Survival and Drinking Urine

Triathlon Forum
1

Hello All,

From Tom’s article:

Army Rangers rescued the only surviving SEAL, Petty Officer 1st Class Marcus Luttrell. Luttrell’s book, “Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10” is Luttrell’s account of the tragedy. Luttrell’s incredible escape, during which he drank his own urine and crawled half naked in freezing temperatures for miles, makes our Ironman dramas trivial.

Urophagia is the consumption of urine.

When I went through survival school many years ago (USMC Pilot) we were told not to drink our urine or seawater, that it would reduce our survival time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urophagia

It has been suggested that when a person is in desert survival or surrounded by salt water and devoid of drinking water that the person must resort to drinking his/her own urine if it is the only liquid available. As it tends to cause further dehydration due to the salts in it, drinking urine for survival is advised against by the US Army Field Manual, the head of the Texas Urological Society, and numerous survival instructors and guides while the Discovery Channel advises it.

Aron Ralston claims to have used the technique when trapped for several days with his arm under a boulder.
Bear Grylls of the Discovery Channel’s Man vs. Wild drank his own urine while he was in the Outback of Australia.
Alternatively Les Stroud drank water evaporated from urine that he made to collect on plastic wrap and drip into a cup.

Is there new information about drinking urine for survival tactics?

Cheers,

Neal

2

Drinking Urine…well, here is what I know. First off, the proper way does not include actually drinking the urine but basically you piss in a hole, let the water evaporate, find a way to catch the vapor and drink that. It is actually pretty easy, I haven’t done it, but I have seen how it is done numerous times.

When Aaron Ralston(sp?) had his arm stuck under an 800lb boulder in horse shoe canyon, Ut, he ran out of water fairly quickle and pissed into a Nalgene bottle, Apparently, he let the urine sit out overnight and it seperated to some degree (although I would guess that at least part of what he drank was the stuff you don’t want to drink). Ralston didn’t really use the urine to re-hydrate himself as much as just to keep his mouth wet.

3

There is of course Urine therapy. I know it is still used but I’m not sure how common it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine_therapy

4

Like you had mentioned, I did see Bear drink his own urine on Man vs. Wild. (Well, that’s what he said on the show. I guess it could have been apple juice that his crew gave him).

5

it was probably apple just, after all, Bear is not even his real name.

6

The real ST question, though, is would you drink it if it made you faster? :wink:

LOL!!

7

The engineer’s perspective is this.

Seawater is more concentrated than the urine your body can make. So you drink in 1 liter of seawater and your body is going to make say 1.1 liters of urine to remove the salts from your body. Netting you - 0.1 liters of water in blood.

But your own urine is exactly the same concentration as the concentration of your urine because it is your own usrine - it is a metapysical certitude.

So you drink 1 liter of your own urine and later out comes one liter of your own urine. Net to you is zero.

Furthermore is you make one liter of urine and drink nothing - then the net to you is - 1 liter of liquid in your blood.

Now, that’s the engineer’s view and there may be very good reasons not to do it otherwise.

8

The engineer’s perspective is this.

Seawater is more concentrated than the urine your body can make. So you drink in 1 liter of seawater and your body is going to make say 1.1 liters of urine to remove the salts from your body. Netting you - 0.1 liters of water in blood.

But your own urine is exactly the same concentration as the concentration of your urine because it is your own usrine - it is a metapysical certitude.

So you drink 1 liter of your own urine and later out comes one liter of your own urine. Net to you is zero.

Furthermore is you make one liter of urine and drink nothing - then the net to you is - 1 liter of liquid in your blood.

Now, that’s the engineer’s view and there may be very good reasons not to do it otherwise.
Another Engineers perspective, If you start by drinking 1 liter of seawater, and then capture the 1.1 liters you pee out and drink that, your up 1 liter of fluid from where you started.

9

I’m hoping Dan/Jordan mention in their weekly newsletter:
“This week in the Slowtwitch Forum: Can you drink your own piss?”
.

10

No, there isn’t new information on drinking your own urine in a survival situation. You should not do it. It is only slightly better than drinking salt water, which is absolutely deadly in a survival situation. Neither practice should be done in a survival (or any other) situation.

History and the lore of survival is, however, is filled with references to such dire (and revolting) survival strategies. In the classic tale of survival “Skeletons of the Zahara”, a turn of the century journal of merchant sailors ship wrecked along the Skeleton Coast of Africa in the Namib desert, the leader of the expedition recounts, “We slaked our thirst with camel urine” Most of the party perished. Some were sold into to slavery and later sold as hostages to an emissary and repatriated, years later, to the U.S.

Other tales of survival at sea where victims are trapped in a life raft for days, weeks and months tell of them resorting to such means. In another survival classic, “Survive the Savage Sea” in which a family is cast adrift after their sail boat is sunk by killer whales (a true story) they do briefly experiment with drinking each others urine. And there are others.

