Latest / Stuff You Should Know / How long can you go without food and water?
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
- 0:03Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know?
- 0:08Speaker 1: From house Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
- 0:11Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. This is stuff you
- 0:15Speaker 1: should know. Welcome, Welcome. How you doing the invenue? So, Chuck? Yes,
- 0:23Speaker 1: I just um, I just drank a coke and I
- 0:26Speaker 1: also ate some chips and salsa, nice, and I it
- 0:31Speaker 1: was all on an empty stomach, so I feel like
- 0:32Speaker 1: I'm gonna vomit. Three of the four food groups right
- 0:35Speaker 1: cover right, So, yeah, you've got corn in the chips,
- 0:38Speaker 1: You've got tomato onion, God knows what else is cilantro
- 0:42Speaker 1: in cilantro? I'm sure is that a food group? So
- 0:46Speaker 1: you've got all this stuff in the salts and the
- 0:48Speaker 1: chips and and then whatever's in the coke, right, um,
- 0:52Speaker 1: And all of it came to me and into my
- 0:55Speaker 1: stomach because I am a member of the wealthiest nation
- 0:59Speaker 1: on the planet. Okay, Yeah, do you want me to
- 1:02Speaker 1: get to the bottom of this? Yeah, I kind of
- 1:04Speaker 1: don't know where you're going. Well, ironically, I should say
- 1:07Speaker 1: I didn't even pay for this. I found it in
- 1:08Speaker 1: the brake room and ate it. Okay, but I live
- 1:11Speaker 1: in America, and America's got the money to pay for food.
- 1:16Speaker 1: So food naturally finds its way to countries like the
- 1:20Speaker 1: United States, Western European countries, developed nations, right, it doesn't
- 1:26Speaker 1: necessarily find its way to underdeveloped nations. Okay. So you're
- 1:31Speaker 1: familiar with the carrying capacity, right, Okay, Um, well then
- 1:35Speaker 1: I'll explain to everybody else. Uh. It's an anthropological term,
- 1:38Speaker 1: and I think it may also have to do with economics.
- 1:41Speaker 1: But basically, a carrying capacity is the total number of humans. Uh,
- 1:46Speaker 1: something can sustain so like hunting, hunting and gathering. I
- 1:50Speaker 1: think could sustain something like several hundred million people up
- 1:55Speaker 1: to maybe two billion, I'm not sure. Uh. And right
- 1:58Speaker 1: as we were on the verge of hitting that mark,
- 2:00Speaker 1: we came up with agriculture out of the blue. Agriculture
- 2:04Speaker 1: can buy estimates, Uh, carry ten billion people. Okay, we're
- 2:10Speaker 1: coming up on that mark pretty quickly. Yeah. I think
- 2:12Speaker 1: we're supposed to hit ten billion in like or something
- 2:15Speaker 1: like that, and we may go it may go shorter, um,
- 2:19Speaker 1: depending on you know, if there's any kind of catastrophes
- 2:22Speaker 1: or major food crises or climate change. It could go
- 2:26Speaker 1: longer if we'd be if our technology advances sufficiently, like
- 2:30Speaker 1: you know, we come up with soilent green or something
- 2:32Speaker 1: like that, right, grow from food in outer space. That's
- 2:35Speaker 1: that's where we we eat humans. Okay, that the science
- 2:39Speaker 1: fiction film you're talking about, soilent Green. Yeah, okay, So
- 2:43Speaker 1: so we may go more or less ten billion, but
- 2:45Speaker 1: ten billions usually the mark And um. This has kind
- 2:48Speaker 1: of been on the mind of some people for a while, right, Um,
- 2:52Speaker 1: especially in the in the mid to late sixties, there
- 2:54Speaker 1: was a food shortage and there were all sorts of
- 2:56Speaker 1: predictions coming out that you know, we were about to
- 3:00Speaker 1: be screwed, we're in big trouble. Um. And there is
- 3:03Speaker 1: a book called um Famine nineteen seventy five with an
- 3:07Speaker 1: exclamation point or anything. Yeah, And it was an academic
- 3:10Speaker 1: book and it used an exclamation point in the title UM.
- 3:13Speaker 1: And basically in it, the author um suggests that we
- 3:17Speaker 1: need to triage essentially who gets food. So the countries
- 3:22Speaker 1: that are contributing the most to the rest of the
- 3:24Speaker 1: world through advancement and you know, um whatever, uh, they
- 3:29Speaker 1: should get the most food and basically the other countries
- 3:32Speaker 1: should be left to starve to death. It was pretty grim.
