WEBVTT - Don't Drink the Salt Water 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:03.280 All in a hot and copper sky. The bloody sun 0:00:03.320 --> 0:00:06.840 at noon, right up above the mast, did stand no 0:00:07.000 --> 0:00:11.200 bigger than the moon. Day after day, day after day, 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:14.760 we stuck nor breath nor motion. As idle is a 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:20.320 painted ship upon a painted ocean. Water water everywhere, and 0:00:20.440 --> 0:00:25.279 all the boards did shrink water, water everywhere, nor any 0:00:25.360 --> 0:00:32.360 drop to drink, A speck, a mist, a shape. I whisked, 0:00:33.000 --> 0:00:36.479 and still it neared and neared, as if it dodged 0:00:36.520 --> 0:00:40.760 a water sprite. It plunged, and tacked, and veered, with 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:45.360 throats unslaked, with black lips baked. We could not laugh 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:50.040 nor wail through uttered drought. All dumb we stood. I 0:00:50.159 --> 0:00:54.040 bit my arm, I sucked the blood and cried A sail, 0:00:54.520 --> 0:00:59.800 a sail with throats unslaked, with black lips baked agape. 0:00:59.800 --> 0:01:03.600 They heard me call gram Mercy. They for joy did grin, 0:01:04.120 --> 0:01:07.160 and all at once their breath drew in as they 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:18.000 were drinking. All. Welcome to stuff to blow your mind 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:26.600 from How Stuff Works dot com. Hey, you welcome to 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:28.760 stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:32.319 and I'm Joe McCormick and Olst Coleridge invading your ears. 0:01:32.680 --> 0:01:37.319 That's right from his poem the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. Uh. 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:41.080 In the first chunk there, we're we're getting the famous 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:44.679 lines about about being thirsty at sea, having no fresh 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:49.960 water to drink, the ironic situation of finding yourself stranded 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:52.280 and inst all this water and yet none of it 0:01:52.440 --> 0:01:55.920 is sufficient for for human consumption. And then in the 0:01:56.040 --> 0:01:59.920 second section, the sailors are so thirsty that they turn 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:04.720 to drinking their own blood h to to satisfy their thirst. Now, 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:09.760 this is a horror movie of the Romantic period. Yeah, 0:02:09.840 --> 0:02:12.440 it has everything. It has ghosts, it has an albatross, 0:02:13.200 --> 0:02:18.040 it has c madness. Why is this classified as Romantic literature? 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:20.600 I need to go back to my English literature education 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:24.760 and understand what I think. It's about the spontaneous outpouring 0:02:24.800 --> 0:02:28.679 of overpowering feelings, right, I think so. But it's just 0:02:28.720 --> 0:02:31.000 about people going crazy at see. Like one of my 0:02:31.080 --> 0:02:34.720 favorite lines is is as follows, I took the oars. 0:02:34.760 --> 0:02:38.240 The pilot's boy, who now doth crazy go, laughed loud 0:02:38.240 --> 0:02:40.400 and long, and all the while his eyes went to 0:02:40.560 --> 0:02:43.600 and fro ha ha quoth eeful plane. I see the 0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:46.480 devil knows how to row. That's great. It has a 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:49.720 great tell offline too. Uh So it starts. I don't 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:51.760 know if you remember the framing of the Rhyme of 0:02:51.760 --> 0:02:55.240 the Ancient Mariner. Most of the poem is this crazy 0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:57.720 old mariner telling the story about how, you know, he 0:02:57.800 --> 0:02:59.919 killed an albatross and brought a curse upon his ship 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:02.880 up and they saw death and all this. But the 0:03:02.919 --> 0:03:05.480 framing narrative is that there's this dude on his way 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:08.840 to a wedding and the crazy old sailor just grabs 0:03:08.919 --> 0:03:11.919 him and starts telling his story. And as the poem 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:15.600 goes on, the narrator gets totally horrified and engrossed in 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:18.920 