The U.S. Air Force’s survival school does not recommend this as a survival strategy. I do recall at least one of our instrucors mentioning it, and there is documentation of certain Asian cultures who practice it as an odd “health” ritual. There have even been volume published on how to slowly acclimate oneself to being able to do so, presumably, with no ill effects. Nonetheless, this is not an accepted survival strategy in the current U.S. military survival curiculae.

At the cold weather survival school one instructor did teach us to urinate on tissue that flash freezes to metal in extreme cold to thaw it so you can get your skin off the surface it is frozen to. It was even more odd when he told us, “If you freeze both hands to a piece of metal, you better have a team member along…”

And finally, I do remember sme weird survival course I had along the way where a female instructor, not U.S. personnel, advised us to flush wounds with urine in lieu of anything else since, as she stated, “urine is sterile”. The thought of irrigating a burn, gunshot wound or other injury with urine was rejected by us but became a great source of levity- whenever anyone on our team got the least little cut or abrasion, one of the other team members would threaten to “irrigate it” for them…

Bottom line: Stick to Gatorade.

11

Bottom line: Stick to Gatorade.
Wasn’t the point of this discussion about drinking urine when you have no other liquids?!?!?!?!

12

That is a very simplistic engineering analysis. If you draw the box around the whole system, your analysis is correct. However, it does nothing to explain the question. A more detailed engineering analysis would look at smaller systems. The urine that is excreted contains urea and other waste products in higher concentration than found in the body. Excretion serves to reduce the concentration. Consuming urine would return the body’s fluid volume to previous level (ignoring water lost through lungs and skin), but it would increase the concentration of urea and other wastes.
.

13

Wouldn’t it be best to hold your wee? It seems strange that if we are in such dire need of hydration, that we would have enough urine in our bladders. Wouldn’t the urine just further concentrate if we waited? Is there a re-uptake mechanism? I’ve experienced plenty of times where I’ve had to go, but since I was on the bike and sweating (and not wanting to stop - or shower myself on the go), and the urge passed. Maybe it’s just my perception.

Also, in that episode Bear Grylls says to drink it while it’s fresh because it’s a breeding ground for bacteria. He also says resort to that ‘technique’ sooner rather than later as a hydration strategy (presumably because it’s not as concentrated yet). He doesn’t even wait for it to cool down. I don’t believe urine to be 100% sterile, any thoughts that as the salt levels get higher that it would become less habitable to bacteria? and perhaps better to irrigate with?

14

For what its worth, I have read that urine is only safe to drink when it is clear. In order for it to be clear you would need to be almost fully hydrated.

So perhaps, you should piss early and drink it later.

15

Wouldn’t it be best to hold your wee? It seems strange that if we are in such dire need of hydration, that we would have enough urine in our bladders. Wouldn’t the urine just further concentrate if we waited? Is there a re-uptake mechanism? I’ve experienced plenty of times where I’ve had to go, but since I was on the bike and sweating (and not wanting to stop - or shower myself on the go), and the urge passed. Maybe it’s just my perception.

Also, in that episode Bear Grylls says to drink it while it’s fresh because it’s a breeding ground for bacteria. He also says resort to that ‘technique’ sooner rather than later as a hydration strategy (presumably because it’s not as concentrated yet). He doesn’t even wait for it to cool down. I don’t believe urine to be 100% sterile, any thoughts that as the salt levels get higher that it would become less habitable to bacteria? and perhaps better to irrigate with?

You have a couple of wrong “assumptions” there -

First, urine IS sterile. You can culture/test it all you like - pretty easy to prove! You may pick up a few bacteria on the “way out” the urethra (hence the more reliable mid-stream tests). Second, once urine is in the bladder - it is OUT of circulation if you will. There is no re-uptake at this point. The specialized transitional epithelium that stretches in the bladder is what triggers the “signal” that you have to go. Once stretched, the signal can often be ignored.

16

but he did urinate on a shirt and wear it around his head for an entire episode.

17

Ask R Kelly he knows something about the Wiz
.

18

Hello All,

Urine drinking seems a survival problem in search of a solution… (no pun intended)

I see an opportunity for an entrepreneur to devise a light small baggy style pouch with a filter that would render urine useful (though perhaps not very palatable) for survival. It might be as easy as squeezing the urine through a very fine filter, first adding a bit of chemical to coagulate the salt and impurities.

The pouch could be added to survival packs for crews flying over desert areas, life rafts (it would be in addition condensation collectors), hikers, etc.

With a very good filter and low sweat rates survival time could be extended considerably.

The Seal teams might be your first customer.

What do you think?

Cheers,

Neal

19

So the question is whether it is better to keep plasma volume as high as possible or keep urea concentration down as low as possible.