more metabolic water from survivors as water exhaled from the breath increases.
Increased Urination
While this is the result of some diseases, diuretics such as coffee, tea, alcohol, and some blood pressure medications cause increased urination and/or perspiration.
Burn Injuries
The skin is the largest organ of the body. Third-degree or large first- or second-degree burns cause extreme fluid loss from the body.
Pregnant or Breast-feeding Women
The Institute of Medicine recommends that pregnant women drink ten cups of water per day. Breast-feeding moms are encouraged to drink about thirteen cups. Reread the other above factors and adjust your fluid intake accordingly, regardless of these recommendations.
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HARDCORE HYDRATION
In the middle of the seventeenth century, on the border of England and Scotland, Carlisle Castle became home to the last siege of an English castle when Bonnie Prince Charlie's Jacobite garrison tried in vain to hold off the Duke of Cumberland's Hanoverian army. The defeated Scottish Jacobites were held in the dungeon of the castle, now known for its "licking stones." These licking stones were created by the dying Jacobite prisoners in their desperate attempt to get water. The castle walls were made from damp sandstone in which the prisoners literally licked pockets into up to four and five inches deep with their tongues looking for moisture to stay alive. The imprints of the captives' tongues are visible within the castle walls to this day. Any survivors were brutally executed on nearby Gallows Hill.
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High Protein, Fat, and Sodium Diets
Those who eat large amounts of the above food types, as most Americans do, will use more of their body's water to break down and process the nutrition.
What about Electrolyte Solutions?
In my book 98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive! I shared the four main techniques for quick, maximal hydration. They are listed below. Although these techniques are in no particular order in regard to their importance, take a close look at number three.
Four Factors for Accelerated Maximal Hydration
1 Adequate volume
2 Temperature
3 Minimal salts, carbohydrates, and sugars
4 Carbonation
Drinking fluids containing salts, carbohydrates, and sugars causes the stomach to hold this water in order to digest the nutrients contained within it. In essence, the presence of nutrients in your water causes your stomach to treat your water like food. After all, the stomach and small intestine absorb nutrients from whatever you put in your mouth; that's their job. For the fluid you drink to be absorbed in order to stave off dehydration, it must reach your large intestine. The more foodstuff water possesses, the longer it hangs out in the stomach and small intestine digesting.
A barrage of sports drinks exist on the market, many backed by big-money advertising campaigns. While they have their merits (including flavoring funky-tasting-and-looking water after it's been disinfected), all contain a fierce amount of salt, carbohydrates, and sugar. While electrolyte replacement can be an issue in long-term survival, it pales in comparison to dying of short-term dehydration. Electrolyte solutions can and will be abused by people assuming that if one scoop is good, three must be better. My hometown fire department stopped using dry electrolyte replacements altogether as they were getting sick due to the fact that they lacked the water in their systems to process the excessive electrolytes being ingested. In addition, sports medicine colleges around the nation have completed study after study on hydration and most flat-out recommend plain old water. Of the many electrolyte replacement solutions tested, most all were successful at increasing hydration simply because they tasted better than straight water, thus the subject tended to drink more and more often. If you or the kids insist on using colored, sugary, electrolyte replacement solutions, consider diluting the overall concentration with added water, and beware the scores of bees and yellow jackets that will flock to the sugary brew. Don't lose sight of the fact that the most important factor is drinking a lot of water, even if it's laced with trace nutrients.
Stay away from all alcoholic products, as alcohol increases dehydration by eliminating more fluid from the body through the kidneys than the quantity of liquid you originally consumed. After all, alcohol is a toxin, and your body requires eight ounces of plain water to neutralize one ounce of alcohol.
Dehydration and Sickness in Kids
There are times to use electrolyte solutions, and one of these times is with sick children. It wouldn't hurt to have on hand oral rehydration solutions such as Pedialyte or Ricelyte for infants and children who have diarrhea, vomiting, or fever. If you can, check with your doctor first to see if this is advised. Oral rehydration solutions are available at most drugstores. Check the shelf life to see how long they'll keep. Most adult dehydration caused
by diarrhea, vomiting, or fever can be improved upon by drinking more plain water. Fruit juices and sodas can make diarrhea worse. In a pinch, use the following homemade oral rehydration solution for any family member who may need more than simply water to rehydrate a sick body.
Handy Homemade Rehydration Solution
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
3 tablespoons sugar
One quart (liter) of room-temperature potable water
Mix the above ingredients in the quart of water and don't fudge this recipe. Be sure to measure the ingredients accurately!
Bogus Bottled Bubbly?
Bottled water can be up to 1000 times more expensive than regular tap water and it may not be as safe. That said, commercially available bottled water might very well be what you store for your preparedness plan. In 2003, Americans spent more than $7 billion on bottled water that on average cost more than one dollar a bottle. Many bottlers claim that their product originates from some faraway spring or ancient glacier. If true, it's hard to say how many resources were squandered in the bottling and transportation of that liter of water from the French mountains, not to mention the estimated 1.5 million tons of plastic that are used to bottle 89 billion liters of water each year.
As if that's not obscene enough, many of these exotic waters have turned out to be bogus. A few years ago, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) conducted a four-year study that tested more than 1,000 samples from 103 brands of bottled water. The results? You guessed it: the researchers discovered that 25 percent or more of bottled water is really just tap water in a bottle. Sometimes the water was "purified" by reverse osmosis or some other means, and sometimes it wasn't. It gets worse. Under the same NRDC study, eighteen of the 103 bottled water brands tested contained "more bacteria than allowed under microbiological-purity guidelines."
