[HN Gopher] 'Agua, Agua'
___________________________________________________________________
'Agua, Agua'
Author : acdanger
Score : 83 points
Date : 2024-08-05 05:13 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.altaonline.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.altaonline.com)
| hasoleju wrote:
| The guy in the story basically survived 6 days without water and
| traveled up to 160 miles during that time. It's almost
| unbelievable. I thought that once you loose 4-6 kg of water due
| to sweat the body does not function any more due to the changed
| concentration of minerals in the cells.
| nabla9 wrote:
| You risk heart attack even if you are in water only diet
| (without salts and potassium) for longer periods of time
| (several weeks).
| sph wrote:
| Stupid question, but if stuck in the desert you can suck on
| some rock to recoup some lost minerals, no?
|
| I guess like any deer we'd immediately recognise (and love)
| the taste of rock salt
| darby_nine wrote:
| I've got to imagine this would mess with our ability to
| cool ourselves even if it gave us more water retention.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| That basically only happens if you do a water fast with
| distilled water.
|
| Regular mineral water will avoid that.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Uhmm, No... no it will not. That is dangerously incorrect.
|
| Mineral water may have a small amount of trace minerals,
| but it has basically zero electrolytes at relevant
| physiologic concentrations. Functionally, there'd be almost
| no difference between distilled and mineral water fasting
| with respect to electrolyte management.
|
| Imbalances in sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium can
| get VERY serious very quickly. Mineral water does not
| really have relevant concentrations of those.
|
| I think you're conflating the idea that distilled water
| isn't particularly good for you since it starts leaching
| out the trace minerals from parts of your body, with the
| entire concept of electrolyte management. These are VERY
| different things, occurring with VERY different relevant
| concentrations... like at least 1-2 orders of magnitude.
| cycomanic wrote:
| > Mineral water may have a small amount of trace
| minerals, but it has basically zero electrolytes at
| relevant physiologic concentrations. Functionally,
| there'd be almost no difference between distilled and
| mineral water fasting with respect to electrolyte
| management.
|
| This might be correct for what is considered mineralwater
| in the US (I honestly don't know), but 1l of typical
| sparkling mineralwater in Germany has about a third of
| your daily magnesium and calcium recommended amounts (as
| well as relevant amounts of a view others). https://www.g
| erolsteiner.de/wissensquellen/wasserwissen/mine...
|
| And there are waters with even higher concentrations.
| Alupis wrote:
| Just a note, most mineral waters are not entirely
| natural, and contain added minerals and electrolytes. The
| water coming out of your tap, for instance, does not
| contain anywhere near the levels of minerals and
| electrolytes as a bottled mineral water product.
|
| The GGP mentioned "regular mineral water" - but most of
| us (at least in the US) do not purchase bottled mineral
| water to drink on a day-to-day basis. Most of our water
| consumption, in one way or another, comes out of the tap.
| f1shy wrote:
| That is 1/3 of the minerals you are supposed to get from
| water! It is recommended 6g of Na per day, which you will
| not get just from water.
| lukan wrote:
| Where do you get that from? No, it _is_ the amount of
| minerals you are recommended to get during one day, no
| matter the source.
|
| And for Na the recommended ammount is 1.5 g (from D-A-CH)
|
| But in the example linked above, 1 l of the water gives
| 118 mg of Na, so 13 l of water would be needed to get the
| required Na amount. Not practical, but most mineral
| waters actually come rather with an artifically reduced
| amount of Na. Natural sources probably have higher
| values.
|
| But in
| space_oddity wrote:
| When I read these stories, it's like a reminder of the
| incredible, albeit rare, resilience of the human body
| nabla9 wrote:
| Tendai "Marathon monks" in mount Hiei finish 1,000-day kaihogyo
| with 9-day period without food, water, and sleep but they have to
| walk only 400m in those last 9-days. Only 46 men have finished.
|
| If I remember correctly the 9-day period was shortened to
| something like 6 or 7 days, because too many of them died.