the old man's tail. But at first the narrator just yells, 0:03:19.240 --> 0:03:24.239 unhand me, graybeard, loon. I often think of that when 0:03:24.280 --> 0:03:26.960 somebody is like bidding for my attention at work and 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:29.520 I don't have time to pay attention to them. Now. 0:03:29.520 --> 0:03:31.680 One thing that's great about the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, 0:03:31.720 --> 0:03:34.440 in addition to how fantastic of a poem it it is, 0:03:34.440 --> 0:03:37.480 is it's got really great old school illustrations, like this 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:41.360 Gustave dore A graving. We've got here of it, where 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:45.200 everybody's huddled in fear as they're watching the albatross perching 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:48.440 on the deck. Oh. Yeah, the his his artwork always 0:03:48.440 --> 0:03:50.480 goes great with a kind of dark story, right, I 0:03:50.480 --> 0:03:54.080 mean his his his illustrations of the divine comedy, various 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:57.520 biblical h stories that he illustrated. There's a there's a 0:03:57.640 --> 0:04:01.280 darkness to those woodcuts. Yeah. Now, the line that often 0:04:01.280 --> 0:04:04.119 gets quoted from the Ryme and the ancient Mariner water 0:04:04.200 --> 0:04:07.320 water everywhere, I think slightly misquoted as and not a 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:10.800 drop to drink. Uh, of course, signals the fact that 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:13.880 you often, as a sailor, be stuck out in the ocean, 0:04:13.920 --> 0:04:17.159 and you might be very, very thirsty, and you're surrounded 0:04:17.200 --> 0:04:20.400 by water, but the water is not going to help 0:04:20.440 --> 0:04:23.919 you with your thirst. That's right. This is this is 0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:27.880 one of the most important survival facts out there, is 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:31.760 that if you were stranded at sea, upon a desert island, 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:34.880 upon a deserted ship, you name it, uh, do not 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:38.120 drink the salt water. Every survival handbook out there will 0:04:38.120 --> 0:04:41.279 tell you the same, no matter how how tantalizing it 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:45.159 may seem, no matter how how logical the solution might appear, 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:48.719 you should not drink the salt water. Because you're gonna 0:04:48.720 --> 0:04:51.200 You're gonna lose that race, because it is going to 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:53.479 catch up with you. Yes, you, you are going to 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:57.800 lose the chemical race against the solvent wait, the salute 0:04:57.880 --> 0:05:01.520 the salt anyway, against this solution of in a c 0:05:01.839 --> 0:05:04.760 L in H two O. And I also wanted to 0:05:04.800 --> 0:05:07.520 think about how I think it's fascinating to make just 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:12.640 a chemical compound such a grim apocalyptic figure in a 0:05:12.720 --> 0:05:16.640 poem like as a grim apocalyptic tale about death by 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:18.880 sea water. I think the rhyme of the ancient mariner 0:05:19.040 --> 0:05:21.880 is pretty much the best, but I often think about 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:25.360 what sorts of chemistry is could figure into modern apocalyptic 0:05:25.440 --> 0:05:28.040 sci fi, and I think salt would be a really 0:05:28.120 --> 0:05:30.479 great one. So, Robert, do you want to hear my 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:35.400 pitch for the sci fi version of the saltwater Apocalypse? Sure, though, 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:37.640 I you're gonna you have quite a challenge here in 0:05:37.720 --> 0:05:40.400 capturing the same cadence you know. Well, no, it's I 0:05:40.720 --> 0:05:43.400 can't do the romantic poetry, but I'll try to do 0:05:43.400 --> 0:05:47.440 the scenario. So the fact is, the Earth's oceans were 0:05:47.480 --> 0:05:50.640 not always as salty as they are now, because salt 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:53.719 is not intrinsic to the ocean water. I don't know. 0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:56.760 Sometimes you think about, well, most of the water on 0:05:56.800 --> 0:06:00.000 the Earth is in the oceans. The salt water therefore, 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:03.040 or vastly out numbers the the amount of freshwater out there, 0:06:03.040 --> 0:06:05.880 and out numbers is the right word, because it's not enumerated. 