Bottled water is actually defined as a "food" under federal regulations and thus sits under the wings of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Environmental Protection Agency is responsible for municipal water supplies, or tap water, and is required to uphold much stricter standards. Unlike bottled water companies, the EPA requires that local water treatment facilities provide users with a detailed description of the tap water's source, and the end results of any testing, including violations in contaminant levels. You might remember getting one of their little letters in the mail, profiling your water in minutia. While municipal water companies are required to test for harmful pathogens several times per day, bottled water companies are required to do so only once per week. I could go on about the testing differences. In addition, one-fifth of the brands tested positive for synthetic chemicals like phthalate, an unsafe chemical that finds its way into the water from the plastic container itself. The end result is that bottled water companies are not bound by the same standards as municipal water systems, thus they have the option of providing your family with water of a lower quality than you now receive from your kitchen faucet.
Storing Water for a "Rainy Day"
Storing water involves having water-safe container(s) in which to put water for future use. Not all containers are made from materials that you can safely store water in. If you don't have regular access to water sources where you live, stored water will be vital to your survival, both short and long term. Indigenous peoples used a fascinating variety of items to store and transport water such as gourds; seashells; ostrich eggs; animal stomachs, bladders, and intestines; bamboo segments; pottery; tightly woven baskets; and wooden containers hollowed out by fire. You will never fully appreciate how precious your virtually unbreakable, plastic camping water bottle is until you use one of these items on a cross-country field course. I routinely use gourds as canteens on some of my primitive living skills courses, and the stress involved in making sure they don't drop or bang into something and break is intense. You have but limited space within your body to store one of the most prized commodities for your survival. Having several modern, quality water containers, both fixed (due to their size) and portable, will be a huge asset to your peace of mind and potential survival. While you should be fully prepared to use modern container options, it should not weaken your adaptation muscles as to what could be used in your neighborhood to store and transport water in the event that your regular containment options are destroyed, stolen, or lost.
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WACKY WATER FACTOIDS
Of the 1,700 million square miles of water on planet Earth, all 326 million trillion gallons of it, less than 0.5 percent is potable.
Ninety-eight percent of our planet's water is composed of ocean.
Two percent of the Earth's water is fresh but locked-up in the form of glaciers (for now).
0.36 percent of the planet's water is found underground.
Only 0.036 percent of the Earth's entire water supply is found in our lakes and rivers.
Each day, the sun evaporates 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) tons of water.
The human brain is 75 percent water.
Human blood is 83 percent water.
Human bones are 25 percent water.
One inch of rain falling on one acre of land is equal to about 27,154 gallons of water.
Groundwater can take a human lifetime just to traverse one mile.
If the entire world's water were fit into a gallon jug, the freshwater available for us to use would equal only about one tablespoon.
Over 90 percent of the world's supply of freshwater is located in Antarctica.
One drip per second from a leaky faucet can waste 2,000 gallons of water per year.
If all plumbing fixtures in the United States were replaced with water-conserving fixtures, we could save 3.4 to 8.4 billion gallons of water a day.
The average toilet uses five to seven gallons of water per flush. A shower uses five gallons per minute.
The average bath uses about thirty-six gallons of water.
An average American residence uses 107,000 gallons of water per year. (146,000 gallons per year in some Arizona communities.)
The United States uses about 346,000 billion gallons of freshwater every day, including water used for irrigation, industry, fire fighting, and street cleaning.
Americans use five times the amount of water that Europeans use.
Two-thirds of the water used in an American home is used in the bathroom.
Less than 1 percent of the water treated by public water systems is used for drinking and cooking.
The average person spends less than 1 percent of their total personal expenditure of money for water, wastewater, and water disposal services.
Water expands by nearly one-tenth of its volume when it freezes.
Frozen water is 9 percent lighter than unfrozen water, which is why ice floats.
Drinking adequate amounts of water can decrease the risk of certain types of cancers, including colon cancer, bladder cancer, and breast cancer.
Drinking adequate water can significantly reduce joint and back pain.
Adequate hydration can prevent and alleviate headaches.
Seventy-five percent of a chicken is water.
Ninety-five percent of a tomato is water.
Seventy percent of an elephant is water.
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Whatever containers you choose to store your water in, make sure they have tight-fitting lids to keep out debris and critters. Massive plastic water tanks, for example, have a few openings that are completely sealable and a manhole-type cover that has a one-way vent, thereby allowing the tank to "breathe" and compensate for air pressure changes. If your containers, both large and small, are not sealable, you will have all sorts of thirsty critters try to horn in on your supply, especially if you live in an arid environment.
I collect rain, and one of my catchment basins is a plastic fifty-five-gallon drum that's open to the air. Along with rain, it commonly collects rat poop, bird droppings, and other weirdness, but I don't care as it's reserved for watering specific vegetation. Some of t
he more heinous things it collects, especially during the hotter months, are swarms of bees looking for a drink. While we get along fine so far, they could be a problem around small children.
Warning! It is not uncommon for bees to fly into open drinking containers of water. If your container is opaque, you will not see the bee when you take a drink. The bee could sting you in your mouth or throat and possibly cause a potentially fatal allergic reaction called anaphylactic shock. If your airway becomes occluded due to swelling caused by the sting, and you don't have immediate access to medical intervention, you will die. This scenario is especially common with opened soft drinks, as bees love sugary water. Deaths due to bee, wasp, and yellow jacket stings kill hundreds of people each year in the United States alone, so pay attention and consider using only transparent containers for drinking.