| samstave wrote:
| I'm willing to bet that whomever originally came up with the
| 'auspicious' 9 days never did it themselves.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Since it seems like a group that already practices and values
| feats of fasting and endurance it's probably most likely that
| it commemorates a single particularly notable fast attributed
| to a specific individual in the community's history. It's
| possible that that individual didn't actually succeed and it
| was based on a myth. But I seriously doubt some guy decided
| one day to try to trick his peers into doing a brutal fast
| that had never been done.
| lambdaba wrote:
| I'm into dry fasting, and I know people that did up to 20 days
| no food/water, and obviously little (but some) physical
| activity like slow walking.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I think it's pretty stupid to challenge yourself in ways that are
| guaranteed to harm your body in some way, even if the harm is
| temporary.
| diggan wrote:
| We all have your vices. Surely you too have a vice or two that
| isn't ideal for your body, but you do it regardless?
|
| We only live once, to avoid anything that might damage your
| body would lead to a very boring life.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > We all have your vices. Surely you too have a vice or two
| that isn't ideal for your body, but you do it regardless?
|
| Well, I eat a sweet thing about once a month. I guess that's
| pretty harmful.
| sorokod wrote:
| You offer criticism of a spiritual practice you do not
| understand.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| He offers criticism based upon a biological outcome to a
| spiritual practice, he does not need to understand to declare
| the outcome stupid. The cultural practices are protected from
| criticism stuff does not fly- less all insanity of the past
| comes back crawling from the cracks. Cant criticise witch
| burnings as they are a "cultural" practice..
| kjs3 wrote:
| Human sacrifice, genital mutilation and various forms of
| slavery have all been excused as a 'spiritual practice'.
| "Understanding" will not make me go 'oh, sure...now your
| destructive practice makes total sense...carry on'. Get over
| yourself.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I understand and I still think it's stupid.
| darby_nine wrote:
| Most human practices are stupid if you think about them long
| enough.
| RIMR wrote:
| Nobody should do anything ever.
| powersnail wrote:
| Enjoyed stupidity makes up a good portion of entertainment.
| marssaxman wrote:
| I suppose you are welcome to judge people as you please, but
| essentially everyone who hikes, skis, climbs, kayaks, skates,
| surfs, runs, or plays any sort of contact sport will disagree
| with you.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I do a lot of outdoors stuff and there's a huge difference
| between pushing yourself on a challenging hike and being
| stupid by not drinking any water.
| itishappy wrote:
| Dehydration was not the intent, it was supposed to be just
| a long desert hike:
|
| > "I thought, I'm pretty tough. I can do that," Broyles
| says. He planned ahead and buried water caches at strategic
| points of the journey, which he described in a 1982
| article. "Intending to parallel [Valencia's] route, I had
| no design to parallel his plight," he wrote. "But the
| desert doesn't always honor human plans."
| holoduke wrote:
| Almost everyone who did sport on the highest level suffered
| irreversible damage. Of course modest training is very
| important and healthy in all aspects.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's part of the human condition I'd say. Drinking causes harm
| in some way, but most people do it. Sticking to a diet can be
| harmful in some way, but especially people claiming to be
| pursuing good health go for them. Sports harms your body in
| that it causes small injuries that the body has to heal.
|
| Without this stupidity as you call it, we'd be nowhere. Yeah
| it's stupid to try and hunt a wooly mammoth given they're ten
| times our size but if our ancestors didn't we wouldn't be here.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > It's part of the human condition I'd say. Drinking causes
| harm in some way, but most people do it.
|
| I also think drinking is stupid.
| space_oddity wrote:
| But the drive to test limits is understandable
| Xen9 wrote:
| There's a book called anti-fragile which gives opposite advice
| (in certain contexts).
| FDAiscooked wrote:
| The title immediately reminded me of this story from 2018:
| https://globalnews.ca/news/4318789/one-year-old-boy-immigrat...
|
| > The 1-year-old boy in a green button-up shirt drank milk from a
| bottle, played with a small purple ball that lit up when it hit
| the ground and occasionally asked for "agua."