- 3:36Speaker 1: It was written in nineteen seven, and obviously no one
- 3:39Speaker 1: took that up and ran with it, of course not.
- 3:42Speaker 1: It's pretty creepy, but it seems like price mechanism kind
- 3:45Speaker 1: of has come to fulfill that same prediction. You think, yeah,
- 3:50Speaker 1: because if you look at it, if you look at
- 3:52Speaker 1: the the eu n's World Hunger Map, uh, the the
- 3:56Speaker 1: areas that are the hungriest are the areas that are
- 3:59Speaker 1: the least developed. They have the least amount of food.
- 4:02Speaker 1: And as if that weren't enough, it's all a vicious cycle.
- 4:05Speaker 1: The more hungry you are, the higher your literacy rates are,
- 4:10Speaker 1: unemployment rates, all sorts of mortality rates obviously, um, so
- 4:16Speaker 1: you can't really break your way out of it unless
- 4:18Speaker 1: somebody helps you. And the price mechanism theory, my theory
- 4:22Speaker 1: is supported by the recent food crisis we saw in
- 4:26Speaker 1: two thousand seven, right, food just dried up everywhere. Why
- 4:31Speaker 1: because fuel prices went through the roof. We got expensive
- 4:34Speaker 1: to produce and transport food, and so all of a
- 4:36Speaker 1: sudden it didn't go the way it used to. You know,
- 4:40Speaker 1: care International there like an aid group, the Food Aid Group,
- 4:45Speaker 1: and they have a food Aid section. They actually stopped
- 4:48Speaker 1: handing out surplus food. They can't get it anymore. Yeah.
- 4:52Speaker 1: So food is pretty much a wealthy luxury, sadly enough.
- 4:57Speaker 1: And we're kind of hitting that famine nine seventy scenario
- 5:01Speaker 1: one way or another. Wow. I never thought of it
- 5:03Speaker 1: that way. Yeah, And it is tough to think about it.
- 5:05Speaker 1: And I mentioned all this because we're talking about how
- 5:08Speaker 1: long can you live without food or water? Right? Right?
- 5:11Speaker 1: So I guess my my goal was to kind of
- 5:13Speaker 1: put a human face on this, like what happens when
- 5:17Speaker 1: you live in Bangladesh or you know, Chad or somewhere
- 5:22Speaker 1: and you are starving to death and even worse, you
- 5:25Speaker 1: can't get any access to water or fresh water, at
- 5:28Speaker 1: least from from researching this, it's a horrible, horrible way
- 5:32Speaker 1: to die. Yeah, I may i may um, I may
- 5:35Speaker 1: reevaluate my dropping out of the sky in an airplane
- 5:38Speaker 1: is the worst way to die. Starving to death or
- 5:40Speaker 1: dehydration might do it for you. Right. Yeah, So let's
- 5:43Speaker 1: I mean, how long can you go without food? Say, well,
- 5:48Speaker 1: there's a general rule of threes. If you're talking about
- 5:51Speaker 1: survival experts, they call it the rule of threes. Odly enough,
- 5:55Speaker 1: and uh, supposedly you can go and these are rough estimates,
- 5:58Speaker 1: you know, there's we'll talk about the variances later, but
- 6:01Speaker 1: you can go three minutes without air before you die,
- 6:05Speaker 1: three hours without shelter if you're in a really harsh environment,
- 6:08Speaker 1: three days without water, in three weeks without food, three
- 6:12Speaker 1: hours without shelter, and if you're you know, stuck in
- 6:16Speaker 1: the freezing cold somewhere, that kind of thing. So that
- 6:18Speaker 1: that's the rule of threes. Um. There's all sorts of
- 6:21Speaker 1: play within that though. So if you're talking about food,
- 6:24Speaker 1: how long you go food, three weeks is actually kind
- 6:28Speaker 1: of on target. Um. You know, you can look at
- 6:31Speaker 1: political prisoners that have gone on hunger strikes. Yeah, the
- 6:33Speaker 1: IRA in the early eighties a lot longer than three weeks.
