From a BBC Science article "On a desert island, would it be better to drink wine or go thirsty?":
The amount of water you lose through urinating is controlled by the Anti Diuretic Hormone (AHD, also called vasopressin). ADH causes your kidneys to extract excess water from your urine so that it can be recycled back into your body. Without any ADH at all, your kidneys would dump about 10 litres of water a day into your bladder; ADH reduces this to one or two litres. Alcohol increases the amount you urinate because it suppresses the production of ADH.
A sufficiently alcoholic drink can suppress ADH to the point where your kidneys actually excrete more water than the volume of the drink itself, and so there's a net dehydrating effect. But the concentration of alcohol required for this increases as you get thirstier.
If you just drank wine on your desert island, you would initially lose more water than you gain from wine, but as your body became more dehydrated, it would produce more ADH to compensate and you'd eventually reach an equilibrium point. For the 13 per cent alcohol content of most wines, that equilibrium point would still leave you badly dehydrated (not to mention hopelessly drunk), but it should prevent you from dying of thirst.
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40 comments:
Is this really a question?
Go out happy.
Why can't all journalism be like this?
I almost died from SIADH 2 years ago. Body made too much ADH resulting in severe hyponatremia (low sodium). Cause was a pituitary tumor, since removed. ADH is pretty important.
She was stuck in mud - there was water somewhere nearby. Also, she stayed with her car...which probably had water in its windshield washer reservoir.
Old Jewish joke. Three men--a German, a Frenchman, and a Jew--are crawling across the desert without water. The German declares, "I must have beer." The Frenchman says, "I must have wine." And the Jew says, "I must have diabetes."
Depends on the wine.
Useful explanation. But is the lady going to get "hopelessly drunk" on one bottle of wine?
I think also the discussion needs to address the value not only of the wine but of the bottle. She should polish that thing off in a hurry and then write her SOS note, stuff it in, and get it on its way. Rescue depends on it!
You can’t survive five days without water so obviously the wine helped.
If stuck with Dylanized Bud Lite....
Hopleslly drunk? Are we presuming she slammed the whole bottle? If you drink the wine in small amounts at distinct intervals, I doubt someone would be hopelessly drunk. Of course, I'm from Wisconsin. We're professionals.
Alcohol is more volatile than water. You can sense this for yourself whenever you drink wine, assuming you're one of those soi-disant connoisseurs. It's the nose, isn't it? That's a big appreciation point. That's why you oenophiles swirl the liquid under your educated snoots, to get the nose. Then you rattle off a list of favor notes you've memorized from Monica Larner's website. You can't actually decern them from the wafts of goat droppings, but you pretend, else someone might conclude you're a Republican. So how do you get the nose, and why swirl the juice? It's those volatile ethanol molecules. Each one has six lonesome protons on its outer periphery that repel other ethanol molecules but has the tendency to attract the aromatic hydrocarbons that your highborn honker likes to sniff.
Lesson: wine contains alcohol, but the alcohol doesn't like to be contained. It'd rather be footloose and fancy-free out in the atmosphere, to be spirit rather than crude material as the ancients knew it. So if you're in desperate straits with only wine to drink to can mitigate your dehydration, but you'll need something to decant your tipple. Pour the wine back and forth between the bottle and your drinking vessel. With each pour ethanol particles escape the wine. The more you pour the more escape. (While you're performing this ritual you can think about why a wine bottle is shaped like a bottle and why the kraters favored by the Greeks were shaped the way they were.) You'll never remove all the alcohol from the wine, that's a serious violation of the law that could get you charged with criminal evasion of entropy in the first degree, but it will reduce the concentration, maybe low enough to grant you an extra day or two of life without drinking your own piss.
Was it a screw top??
I remember when I was 7 years old, and my buddy would ask me if it would be better to burn to death, or freeze to death??
"Mountain Dew or Crab Juice?"
You and Meade must have planned an interesting vacation.
Whether it was a good or bad idea, it was something normal in the face of uncertainty.
Quaestor @ 10:23: Nice description of how to ruin a good wine (done here for a good cause). ...Just curious, by how much could one lower the alcohol content by aerating the contents? From 13% to 10%? Or to 6-7%? I imagine it's logarithmic? Would it be less work if you poured the bottle onto a pan (maximum surface area) and stirred it awhile?
PS: not to be pedantic but I think you mean "discern" when you say "You can't actually decern them..."
Cheers.