|
| > Then it was the child's turn for his court appearance before a
| Phoenix immigration judge, who could hardly contain his unease
| with the situation during the portion of the hearing where he
| asks immigrant defendants whether they understand the
| proceedings.
|
| > "I'm embarrassed to ask it, because I don't know who you would
| explain it to, unless you think that a 1-year-old could learn
| immigration law," Judge John W. Richardson told the lawyer
| representing the 1-year-old boy.
|
| > The boy is one of hundreds of children who need to be reunited
| with their parents after being separated at the border, many of
| them split from mothers and fathers as a result of the Trump
| administration's "zero-tolerance policy." The separations have
| become an embarrassment to the administration as stories of
| crying children separated from mothers and kept apart for weeks
| on end dominated the news in recent weeks.
|
| > Critics have also seized on the nation's immigration court
| system that requires children -- some still in diapers -- to have
| appearances before judges and go through deportation proceedings
| while separated from their parents. Such children don't have a
| right to a court-appointed attorney, and 90 percent of kids
| without a lawyer are returned to their home countries, according
| to Kids in Need of Defense, a group that provides legal
| representation.
| Xen9 wrote:
| I wonder what would happen if we had a huge truck of fish, then
| loaded thousand of fish to one of those most dry areas in the
| world - IE without coyotes - layed out evenly. Would these make
| good good in few years?
|
| edit: good food
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Yes it makes good food, but no you don't need to have an
| extremely dry place to do this. What you want is a cool climate
| so there are less issues with insects and bacteria. And it only
| takes around 3 months.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockfish
| aaroninsf wrote:
| Adjacent to this I highly recommend the nature writing of Craig
| Childs, which is somewhat akin in style to John McPhee with a
| dash of the more lyrical side of Edward Abbey:
| http://www.houseofrain.com/
|
| http://www.houseofrain.com/bookdetail.cfm?id=1183863164364 for
| example, the epigraph of which burned into my memory:
|
| > There are two easy ways to die in the desert: thirst and
| drowning.
| lambdaba wrote:
| While I did in the safety and chillness of my own apartment, I
| did a 10 day "dry" fast last year. As opposed to water fasting,
| with dry fasting you are not hungry AT ALL, but the thirst is
| something else. It's not unrelenting though, it can fade into the
| background if the air is humid enough and you refrain from
| talking too much, the mouth hydrates by itself.
|
| During dry fasting the body gets H20 from lipolysis (this is
| called "metabolic" water), sort of like a camel (though camels
| have obviously a lot of specialization for this).
|
| Anyway, thought it was a propos, so AMA if curious.
| CollinEMac wrote:
| This sounds incredibly dangerous
| lambdaba wrote:
| It does indeed sound incredibly dangerous, it isn't though.
| Russians (and some other European nations chiefly Germany)
| are into fasting, though I only know about Russians
| organizing dry fasting retreats, like Dr. Filinov https://www
| .wildestvitality.com/portfolio/items/winter-2023-...
|
| I know it's both a cliche and something that westerners often
| have forgotten how to do, but you can actually listen to your
| body and know minute by minute if you're in danger or not.
| For dry fasting, you are told that if you start getting
| persistent high heart rate you should stop.
|
| Now what you should find intriguing is why would anyone put
| themselves through this? Well, it has immense and unique
| health benefits, that's why. It's been studied, although less
| than water fasting for obvious reasons. Even water fasters
| think we're crazy, so I understand.
| Alupis wrote:
| > Dr Sergey Filonov is a world leader in clinical dry
| fasting expertise and the successful treatment of diseases,
| acute illnesses, chronic disorders and undiagnosable
| conditions.
|
| > you can actually listen to your body and know minute by
| minute if you're in danger or not
|
| Friend, this is all hocus pocus bogus from a crackpot
| doctor. Other sources even say dry fasting is rarely done
| today (because it's hocus pocus), even if it was once
| popular _in the Soviet Union_.
|
| You will also notice how this crackpot doctor charges
| $2,200 for a supervised 2 day dry fast - not 10!
