Re: physiological question
Marc Solomon (msolomon@TEK1.TEKNIQ.COM)
Thu, 9 Nov 1995 16:53:09 -0600
At 12:26 PM 11/9/95 -0600, golden cliff wrote:
>The reason you want to empty your bladder at night is because a full
>bladder will rob your body of heat. It is similar to the hot water
>bottle. A water water bottle will give you warmth until it cools, after
>that it takes heat from you. A full bladder requires you to heat excess
>fluid in your body. An empty bladder does not.
Correct.
>Empty your bladder before turning in. If you have to go in the middle of
>the night, go. Don't hold out until morning or you will become cold.
Always a good idea for a number of reasons.
>I don't go for the little chamber bottles in the tent. A quick visit
>outside isn't that bad. I've always found it to be well worth the effort.
I disagree with you here. During my OKPIK training, one instructor went to
great lengths to explain how, after taking the steps to leave your tent to
urinate, you will not have the body heat left to rewarm your sleeping bag.
First, you open your sleeping bag losing all the warmth you stored in your
sleeping bag and much of the warmth you stored within whatever clothes you
wore to sleep. You then put on cold clothes, socks, and boots and lose more
body heat warming up these articles of clothing. Then you open your tent to
get out losing any warmth you had stored within the tent. Then after
walking a short distance, you open up the newly warmed clothes to allow you
to urinate, losing a bit more body heat in the process. Then you expel a
few pints of warm fluid from your body, once more losing a great amount of
stored body heat. After finsihing all this, you trudge back to your tent,
open it up once more (your tent mate will love you by now ;) ), losing more
stored heat from the tent (if any remained from the previous opening), take
of the clothes you just warmed up, and get into your now cold sleeping bag.
If the temperature when you started this trek was freezing or below, the
chances of your body generating enough heat for the second time in a few
hours (remember you had to warm your bag when you first went to sleep) is
ridiculously small. After a short time, you will probably realize this, get
dressed for a second time and go start a fire.
I cannot tell you the number of times I have been wakened by the noise of
one or more Scouters huddled around a fire at three thirty in the morning.
It seems to happen more to the Scouters because after dinner they sit around
swilling down coffee until it is time for bed. The Scouts on the other hand
might have one or two hot cocoa's in the evening and with their higher
(usually) level of activity there body uses the fluid to replace fluid lost
during the day.
By the way, this same instructor suggested using two heavy duty gallon zip
locks for these emergencies. Fill one. Seal it. Place it in the other.
Seal that one. Place it in your sleeping bag as a hot "water" bottle. With
my immense bulk, I doubt the seals would hold if I rolled over. My solution
is still stop drinking a few hours before going to sleep and to expel any
remaining fluid before retiring.
Yours in Scouting,
+--------------------------+-----------------------+
| Marc W. Solomon | Unit Commissioner |
| msolomon@tek1.tekniq.com | Sycamore District |
| marcsol@aol.com | Blackhawk Council, IL |
+--------------------------+-----------------------+
I use to be a wise old owl . . . Now I am just old
Terry Howerton Sakima Group, Inc. SCOUTER Magazine Kansas City | 