0:06:05.920 --> 0:06:08.200 But there's way more salt water than there is fresh water. 0:06:08.480 --> 0:06:11.039 The vast majority of water is saltwater. Therefore, it would 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:15.960 seem rational to to guess that this is the natural 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:19.279 state of water. No, it's not. Freshwater is the natural 0:06:19.320 --> 0:06:23.599 state of water. The ocean's got salty, and they got 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:28.680 salty from billions of years of rinsing the rocks. See 0:06:28.720 --> 0:06:31.960 Earth's crust is about two point eight percent sodium, the 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:35.080 most common compound in rock salt being in a cl 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:38.400 or sodium chloride. This is the same as common table salt. 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:41.560 It's what you'd put on your food, and as slightly 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:46.760 acidic rainwater and freshwater runoff rinses and dissolves the rocks 0:06:46.800 --> 0:06:50.520 of Planet Earth over long periods of time. It dissolves 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:54.440 little bits of that sodium chloride and carries all of 0:06:54.480 --> 0:06:58.400 that sodium downstream and eventually into the ocean, and then 0:06:58.480 --> 0:07:01.640 this salt accumulates the oceans. Because the sun heats the 0:07:01.640 --> 0:07:05.760 ocean water causes it to evaporate, it forms clouds, and 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:08.799 those clouds eventually rain the water back down on the land, 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:12.920 but the salt pretty much stays where it is now. Fortunately, 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:15.960 there are natural processes known as salt sinks, and these 0:07:16.000 --> 0:07:18.760 help remove salt from the ocean and deposit it back 0:07:18.800 --> 0:07:21.239 on land or in the crust. And for this reason, 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:24.320 the salt content of the ocean seems fairly stable for now. 0:07:24.440 --> 0:07:27.720 But what if in the future the oceans became more 0:07:27.800 --> 0:07:31.280 like the fatally salty dead sea, where if you've ever 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:33.040 seen what people look like when they swim in the 0:07:33.040 --> 0:07:35.640 dead sea, they bob like a bob blur like you 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:38.920 just totally float on the surface because of the high 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:41.560 salinity of the water. But also what you'll notice is 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:44.679 you don't see any fish or any seaweed or anything. 0:07:45.080 --> 0:07:48.640 No macroscopic organisms can live in water that's salty, So 0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:51.440 we could have a salt apocalypse. They caught the dead 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:54.160 sea for a reason. Yeah, what if the whole sea 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:56.640 was the dead Sea? I like it. I like it. 0:07:56.680 --> 0:07:58.200 You can eat that. It can even be the title 0:07:58.360 --> 0:08:01.680 dead sea. And then holand and then whatever sci fi 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:03.600 year you want to go with, it's like dead sea 0:08:04.680 --> 0:08:08.680 the saltan ng. Yeah, alright, I like that. I like that. 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:11.280 I guess we should talk a little bit about just 0:08:11.360 --> 0:08:15.320 how much salt is in the ocean currently. Uh just 0:08:15.360 --> 0:08:18.480 the what are the current sea salt levels to the 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:21.920 ocean About a hundred pounds, right, Well a little bit 0:08:21.920 --> 0:08:26.480 more than that. Uh So, seawater is saltwater to the 0:08:26.520 --> 0:08:31.840 tune of three point five average salinity, So that's thirty 0:08:31.880 --> 0:08:35.840 five parts per thousand and there. The crazy part here 0:08:35.880 --> 0:08:39.000 is that there's so much salt in Earth's oceans that supposedly, 0:08:39.040 --> 0:08:41.000 if you were to remove it all and spread it 0:08:41.040 --> 0:08:44.680 evenly across the surface, you'd have a forty story layer 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:48.840 of salt. Now, it should be fairly obvious that drinking 0:08:48.880 --> 0:08:52.000 salt water is not a good idea when you're thirsty. 