Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the old Vault for a classic
Speaker 1: episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind. And this one
Speaker 1: is about drinking salt water. Why on earth did we
Speaker 1: talk about that? But I do remember this one was
Speaker 1: actually interesting. Yeah, this is from January eighteen. And they're
Speaker 1: all interesting, Joe, well, of course, but yeah, this one
Speaker 1: is great because it got into like some of these
Speaker 1: ideas about to what extent could you drink seawater to survive?
Speaker 1: How might you go about it? And then some of
Speaker 1: these ideas about the supposed health benefits of drinking saltwater. Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm up to about six scallons of seawater to day.
Speaker 1: How about you? That means you're lost at sea? Probably, so,
Speaker 1: without further ado, let's drink the salt water. All in
Speaker 1: a hot and copper sky. The bloody sun at noon
Speaker 1: right up above the mast did stand no bigger than
Speaker 1: the moon. Day after day, day after day, we stuck
Speaker 1: nor breath nor motion, as idle as a painted ship
Speaker 1: upon a painted ocean. Water water everywhere, and all the
Speaker 1: boards did shrink water water everywhere, nor any drop to drink,
Speaker 1: A speck, a mist, a shape. I whisked, and still
Speaker 1: it neared and neared, as if it dodged a water sprite.
Speaker 1: It plunged, and tacked, and veered, with throats unslaked, with
Speaker 1: black lips baked. We could not laugh nor wail through
Speaker 1: uttered drought. All dumb we stood. I bit my arm,
Speaker 1: I sucked the blood and cried A sail, A sail
Speaker 1: with throats unslaked, with black lips baked agape. They heard
Speaker 1: me call Gramercy. They for joy did grin, and all
Speaker 1: at once their breath drew in as they were drinking. All.
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from How Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe
Speaker 1: McCormick and ost Coleridge invading your ears. That's right from
Speaker 1: his column The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. Uh. In
Speaker 1: the first chunk there, we're we're getting the famous lines
Speaker 1: about about being thirsty at sea, having no fresh water
Speaker 1: to drink, the ironic situation of finding yourself stranded amidst
Speaker 1: all this water, and yet none of it is sufficient
Speaker 1: for for human consumption. And then in the second section,
Speaker 1: the sailors are so thirsty that they turned to drinking
Speaker 1: their own blood to to satisfy their thirst. Now, this
Speaker 1: is a horror movie of the Romantic period. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: has everything. It has ghosts, it has an albatross, and
Speaker 1: as c madness. Why is this classified as Romantic literature?
Speaker 1: I need to go back to my English literature education
Speaker 1: and understand what I think. It's about the spontaneous outpouring
Speaker 1: of overpowering feelings, right, I think so, But it's just
Speaker 1: about people going crazy at see. Like, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite lines is is as follows, I took the oars.
Speaker 1: The pilot's boy, who now doth crazy go laughed loud
Speaker 1: and long, and all the while his eyes went to
Speaker 1: and fro ha ha quoth he full plane? I see
Speaker 1: the devil knows how to row. That's great. It has
Speaker 1: a great tell offline too. Uh so it starts I
Speaker 1: don't know if you remember the framing of the rhyme
Speaker 1: of the ancient Mariner. Most of the poem is this
Speaker 1: crazy old mariner telling the story about how you know,
Speaker 1: he killed an albatross and brought a curse upon his ship,
Speaker 1: and they saw death and all this. But the framing
Speaker 1: narrative is that there's this dude on his way to
Speaker 1: a wedding, and the crazy old sailor just grabs him
Speaker 1: and starts telling his story. And as the poem goes on,
Speaker 1: the narrator gets totally horrified and engrossed in the old
Speaker 1: man's tail. But at first the narrator just yells, unhand me,
Speaker 1: gray beard, loon. That's good. I often think of that
Speaker 1: when somebody is like bidding for my attention at work
Speaker 1: and I don't have time to pay attention to them. Now.
Speaker 1: One thing that's great about the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner,
Speaker 1: in addition to how fantastic of a poem it it is,
Speaker 1: is it's got really great old school illustrations, like this
Speaker 1: Gustave Dore ating, we've got here of it where everybody's
Speaker 1: huddled in fear as they're watching the albatross perching on
Speaker 1: the deck. Oh yeah, his his artwork always goes great
Speaker 1: with a kind of dark story, right, I mean, his
Speaker 1: his his illustrations of the divine comedy, various biblical stories
Speaker 1: that he illustrated. There's a there's a darkness to those woodcuts. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: the line that often gets quoted from the rhyme and
Speaker 1: the ancient mariner water water everywhere, I think slightly misquoted
Speaker 1: as and not a drop to drink. Uh, of course,
Speaker 1: signals the fact that you often as a sailor, be
Speaker 1: st out in the ocean, and you might be very,
Speaker 1: very thirsty, and you're surrounded by water, but the water
Speaker 1: is not going to help you with your thirst. That's right.
Speaker 1: This is this is one of the most important survival
Speaker 1: facts out there, is that if you were stranded at sea,
Speaker 1: upon a desert island, upon a deserted ship, you name it, uh,
Speaker 1: do not drink the salt water. Every survival handbook out
Speaker 1: there will tell you the same, no matter how how
Speaker 1: tantalizing it may seem, no matter how how logical the
Speaker 1: solution might appear, You should not drink the salt water
Speaker 1: because you're gonna You're gonna lose that race, because it
Speaker 1: is going to catch up with you. Yes, you, you
Speaker 1: are going to lose the chemical race against the solvent,
Speaker 1: wait the salute the salt anyway against this solution of
Speaker 1: in a C L in H two O. And I
Speaker 1: also wanted to think about how I think it's fascinating
Speaker 1: to make just a chemical compound such a grim apocalyptic
Speaker 1: figure in a poem them like as a grim apocalyptic
Speaker 1: tale about death by seawater. I think the rhyme of
Speaker 1: the ancient mariner is pretty much the best. But I
Speaker 1: often think about what sorts of chemistry is could figure
Speaker 1: into modern apocalyptic sci fi, and I think salt would
Speaker 1: be a really great one. So, Robert, do you want
Speaker 1: to hear my pitch for the sci fi version of
Speaker 1: the saltwater Apocalypse? Sure, though, I you're gonna you have
Speaker 1: quite a challenge here and capturing the same cadence you know. Well, no,
Speaker 1: it's I can't do the romantic poetry, but I'll try
Speaker 1: to do the scenario. So the fact is, the Earth's
Speaker 1: oceans were not always as salty as they are now
Speaker 1: because salt is not intrinsic to the ocean water. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Sometimes you think about, well, most of the
Speaker 1: water on the Earth is in the oceans. The salt
Speaker 1: water therefore vastly out numbers the the amount of fresh
Speaker 1: water out there. I don't know out numbers is the
Speaker 1: right word, because it's not enumerated, but there's way more
Speaker 1: salt water than there is fresh water. The vast majority
Speaker 1: of water is saltwater. Therefore, it would seem rational to
Speaker 1: to guess that this is the natural state of water. No,
Speaker 1: it's not. Fresh water is the natural state of water.
