When All Hell Breaks Loose (29 page)

Beware of high humidity levels when it's hot outside. Humidity levels of 70 percent or greater severely impede the evaporation of sweat from your body. Wait for cooler early morning or late evening temperatures before doing heavy physical exercise.

F
or short- and long-term survival, virtually nothing will eclipse the importance of potable water for you and your loved ones. Ignore this fact and you will meet death. Over dramatic? I wish it were.
Water is a biological necessity down to the cellular level
. It is not an optional item. It is general knowledge that water accounts for nearly two-thirds of the human body's total weight. Research has shown that the older we get, the drier we become. Floating around in the womb, overall body water content is more than 80 percent. As infants, our body water content drops to around 73 percent. In young adults, the body contains roughly 65 percent water, 70 percent in the muscles and 50 percent in fat deposits. Between forty and sixty years old, water content drops to 55 percent for males and 47 percent for females. After sixty, the rate drops even further, 50 percent for males and 45 percent for females.

Water has several amazing properties, including the fact that it's an excellent solvent. Water dissolves a remarkable number of inorganic and organic molecules. When dissolved, molecules break apart to form a solution. Living activities on a cellular level take place either dissolved in fats or water. Water has a high heat capacity, meaning it requires a lot of energy to heat it up, or cool it down, so it can handle a wide variety of outside temperature fluctuations within the cell before problems arise. The water in your blood helps the circulatory system get rid of excess heat, or distribute heat to wherever it's needed during the cold. Digestion and metabolism are waterbased processes, and water lubricates the joints and helps eliminate waste products from the body as well. Water is even required for the simple act of breathing, as the lungs need moisture to oxygenate blood and rid the blood of excess carbon dioxide. Nearly 70 percent of the Earth's surface is covered in water. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that water is life itself.

In desert climates, temperatures can be so hot and dry that people don't seem to perspire. Since they're "not sweating," they underestimate how hot the outside temperature really is, thereby reducing the urge to drink. The truth is revealed by putting your hand on your skin for a minute or two. Lift your hand and you'll find it's sodden with sweat, proof enough of the body's desperate attempt to keep the brain and internal organs cool. In extreme hot temperatures, unprotected skin instantly loses moisture. The skin is the largest organ of the body, and directly responsible for the evaporation of sweat, thereby helping to keep your inner temperature at a comfortable 98.6 degrees F (37 degrees C).

A person at rest,
doing nothing
, loses from two to two and a half quarts of water every day. If your home is located in a hot part of the country, be forewarned that you and your family will use much more water than this. Some of this water loss, about 600 to 900 milliliters, happens simply to keep our skin supple and healthy and is called
insensible perspiration
. In extreme hot temperatures, it's possible to lose a gallon of water an hour in sweat. That's an unbelievable 8.3 pounds! This heinous fact should make apparent that the "standard survival recommendation" of carrying one gallon of water per person per day in the desert is completely bogus. When living, recreating, or traveling in hot temperatures, I recommend at least three gallons of water per person per day, more if the terrain, temperatures, or activities undertaken are extreme. Seeing as how the average American
individually
uses 116 to 220 gallons of water
every day
, with some wealthy communities in my arid state using in excess of 400 gallons per person daily, it isn't hard to see our gross neglect regarding the importance of conserving this precious fluid. (Note: The average African family uses about five gallons of water each day.) Pitifully, the National Drinking Water Alliance estimates that up to 50 percent of the water that families use could be saved by implementing simple conservation methods like low-flow shower heads and low-flush toilets.

For every quart of sweat you lose, your heart rate raises about eight beats per minute, your cardiovascular system becomes more stressed, and your cooling system declines. In other words, before dehydration kills you, it greatly impedes your physical and psychological performance.

Deadly Dehydration

Seventy-five percent of Americans are chronically dehydrated. Thirty-seven percent mistake the thirst mechanism for hunger pangs. Lack of hydration is the number one trigger of daytime fatigue. If you live in an arid region or one with oppressively high humidity, you know how tough it is to remain hydrated. Doing so takes a lot of work! Although at times it's hard to remember to drink, and then to drink enough, it is critical for your physiology and psychology that you remain maximally hydrated.

Dehydration is deadly in hot and cold weather. When the blood in your circulatory system loses water, it gets thicker. Thick blood circulates more slowly and is harder for the heart to pump, and in regard to temperature regulation, it hinders the body's ability to lose excess heat or circulate needed heat. When the volume of blood and extra cellular fluids decreases, water is literally sucked from the cells, causing them to shrink, thereby damaging cell membranes and the proteins inside. Platelets actually stick together in the blood due to a lack of plasma. The result is an increase in the naturally occurring salts in the remaining body fluids. Normal body fluid has a salt concentration of 0.9 percent. In contrast, urine contains 2 percent salt, plus toxic urea, while seawater has a whopping 3.9 percent. Many researchers feel that rising salt concentrations within the body are responsible for the punishing side effects of dehydration.

Exposure to cold weather without protective clothing or some other way to remain warm increases urine production. When surface blood vessels constrict from the cold, reducing the circulatory system and increasing blood pressure, pressure sensors in the body perceive an increase in volume and stimulate urine production. To make things worse, when outside temperatures fall, so does your kidneys' ability to concentrate urine, and the end result is that you lose even more water.

Body functions are
severely
limited if you lose 10 percent of your weight due to dehydration, yet physical, mental, and emotional impairment is manifest with the slightest loss of water, especially in the heat. Losing just 2 percent of body weight in water compromises your overall judgment by 25 percent and severely limits physical endurance. Being outside in temperatures of 100 degrees F (38 degrees C) or more will cause you to lose another 25 percent. To summarize, if you live in hot temperatures and are a quart and a half low on water, you are operating at
half
the person you usually are! In Arizona and other arid parts of our nation and world, this is a very common occurrence. The water in your body affects your circulation, metabolism, good judgment, and overall attitude, just like the emotion fear.

How Much Water?

So how do you know if you have enough water in your system? Thirst should
never
be an indicator of when or how much to drink. Being thirsty is a sign that you're already a quart to a quart and a half low. To make matters worse, somewhere down the line in Dehydrationville, the thirst mechanism stops working altogether.

The best way to tell if you're maximally hydrated is the color of your urine
. It should be as clear as the water you drink, with no color whatsoever. Certain medications and vitamins, especially B vitamins, color urine. The volume and frequency of urine produced by someone who has been drinking copiously are other hydration indicators, although not as reliable as color. Using the three together will provide the most effective guesstimating as to when and how much you and your family should drink.

There is no adaptation to dehydration. Military personnel have learned the hard way that "being tough" is not an acceptable substitute for water. Astute military commandeers have recognized for years that when personnel operate in hot temperatures,
even when abundant water is readily available
, soldiers will not drink enough water to avoid dehydration
unless they are forced to drink
. This oddity is called "involuntary dehydration" and I experience it all the time with students on my survival courses. Think about it for a minute. When you are thirsty, meaning that your body is already a quart or more low on water, you have the urge to drink. To allay your thirst, you drink a few swallows of water and,
voila
, you're no longer thirsty, but your body is still dehydrated and will continue to grow more so unless you force yourself to drink a quart or more of water. If you live in hot temperatures, drink more water than your body seems to want. Watch your family like a hawk, especially older people, small children, and babies for the signs and symptoms of dehydration. It only takes one person to compromise the whole group. Exotic methods for procuring water such as solar stills are notoriously unreliable and can hasten your death.