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:55.120 But there's a reason we keep returning to this idea 0:08:55.160 --> 0:08:59.160 in our fiction, right because in much of human history, 0:08:59.200 --> 0:09:01.440 there are lots of areas where you could get stuck 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:04.880 out on the ocean without fresh water. I mean, we 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:06.720 love those type of stories, right, I mean, the there're 0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:10.480 stories of of of man versus nature, a human being 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:13.600 trying to survive and again, like I accluded to earlier, 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:17.280 there is something deeply ironic about being surrounded by water 0:09:17.679 --> 0:09:19.720 and not being able to drink any of it. What's 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:23.079 that Simpsons episode where Homer starts drinking the salt water? 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:25.480 Oh yeah, that's a boy Scouts in the hood where 0:09:25.480 --> 0:09:28.680 he misquotes the poem and says, water water everywhere, so 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:32.320 let's all have a drink, and starts drinking palm full 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:34.800 and palm after palm full of salt water until they 0:09:34.840 --> 0:09:38.840 just pull him away from the edge of the life raft. Um. 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:41.320 You know. It shows up other places as well, in 0:09:41.800 --> 0:09:44.599 in the Song of Ice and Fire saga, George r 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:47.559 and Martin's Iron Islanders, the sort of love crafty and 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:51.560 vikings of the series, the ones that everybody's always saying, 0:09:51.600 --> 0:09:54.000 give us more chapters with them, that's who I want 0:09:54.000 --> 0:09:56.640 to spend my time with. Well, yeah, I ended up 0:09:56.640 --> 0:09:58.360 feeling that way. I ended up feeling that way where 0:09:58.360 --> 0:10:00.400 real TV series. I was like, Hey, there's all sorts 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:02.160 of stuff you could be doing with the Iron Islanders. 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:04.839 They're kind of cool. Oh sorry, I said that. Ironically, 0:10:04.880 --> 0:10:06.720 I feel like most people are just kind of like 0:10:06.800 --> 0:10:09.439 paging through the Iron Islands chapters like, come on, give 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:11.080 me back to the other character. I feel like maybe 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:14.000 I did at one point, but they reached a point 0:10:14.040 --> 0:10:17.840 in the Iron Islanders narrative where I got really invested 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:20.000 in it. Well, they do have a really cool religion 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:22.360 that has to do with an underwater god who has 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:25.200 a major salt component. Yeah. Yeah, and then the whole 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:29.360 drowned god that that pops up in their religion. Uh, 0:10:29.400 --> 0:10:33.319 they have these priests, they have these ritualized drownings. It's 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:35.679 sometimes a little vague, like to what extent it's just 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:38.760 like a violent Viking baptism in the sea, or if 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:43.040 there's some sort of supernatural element going on as well. 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:45.360 But they drink seawater. They do drink seawater. I mean, 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:48.400 you're gonna drink it as the priest is attempting to 0:10:48.480 --> 0:10:50.720 drown you. But then also it said that their priests 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:54.320 drinks seawater to quote to strengthen their faith. But you 0:10:54.320 --> 0:11:00.040 should not drink seawater to strengthen your body. So the 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:03.000 thing is, yeah, humans need a lot of water, certainly, 0:11:03.480 --> 0:11:07.120 but we don't need a lot of salt. We can 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:09.280 consume small amounts of salt, certainly. We do it all 0:11:09.280 --> 0:11:13.559 the time. Uh, we love salty foods and also we 0:11:13.679 --> 0:11:16.600 need salt to maintain our body chemistry. So it's it's 0:11:16.640 --> 0:11:19.400 not a situation where it's just a completely alien component. 