Speaker 1: The ocean's got salty, and they got salty from billions
Speaker 1: of years of rinsing the rocks. See Earth's crust is
Speaker 1: about two point eight percent sodium, the most common compound
Speaker 1: in rock salt being in a cl or sodium chloride.
Speaker 1: This is the same as common table salt. It's what
Speaker 1: you put on your food, and as slightly acidic rainwater
Speaker 1: and freshwater runoff rinses and dissolves the rocks of planet Earth.
Speaker 1: Over long periods of time. It dissolves little bits of
Speaker 1: that sodium chloride and carries all of that sodium downstream
Speaker 1: and eventually into the ocean. And then this salt accumulates
Speaker 1: in the oceans. Because the sun heats the ocean water
Speaker 1: causes it to evaporate, It forms clouds, and those clouds
Speaker 1: eventually rain the water back down on the land, but
Speaker 1: the salt pretty much stays where it is now. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: there are natural processes known as salt sinks and these
Speaker 1: helped remove salt from the ocean and deposit it back
Speaker 1: on land or in the crust. And for this reason,
Speaker 1: the salt content of the ocean seems fairly stable for now.
Speaker 1: But what if in the future the oceans became more
Speaker 1: like the fatally salty dead sea where if you've ever
Speaker 1: seen what people look like when they swim in the
Speaker 1: dead sea, they bob like a bob blur, like you
Speaker 1: just totally float on the surface because of the high
Speaker 1: salinity of the water. But also what you'll notice is
Speaker 1: you don't see any fish or any seaweed or anything.
Speaker 1: No macroscopic organisms can live in water that's salty, So
Speaker 1: we could have a salt apocalypse. They caught the Dead
Speaker 1: Sea for a reason. Yeah, what if the whole sea
Speaker 1: was the dead Sea? I like it. I like it.
Speaker 1: You can eat that. It could even be the title
Speaker 1: dead Sea and then colon and then whatever sci Fi
Speaker 1: year you want to go with. It's like dead Sea
Speaker 1: the saltan ng Yeah, alright, I like that. I like that.
Speaker 1: I guess we should talk a little bit about just
Speaker 1: how much salt is in the ocean currently, Uh, just
Speaker 1: the what are the current sea salt levels to the
Speaker 1: ocean about a hundred pounds, right, well, a little bit
Speaker 1: more than that. Uh So, seawater is saltwater to the
Speaker 1: tune of three point five percent average salinity. So that's
Speaker 1: thirty five parts per thousand. And they're The crazy part
Speaker 1: here is that there's so much salt in Earth's oceans
Speaker 1: that supposedly, if you were to remove it all and
Speaker 1: spread it evenly across the surface, you'd have a forty
Speaker 1: story layer of salt. Now, it should be fairly obvious
Speaker 1: that drinking saltwater is not a good idea when you're thirsty.
Speaker 1: But there's a reason we keep returning to this idea
Speaker 1: in our fiction, right because in much of human history,
Speaker 1: there are lots of scenarios where you could get stuck
Speaker 1: out on the ocean without fresh water. I mean, we
Speaker 1: love those type of stories, right, I mean, the there're
Speaker 1: stories of of of man versus nature, a human being
Speaker 1: trying to survive. And again, like i occlude too earlier,
Speaker 1: there is something deeply ironic about being surrounded by water
Speaker 1: and not being able to drink any of it. What's
Speaker 1: that Simpsons episode where Homer starts drinking the salt water?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's a boy Scouts in the hood, where
Speaker 1: he misquotes the poem and says water water everywhere, so
Speaker 1: let's all have a drink, and starts drinking palm full
Speaker 1: and palm after palm full of salt water until they
Speaker 1: just pull him away from the edge of the life
Speaker 1: raft um. You know. It shows up other places as well,
Speaker 1: in in the Song of Ice and Fire saga George rr.
Speaker 1: Martin's Iron Islanders, the sort of love crafty and vikings
Speaker 1: of the series, the ones that everybody's always saying, give
Speaker 1: us more chapters with them, that's who I want to
Speaker 1: spend my time with. Well, yeah, I ended up feeling
Speaker 1: that way. I ended up feeling that way where real
Speaker 1: TV series, I was like, Hey, there's all sorts of
Speaker 1: stuff you could be doing with the Iron Islanders. They're
Speaker 1: kind of cool. Oh sorry, I said that. Ironically, I
Speaker 1: feel like most people are just kind of like paging
Speaker 1: through the Iron Islands chapters, like, come on, give me
Speaker 1: back to the other character. I feel like maybe I
Speaker 1: did at one point, but at the reached a point
Speaker 1: in the Iron Islanders narrative where I got really invested
Speaker 1: in it. Well, they do have a really cool religion
Speaker 1: that has to do with an underwater god who has
Speaker 1: a major salt component. Yeah, yeah, and the whole drowned
Speaker 1: god that that pops up in their religion. Uh, they
Speaker 1: have these priests, they have these ritualized drownings. It's sometimes
Speaker 1: a little vague like to what extent is just like
Speaker 1: a violent Viking baptism in the sea, or if there's
Speaker 1: some sort of supernatural element going on as well. But
Speaker 1: they drink seawater. They do drink seawater. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: gonna drink it as the priest is attempting to drown you.
Speaker 1: But then also it said that their priests drinks seawater
Speaker 1: to quote, to strengthen their faith, but you should not
Speaker 1: drink seawater to strengthen your body. So the thing is, yeah,
Speaker 1: humans need a lot of water, certainly, but we don't
Speaker 1: need a lot of salt. We can consume small amounts
Speaker 1: of salt, certainly, We do it all the time. Uh,
Speaker 1: we love salty foods. And also we need salt to
Speaker 1: maintain our body chemistry. So it's it's not a situation
Speaker 1: where it's just a completely alien component. It's part of
Speaker 1: who we are. But we don't need that much. But
Speaker 1: we absolutely do need some Like at any given time,
Speaker 1: the average human body contains I read this today, about
Speaker 1: two d and fifty grams of sodium. That's about eight
Speaker 1: point eight ounces. Your standard cylinder container of Morton table salt.
Speaker 1: You know that, you know the can as salt, the
Speaker 1: big one. This is the one that larger than a
Speaker 1: soda can. Well, it's the twenty six ounds can. Yeah, exactly. Uh,
Speaker 1: that container of Morton table salt twenty six ounces. So
Speaker 1: if you've got eight point eight ounces in the average
Speaker 1: human body, depending on your body size, more or less,
Speaker 1: about one third of those containers is inside you right now.