- 6:38Speaker 1: Well they did, and you can and you know, Gandhi
- 6:41Speaker 1: fasted for exactly three weeks, but he was in his
- 6:43Speaker 1: seventies at the time, so he wasn't in you know,
- 6:46Speaker 1: premium condition, which obviously if you're in the most fit
- 6:49Speaker 1: and the most healthy, you can go a little bit
- 6:51Speaker 1: longer than you know, someone who's grossly out of shape,
- 6:54Speaker 1: although having an abundance of fat actually would help you
- 6:57Speaker 1: survive too. So I guess that gets this into what
- 6:59Speaker 1: happened is when you start to run out of food,
- 7:02Speaker 1: bringing up the fat part, because your body what it
- 7:05Speaker 1: does is it processes uh, fat, carbohydrates, and proteins as
- 7:10Speaker 1: the stored energy, right, because it keep surviving. That's energy
- 7:14Speaker 1: you need your cells need for you know, to to
- 7:17Speaker 1: perform the functions that they do right. Right. And so
- 7:19Speaker 1: if you're talking about those three things and you're starting
- 7:22Speaker 1: the process of starving to death, uh, your body is
- 7:26Speaker 1: going to burn up carbohydrates. That's the first thing that's
- 7:29Speaker 1: going to burn up, which is which is good because
- 7:31Speaker 1: carves make you fat, sure, and then uh, then it
- 7:35Speaker 1: starts to burn up your fat. Stored fat even better
- 7:37Speaker 1: than burning up carbs, right. And if you have extra
- 7:39Speaker 1: stored fat, that's why you might get less a little
- 7:41Speaker 1: bit longer. I think you're I would make it for
- 7:43Speaker 1: a while. I think we'd beat the average. I have
- 7:45Speaker 1: a few extra pounds, if that's what you're alluding to,
- 7:48Speaker 1: I said you and okay, And then after that, the
- 7:52Speaker 1: proteins start to get burned. And that's bad news because
- 7:56Speaker 1: using up proteins is basically your body itself. Your body
- 7:59Speaker 1: is kind of consumed itself in a way, so it's creepy.
- 8:02Speaker 1: That's like the maybe the structure, cellular structure, like you're
- 8:05Speaker 1: just eating your own muscles or something like that. I
- 8:08Speaker 1: don't know. It sounds pretty rotten either way. Yeah, that's
- 8:11Speaker 1: that's very rotten. Your metabolism comes into play obviously, which
- 8:15Speaker 1: is how your body converts food into energy. So if
- 8:18Speaker 1: you have a real slow metabolism, you're gonna burn your
- 8:20Speaker 1: food a slower so you'll last longer you have which
- 8:24Speaker 1: which will also cause you to you know, have carry
- 8:26Speaker 1: little extra weight if you have a slow metabolism, right,
- 8:28Speaker 1: But also you would be breaking down the carbohydrate slower
- 8:31Speaker 1: and then the fat slower, and then the proteins more slowly. Right, Yeah, Josh,
- 8:35Speaker 1: I think that's that's probably the case. So that's explains
- 8:38Speaker 1: why you would live a little bit longer if you're starting.
- 8:41Speaker 1: Climate plays plays a role. If you're in the freezing
- 8:44Speaker 1: cold or in the burning heat, neither one of those
- 8:47Speaker 1: are aren't any good because you're gonna die faster basically,
- 8:52Speaker 1: which actually in this case may be better. Uh Well,
- 8:56Speaker 1: chances are if you're in extreme heat or cold, you
- 8:59Speaker 1: wouldn't make it to the point where you actually starved
- 9:01Speaker 1: to death. You would die from the elements before that
- 9:04Speaker 1: because it would weaken your body, you know, and tomato
- 9:07Speaker 1: tomato at that point, right, sure, yeah, you're probably just
- 9:10Speaker 1: you know, whatever hastens death, I imagine at that point
- 9:13Speaker 1: it's okay. So, um, I mean there's different stages, and
- 9:17Speaker 1: there's different symptoms for the stages of starvation, right um,
- 9:22Speaker 1: So at first, you know, and you can I can
- 9:24Speaker 1: identify with these like weakness, confusion, chronic diarrhea, got it
- 9:30Speaker 1: all the time, I barely ever eat, right. Um. Don't
- 9:34Speaker 1: you find that significant that you you your body starts
- 9:37Speaker 1: ejecting stuff while you're starving. You would think you'd be
- 9:41Speaker 1: hoarding it, right, Yeah, I guess it makes sense. But
- 9:44Speaker 1: that's that seems to be a common theme that that you, um,
- 9:47Speaker 1: you you have diarrhea, which is just bad because that
- 9:51Speaker 1: will also lead to dehydration, which we'll get treated in
- 9:53Speaker 1: a minute, right exactly. Um, and then advanced starvation. You're
- 9:56Speaker 1: you're really bad off. You're convulsive. Um, you can have
- 10:01Speaker 1: muscle spasms, a regular heartbeat, m hallucinations. Uh, and then
- 10:07Speaker 1: ultimately you can die of shock, correct, right, Well, your
- 10:10Speaker 1: organs will just start shutting down basically one by one. Yeah,
- 10:13Speaker 1: you know, your body's a machine and they always say
- 10:16Speaker 1: that and that food, food is the fuel, and so
- 10:18Speaker 1: without it, you're literally just gonna start breaking down bit
- 10:21Speaker 1: by bit. You said, Gandhi fasted for twenty one days,
- 10:23Speaker 1: and he probably did it more than once, I imagine. Um.