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:21.800 It's part of who we are. But we don't need 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:25.080 that much, but we absolutely do need some. Like at 0:11:25.080 --> 0:11:28.840 any given time, the average human body contains I read 0:11:28.880 --> 0:11:33.080 this today, about two hundred and fifty grams of sodium. 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:37.600 That's about eight point eight ounces. Your standard cylinder container 0:11:37.640 --> 0:11:39.560 of Morton table salt, you know, the you know the 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:42.240 can as salt, the big one. This is the one 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:45.520 that larger than a soda can. Well, it's the twenty 0:11:45.559 --> 0:11:49.360 six ounces can. Yeah, exactly. Uh, that container of Morton 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:52.240 table salt twenty six ounces. So if you've got eight 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:55.280 point eight ounces in the average human body, depending on 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:57.520 your body size, more or less, about one third of 0:11:57.559 --> 0:12:00.960 those containers is inside you right now, that seems like 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:03.240 a lot of salt, right, Like, if you put that 0:12:03.320 --> 0:12:06.120 much salt on a meal, the meal would be, I 0:12:06.240 --> 0:12:08.800 dare say, too salty. I think most people would agree 0:12:08.840 --> 0:12:10.800 with that. Yes, I want to tell a story that 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:14.120 a friend of mine once told me. So, Uh, my friend, 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:17.240 she she's very smart outdoors person. She does a lot 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:20.000 of hiking, and she knows how to handle herself in 0:12:20.040 --> 0:12:23.200 the wilderness. And she was out hiking one time on 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:26.240 a trail in Zion National Park and it was out 0:12:26.240 --> 0:12:28.240 in the heat. And of course, you know when you're 0:12:28.280 --> 0:12:30.760 hiking out in the heat and the desert on the rocks, 0:12:30.800 --> 0:12:32.719 you know you need to take plenty of water with 0:12:32.760 --> 0:12:35.720 you and to keep drinking in order to keep yourself hydrated. 0:12:36.320 --> 0:12:39.880 And under that desert sun, dehydration and overheating can really 0:12:39.920 --> 0:12:41.839 sneak up on you. So the smart thing to do 0:12:42.000 --> 0:12:45.480 is not wait until you're super thirsty to drink some water, 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:48.760 but keep sipping. Be very conscientious about keeping yourself cool, 0:12:49.200 --> 0:12:52.120 keeping water coming in. And this this friend of mine, 0:12:52.160 --> 0:12:53.960 as I said, she knows how, she knows what to 0:12:54.000 --> 0:12:56.520 do in the outside. So she was drinking plenty of 0:12:56.559 --> 0:12:59.840 water out on the rocks, but she noticed that she 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:03.679 started to feel terrible. She felt nausea, as she had 0:13:03.720 --> 0:13:06.599 a headache, weakness, and I think she said she was 0:13:06.679 --> 0:13:10.640 kind of confused and foggy, and normally in that situation 0:13:10.679 --> 0:13:13.120 you'd think, Okay, I'm out in the desert, I'm probably 0:13:13.160 --> 0:13:16.280 getting dehydrated. I need to rest and drink more water. 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:20.319 But she kept drinking water and the symptoms didn't get 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:22.720 any better, so she didn't know what was going on. 0:13:22.880 --> 0:13:25.240 They got concerned and she came back down off the 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:27.600 trail and ended up at a shuttle station where they 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:31.240 called for emergency services. So what's going on? Right? It 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:34.480 seems like the symptoms of dehydration almost but she had 0:13:34.480 --> 0:13:37.440 been drinking so much water it didn't really make any sense. 0:13:38.040 --> 0:13:41.240 So the paramedics arrived, they got the lay of the situation. 