Speaker 1: That seems like a lot of salt, right, Like, if
Speaker 1: you put that much salt on a meal, the meal
Speaker 1: would be I dare say, to salty. I think most
Speaker 1: people would agree with that. Yes. I want to tell
Speaker 1: a story that a friend of mine once told me. So. Uh,
Speaker 1: my friend, she she's very smart outdoors person. She does
Speaker 1: a lot of hiking, and she knows how to handle
Speaker 1: herself in the wilderness. And she was out hiking one
Speaker 1: time on a trail in Zion National Park and it
Speaker 1: was out in the heat, and of course, you know
Speaker 1: when you're hiking out in the heat and the desert
Speaker 1: on the rocks, you know, you need to take plenty
Speaker 1: of water with you and to keep drinking in order
Speaker 1: to keep yourself hydrated. And under that desert sun, dehydration
Speaker 1: and overheating can really sneak up on you. So the
Speaker 1: smart thing to do is not wait until you're super
Speaker 1: thirsty to drink some water, but keep sipping. Be very
Speaker 1: conscientious about keeping yourself cool, keeping water coming in. And
Speaker 1: this this friend of mine, as I said, she knows how,
Speaker 1: she knows what to do in the outside. So she
Speaker 1: was drinking plenty of water out on the rocks, but
Speaker 1: she noticed that she started to feel terrible. She felt
Speaker 1: nausea as she had a headache, weakness, and I think
Speaker 1: she said she was kind of confused and foggy, and
Speaker 1: normally in that situation you'd think, Okay, I'm out in
Speaker 1: the desert, I'm probab getting dehydrated. I need to rest
Speaker 1: and drink more water. But she kept drinking water and
Speaker 1: the symptoms didn't get any better, so she didn't know
Speaker 1: what was going on. They got concerned and she came
Speaker 1: back down off the trail and ended up at a
Speaker 1: shuttle station where they called for emergency services. So what's
Speaker 1: going on? Right? It seems like the symptoms of dehydration
Speaker 1: almost but she had been drinking so much water it
Speaker 1: didn't really make any sense. So the paramedics arrived, they
Speaker 1: got the lay of the situation. They and what they
Speaker 1: eventually did was they got her to eat some pretzels. Oh,
Speaker 1: so the problem wasn't a lack of water, It was
Speaker 1: too much water deluding the salt content of her blood
Speaker 1: plasma and what she needed to bounce back or some
Speaker 1: salty snacks. All right, So that sounds like what everyone
Speaker 1: needs to bring with them on a on a hike
Speaker 1: from now and it just make sure you do have
Speaker 1: some pretzels tucked away for emergency use. I wonder if
Speaker 1: you need a rapid infusion of salt, Like, what is
Speaker 1: the best thing to eat? I imagine the situation is
Speaker 1: fairly rare and im America. Yeah, like, yeah, we do
Speaker 1: love our salt. Yeah, well, I I love salty foods too,
Speaker 1: But like, what is it like Dorito's or she you
Speaker 1: take a jar of pickles or a stick of pepperoni,
Speaker 1: But see other people might see you taking that bag
Speaker 1: of Doritos or jar of pickles would be on the
Speaker 1: hike and they're gonna, they're gonna they might judge you
Speaker 1: for your your your choice in trail food. I guess
Speaker 1: you just need like a salty trail mix or packets
Speaker 1: of soy sauce, which will come back to in a bit. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well I wonder if some people, in addition to their
Speaker 1: hydration when they're like running and exercising, they squirt those
Speaker 1: little electrolyte gel things, right, and those have some amount
Speaker 1: of salt content to help keep you balanced. Right. Yeah? Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: gross side note of the story she told me about
Speaker 1: the shuttle station. Uh, my friend, she felt so bad
Speaker 1: after she got down there that she vomited out on
Speaker 1: the ground somewhere. And then later, while she was waiting around,
Speaker 1: she got to watch a wild fox wander over and
Speaker 1: start eating it. Oh well that's kind of beautiful really.
Speaker 1: Cycle of life, yeah, the cycle of whatever her life.
Speaker 1: She ate and then vomited, and then something else got
Speaker 1: to you. Yeah, I mean she was. She was behaving
Speaker 1: much like certain buzzards do when threatened. You know, A
Speaker 1: vomit which a vomiting display that is either meant to
Speaker 1: scare off a predator or to distract it with a bribe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: here you can have this. Yeah, have these pretzels and
Speaker 1: you know in gatorade. So we totally need sodium to
Speaker 1: keep our bodies functioning right. If you don't have enough
Speaker 1: sodium in the body, this is called hypootremia, and you
Speaker 1: can experience some really messed up symptoms. And in addition
Speaker 1: to what you heard about in that story, nausea, vomiting, headache, fatigue,
Speaker 1: and all that, you can on the far end of problems,
Speaker 1: if he gets bad enough, you can end up with
Speaker 1: seizures in coma. So I mentioned that sodium is an electrolyte,
Speaker 1: that that's one of the reasons that it's necessary in
Speaker 1: the body. And an electrolyte is a substance that tends
Speaker 1: to dissolve in a solution and produce ions, or charged particles.
Speaker 1: The presence of these charged particles makes the solution a
Speaker 1: better conductor of electricity. For example, salt water is a
Speaker 1: much better conductor of electricity than fresh water. And if
Speaker 1: you want proof of this, you can look up videos
Speaker 1: of salt water circuits. Have you ever seen one of these? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting. I wouldn't advise you to try
Speaker 1: this on your own at home unless you really know
Speaker 1: what you're doing. Electricity and water can be a dangerous combination.
Speaker 1: But the basic setup is you've got a circuit UH
Speaker 1: and it's connected to a battery and to a light bulb,
Speaker 1: and at one point on your circuit you have open
Speaker 1: wire ends that are stuck down into a jar of water.
Speaker 1: So the electricity would need to go through the water
Speaker 1: to complete the circuit. And if you've just got regular
Speaker 1: tap water, especially if you've got something like distilled water,
Speaker 1: the bulb is not going to light up. It can't
Speaker 1: generate enough current to really complete the circuit. But if
Speaker 1: you stir some salt into the water, suddenly the boat
Speaker 1: the bulb will come to life. And there's some kind
Speaker 1: of rough equivalence to that within within the body, like
Speaker 1: the body is an electrochemical machine, and one of the
Speaker 1: ways it regulates itself and does its stuff is through
Speaker 1: electrochemical signal ling an electrochemical exchange. So your body cells
Speaker 1: have membranes surrounding them, and these membranes are electrically permeable.