- 10:27Speaker 1: But when we were talking about the IRA earlier, they
- 10:31Speaker 1: one of them made it seventy one days, I think, so,
- 10:34Speaker 1: I don't remember the number exactly, but I think the
- 10:36Speaker 1: last one made it seventy one days. And um, there
- 10:38Speaker 1: were a group of ten of them, right they were
- 10:41Speaker 1: in prison in Great Britain, and they started a hunger
- 10:44Speaker 1: struck because they were being um, pretty much tortured. At
- 10:47Speaker 1: the time, everybody hated the IRA, and Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher
- 10:52Speaker 1: was Prime Minister at the time, would would not budge.
- 10:55Speaker 1: She went doing very public and yeah the world and
- 10:58Speaker 1: um she she she kept repeating that these people are
- 11:02Speaker 1: criminals and they're committing suicide and she had zero compassion
- 11:04Speaker 1: for him. But from what I understand, it actually started
- 11:07Speaker 1: to kind of turn the tide of public opinion slightly
- 11:10Speaker 1: more in favor of the I R A UM than
- 11:13Speaker 1: than it had been before, because up to that point
- 11:15Speaker 1: they were just heartless bombers, you know. So, and actually
- 11:19Speaker 1: seventy three days. Thomas mcawie he lasted the longest at
- 11:23Speaker 1: seventy three days, and he lasted what a week or
- 11:25Speaker 1: so longer than the second Yeah, full week. Well, choosing
- 11:29Speaker 1: to starve to death is one thing that's pretty harsh,
- 11:31Speaker 1: and you've got to be pretty committed to your cause
- 11:34Speaker 1: to do that. There's absolutely no way whatsoever you're gonna
- 11:37Speaker 1: last seventy one days without water right now. You never
- 11:41Speaker 1: see anyone go on on a dehydration strike, no, because
- 11:44Speaker 1: even the I ra a guys, um, we're taking small
- 11:47Speaker 1: amounts of water, which is what allowed them to live
- 11:50Speaker 1: that long. Exactly, you have to would be a very
- 11:52Speaker 1: short protest if you were doing a water strike, agreed,
- 11:55Speaker 1: and you would not get much accomplished. So what what
- 11:58Speaker 1: kind of time length they are we talking? I'll go
- 12:00Speaker 1: back to the threes three days you could potentially live
- 12:04Speaker 1: without water. Um. Again, environment and what kind of shape
- 12:08Speaker 1: you're in play a role. If you're obviously in the desert,
- 12:10Speaker 1: you can start to be the hydrated within the hour.
- 12:13Speaker 1: And you hear about, you know, these awful stories about
- 12:16Speaker 1: like a baby being locked in a car that can
- 12:18Speaker 1: die from dehydration just a couple of hours in the car.
