[HN Gopher] Richard A. Cash, who saved millions from dehydration...
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Richard A. Cash, who saved millions from dehydration, has died
Author : impish9208
Score : 151 points
Date : 2024-11-07 15:54 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| joecool1029 wrote:
| https://archive.ph/wTJu9
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| What a legacy to leave behind. RIP Mr. Cash, thank you for your
| contributions to humanity. May many others follow in your
| footsteps.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Also mitigated many millions of hangovers, including my own.
|
| Too bad the commercial nature of "sports drinks" have dialed up
| the sugar and broke away from the clinical goal of rehydration.
| paulpauper wrote:
| they sell sugar free sports drinks
| willcipriano wrote:
| Gatorade has a entire line of drinks for different purposes.
| Zero is what OP is looking for: https://performancepartner.ga
| torade.com/content/products/hyd...
|
| The normal one is for high powered endurance activities and
| contains some carbs (sugar) to help fuel you through them.
|
| They have one with even more carbs, sodium and potassium for
| people running marathons.
|
| The last two on that chart aren't a good choice for someone
| who isn't active. Stick to the first two for that.
| bigfatfrock wrote:
| Propel and Zero (the first options) both contain sucralose,
| aka Splenda - I'd prefer to just drink salt water
| personally, or take the hit on a tablespoon of sugar mixed
| in and walk it off.
| willcipriano wrote:
| The majority of Americans are overweight, as far as the
| science shows artificial sweeteners are the best choice
| for them vs full calorie.
|
| If you look up the evidence for the downsides of
| artificial sweeteners anything that finds one is
| generally an observational study. So for example, the
| claim that they cause obesity is backed by the
| observation that obese people consume it in greater
| amounts than people who are not obese. That's like
| standing in front of a hospital and noticing everyone
| with a broken leg is on crutches and coming to the
| conclusion that crutches are the problem. Double blinded,
| placebo controlled studies don't find this effect. The
| best evidence we have indicates they are safer than the
| obesity that full calorie sweeteners cause in most
| people.
| swatcoder wrote:
| > The majority of Americans are overweight, as far as the
| science shows artificial sweeteners are the best choice
| for them vs full calorie.
|
| This is a false choice and has nothing to do with the
| above commenter's preferences.
|
| Many people just desperately long for convenient
| foods/drinks that aren't so sweet in the first place and
| feel frustrated that the largest brands don't want to
| bother with them.
| xtracto wrote:
| I maje my own electrolyte drink with water, spoonful of
| sugar and spoonful of "low sodium" salt: they add
| potassium to those, which completes the electrolyte menu.
|
| Sometimes I add a dash of lime
|
| Veeeey low cost and great. And you can pre-mix it in a
| zip lock bag to have it always available. And add some
| orange flavour kool-aid powder if you need flavour.
|
| Commercial Rehydration drinks are overpriced and
| overhyped IMHO
| foxyv wrote:
| I like pickle juice. The vinegar helps the salt go down
| better.
| ajb wrote:
| Yeah, although worth noting that glucose is useful to
| promote absorption of the electrolytes, you may not need it
| in a sports drink but it's an integral part of the diarrhea
| med.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| That's the point. A little sugar is good. Too much sugar is
| bad. No suger is not as good. It's very modern to have two
| options, one with waaay too much sugar and one with zero
| sugar (or some sugar replacement).
| soperj wrote:
| You can always go with a Roman sports drink. Salt, water and
| some red wine vinegar (apple cider vinegar works too)
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" Too bad the commercial nature of "sports drinks" have
| dialed up the sugar and broke away from the clinical goal of
| rehydration."_
|
| The ones that come as tablets which dissolve in water give you
| the electrolytes without the sugar. Less packaging waste, too.
| SIS (Science In Sport) is good, and other brands are available.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| You want _some_ sugar, but putting even more than necessary
| sells better.
|
| Sugar, like salt, is a solute and will impair water
| absorption.
| tmoertel wrote:
| You can always make your own sports drink, starting with the
| recipe from the World Health Organization:
|
| https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/WHO-FCH-CAH-06.1
|
| Just 4 ingredients:
|
| Glucose, anhydrous (dextrose)
|
| Sodium chloride (salt)
|
| Potassium chloride
|
| Trisodium citrate, dihydrate
|
| Of course, the batch size of 75 kg may not be the most
| convenient for home use, but it's easy to scale down.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Generic Pedialyte is great for hangovers and migraines--way
| less sugar. You can even get the individual powder packets
| instead of having to buy a huge jug of liquid.
| MisterTea wrote:
| There's a bananna bag mix you put in water. Comes in packets.
| Quite invigorating.
| greentxt wrote:
| "We're enamored by high technology," he said at the Council on
| Foreign Relations. "And we're not in love with low-tech. Low-tech
| is always seen in our eyes as second-class. Why would you do
| this, when you could do that? And I would argue just the
| opposite."
|
| Noteworthy that others tried to gatekeep thier low tech approach
| and experimental efforts. So much "perfection, enemy of the good"
| in expert circles.
| cyberax wrote:
| People tried oral rehydration before with isotonic solutions,
| even going as far as matching the concentration of minerals in
| plasma. It didn't work well for cholera.