Speaker 1: They can allow ions to pass through to balance electrical
Speaker 1: charge on the sides of the membrane, and by exchanging
Speaker 1: potassium ions and sodium ions across the cell membrane. The
Speaker 1: cells can for example, direct an electrical impulse, which means
Speaker 1: a chain of nerve cells can pass a message from
Speaker 1: one part of the body to another. But you can
Speaker 1: also think of sodium and potassium as one of the
Speaker 1: ways that stuff gets into and out of a cell.
Speaker 1: This electrolyte exchange across the cell membrane can be used,
Speaker 1: for example, to exchange glucose to get glucose into the cell.
Speaker 1: And the body also uses sodium to maintain overall fluid
Speaker 1: balance and regulate blood pressure. So you need sodium. It's
Speaker 1: an important part of everything your body needs to do
Speaker 1: to survive. Without it, you would not be able to live.
Speaker 1: But like we were saying, you don't need a lot
Speaker 1: of it. It's interesting, isn't it. How you end up
Speaker 1: revisiting the body as this kind of chemical equation. But
Speaker 1: for the most part, it's a self regulating chemical chemical
Speaker 1: equation provided that you have you have your your your
Speaker 1: typical resources around you. Yeah, unless there's something really wrong
Speaker 1: with your inputs. Generally, if the body is healthy, it's
Speaker 1: going to be balancing the sides of this equation on
Speaker 1: its own, and so the body usually tries to keep
Speaker 1: the sodium content very stable between about a hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty five and a hundred and forty five milli equivalence
Speaker 1: of sodium per liter of water in your body. And
Speaker 1: mill equivalence is a measure and chemistry often used to
Speaker 1: measure the amount of solute and a solution. In this case,
Speaker 1: it's sodium and water, and there are one thousand milli
Speaker 1: equivalents and an equivalent. So notice that's a pretty tight
Speaker 1: range for normal sodium levels. Right one to one forty
Speaker 1: five milli equivalence means that the body needs to be
Speaker 1: constantly managing its retention and excretion of sodium to keep
Speaker 1: those levels in the optimal functioning range. But having too
Speaker 1: much salt is I would guess a more common problem
Speaker 1: than having too little, and certainly just as potentially harmful,
Speaker 1: and drinking seawater puts you at immediate risk for over
Speaker 1: salting your body and your cells can basically start to
Speaker 1: get like salted slugs. It's not good. It's not good.
Speaker 1: It's really it's really kind of diabolical. The way it
Speaker 1: plays out, it seems like some sort of a punishment
Speaker 1: from the inferno. So basically what happens is humans were
Speaker 1: eating and drinking a lot to dilute our salt intake.
Speaker 1: So you're fine normally, if you have a salty meal,
Speaker 1: it's not going to kill you immediately because you can
Speaker 1: drink water to make up for it. Your your kidneys
Speaker 1: will help you excrete all that salt over a period
Speaker 1: of time, because there's a reason you have that super
Speaker 1: gulp of of sugary soda water, right right, Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: if we consume too much salt, the body has to
Speaker 1: dump it. But that that body has to get rid
Speaker 1: of that salt the only way it knows how through
Speaker 1: urine evacuation mode exactly. But the human kidneys can only
Speaker 1: make urine that is less salty than salt water, so
Speaker 1: it cannot it can't get rid of it as fast
Speaker 1: as it's coming in. To get rid of all that
Speaker 1: excess salt from saltwater, you have to urinate more water
Speaker 1: than you drink, and this is the path to doom.
Speaker 1: You die of dehydration, becoming thirstier and thirstier with every gulp.
Speaker 1: It's one of those faiths that is not only cruel,
Speaker 1: but ironic. YEA, all right, we're gonna take a quick
Speaker 1: break and when we come back, we're gonna get more
Speaker 1: into this situation. What happens when we do drink salt
Speaker 1: water and another outline question, does it lead to madness?
Speaker 1: Does it lead to sea madness? Thank? Thank all right,
Speaker 1: we're back. So, Robert, we've talked about how the body
Speaker 1: needs sodium to survive, but if you have too much
Speaker 1: of it, it's going to be a big problem for you.
Speaker 1: And if you start drinking seawater when you're thirsty, it
Speaker 1: will not cure your thirst, but we'll take you down
Speaker 1: a bad road. That's right, the road to doom. So
Speaker 1: the body tries to compensate for fluid loss by increasing
Speaker 1: the heart rate and constricting blood vessel to maintain blood
Speaker 1: pressure and flow to vital organs. So you're you're also
Speaker 1: most likely to feel nauseous, weakness, and even a sense
Speaker 1: of delirium. But as you become more dehydrated, the coping
Speaker 1: mechanism fails. If you still don't drink any water to
Speaker 1: reverse the effects of the excess sodium, the brain and
Speaker 1: other organs receive less blood, leading to coma, organ failure
Speaker 1: and eventually death. Right. So, as we've said, several times. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're thirsty out on the ocean, don't drink the
Speaker 1: sea water, that's right. And the delirium condition there that
Speaker 1: that underlies the whole idea of sea madness, Right, you
Speaker 1: could become delirious from drinking the seawater. We see a
Speaker 1: good bit of that portrayed, I think in the rhyme
Speaker 1: of the Ancient Mariner, even though well, I don't know
Speaker 1: if it ever establishes in the poem a cause and
Speaker 1: effect saying like, oh, somebody drank the sea water and
Speaker 1: then they went mad. I can't remember. Is that in there?
Speaker 1: At least you get that vibe. I mean, it could
Speaker 1: be that this this character, the old man from the sea,
Speaker 1: is just making up this whole story. It could be
Speaker 1: may he just drink, see why, just right out of
Speaker 1: the bay and walked up to this guy on his
Speaker 1: way to the wedding. There's really no uh, no epic
Speaker 1: survival story to to relate. Now, if this guy was
Speaker 1: going to an ancient Greek wedding, it's possible he may
Speaker 1: have been on his way to drink some seawater himself. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this so this is interesting. I was not aware of
Speaker 1: the medicinal consumption of seawater prior to researching this episode,
Speaker 1: but I ended up running across it and it's it's fascinating.