- 12:20Speaker 1: I think you've been showing them that. I think like
- 12:22Speaker 1: maybe an hour. Yeah, yeah, and it's um, I guess
- 12:25Speaker 1: this is the point where we should say that this
- 12:27Speaker 1: is not something anyone should test. You know, this is
- 12:30Speaker 1: no laughing matter. Legal department loves you, chuck. Yeah. I
- 12:34Speaker 1: need to say these things because you do not want
- 12:36Speaker 1: to test your body to see how long you go
- 12:37Speaker 1: without water. You can go on fast and people do
- 12:39Speaker 1: the cleanses and things, as you know. I've done my
- 12:42Speaker 1: cleans the Master cleanse before and um, is that the
- 12:45Speaker 1: lemonade cleans Yeah, yeah, with the cayan pepper lemon and
- 12:48Speaker 1: gray bean maple syrup. I've done that before. To all
- 12:51Speaker 1: it did was kick up like chicken pox and me, oh,
- 12:54Speaker 1: I was so sick after like four days. Yeah, yeah,
- 12:56Speaker 1: I couldn't hank I pooped my pants. I'll bet you did.
- 13:00Speaker 1: Once per moves through you, isn't it. Yeah, it's very
- 13:04Speaker 1: h It leads lends itself to an accidental scenarios that
- 13:08Speaker 1: is a sign of starvation. So it is so Yeah,
- 13:11Speaker 1: you can't live without water for very long. Um, you
- 13:14Speaker 1: lose water when you sweat, when you urinate, um water
- 13:17Speaker 1: in your feces. You lose water when you breathe through evaporation.
- 13:22Speaker 1: So your body is constantly losing water. Yeah, even like
- 13:25Speaker 1: you said, when you breathe, I found that surprising until
- 13:27Speaker 1: I really thought about it. I'm like, of course, that's
- 13:29Speaker 1: why you can see your breath. It's water vapor right right,
- 13:32Speaker 1: And you know there's a lot of water. Our body,
- 13:35Speaker 1: I believe is water, and uh, we need water. It
- 13:38Speaker 1: carries it runs through the blood to carry oxygen everywhere.
- 13:42Speaker 1: It acts as cushions for your joints and soft tissue
- 13:45Speaker 1: and helps your food digest, helps you absorb food energy.
- 13:49Speaker 1: There's actually this precarious balance going on, Chuck. There's this, uh,
- 13:53Speaker 1: I guess kind of dance between water and solutes in
- 13:57Speaker 1: your body. A waltz sure sometimes is a fox trot
- 14:00Speaker 1: depending on the state of um. And so solutes can
- 14:04Speaker 1: be things like calcium, sodium, electro lights, think things that
- 14:09Speaker 1: you need, but um, you don't need an over abundance
- 14:12Speaker 1: of them in relation to the amount of water. You
- 14:14Speaker 1: don't want to high concentration or low concentration. And this
- 14:17Speaker 1: is part of the homeostasis that that um state of
- 14:20Speaker 1: balance in your body's processes. Part of that is UM
- 14:25Speaker 1: an isotonic state, which is a balance in the solution
- 14:29Speaker 1: of solutes and water. Got got me? Okay, you got me,
- 14:33Speaker 1: You're with me so far with so basically there's there's
- 14:37Speaker 1: two places um. These solutions can be in your body
- 14:41Speaker 1: on the cellular level. They can be outside the cell,
- 14:44Speaker 1: which is extracellular, or they can be inside the cell,
- 14:46Speaker 1: which is intercellular. But and you want to have an
- 14:49Speaker 1: equal and isotonic balance and equal solution inside and outside. Right,
- 14:54Speaker 1: and if you if one's thrown off, say there's a
- 14:57Speaker 1: high concentration, which means there's a lot of salutes and
- 15:01Speaker 1: not too much water. UM on the extracellular spaces. Uh,
- 15:05Speaker 1: the water is going to go from inside the cell outside.
- 15:09Speaker 1: It's it's trying to strike a balance. If you're not
- 15:12Speaker 1: replenishing water and the water is being shifted around like this,
- 15:17Speaker 1: that's when you're in trouble. That makes sense. Okay, Now,
- 15:20Speaker 1: when you start losing water, you get thrown out of balance.
- 15:24Speaker 1: When you get thrown out of balance, basically dehydration, all
- 15:29Speaker 1: sorts of terrible things can happen. To your cells. Right,
- 15:31Speaker 1: So let's say there is a build up of sodium.
- 15:34Speaker 1: You've seen what sodium does your lips if you eat.
- 15:37Speaker 1: Have you ever had Burger King's chicken fries? No? Okay,
- 15:42Speaker 1: well what if you? If you they were an ill
- 15:44Speaker 1: conceived and short lived. Um, they were French fries, but
- 15:47Speaker 1: they were made of chicken, so they weren't they were.
