Dehydration thread

A friend of mine told how they used to put IV into each other in the army, after waking up hungover and dehydrated after drinking the night before, to be ready for morning PT. bring you back like a magic wand, faster than anything.
 
My wife is a distance runner. This is just the left side of my kitchen counter. Inside refrigerator door shelf looks the same..
I feel like I'm living in a pill Despenser
IMG_20230723_141919685.jpg
 
It also contains some potassium.

Less than 1/300 of the daily requirement. Just incidental trace, probably due to other ingredients.

I'm going to put this out there again. Hydration drinks are generally overpriced, and most have extra ingredients that you don't need and that can cause negative side effects. Salt is the only electrolyte that you lose in sweat that you can rapidly replace. And it also happens to the be the primary electrolyte that you lose most in sweat. Drinking hydration mix can certainly have benefits. Drinking "sports drinks" has pluses and minuses as noted above.

You can make your own hydrating drink mix and carry it premade in liquid form or in a powder that you can instantly mix on the trail. It's easy, very inexpensive, and very effective. The formula has saved millions of lives all over the world, as it is the formula used by NGOs working to save lives in poor countries where severe dehydration is common due to disease and bacteria.


The "Simple Solution" - Home made Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) Recipe

Preparing 1 (one) Litre solution using Salt, Sugar and Water at Home Mix an oral rehydration solution using the following recipe. Ingredients:

  • Six (6) level teaspoons of Sugar
  • Half (1/2) level teaspoon of Salt
  • One Litre of clean drinking or boiled water and then cooled

PDF RECIPE LINK
 
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There was one post in this thread @JimIslander where you mentioned a concoction used in the jungle or something that had a certain amount of sugar to aid in nutrient absorption. I use a powder on ocasion called drip drop that is similar to that. It's a mixture of things to help the body soak up water more efficiently.
Kinda pricey but it works. Sometimes I need two of them if I waited too long or work nights and used too much caffiene.

I've been consuming grapes and cantelope for the water and electrolites along with cashews for magnesium, other nuts like walnuts and pecans as well. (Eating a 1/4 cup of cashews as I type this) Those along with brocolli and other foods for the electrolite nutrients and drinking plenty of water. Mostly spring water if possible. At times I'll drink a can of chicken noodle soup for the salt or eat a can of tuna.

In summer my dad used to wear out cantelopes, strawberry, grapes, bannanas and other stuff like that before sports drinks were invented. He worked in a metal extrusion factory until he retired.
 
Less than 1/300 of the daily requirement. Just incidental trace, probably due to other ingredients.
There was one post in this thread @JimIslander where you mentioned a concoction used in the jungle or something that had a certain amount of sugar to aid in nutrient absorption. I use a powder on ocasion called drip drop that is similar to that. It's a mixture of things to help the body soak up water more efficiently.
Kinda pricey but it works. Sometimes I need two of them if I waited too long or work nights and used too much caffiene.

I've been consuming grapes and cantelope for the water and electrolites along with cashews for magnesium, other nuts like walnuts and pecans as well. (Eating a 1/4 cup of cashews as I type this) Those along with brocolli and other foods for the electrolite nutrients and drinking plenty of water. Mostly spring water if possible. At times I'll drink a can of chicken noodle soup for the salt or eat a can of tuna.

In summer my dad used to wear out cantelopes, strawberry, grapes, bannanas and other stuff like that before sports drinks were invented. He worked in a metal extrusion factory until he retired.

Literally reposted in the post above yours. :)
 
I've just tried a couple of sips of pickle juice for the first time. It's funny that my taste buds were rapidly going back and forth between "that's tasty" and "that's horrid!" :yellowlaugh:

I take a little Nalgene bottle of Vlasic dill juice camping if I have an empty jar.
 
It's been a rather intense summer this year in the DFW metromess. Today we hit 109°F, heat index something like 120°. I naturally decided to spend the day working outside and regretted it. What was supposed to be a 2 hour job took ... longer ... and I didn't finish.

My mistake (besides not starting early) was not to hydrate early and often. I prepared but a quart of ice water - enough for a lawn care session, but not standing on a ladder futzing with wires and conduit. Tomorrow I'll implement the strategy that got me through a summer-long shed building project 5 years ago: ½ gallon of ice water plus a quart of powder-heavy Gatorade.
 
It's been a rather intense summer this year in the DFW metromess. Today we hit 109°F, heat index something like 120°. I naturally decided to spend the day working outside and regretted it. What was supposed to be a 2 hour job took ... longer ... and I didn't finish.

I can sympathise, our summers here are brutal as well, 45C+ for extended periods, best to get necessary jobs outside done at dawn or in the evenings 😉


"Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun" - Rudyard Kippling
 
July was a lousy month for me. Got sick with something (not covid), followed by a heel spur flare up, followed by a sudden and unexplained muscle spasm in my right side. One "Oh, you think you're going to enjoy any of July?" thing after another so I was down and out most of the month.

When I was sick I was drinking a lot of fluids but at one point got so dehydrated my eyelids were attempting to stick to my eyes. So I chugged down a bunch of water and went back to bed.
 
Reading this thread, I don't see anything about chia seeds, or other similar "slow-release" hydration aids… My sister is a long-distance runner and put me onto them - they absorb water and swell up, mix them into yoghurt with berries or whatever floats your boat, and they provide a buffer or sorts to increase your resilience against dehydration.

I've found them very helpful at times. I work hard - not as manual these days, but I used to spend 16+ hrs a day going pretty full tilt on heavy manual industrial work with no breaks, and it beats your body pretty bad when you do it week in, week out, for years at a time.

I've found out most of this stuff about hydration the hard way though, like the time I installed a big industrial machine alone with no lifting gear, in one of the hottest parts of the country on a roasting midsummer day, AND in a dead-end workshop with one roller door and no air flow!
I knew I was in trouble when I dried out my 8th litre of water after whole packet of chips (crisps for you 'muricans) - a terrible way to get salt, but my body was screaming for it.
I felt very ill, but still had to drive 3 hours home over difficult roads… Not good. I could hardly stand for several days after, looking back it took me weeks to recover properly, and yes, there were a lot of bananas involved.

Funny how, to a certain extent, your body knows what it needs, if you'll just learn to listen to it properly.

@bykfixer , have you tried massage therapy for long-term improvement of your cramps?
 
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