Speaker 1: So we mentioned the fictional Iron Islanders earlier, a seagoing
Speaker 1: people in George R. Martin's book who who honored the
Speaker 1: sea and believe their god lives under the sea. And
Speaker 1: this of course lines up with a number of different
Speaker 1: traditions of ocean going people, particularly the ancient Greeks, who
Speaker 1: were a seafaring culture, and they placed a lot of
Speaker 1: emphasis on the power of the ocean, right and if
Speaker 1: you anger Poseidon, it could really come back to bite you.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, of course, really, most of the
Speaker 1: Greek gods were terrible entities to even attract the attention
Speaker 1: of much less tick off. But yeah, Poseidon does fifth
Speaker 1: feature into a number of these tales. I mean, in't
Speaker 1: that what happened to Odysseus he made besides that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's kind of the central antagonist of that one,
Speaker 1: isn't it. But the Greeks they sometimes added seawater to
Speaker 1: wine to to adjust the flavoring. Um Kato the Elder
Speaker 1: reportedly served it to his slaves a mixture of wine
Speaker 1: and seawater to keep them energized. That doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: an energy drink, well, or does it like the electrolytes?
Speaker 1: I guess you know, it's kind of like ancient cruel gatorade.
Speaker 1: I guess all energy drinks are cruel, but that that's
Speaker 1: crueler than usual. Yeah. Now, during the eighteenth century, physicians
Speaker 1: took inspiration from the works of Hpocrates and Celsus and
Speaker 1: they revived the practice. Uh Now, one of the classical
Speaker 1: approach was to sweeten your saltwater. You're sweeten your seawater
Speaker 1: with honey. The British like to dilute it with milk.
Speaker 1: This sounds gross and just a big glass of salty
Speaker 1: milk to to to enhance your constitution. I guess I'm
Speaker 1: trying to imagine how salty it was like. As we've
Speaker 1: said that they're they're electrolytes in some sports drinks. So
Speaker 1: is this going to end up being about as salty
Speaker 1: as gatorade? Or is it going to be like a
Speaker 1: salty salty drink? Well, I think we find one possible
Speaker 1: answer in an excellent two thousand thirteen Atlantic article by
Speaker 1: Addie Brawn titled The Historic Healing Power of the beach.
Speaker 1: I'll include a link to this article on the Landing
Speaker 1: page for this episode of Stuff to Put Your Mind
Speaker 1: dot Com because she gets into not only the idea
Speaker 1: of drinking salt water, but just this idea of the
Speaker 1: beach as a place where one might go to heal oneself,
Speaker 1: which is which is an interesting topic on to itself,
Speaker 1: and one that I find myself believing in and yeah,
Speaker 1: yet unsure of the scientific you know, underlying truth to it. Well,
Speaker 1: it seems like part of a broader phenomenon, especially in
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century. I can think of of people who
Speaker 1: have a disease being prescribed by their doctors, not to
Speaker 1: like take a drug or I mean the that did
Speaker 1: happen too, but to go to a specific climate. I
Speaker 1: think about, you know, keats being prescribed you need to
Speaker 1: go to like a Mediterranean climate to get well or something. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But as she points out in the article, there was
Speaker 1: a time when hanging out of the beach that's what
Speaker 1: peasants did. It's only as this, uh, this resurgence of
Speaker 1: the healing power of the beach becomes a thing. But
Speaker 1: you see the higher classes heading out there as well. Now.
Speaker 1: In this article, though she points out that in seventeen
Speaker 1: fifty Dr Richard Russell published a treatise titled A Dissertation
Speaker 1: on the Use of Seawater in the Diseases of the Glands,
Speaker 1: particularly the scurvy, jaundice, King's Evil, leprosy and the glandular consumption. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the King's evil, the King's evil. So the King's
Speaker 1: evil was a swelling of the lymph nodes associated with
Speaker 1: the tuberculosis. But of course the idea was that this
Speaker 1: condition could be cured by the touch of a royal
Speaker 1: royal person who was blessed by the divine right of king.
Speaker 1: Exactly we know now that that that that cure does
Speaker 1: not work. They're probably a great way to get syphilis.
Speaker 1: Just looking back on the history. Wait, was this also
Speaker 1: known as the SCRAWFULA? Is that I think I've read that? Yes,
Speaker 1: I believe so so Dr Russell. He he prescribed a
Speaker 1: lot of seawater, including to one of his patients who
Speaker 1: who suffered from leprosy, and he required uh this particular
Speaker 1: patient to sprinkle himself with seawater and quote drink a
Speaker 1: pint of seawater every morning during nine months without any intervals.
Speaker 1: And he reported a full recovery. I don't believe that
Speaker 1: a pint of seawater that is a lot of salt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would think so. I kept thinking about it during
Speaker 1: my recent trip to the beach, like what have I?
Speaker 1: What have I followed Dr Russell's advice and I myself
Speaker 1: just drank a pint of this stuff every morning just
Speaker 1: to kick off the day. Now here's a question I wonder.
Speaker 1: I wonder if maybe people were in some cases not
Speaker 1: drinking enough fresh water, and that by getting people to
Speaker 1: drink seawater it made them thirsty, so they would end
Speaker 1: up drinking a lot of fresh water to make up
Speaker 1: for it, and that that would actually increase their overall
Speaker 1: water consumption and make them healthier well. But of course
Speaker 1: then that depends on their access to fresh water. Does
Speaker 1: it result in them drinking more fresh water? Does it
Speaker 1: result in them drinking more beer? I don't know. I'd
Speaker 1: say the answer is probably beer. So if you were
Speaker 1: if you are stuck at sea or on a deserted island,
Speaker 1: or or what have you, obviously beer would be the
Speaker 1: better choice. But but let's say you definitely have to
Speaker 1: drink seawater. You should not drink seawater, but let's say
Speaker 1: it starts looking like a good idea, how might one
Speaker 1: go about that? Wait a minute, didn't we say you
Speaker 1: shouldn't do it? No matter what? Exactly all the survival
Speaker 1: manual say do not drink seawater. And yet you will
Speaker 1: find particular survivalist who say, look, you shouldn't drink seawater.
Speaker 1: But here's how you do it. Here's how I did
Speaker 1: it and survived. All right, Well, let's hear some salty prescriptions. Okay,
Speaker 1: So once again, to be clear, there are accounts and
Speaker 1: sometimes rather disputed accounts, of individuals surviving their or their
Speaker 1: ordeals at sea through the balance consumption of seawater. Balance.
Speaker 1: So that means not just like ladling it out and
Speaker 1: drinking it, but maybe mixing it with consumption of freshwater
Speaker 1: or something else. Yeah. Noteworthy examples of this include French
Speaker 1: biologist Alan Bombard, nor Even, Norwegian adventure thor Hire dol
Speaker 1: rynch and sailor William Willis. I'm gonna talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about Bombard here. He lived through two thousand five.
Speaker 1: He went to an Oceano graphic institute in Monte Carlo
Speaker 1: to develop ways for people lost in small boats to survive.
Speaker 1: This after he and a friend survived in a boat
Speaker 1: for five days with only a half kilogram of butter.
Speaker 1: Of butter, what is that supposed to say? Water butter?
Speaker 1: Just butter? Yes, butter? You heard that right, not water butter.
