In a recent thread here, it was revealed that that humans continue to defecate even after they have stopped eating altogether.
This raises an interesting possibility. If you are starving and have absolutely nothing to eat, would you be able to delay your own demise by eating your own poop? I would think that the poop would still contain some nutrients, unless the digestive process is 100% efficient.
Also, if you are becoming dehydrated, would drinking your own urine be advisable? In my experience, urine is rather salty, so I would be concerned it might make the dehydration worse. Would it??
Urine would affect you just like drinking sea water (in a recent column rerun). You’re asking for both dehydration and kidney failure.
I doubt feces would have enough nutrients to counteract the possibility of a massive e. coli infection. Remember, too, your body’s been sucking out nutrients from it for several days, so there isn’t much left.
With a little ingenuity, you could set up a still of sorts to capture potable water from your wastes. I’m sure it would taste unimagineably foul, however.
The first time, out of curiosity, to see if it really is sweet, when my blood sugar is high. And yes, it is sweet… sweet and salty.
Kinda like a Payday bar.
Other times I’ve tasted it when I didn’t have a blood sugar monitor handy, or I was out of test strips.
Before the invention of the galvanic blood glucometer, there used to be people who were paid to taste patients’ urine to determine their blood sugar concentrations… Imagine that, tasting urine all day long, day in and day out.
“Honey, I’m home! Give us a kiss, love!” MMmmmmmm… (puckering)
Please be advised that it is neither routine, expected, nor desirable for diabetics to taste their own urine.
QtM, MD
[sub]jeez, I’ve enough trouble trying to get my diabetics to do fingersticks, much less worry about them thinking they need to taste their urine![/sub]
No, distilled water is distilled water… assuming you are careful about contamination. But, if you’ve got the stuff to make a still (plastic sheeting and a tin can will do) you can get water pretty easily from the ground. http://ohoh.essortment.com/solarstill_rcjl.htm
All right, gcarroll, at the next opportunity, I promise I’ll try it out. (I admit I was thrilled to hear of a “plastic sheeting and tin-can” still. :). Then I realised there was no sour mash involved :(.)
And, confidentially, those instructions sound more like a way to keep oneself occupied whilst dying of thirst prostration. Have you tried building this contraption?
Reminds me of something Crow once said on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000:
“Hey Mike, if I run out of vomit, can I borrow some of your’s?”
I would think it would be pretty useless-I mean, it’s our waste-what our body didn’t need, right? So our body would just end up pooping it out again. If it worked, wouldn’t that make us perpetual motion beings?
I would guess that normally the body does a less than 100% job extracting nutrients, so there would be some left. (Aside: rabbits do this habitually, right?) But if you’re starving, and not eating, then whatver you do poop must be omsosed out of your blood… it seems likely it’s pretty bare.
Though even if it wasn’t I’d listen to the doctors’ advice and not try it.