The real question is whether she would have survived drinking Bud Light.
I think the best fictional treatment of this is Wine On the Desert:
here
"which probably had water in its windshield washer reservoir"
Windshield washer fluid contains antifreeze, and that can kill you. Don't drink that!
You can go a few days with no water — 3 or 4, it seems.
This lady went 5 days... so the wine seems to have been useful. But wine is just a diuretic. Wiper fluid is toxic.
Althouse, my opinion is...that...you're spending too much time on Reddit.
Ice Nine writes, "[S]he stayed with her car...which probably had water in its windshield washer reservoir."
Althouse responds, "Windshield washer fluid contains antifreeze, and that can kill you. Don't drink that!"
Hmmm. Yeah, sorta. WWF usually contains something to make it less like to freeze and damage the washer pump. Usually, this is methanol, though some formulations include ethylene glycol as well. Both are pretty nasty, but methanol is slightly less nasty than the other. Happily, methanol is even more volatile than ethanol, boiling 15.5 degrees cooler than the drinkin' kind as every hillbilly 'shiner knows like Scripture. Consequently, the ethanol mitigation method I described earlier works even better for the methanol in WWF. If its a choice between life with blindness or other neurotoxic effects and death by dehydration... do the pour-pour cha-cha-cha then hold your nose and sip the tiniest amount that keeps you conscious.
That said, if you're really in the desert with a working car (not a Tesla!) it has a radiator full of water mixed with antifreeze (fun fact, the antifreeze isn't in there to prevent freezing) but if you're handy you can use the car's components to construct a still, which you can then use to convert your engine coolant to potable water. And there's sand everywhere which can be very useful in completing your project.
"PS: not to be pedantic but I think you mean 'discern' when you say 'You can't actually decern them...'"
I did and I didn't notice the typo. Thanks.
To your question, it's definitely logarithmic. You'd reach equilibrium at about 9-10 percent, after that, you'd lose about as much water as ethanol. However, the diuretic effect is proportional to the amount of alcohol ingested, so ruining the wine by three or four percent would proably improve your lifespan.
"Would it be less work if you poured the bottle onto a pan (maximum surface area) and stirred it awhile?"
Bingo! You gave some neurons over to krater as I suggested, you slyboots. At an Athenian symposium, the ritual of diluting and seasoning the wine was an honored precursor to the drinking. The stirring filled the room with delicious aromas borne on the spirit of the wine itself, signifying the presence and approval of Dionysus.
For most people in this situation, the survival rate would be dependent on their ability to pee into the bottle.
Wince writes "Mountain Dew or Crab Juice"
No bowl. Steek. Steek.
I seem to recall reading how survivors of shipwreck, drifting in a raft without fresh water, could survive by taking seawater enemas. There was some kind of favorable osmotic gradient so that the intestinal wall would not allow the salt to cross into the bloodstream but did allow the water to do so. Is that at all correct?
Not very dignified but, hey, if it keeps you going, who cares?
"an extra day or two of life without drinking your own piss."
This was my thought: if the wine makes you pee, you can drink the pee. Two drinks instead of zero.
Ice Nine writes, ""She was stuck in mud - there was water somewhere nearby.
So what does a mudhole in the desert signify? Generally one of two things, the remains of a rainstorm, or the presence of a spring. Water can percolate through sand only so fast, so rainstorms leave puddles that evolve into mudholes that transition (don't just love that word?) into dry sand over a matter of days or hours. Not very hopeful to the marooned. A spring, however, will save your life. That is, if it's not too deep below the surface, and you have the means, and the endurance, to dig a well. The exposed spring will not only save you from dehydration, but it will also attract wildlife that you can capture and eat. Chuckwalla on a stick. Yum. Yum.
madAsHell writes, "I remember when I was 7 years old, and my buddy would ask me if it would be better to burn to death, or freeze to death??"
Let's ask Joan of Arc.
Freezing is a very gentle death, I'm told. You're horribly uncomfortable until your core temperature drops to about 35, at which point you lapse into unconsciousness followed by brain death.
But fire? Very nasty indeed. How long you last depends on what parts are burning. The human brain will die if its mean temperature rises to 39, only about 2 degrees hotter than its normal operating temperature. Unfortunately for little Joan from Domrémy, the brain is remarkable for its ability to ability to maintain 37 even when the ambient temperature is 20 degrees higher. Poor Joan stopped screaming awhile before she stopped experiencing.