|
| Please don't go 10 days without liquid intake - _especially
| when you are without medial supervision for crying out
| loud_. You cannot monitor yourself properly under these
| extreme conditions. Even if you survive 10 days without any
| liquid intake, you may (and probably will) cause
| irreversible damage to your body and organs.
| lambdaba wrote:
| Well, I did it, and I felt AMAZING for months after.
|
| I don't care about the doctor at all, I only wanted to
| link to the retreat to people are doing it and paying for
| it.
|
| I'm not advocating anybody do it either, and since it's
| so difficult, even though it's less than it appears, I
| don't see anyone jumping in blindly into this.
|
| Humans are almost uniquely adapted to starvation. Dry
| fasting is simply a boosted form of water fasting, which
| is almost mainstream. There's no particular danger to a
| person in reasonable health. I am so I could do it by
| myself.
| Alupis wrote:
| You may not be aware of the Placebo Effect[1]. What you
| experienced was not real in the sense that anything
| changed but your belief you felt better.
|
| While the placebo effect can be a powerful mental
| illusion, it will not prevent damage to your organs (or
| death) during this 10 day dry fast. Please don't ever do
| this.
|
| [1]
| https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/the-
| power-...
| lambdaba wrote:
| Of course placebo is involved in everything, as you know,
| whether you are aware of it or not, but the results of
| fasting are well studied and only a web search away.
| istultus wrote:
| From that site:
|
| > Russian physicians have successfully treated many
| illnesses and diseases outside
|
| > the standardized support of allopathic medicines, as
| well as more common
|
| > ailments including, but not limited to, mental
| disorders, bronchial asthma,
|
| > rheumatoid arthritis, hypertension, obesity and
| diabetes.
|
| I guess the Gulag does cure everything...
|
| (though to be fair, the part of the diseases mentioned
| that are due to metabolic disease - read: obesity - can
| be treated early in their course by just losing weight -
| diabetes and hypertension due to obesity will go away
| once you drop the weight. Just, you know, drink water if
| you're fasting. Or join the Darwin Awards, whatever).
| lambdaba wrote:
| Right, I sense a lack of open-mindedness here, or
| curiosity, fasting is widely recognized as having unique
| effects on stem cells including the immune system.
| istultus wrote:
| I'm sorry if you "sense a lack of open-mindedness" in my
| skepticism regarding Russian medicine. I'm actually very
| curious - I've water fasted myself. But I try to be
| rational, and tend to think anecdotal evidence shouldn't
| move my priors too much.
| lambdaba wrote:
| I don't know why you're making it about Russian medicine,
| as I said I've only given this example to show there is
| interest in structured arrangements for dry fasting, I
| guess it backfired because those Russians are backwards
| pre-scientific primitives or something.
|
| Fasting is an ancient practice, perhaps the most ancient
| medical practice.
| istultus wrote:
| It is incredibly dangerous, hypernatremia sadly occurs way
| too often in elderly patients in care homes where the
| patients are weak or mentally incapacitated and can't/don't
| ask for a drink of water and/or are ignored by their carers
| for long enough.
| lambdaba wrote:
| elderly patients in care homes is a far cry from anyone
| attempting to do this on their own
| istultus wrote:
| They are literally our only (unwilling) test subjects...
| Not a representative cohort by any means
| istultus wrote:
| Can I ask what led you to doing this?
|
| (And regardless - you usually aren't hungry during an extended
| water fast either - you do get physiological "pings" during
| your normal meal times. However, I would assume that if you're
| depriving yourself of water the body naturally overrides
| everything with signals for thirst)
| lambdaba wrote:
| I have MS, where autoimmune processes deteriorate the
| conductive coating on the nerves (myelin), and fasting is
| known for greatly boosting myelin repair. In fact, the most
| effective currently known remyelination treatment is a
| fasting mimetic (metformin) alongside an antihistamine
| (clemastine). It also regenerates the immune system, with
| obvious benefits for optimal functioning.