0:13:41.400 --> 0:13:43.600 They and what they eventually did was they got her 0:13:43.640 --> 0:13:48.199 to eat some pretzels. So the problem wasn't a lack 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:52.520 of water, It was too much water deluding the salt 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:55.800 content of her blood plasma, and what she needed to 0:13:55.840 --> 0:13:59.000 bounce back were some salty snacks. All right, So that 0:13:59.240 --> 0:14:01.920 sounds like what everyone needs to bring with them on 0:14:01.960 --> 0:14:03.320 a on a hike from now and to just make 0:14:03.360 --> 0:14:06.000 sure you do have some pretzels tucked away for emergency use. 0:14:06.240 --> 0:14:08.800 I wonder if you need a rapid infusion of salt, like, 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:11.320 what is the best thing to eat? I imagine the 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:14.720 situation is fairly rare in America. Yeah, like, yeah, we 0:14:14.880 --> 0:14:18.240 do love our salt. Yeah, well, I I love salty 0:14:18.280 --> 0:14:20.960 foods too, but like, what is it like Doritos? Or 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:23.080 should you take a jar of pickles or a stick 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:26.320 of pepperoni? But see, other people might see you taking 0:14:26.440 --> 0:14:29.320 that bag of Doritos or jar of pickles, would be 0:14:29.360 --> 0:14:31.520 on the hike, and they're gonna, they're gonna they might 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:34.360 judge you for your your your choice in trail food. 0:14:34.400 --> 0:14:36.160 I guess you just need like a salty trail mix 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:39.880 or packets of soy sauce, which will come back to 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:42.680 in a bit. Okay, Yeah, Well, I wonder if some people, 0:14:43.080 --> 0:14:46.600 in addition to their hydration when they're like running and exercising, 0:14:47.000 --> 0:14:50.360 they squirt those little electrolyte gel things, right, and those 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:55.040 have some amount of salt content to help keep you balanced. Right. Yeah? Yeah, anyway, 0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:57.320 gross side note of the story she told me about 0:14:57.480 --> 0:15:01.200 the shuttle station. Uh, my friend, she felt so bad 0:15:01.280 --> 0:15:03.480 after she got down there that she vomited out on 0:15:03.520 --> 0:15:06.240 the ground somewhere. And then later, while she was waiting around, 0:15:06.360 --> 0:15:08.720 she got to watch a wild fox wander over and 0:15:08.760 --> 0:15:12.560 start eating it. Oh well, that's kind of beautiful, really. Cycle, yeah, 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:14.560 the cycle of whatever her life. She ate and then 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:16.760 vomited and then something else got to you. Yeah, I 0:15:16.760 --> 0:15:19.800 mean she was. She was behaving much like certain buzzards 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:23.480 do when threatened. You know, a vomit which a vomiting 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:27.360 display that is either meant to scare off a predator 0:15:27.520 --> 0:15:30.120 or to distract it with a bribe. Yeah, here you 0:15:30.120 --> 0:15:32.840 can have this. Yeah, have these pretzels, and you know 0:15:32.880 --> 0:15:36.080 in gatorade. So we totally need sodium to keep our 0:15:36.120 --> 0:15:38.520 bodies functioning right. If you don't have enough sodium in 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:41.840 the body, this is called hyponotremia, and you can experience 0:15:41.840 --> 0:15:44.160 some really messed up symptoms. And in addition to what 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:47.520 you heard about in that story, nausea, vomiting, headache, fatigue, 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:50.480 and all that, you can on the far end of problems, 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:52.080 if he gets bad enough, you can end up with 0:15:52.120 --> 0:15:56.440 seizures in coma. So I mentioned that sodium is an electrolyte, 0:15:56.440 --> 0:15:59.040 that that's one of the reasons that it's necessary in 0:15:59.080 --> 0:16:01.440 the body and in a electro light is a substance 0:16:01.560 --> 0:16:04.960 that tends to dissolve in a solution and produce ions, 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:09.000 or charged particles. The presence of these charged particles makes 0:16:09.040 --> 0:16:12.960 the solution a better conductor of electricity. For example, salt 0:16:13.040 --> 0:16:16.280 water is a much better conductor of electricity than fresh water. 