- 15:49Speaker 1: It was chicken, a chicken nugget elongated and those things
- 15:54Speaker 1: you just you took a bite and your lips were
- 15:56Speaker 1: immediately checked like you've been skiing for eight days. Yeah,
- 15:59Speaker 1: oh my god. It's so there's um, there's too much
- 16:03Speaker 1: sodium can dry out cells, right, it can wither them.
- 16:07Speaker 1: So if you have too much sodium in your cells
- 16:09Speaker 1: and not enough water, they can shrink and become destroyed.
- 16:13Speaker 1: And also outside of the cells as well, you have
- 16:15Speaker 1: all sorts of process He's going on. So if there's
- 16:18Speaker 1: too much water inside the cells and not enough outside,
- 16:21Speaker 1: the solution is too concentrated outside, then you have all
- 16:24Speaker 1: sorts of connections, um, a little vessels and things that
- 16:27Speaker 1: can rupture. Right, Okay, so this is what's going on
- 16:31Speaker 1: with dehydration. Actually, both of those can happen. So One
- 16:34Speaker 1: of the processes that that can take place and kill
- 16:37Speaker 1: you very easily is cerebral adema. Right, that just sounds
- 16:42Speaker 1: like a killer. It's not good. Basically, what happens is
- 16:45Speaker 1: the U the uh osmotic gradient occurs, so it's out
- 16:50Speaker 1: of balance and the water is sucked into the cell,
- 16:55Speaker 1: which sounds kind of weird because you know you're dehydrated,
- 17:00Speaker 1: but so it's taking any available water. It can um
- 17:04Speaker 1: and if that happens too much to sell can rupture,
- 17:07Speaker 1: and if it happens in your brain, your brain swells
- 17:10Speaker 1: and you're in big trouble because once a cell is
- 17:13Speaker 1: damaged like that, it can't be repaired. The exact opposite
- 17:18Speaker 1: can happen to your brain can if the balance is
- 17:21Speaker 1: off you have too much sodium not enough water, which
- 17:24Speaker 1: seems much more intuitive, and dehydration, uh, the the brain
- 17:28Speaker 1: can shrink. Actually. Do you remember Terri Shiavo, right, the
- 17:33Speaker 1: patient that was on life support and I got too
- 17:35Speaker 1: much media attention. I remember her? Right? Um? She actually
- 17:39Speaker 1: when when she finally died, you know, she died of dehydration.
- 17:42Speaker 1: After thirteen days they took her off life support. She
- 17:45Speaker 1: was in a persistent vegetative state. Which we've talked about before. Um,
- 17:49Speaker 1: And she was basically just functioning on her brain stem.
- 17:52Speaker 1: When they did the autopsy after she died of dehydration
- 17:55Speaker 1: thirteen days later, it was half the size, half of
- 17:58Speaker 1: its normal size. Her brain was it just shrunk because
- 18:02Speaker 1: of a lack of water. It's interesting, It is interesting
- 18:05Speaker 1: and horrifying. It is Unfortunately, from everything I've read, every
- 18:08Speaker 1: medical professional said, there's no way she can feel pained.
- 18:11Speaker 1: She's not in a state of consciousness where she can
- 18:13Speaker 1: experience pain, which is good because that would have been
- 18:16Speaker 1: a really painful way to die. I would imagine dying
- 18:19Speaker 1: of thirst or dehydration starvation is not a pleasant way
- 18:22Speaker 1: to go if you're obviously not in a vegetatus. Right. Yeah, well,
- 18:27Speaker 1: you know though you've experienced something similar before. I know
- 18:31Speaker 1: you have when you've had a hangover. You know those
- 18:34Speaker 1: throbbing headaches that you have. Your brain is literally shrinking,
- 18:40Speaker 1: right right. Um, You're you're you're dried out, basically. Um.