| istultus wrote:
| I'm sorry to hear about your MS - I can understand seeking
| whatever treatment might help, Did you do a pre/post MRI to
| compare the effect? (or whatever, CSF markers, OCT, what
| have you) How did you decide on the type and length of the
| fast? Have you tried water fasts beforehand? How long did
| you find a positive effect? Is the fast something that you
| plan on doing on continual schedule?
| lambdaba wrote:
| My MRIs are great because of all the "alternative"
| practices I did over the years, and it's not a new
| diagnosis either, usually at this stage people have a
| sizable amount of lesions. My last brain MRI came almost
| entirely clear, remarked upon by the doctor, with no
| signs of brain atrophy, which is almost unheard of at
| this point especially for someone not on a conventional
| immunosuppressant
|
| I did do water fasts, dry fasts are simply more effective
| for the same time spend.
|
| I do plan, not there yet because right now I'm focusing
| on building up exercise capacity and i'm also on high
| dose vitamin D for which it's recommended do drink lots
| of fluids, so I cut it out for a while and wait for my D
| levels to go down and when the weather permits I'll go at
| it again, probably on a whim which I find easier than
| setting a date beforehand.
| istultus wrote:
| How long ago was the MS diagnosed? What other alternative
| practices have you done? Any of them for an appreciable
| time with consistent good results (or inversely bad
| results when stopping)?
|
| May your good health continue!
| lambdaba wrote:
| Thank you,
|
| 15 years ago
|
| - "paleo" diet with the usual elimination trifecta of
| gluten, sugar & dairy, quit alcohol & nicotine <= this is
| where I was convinced it was the way when in the space of
| a week or so a lot of my more evident symptoms faded away
|
| - later keto
|
| - much later (6 years ago) carnivore diet
|
| - more recently megadose vitamin D (~2y with breaks)
|
| - even more recently psilocybin (full doses)
|
| - a lot of supplementation over the years which took a
| long time to figure out because the space is so vast and
| so hard to read, at least it was back in the early '10s.
| Nowadays B vitamin megadoses, fish oil, some newer
| research findings like n-acetylglucosamine, still have a
| lot to explore in the peptide area for neurogenesis and
| myelin repair, also mineral balancing, iron management
| (I'm male so phlebotomy), a few popular and totally
| mainstream supplements researched for MS like alpha-
| lipoic acid, fish oil
|
| That's about it in the most condensed manner. The entire
| history would be about 30x the size as my supplement
| drawer proves, though I already threw out a lot
| qingcharles wrote:
| I used to know a lot of Hispanic immigrants in Chicago. One of
| them told me his story. It start with his mom sewing two hidden
| amounts of dollars into the lining of his pants. When the coyotes
| he'd hired dumped him and 12 others in the desert near the border
| they were surrounded within minutes by gunmen who put them on
| their knees. He said a gunman tore straight into his pants and
| found one of the bundles (but clearly wasn't expecting a second
| one and didn't find it). He said the gunmen were slashing
| everyone's water bottles. He begged his captor not to slash his,
| and him and one other person got lucky. All the bad dudes then
| left these people to their own fates.
|
| He said he spent three days walking in the desert. They shared
| the little water they had, but it was gone after a day. Most of
| the people fell in the desert and didn't get up. At one point a
| woman with a baby fell and refused to get up. He went back to try
| and carry her but his two friends dragged him off and told him if
| he tried to save that woman and her baby that he would die with
| her. He says a day doesn't go by when he doesn't think about this
| woman.
|
| On the third night Border Patrol found the three of them, and
| they all ran, getting split up. He said he spent the entire night
| hiding in some brush.
|
| In the morning he found a backroad and started following it and a
| pickup pulled up to him with a Mexican family in it. They took
| him home, fed and watered him and asked him if he had any money.
| He gave them everything he had left ($180) and they put him back
| in the truck and drove him to Chicago and dropped him there with
| nothing and wished him good luck.
| Xen9 wrote:
| The Devil's Highway by Luis Urrea has similar plot--except less
| brutal!
|
| I wonder if there are any coyotes nicknamed The Virgil though.
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