I read the life of pi the other day.. and then I lay awake thinking about dehydration at sea (as you do).

Drinking sea water is bad, right? Makes you go bonkers.

But to aid dehydration, you can be given a saline drip.

So…. if you are stuck at sea with no drinking water. Can you fashion yourself a saline drip to keep hydrated?

Dave

I dont think a saline drip involves putting sea water in you

You could do it [ if you had the tools and skills] but you would still die
IANADOCTOR

I imagine the saline drip is saline to stop your cells being stripped of nutrients to balance the H20 being injected.

But you can evaporate water from sea water.

of course, assuming you have the right types of salts and sterile equipment and have either the medical knowledge to know where to jab yourself, or access to the internet either post on here or find the appropriate youtube clip to guide you through it.

i know sea water has all sorts of other stuff in it – but the principle constituents are water and salt…. which is pretty damn similar to those of saline!!

assuming you have some way of getting it into your blood, and you don’t give yourself a massive case of blood poisoning… is it better to inject it than drink it?

Dave

You could just log on to STW, then you could boil your piss.

According to Wikipedia, saline solution has 9g ‘salt’ per kg water. Seawater has 35g per kg. which is quite a big difference! So unfortunately I think whatever way you take it, it’s bad stuff!

As others have said, Saline is used as it closely mimics your bloods salt concentration so that you don’t lose anything through osmosis etc.

I’m guessing a saline drip is quite a lot less saline than sea water. I’f the drip is not saline enough you’ll lose salts and nutriens from your cells, but if it’s too saline it’ll strip out the water and worsen the dehydration.

Probably better off drinking tiger pee. At least it’ll give you magic powers.

One solution I heard about was to give yourself an enema with the bilge water from the boat, this is often largely made up rainwater and condensation, this way you can absorb some of the water with a slightly reduced risk of the bugs and contaminants in the water doing you in.

IIUR, the salt content of blood is about 0.9%, the total salts in seawater are about 3.5%, so it contains too much salt.

(edit) Too slow, as usual.

Glad we’ve got that cleared up… If I had got shipwrecked and had that idea floating around in my mind, it could have gone badly 🙂

I’d like to know where you’re going to get the giving set and venflon from.

If you were stuck at sea and only had a bag of saline (as used in saline drips) but no needles, would it do you any good to drink it?

Bear Grylls reckons it’ll keep you going if you give it as an enema, but I’m not so sure. When that was done in real life they used bilgewater which had rain, blood and muck in it, wreck of the Lucette, 1971.

“Glad we’ve got that cleared up… If I had got shipwrecked and had that idea floating around in my mind, it could have gone badly”

Yeah but you could have set it up for the Tiger.

‘Normal saline’ for infusion is 154mmol/L of sodium.
Sea Water is about 480mmol/L.

Like I say when my Nan cooks tea – too salty…….

DrP

IAN,A DOCTOR

(It’s all in the punctuation!)

EDIT: Oh what a geek I am! You’ve all said the same as I, but in plain English!

You can get simple solar stills for life rafts which are made from a lifering sized inflatable ring and a kind of double galzed cone with a big hole in the inner one. Seawater evaporates, condenses on the outer cone, drips down and collects in the trough created by the inner cone.

And there’s handheld osmotic pumps, but unless it’s a cold night you sweat more than you pump.

Or…just visit a starbucks?
They seem to be everywhere…

DrP

Who gets the tax on my latte in the middle of the pacific ?

International waters innit….

DrP

Drac – Moderator
I’d like to know where you’re going to get the giving set and venflon from.

CRC or LBS is what i’d like to know.

International waters innit….

Are all international waters saline?

When that was done in real life they used bilgewater which had rain, blood and muck in it, wreck of the Lucette, 1971.

😯

You might be able to drink saline. After all you can eat food with a fair bit of salt in it.