Speaker 1: So what he's saying is, you know, if if there's
Speaker 1: no fresh water around, you're saying, drink butter. That what
Speaker 1: we're being told here. But basically, but now, during his
Speaker 1: his time in Minding Carlo, he concluded the drinking limited
Speaker 1: quality quantities of seawater and fluids pressed from raw fish,
Speaker 1: and eating raw fish and plankton that this was the
Speaker 1: way to go. Well, it'll come back in a little
Speaker 1: bit later in this episode, but that may be part
Speaker 1: of the strategy employed by some organisms that live in
Speaker 1: the ocean exactly, but this case, like I said, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a little uncertain exactly how that all this
Speaker 1: shakes out. He later put it to the test and
Speaker 1: claimed that while the raw fish and plankton tasted like
Speaker 1: lobster biscuit, first it grew tiresome. Oh, it grew tiresome
Speaker 1: on the on the lifeboat. Yeah, and uh. And then
Speaker 1: a critic comes along, German doctor Hans Lindemann, who lived
Speaker 1: UH through two thousand and fifteen. He tried to follow
Speaker 1: his advice and drank seawater to survive on two short voyages,
Speaker 1: resulting in dangerous swelling of his feet and legs, and
Speaker 1: he ended up charging bombered with cheating, saying that he
Speaker 1: had he'd probably use secreted provisions to survive in this test,
Speaker 1: and UH and I believe he he suggested that it
Speaker 1: was probably beer, to come back to our mentioned of
Speaker 1: beer earlier. Now, he's not the only word on the
Speaker 1: whole issue of how much seawater should you drink? According
Speaker 1: to the paper Metabolic Effects in Rats drinking increasing concentrations
Speaker 1: of seawater by z Etzen and R. Yaggle, published in
Speaker 1: Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, Part A UH of Physiology, found
Speaker 1: that yes, drinking seawater wind dehydrated is quote not beneficial
Speaker 1: and causes impaired renal function. But if push comes to shove,
Speaker 1: they recommend the following. Oh so they actually got some
Speaker 1: results that might be useful to save lives. Yeah, now
Speaker 1: these are from these are with rats. But they say
Speaker 1: when the concentration of seawater in the drinking water is
Speaker 1: gradually increa east, there is a gradual increase in water
Speaker 1: uptake and corresponding urine excretion. At fifty percent seawater, the
Speaker 1: maximum uptake and excretion is reached. Following this, there is
Speaker 1: a decline and appetite water uptake and urine secretion. So
Speaker 1: this is this is what they say. It is suggested
Speaker 1: that when a man is stranded at sea, it is
Speaker 1: not advisable to drink all the fresh water and then
Speaker 1: be compelled to drink sea water when be hydrated. It
Speaker 1: is better to slowly increase the seawater uptake. This will
Speaker 1: prolong the time before seawater needs to be drunk and
Speaker 1: result in only minor metabolic changes. Return to freshwater will
Speaker 1: be followed by an immediate return to normal homeostasis. Now,
Speaker 1: I want to come back to soy sauce for a second, because,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, there there are, of course other
Speaker 1: ways to acquire salt poisoning, such as the two thousand
Speaker 1: thirteen case reported in the Journal of Emergency Medicine, in
Speaker 1: which a nineteen year old Virginian man drank a quart
Speaker 1: of soy sauce what apparently on a day and he
Speaker 1: he developed a hypernatremia so it's the opposite of the
Speaker 1: condition you were talking earlier. This is too much salt
Speaker 1: in the blood. Then this is super dangerous because it
Speaker 1: essentially turns your brain into jerky. Now, if I had
Speaker 1: to guess, I suppose I could, I would guess that
Speaker 1: if the body detected that much salt going in through
Speaker 1: the digestive system, it would just immediately reject it through vomiting,
Speaker 1: you would think. And yet in this case, he drank
Speaker 1: down the the soy sauce and then he started complaining
Speaker 1: of of these symptoms that he was feeling nauseous, because
Speaker 1: in this case he drank enough to go into a
Speaker 1: seizure and had to had had to be picked up
Speaker 1: by the ambulance taken to the emergency room. So so
Speaker 1: what happens here is that the water ends up moving
Speaker 1: out of the brain into the body to equalize the
Speaker 1: salt concentration, and this can cause the brain to shrink
Speaker 1: into blithe so at once he arrives the emergency room,
Speaker 1: they had to pump one point five gallons or six
Speaker 1: liters of sugar water into a system, and his levels
Speaker 1: normalized after five hours. The hippocampus, however, a region of
Speaker 1: his brain showed signs of trauma for several days before
Speaker 1: returning to normal. So we've said, don't drink the seawater. Also,
Speaker 1: don't drink the soy sauce, don't don't drink the soy sauce,
Speaker 1: and certainly don't slam the soy sauce, not to demonize
Speaker 1: soy sauce big fans of soy sauce now. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: in the paper, authors Carl Berg at All reports that
Speaker 1: in ancient China, salt ingestion was a traditional method for suicide.
Speaker 1: This led me to a paper. Yeah, this, this the
Speaker 1: floored me as well. That sounds like the result of
Speaker 1: like some sick brainstorming session at a saw movie writer's
Speaker 1: meeting where they're trying to come up with like the
Speaker 1: most horrible way to kill somebody. I agree, I I was.
Speaker 1: I was a little doubtful of it, so I ended
Speaker 1: up doing a little more research on it. This led
Speaker 1: me to a paper in jama titled Suicide by Drinking
Speaker 1: a solution of salt by sea Herman Barlow. Sounds good, right,
Speaker 1: except it's a nineteen twelve paper, so that it's it's
Speaker 1: you know, not definitive. But in this the author says quote,
Speaker 1: salt is taken for suicidal purposes, sometimes in a common
Speaker 1: saturated solution made with water as the solvent, and sometimes
Speaker 1: in the brine from salted crout. Poisoning by salt usually
Speaker 1: presents a picture of high temperature and pulse purging, vomiting
Speaker 1: and spasm. Um. Yeah, I couldn't find anything else on this. Really.
Speaker 1: I found that I found some some information about the
Speaker 1: nature of suicide in Chinese society in in the book
Speaker 1: Chinese Society, Change, Conflict and Resistance uh and and in
Speaker 1: this author is seeingly an author Kleinman. They write the
Speaker 1: quote suicide is not simply authorized in the Chinese tradition
Speaker 1: as an unnatural death. It was to be avoided, and
Speaker 1: it was in some text not to be mourned. Suicide
Speaker 1: was polluted and polluting. I wasn't able to find much
Speaker 1: more about traditional Chinese suicide practice than that. Yeah. One
Speaker 1: of the types of claims I'm often the most skeptical
Speaker 1: of is just sort of like generic claims about cultural
Speaker 1: practices in some culture other than the one writing about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and especially when drinking salt water as a means of
Speaker 1: killing yourself is it does seem nonsensical. It seems like
Speaker 1: they're much better ways. It seems like this, this would
Speaker 1: be the sort of thing that wouldn't want to be
Speaker 1: driven to in a survival situation or in a case
Speaker 1: of of some sort of severe mental instability. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: if you are out there and you know of a
Speaker 1: more authoritative source about this, police send it our way.