|
| The amazing discovery was that just a bit of glucose made the
| world of difference.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| On a side note, his Wikipedia page has one of the worst, low res
| leading photographs for a topic I've ever encountered on that
| site. Surely a man of his stature deserves better?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| This caught my attention. From the article:
| Other doctors and nurses found their experiment [drinking water
| w/ sugar+salt] bizarre and tried to stop them.
|
| To me that seemed like professionals clinging to orthodoxy for
| orthodoxy's sake. They forget that endless reevaluation is needed
| for a practice to remain 'best'.
|
| And maybe it was that. But I also found this talk from Dr Cash;
| he gives other examples of resistance (along with their causes).
| Whereas, in one country I went to, Jamaica, I was puzzled, even
| though I was working at that time for PAHO, that there was
| terrific opposition. It seemed that they wouldn't cooperate with
| anything. Even they wouldn't give my assistant a bed in the
| residence quarters. So I found out gradually--I was
| investigating this--and I found out several things. One is, the
| head of the hospital was so skeptical about this working that he
| had made a hundred dollar bet with his residents that it would
| fail. So obviously there was an incentive for it to fail.
| (Laughs.) Secondly, the head of hospital stores, I
| found out, was making a lot of money on kickbacks from the IV
| company. So he had no interest in terms of resource flow of
| substituting oral for IV.
|
| ref: https://www.cfr.org/event/simple-solution-saved-fifty-
| four-m...
| wetpaws wrote:
| >people clinging to orthodoxy for orthodoxy's sake.
|
| Always been like this. Even something as simple as making them
| wash hands was a pain.
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| > To me that seemed like professionals clinging to orthodoxy
| for orthodoxy's sake.
|
| There's much I don't know about medicine in Bangladesh, but I'm
| guessing doctors think it's unethical to treat patients with
| anything other than the best accepted standard of care, unless
| engaging in an experiment for which the risk and benefits can
| be described and there exists a reason to believe the benefits
| outweigh the risks. I suspect that was not communicated well by
| the experimenters.
| encoderer wrote:
| Reminds me of Norman Borlaug.
|
| Talk about leaving a dent.
| textlapse wrote:
| People are so against GMOs without realizing how many millions
| of lives GMO'ed wheat and rice saved in India and elsewhere.
|
| Both (Norman Borlaug and Dr Cash) go to show that modern and
| traditional medicines can be carefully manipulated in amazing
| ways to save millions of lives.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| If you press them, you'll discover most people are against
| Monsanto and only a tiny minority actually cares about GMO.
| alecco wrote:
| But most people worship vapid celebrities. As a species, we
| need some more evolving.
| throw0101a wrote:
| Regarding the dehydration work see:
|
| > _Oral rehydration therapy (ORT) is a type of fluid replacement
| used to prevent and treat dehydration, especially due to
| diarrhea.[1] It involves drinking water with modest amounts of
| sugar and salts, specifically sodium and potassium.[1] Oral
| rehydration therapy can also be given by a nasogastric tube.[1]
| Therapy can include the use of zinc supplements to reduce the
| duration of diarrhea in infants and children under the age of
| 5.[1] Use of oral rehydration therapy has been estimated to
| decrease the risk of death from diarrhea by up to 93%.[2]_
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_rehydration_therapy
| emmelaich wrote:
| ORT seems to have been developed in the mid 1960s, around the
| same time as Gatorade.
|
| I wonder how much one informed the other.
| throw0101d wrote:
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatorade#Origin
| zusammen wrote:
| I met him in the late 1970s. I was too young then to understand
| his work at the time, but he was one of the few famous people I
| have met who genuinely cared about other people. He was as one of
| the good ones. RIP.
| CalChris wrote:
| So I had cholera.
|
| I was in a cholera study at the University of Maryland for a
| week. Read a lot of sci fi, played ping pong and drank fluids
| with electrolytes. There is a first phase which is uncomfortable
| but otherwise, as the docs said, cholera is a piece of cake if
| treated with hydration.
| throwaway4220 wrote:
| Whoa! I didn't know you could do such studies on humans this
| day and age. Were you compensated handsomely?
| plorkyeran wrote:
| https://eukaryotewritesblog.com/2024/10/21/i-got-
| dysentery-s... is a writeup of a similar trial that hit HN
| recently. That person got $4000 for 10 days.
| foxyv wrote:
| Yup, they are called Human Challenge Studies. Compensation is
| typically modest. Most participants are students at
| universities.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_challenge_study
| nelblu wrote:
| for a few moments I was thinking "saved millions of dollars from
| dehydration". The title could be clearer if it said "saved
| millions of people from dehydration".
| joemi wrote:
| I thought the same thing before clicking on it.
| ricksunny wrote:
| I wonder if headline writers these days generate several
| permutations of a headline via GPT, and have some way of A|B
| testing the early readers to figure out which one generates the
| most clicks (especially due to people clicking through to
| satiate curiosity of a freshly quizzical headline from what
| would otherwise have been an at-a-glance comprehensible one
| that would fail to elicit the all-lifegiving click.)
| acyou wrote:
| I also have a feeling that the pH of rehydration drinks should be
| low (acidic). To an extent, my body knows pretty well what's good
| for it. The salt+water tastes terrible, add a little acid and
| it's delicious. Maybe it takes a little load off of the digestive
| system by providing the acid that would otherwise need to be
| generated.
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(page generated 2024-11-07 23:01 UTC)