- 18:44Speaker 1: You dehydrate when you when you drink heavily. Um, and
- 18:47Speaker 1: your body actually shuffles water around itself, right, And one
- 18:54Speaker 1: one great store of water in your body is in
- 18:57Speaker 1: your brain. So what's happening is water is being on
- 19:00Speaker 1: from your brain and sent to other parts of your
- 19:01Speaker 1: bodies to rehydrate them, which seems like a terrible mechanism, right,
- 19:06Speaker 1: But what's going on is your brain actually doesn't have
- 19:08Speaker 1: any um, any any nervingtings. There's no way to feel
- 19:11Speaker 1: pain in your brain. But the membrane that connects your
- 19:16Speaker 1: brain to your skull, it's called the dura, it does
- 19:18Speaker 1: have pain receptors. So that's where the stretched and that's
- 19:22Speaker 1: where you get the headache, which is why you need
- 19:24Speaker 1: to replenish yourself with water. Well, yeah, they say, you know, uh,
- 19:27Speaker 1: if you're drinking alcohol in large amounts for you know,
- 19:30Speaker 1: New Year's Eve, let's say to uh toward the end
- 19:33Speaker 1: of the night, and you you need to start slamming water
- 19:35Speaker 1: or alternate the alcoholic beverage with a couple of I've
- 19:37Speaker 1: always heard that too. I find it really difficult to do. Well, yeah,
- 19:40Speaker 1: that's because you have to put down the glass of
- 19:41Speaker 1: scotch in order to do it. So what else you got?
- 19:44Speaker 1: You got anything else? I've got nothing else? You know,
- 19:47Speaker 1: don't don't try this at home if you're in a
- 19:49Speaker 1: survival scenario though you're gonna want to get on the
- 19:52Speaker 1: water too. It's sweet. That's first order of business, unless
- 19:55Speaker 1: you're obviously caught in freezing ice storm somewhere, and then
- 19:59Speaker 1: you're gonna one to get your shelter really fast. Right. Also,
- 20:02Speaker 1: you you've got plenty of water right around. You need
- 20:04Speaker 1: to melt it, true, Yeah, you have to melt it.
- 20:06Speaker 1: That's a good point. You don't want to eat snow
- 20:08Speaker 1: or chew on ice that will actually dehydrate you further.
- 20:11Speaker 1: Well it really, I know that the best way to
- 20:13Speaker 1: drink water is that room temperature. That's when your body
- 20:15Speaker 1: absorbs the most from it, right, But I didn't know
- 20:18Speaker 1: you can't eat snow. Well, it's uh. What it does
- 20:21Speaker 1: is it drops your core body temperature so much that
- 20:23Speaker 1: you're doing more harm than good. Got you, got you
- 20:26Speaker 1: well again, don't try going without food or water if
- 20:30Speaker 1: you don't have to drink eight to tin cups a day.
- 20:32Speaker 1: I know it varies from different doctors, but I think
- 20:35Speaker 1: by and large, if women drink, you know, roughly ninety
- 20:38Speaker 1: ounces of water day and men drink about a hundred
- 20:40Speaker 1: and twenty ounces a day, then you should be doing
- 20:42Speaker 1: pretty well. You definitely want to hydrate got you and
- 20:46Speaker 1: when your mom said that you should eat all your
- 20:48Speaker 1: food because they're starving kids in China, she wasn't that
- 20:51Speaker 1: far off. So consider that and uh, chuck, what do
- 20:54Speaker 1: we got? Uh? You know, I think we should give
- 20:58Speaker 1: some props to some of our podcasting mates here. I
- 21:01Speaker 1: know that we have a lot of great fans and
- 21:03Speaker 1: so of you know some of the other podcasts we do.
- 21:05Speaker 1: But we have a great auto podcasts if you're into that,
- 21:08Speaker 1: called high Speed Stuff, and we have a music one
- 21:11Speaker 1: that's been launched recently. It's very cool kind of side. Yeah,
- 21:14Speaker 1: it's stuff from the B side takes an interesting angle
- 21:17Speaker 1: on different various music subjects. Is school. I like it?
- 21:20Speaker 1: And of course stuff you missed him? History class? Great? Yeah?
- 21:24Speaker 1: And uh what else? Brain stuff from our company founder
- 21:28Speaker 1: Marshall Brain the brain and then we can't forget Strickland
- 21:31Speaker 1: and tech stuff he would badger us for the next
- 21:34Speaker 1: few weeks. Sold. So tech stuff. If you're into gadgets
- 21:37Speaker 1: and technology, then they're your guts. But you can find
- 21:39Speaker 1: all those on the how stuff works page of iTunes.
- 21:43Speaker 1: And if you want to learn more about, um, how
- 21:46Speaker 1: long you can go without food or water? You can
- 21:49Speaker 1: type those words into our handy search bar at how
- 21:51Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
- 21:56Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
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