Speaker 1: This would be interesting to know by all means. All right, well,
Speaker 1: we are going to take a quick breaking. When we
Speaker 1: come back, we'll ask the question, do any animals drink seawater?
Speaker 1: And if so, how Alright? We're back. So when you
Speaker 1: think of ocean dwelling animals, if you're like me, you
Speaker 1: probably assumed that they just must have some way of
Speaker 1: drinking salt water to hydrate themselves. That's what seems obvious, right,
Speaker 1: But this isn't necessarily the case, not for all of them.
Speaker 1: I found a good explainer in this Scientific American article
Speaker 1: by a marine biologist, Robert Kinney of the University of
Speaker 1: Rhode Island about how animals that live in the sea
Speaker 1: consume saltwater. Specifically, he was focused on mammals, and one
Speaker 1: of the things he pointed out is that it's not
Speaker 1: that marine mammals are like these salt monsters, with ten
Speaker 1: percent salt in their blood. In fact, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that they live in this salty environment, the salt concentration
Speaker 1: in their blood is not very different from that of
Speaker 1: terrestrial mammals, so they're they're insides are a lot like
Speaker 1: our inside. So their blood is generally about one third
Speaker 1: as salty as seawater, which is kind of close to
Speaker 1: what ours is. But some sea dwelling mammals get water
Speaker 1: not by drinking from the ocean and purging the salt,
Speaker 1: but from their food. This kind of goes back to
Speaker 1: Bombard's recommendation where he said, you know, maybe you can
Speaker 1: get uh some freshwater content by pressing the ash of
Speaker 1: fish or something like that, or or of marine plants.
Speaker 1: You've heard a million times that the human body is
Speaker 1: you know, however many percent water three water or whatever.
Speaker 1: I think the real figure is something close to six
Speaker 1: by mass. Well, other organisms are also largely made of water,
Speaker 1: and if you eat them, you can get water from them.
Speaker 1: But sub marine organisms also actually do drink the brine wine.
Speaker 1: So how does that work. Well, they're basically two different approaches.
Speaker 1: One approach is that they act as osmotic conformers. Okay,
Speaker 1: what does that mean? So marine plants and invertebrates, they
Speaker 1: have no mechanism to control osmosis, so their cells are
Speaker 1: the same salinity as their environment thirty five for ocean dwellers,
Speaker 1: and that means saltwater intake doesn't disrupt their physiological equilibrium.
Speaker 1: So that's plants and invertebrates that they basically say, okay,
Speaker 1: we're just committing to salt life exactly. But what about vertebrates?
Speaker 1: All right, this is where we encounter osmotic regulators. Most fish,
Speaker 1: as well as reptiles, birds, and mammals control osmosis in
Speaker 1: a variety of ways. For instance, salmon, you specialized cells
Speaker 1: on their gills called chloride cells to cope with osmosis.
Speaker 1: Chloride cells can excrete excess salt, allowing a fish to
Speaker 1: take uh in water without dehydrating. Okay, so you can
Speaker 1: imagine that in some senses these might work kind of
Speaker 1: like the like the water purifying plants that that get
Speaker 1: fresh water out of the ocean water through some process
Speaker 1: of reverse osmosis. They've got a membrane and it allows
Speaker 1: water to come through from one side to the other,
Speaker 1: but keeps the salt out or maybe the wady. The
Speaker 1: body works by purging salt in the other way, like
Speaker 1: it can excrete salt through a membrane while retaining the
Speaker 1: water content. Yeah, I think that's a that's a good
Speaker 1: way to put it now. I recently returned from a
Speaker 1: trip to Florida, and I was sort of churning over
Speaker 1: a lot of this salt research while I was down there,
Speaker 1: as I was encountering manatees both in the wild and
Speaker 1: in an aquarium situation, as well as some exhibits with
Speaker 1: a number of different aquatic reptiles. So one example was
Speaker 1: the American crocodile. It excretes salt through the use of
Speaker 1: modified salivary glands called lingual salt glands in their tongues
Speaker 1: salty tongues, and these allow them to tolerate partially salty
Speaker 1: water or even full seawater in some species. And similarly,
Speaker 1: the green and loggerhead sea turtles have salt glands near
Speaker 1: their eyes. Um salt glands are also found in sharks,
Speaker 1: raised skates, seabirds, and a few reptiles. Marine iguanas are
Speaker 1: a great example of this. They have nasal salt glands
Speaker 1: that dislodge the salt through the splendid nasal blast. Oh.
Speaker 1: I wonder if that's why sometimes you see those marine
Speaker 1: iguanas looking so crusty on the face. Probably probably so,
Speaker 1: there are a few different I want to say. It's
Speaker 1: probably the you know, the BBC series with Attenborough where
Speaker 1: you get to see some of these these iguanas of
Speaker 1: swimming under the water and then coming up on the
Speaker 1: surface to just blast that salt out of their nose. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: how about some mammals. All right, well the manateee is
Speaker 1: I think that the perfect example to look to next.
Speaker 1: So among the Sirenian species, you have both strict fresh
Speaker 1: water inhabitants such as the Amazonian manatees. These are like
Speaker 1: river manatees. Yeah, and then you have strictly saltwater inhabitants
Speaker 1: like the marine doo gongs. Now, if anyone's not familiar
Speaker 1: with the doo gong, it's essentially like a manatee. It
Speaker 1: looks like a manatee. Uh, kind of a gray mitchell
Speaker 1: entire man. Yeah, except its tail is more like that
Speaker 1: of a whale or you know, even I guess a
Speaker 1: mermaid as opposed to the the the West Indian manateee.