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:17.840 And if you want proof of this, you can look 0:16:17.880 --> 0:16:21.000 up videos of salt water circuits. Have you ever seen 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:24.160 one of these? Yeah, it's kind of interesting. I wouldn't 0:16:24.160 --> 0:16:26.840 advise you to try this on your own at home 0:16:26.920 --> 0:16:29.320 unless you really know what you're doing. Electricity and water 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:32.480 can be a dangerous combination. But the basic setup is 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:35.120 you've got a circuit, uh and it's connected to a 0:16:35.160 --> 0:16:38.040 battery and to a light bulb, and at one point 0:16:38.040 --> 0:16:40.640 on your circuit you have open wire ends that are 0:16:40.640 --> 0:16:43.200 stuck down into a jar of water. So the electricity 0:16:43.200 --> 0:16:45.960 would need to go through the water to complete the circuit. 0:16:46.480 --> 0:16:48.880 And if you've just got regular tap water, especially if 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:52.440 you've got something like distilled water, the bulb is not 0:16:52.520 --> 0:16:55.440 going to light up. It can't generate enough current to 0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:58.440 really complete the circuit. But if you stir some salt 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:00.920 into the water, suddenly the boat the bulb will come 0:17:00.960 --> 0:17:03.760 to life. And there's some kind of rough equivalence to 0:17:03.800 --> 0:17:06.520 that within within the body, Like the body is an 0:17:06.520 --> 0:17:10.240 electrochemical machine, and one of the ways it regulates itself 0:17:10.280 --> 0:17:15.159 and does its stuff is through electrochemical signaling and electrochemical exchange. 0:17:15.760 --> 0:17:19.000 So your body cells have membranes surrounding them, and these 0:17:19.000 --> 0:17:23.000 membranes are electrically permeable. They can allow ions to pass 0:17:23.040 --> 0:17:27.119 through to balance electrical charge on the sides of the membrane, 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:31.080 and by exchanging potassium ions and sodium ions across the 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:35.040 cell membrane, the cells can for example, direct an electrical impulse, 0:17:35.640 --> 0:17:37.879 which means a chain of nerve cells can pass a 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:40.320 message from one part of the body to another. But 0:17:40.440 --> 0:17:43.080 you can also think of sodium and potassium as one 0:17:43.080 --> 0:17:45.760 of the ways that stuff gets into and out of 0:17:45.800 --> 0:17:49.359 a cell. This electrolyte exchange across the cell membrane can 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:53.000 be used, for example, to exchange glucose to get glucose 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:55.720 into the cell, and the body also uses sodium to 0:17:55.760 --> 0:17:59.479 maintain overall fluid balance and regulate blood pressure. So you 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:02.359 need sodium. It's an important part of everything your body 0:18:02.400 --> 0:18:04.600 needs to do to survive. Without it, you would not 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:08.320 be able to live. But like we were saying, you 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:11.320 don't need a lot of it. It's interesting, isn't it. 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:15.440 How you end up revisiting the body as this kind 0:18:15.440 --> 0:18:17.840 of chemical equation. But for the most part, it's a 0:18:18.000 --> 0:18:22.240 self regulating chemical chemical equation, provided that you have you 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:25.919 have your your your typical resources around you. Yeah, unless 0:18:25.960 --> 0:18:29.679 there's something really wrong with your inputs. Generally, if the 0:18:29.720 --> 0:18:32.240 body is healthy, it's going to be balancing the sides 0:18:32.280 --> 0:18:35.120 of this equation on its own, and so the body 0:18:35.200 --> 0:18:38.240 usually tries to keep the sodium content very stable between 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:40.320 about a hundred and thirty five and a hundred and 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:44.160 forty five milli equivalence of sodium per liter of water 0:18:44.240 --> 0:18:46.600 in your body. And mill mill equivalence is a measure 0:18:46.640 --> 0:18:49.200 and chemistry often used to measure the amount of solute 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:52.000 and a solution. In this case, it's sodium and water 0:18:52.200 --> 0:18:54.920 and there are one thousand milli equivalents and an equivalent. 