There's another benefit to aerating your wine besides the evaporation of some of its alcohol. Gas phase oxidation. Some of the ethanol that doesn't escape the wine will be oxidized into acetic acid, which in low concentrations will actually help your body retain water.
Was it a screw top??
Stelvin closure...
Is that at all correct?
It could work, but getting seawater into the intestines is probably impossible by anything but surgical means. Seawater in the rectum won't do anything but promote a bowel movement.
There's another benefit to aerating your wine besides the evaporation of some of its alcohol.
I was just going to ask whether alcohol evaporates more quickly than the rest of the wine (I was thinking it does). And if there's a means to heat the wine, will that also reduce or eliminate the alcohol. I recall that wine used in cooking does not result in much or any alcohol in the food.
This lady went 5 days... so the wine seems to have been useful. But wine is just a diuretic.
True
But...this is one of those instances where true in meaningless. If you have a choice, pick water. Sports drinks are formulated with balanced electorates, I don't know for sure, but that would be the best choice. H2O next, then down the list, coffee, tea, soda, diet soda, beer, wine, liquor. Not necessarily in that order. If you only have one, that's the one you drink.
But if you got wine, drink it instead of puddles, or streams, because most likely you will get diarrhea and you've lost ground.
So noting wine is a diuretic, is correct, it offers nothing to the topic.
Every wonder why there is so much wine in the Bible?
reliable Potable water was not yet a thing.
Learning to ferment fruit, and brew beer, were two of the most important inventions to advance man kind.
I can't say I'm enamored with the article:
1. It's sort of confusing to use ADH:
"Without any ADH at all, your kidneys would dump about 10 litres of water a day into your bladder; ADH reduces this to one or two litres. Alcohol increases the amount you urinate because it suppresses the production of ADH."
Why? Because alcohol also stimulates another kind of ADH. Alcohol Dehydrogenase (ADH) oxidizes alcohol into acetaldehyde as a first step in ethanol metabolism. What makes it important, is that it's a really fast reaction compared to the next reaction. A result of this, is the buildup of the aldehyde (think formaldehyde, except with two carbons instead of one), this is what causes cirrhosis of the liver. The upshot of this knowledge, is that if you drink a lot, at least do it slowly. Your liver will thank you.
2. The last sentence seems contradictory:
"For the 13 per cent alcohol content of most wines, that equilibrium point would still leave you badly dehydrated (not to mention hopelessly drunk), but it should prevent you from dying of thirst."
I don't see how something which dehydrates you will help prevent dying of thirst. It seems like it would accelerate the process. I think if you drank the wine slowly--a tiny sip, several times/day, this should keep the blood alcohol too low to do much to the Anti Diuretic Hormone level. You would also avoid getting "hopelessly drunk"
James K. writes, "I was just going to ask whether alcohol evaporates more quickly than the rest of the wine (I was thinking it does)."
So what is wine? Essentially it's water with fructose and alcohol in solution along with a few hundred trace compounds. Ethanol boils at 78.23, whereas water boils at 99.98, but heating the wine isn't necessary. A low boiling point contributes to volatility, but that's not the whole picture. For several reasons, water is much less volatile than alcohol at STP, which explains why liquor is sold in sealed bottles rather than in buckets.
"Windshield washer fluid contains antifreeze, and that can kill you. Don't drink that!"
Yes and no. Windshield wiper fluid often contains methanol, which is poisonous, but not necessarily ethylene glycol, which is poisonous antifreeze. Antifreeze can also be propylene glycol, which is not poisonous (but will help your constipation). The other thing is the antifreeze also contains some rust inhibitors, which aren't good for you. Never drink the wiper fluid, but drink the radiator fluid if it propylene glycol.
>Ann Althouse said...
"which probably had water in its windshield washer reservoir"
Windshield washer fluid contains antifreeze, and that can kill you. Don't drink that!<
Yes, I am aware of that, of course. Like me, most people, I presume, fill their windshield washer reservoir with plain water rather than waste money on the special stuff.
In any event, methanol, isopropyl alcohol and ethylene glycol are toxic if ingested in *large* amounts. All of those are diluted in windshield washer fluid. We aren't talking about a women who was sitting around on a summer day chug-a-lugging the stuff for refreshment -- it was a woman in dire straits who didn't know if/when she would be rescued, who was looking to stave off death by dehydration, remember? And it goes without saying that the windshield water would be a last resort.
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