Speaker 1: The manateee that you encounter in Florida has this kind
Speaker 1: of paddle tail. And yeah, the West Indian manateee is
Speaker 1: is really most interesting because it inhabits both fresh and
Speaker 1: salty water and of course the brackish waters in between. Now,
Speaker 1: given their vulnerability, the manateee has received quite a bit
Speaker 1: of study. According to the University of Central Florida is
Speaker 1: Physiological Ecology and bio bio Energetics lab. Manatees and fresh
Speaker 1: water seem to get a great deal of water from
Speaker 1: the food they eat. Their voracious herbivores, after all, consuming
Speaker 1: around nine percent of their body weight per day, and
Speaker 1: they weigh up to twelve thirteen pounds or so. They're
Speaker 1: they're large animals. Plus they also drink a lot of
Speaker 1: fresh water while it's there. Oh yeah, there's um I've
Speaker 1: heard from people who've grown up in Florida the whole
Speaker 1: anecdote about how you can, you can and absolutely should not,
Speaker 1: um fee give a manateee fresh water from a hose. Yes,
Speaker 1: Actually that article I was talking about earlier, by that
Speaker 1: the marine biologist Kenny He writes about that. He said,
Speaker 1: when given a choice of manatees and some pinnipeds will
Speaker 1: go to a freshwater source to drink it, and that
Speaker 1: sometimes people who live on salty waterways in Florida will
Speaker 1: like put out a garden hose to watch the manatees
Speaker 1: come over and drink from it because they like it
Speaker 1: better than the salty or brackish water. And of course,
Speaker 1: the danger there with with the West Indian manatee is
Speaker 1: that is that you do not want them associating food
Speaker 1: or fresh water with humans, because interaction between humans and manatees,
Speaker 1: particularly interactions between boats and manatees, this is the leading
Speaker 1: cause of death for the species. Yeah. Now, now that's
Speaker 1: of course when they're in fresh water. Yeah, they can
Speaker 1: get the fresh water all around them. In salt water, however,
Speaker 1: they seem to limit their direct salt intake and have
Speaker 1: been observed to cease the consumption of sea grasses when
Speaker 1: their salt levels get too high. So the sea grasses
Speaker 1: I assume are saltier than some of the other things, yes, exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that this grass is in the salty environment and is saltier. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the interesting strategies that Kenny mentions is that
Speaker 1: he says some seals will actually eat snow to get
Speaker 1: fresh water. Well, I grew up eating snow, don't. Didn't
Speaker 1: you have snow creams when you're a child? Wait? Hold on,
Speaker 1: what is a snow cream? How is that different from
Speaker 1: a snow cone? A snow cream is you you were
Speaker 1: allowed to go out into the snow, You get a
Speaker 1: bowl of snow, you bring it inside, and you put
Speaker 1: like sugar and milk on it and you eat it
Speaker 1: that Okay, I have not increasing messing with me. You
Speaker 1: know this is real. I would I would do it
Speaker 1: as a child up in uh Up in Newfoundland, Canada.
Speaker 1: You get that brown slush from under the tire and
Speaker 1: you only go for the white stuff. You leave the
Speaker 1: brown and the yellow alone. Uh And, and I have
Speaker 1: to add I I do not know to what extent
Speaker 1: this is still done. I have not introduced it to
Speaker 1: my son yet, but I do have fond memories of
Speaker 1: doing doing this as a child. Well, I did not
Speaker 1: expect to learn that today. Well, now, you know, you
Speaker 1: learn something new to do with milk and sugar every day.
Speaker 1: And hey, if you want to throw some salt in there,
Speaker 1: then you have the curative properties of that as well.
Speaker 1: You know for your leprosy? Right, Well, I think you
Speaker 1: actually need salt if you're gonna go ahead and make
Speaker 1: full on ice cream, right, Well, that's true. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you're gonna go all the way, you're gonna need the salt.
Speaker 1: So there you go. But perhaps there are some snow
Speaker 1: cream experts out there practicing snow cream eaters that can
Speaker 1: weigh in on this. Now, also a survival tactic among
Speaker 1: some seals and sea lions is apparently too actually get
Speaker 1: some salty water in their system and just they just
Speaker 1: purge the heck out of it. Like Kinney writes that
Speaker 1: measurements have found that among seals and sea lions, their
Speaker 1: urine can be up to two point five times as
Speaker 1: salty as seawater. Remember how we talked about how our
Speaker 1: urine can't get as salty as seawater, so we can't
Speaker 1: net purge salt. We're just gonna accumulate it. But seals
Speaker 1: and sea lions apparently can. They can be up to
Speaker 1: two point five times as salty as seawater, meaning it's
Speaker 1: seven or eight times saltier than their blood. And that
Speaker 1: is some salty urine. So but they have the kidneys
Speaker 1: of a creature that is evolved to thrive in a
Speaker 1: saltwater habitat. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they think that the kidneys
Speaker 1: have evolved to have these different types of structures, these
Speaker 1: longer loops that allow for more purging of water out
Speaker 1: of the concentrated solution that they will have actually end
Speaker 1: up excreting in their urine curiously enough, apparently, at least
Speaker 1: of the time Kenny was writing, he wrote that we
Speaker 1: don't yet fully understand how whales and dolphins hydrate themselves,
Speaker 1: just because it's it's harder to study them in the wild. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, the sea retains so many of its mysteries,
Speaker 1: just as the ancient mariner would have it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I think that the old man they know what
Speaker 1: the gray haired loon I would agree with us there.
Speaker 1: So I know you're out there thinking like, okay, unhand me,
Speaker 1: gray beard loon. It's time for this episode to wrap up.
Speaker 1: Should we wrap up? Yeah, let's let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: wrap it up. Hopefully we provided you know, a decent
Speaker 1: overview of of salt water, why we can't drink it,
Speaker 1: some of the arguments for drinking it, and instructions on
Speaker 1: how to drink it if you absolutely have to. Uh,
Speaker 1: we do want to drive home, though, do not drink saltwater.
Speaker 1: Do not do not leave this podcast thinking that you
Speaker 1: should try a couple of pints. Now, what should their
Speaker 1: opinion be on snow cream? I don't know, I have
Speaker 1: I have not researched it recently. I probably should to
Speaker 1: see see if I should let my my son eat
Speaker 1: snow the next time it snows here in Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I would. I would love to hear from
Speaker 1: people who are a little more up on the science
Speaker 1: of eating snow. Likewise, I'd love to hear from anyone
Speaker 1: who has uh who either has a story of not
Speaker 1: consuming enough salt or consuming way too much of drinking seawater.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's we have a number of listeners. I
Speaker 1: imagine some of you have been in survival situations before.
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear what it was like. And I
Speaker 1: know we've heard from some listeners in the past who
Speaker 1: have actually lived and worked on the high seas. So
Speaker 1: what tales did you hear out on the waves? Indeed,
Speaker 1: let us know. Hey. In the meantime, be sure to
Speaker 1: check out stuff to Blew your Mind dot com. That's
Speaker 1: the mother ship, that's where we will find all the
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Speaker 1: to rate our show, to throw some stars our way,
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Speaker 1: our excellent producers Alex Williams and Torry Harrison. And if
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us directly and
Speaker 1: ask us about a future topic or give us feedback
Speaker 1: on this, this episode or any other, you can email
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