0:18:55.080 --> 0:18:58.360 So notice that's a pretty tight range for normal sodium 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:01.560 levels right on to one forty five mill equivalents. Means 0:19:01.600 --> 0:19:04.720 that the body needs to be constantly managing its retention 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:07.879 and excretion of sodium to keep those levels in the 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:12.199 optimal functioning range. But having too much salt is I 0:19:12.240 --> 0:19:15.280 would guess a more common problem than having too little, 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:19.760 and certainly just as potentially harmful, and drinking seawater puts 0:19:19.800 --> 0:19:23.119 you at immediate risk for over salting. Your body and 0:19:23.160 --> 0:19:26.480 your cells can basically start to get like salted slugs. 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:29.760 It's not good. It's not good. It's really it's really 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:32.919 kind of diabolical. The way it plays out, it seems 0:19:32.960 --> 0:19:36.439 like some sort of the punishment from the inferno. So 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:39.119 basically what happens is humans were eating and drinking a 0:19:39.119 --> 0:19:43.240 lot to dilute our salt intake. So you're fine normally, 0:19:43.359 --> 0:19:45.159 if you have a salty meal, it's not going to 0:19:45.320 --> 0:19:48.080 kill you immediately because you can drink water to make 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:50.680 up for it. Your your kidneys will help you excrete 0:19:50.680 --> 0:19:52.920 all that salt over a period of time. There's a 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:56.920 reason you have that super gulp of sugary soda water, 0:19:57.080 --> 0:20:00.679 right right, But yeah, if we consume to much salt, 0:20:00.840 --> 0:20:03.040 the body has to dump it. But that that body 0:20:03.080 --> 0:20:04.560 has to get rid of that salt the only way 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:08.520 it knows how through urine evacuation mode exactly. But the 0:20:08.600 --> 0:20:11.840 human kidneys can only make urine that is less salty 0:20:11.880 --> 0:20:15.320 than salt water, so it cannot it can't get rid 0:20:15.359 --> 0:20:17.520 of it as fast as it's coming in. To get 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:20.080 rid of all that excess salt from saltwater, you have 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:23.119 to urinate more water than you drink and this is 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:26.959 the path to do you die of dehydration, becoming thirstier 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:30.040 and thirstier with every gulp. It's one of those faiths 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:33.200 that is not only cruel but ironic. All Right, we're 0:20:33.200 --> 0:20:35.520 gonna take a quick break and when we come back, 0:20:35.720 --> 0:20:39.320 we're gonna get more into this situation. What happens when 0:20:39.359 --> 0:20:43.680 we do drink saltwater? And another outline question, does it 0:20:43.800 --> 0:20:47.760 lead to madness? Does it lead to sea madness? Than? 0:20:49.480 --> 0:20:52.200 All right, we're back. So, Robert, we've talked about how 0:20:52.240 --> 0:20:54.719 the body needs sodium to survive, but if you have 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:56.840 too much of it, it's going to be a big 0:20:56.880 --> 0:21:00.199 problem for you. And if you start drinking seawall or 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:02.760 when you're thirsty, it will not cure your thirst, but 0:21:02.840 --> 0:21:06.040 will take you down a bad road. That's right, the 0:21:06.119 --> 0:21:09.240 road to doom. So the body tries to compensate for 0:21:09.280 --> 0:21:12.600 fluid loss by increasing the heart rate and constricting blood 0:21:12.640 --> 0:21:16.960 vessels to maintain blood pressure and flow to vital organs. 0:21:17.000 --> 0:21:20.160 So you're you're also most likely to feel nauseous, weakness 0:21:20.280 --> 0:21:23.320 and even a sense of delirium. But if you become 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:26.160 more dehydrated, the coping mechanism fails. If you still don't 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:29.360 drink any water to reverse the effects of the excess sodium. 0:21:29.560 --> 0:21:32.840 The brain and other organs receive less blood, leading to coma, 0:21:33.200 --> 0:21:36.440 organ failure and eventually death. Right. So, as we've said 0:21:36.480 --> 0:21:39.359 several times, now, if you're thirsty out on the ocean, 0:21:39.440 --> 0:21:43.920 don't drink the sea water. That's right. And the delirium 0:21:44.160 --> 0:21:48.560