The other day I noticed that my platypus was leaking water. I knew I’d have about 5 more hours before I could get to a clean water source and I had about two litres of water left - enough for the rest of the day, but only if I could keep that water. I was unsure if I should try to gulp as much as possible (and hope my body can retain most of it) or sip at it at a much quicker rate than usual (thus losing more of it to leakage, but hopefully keeping more in my body). Which is better for hydration?
In the end, it turned out that it was just leaking because the hose had gotten a bit disconnected, so I was fine, but I’d like to know what to do for future reference.
Surely that depends on how fast the leak is (and how much water you start with), although I should think it has to be pretty fast before gulping becomes the best option.
I don’t have a cite for this, but a friend who is a physician and outdoor enthusiast says that the best place to carry water is inside your body. So in a “use it or lose (some of) it” scenario, his advice would be to drink as much as you can as soon as you can.
Agree with Gary T, if you’re going to lose it anyway, drink it now.
Your body is going to perspire at the same rate regardless of whether you have a big input early of water or a slow drip feed of water, and seeing as how if you go the slow drip feed you’ll be putting less water in because of leakage, definitely go with what will gve you the most water.
Completely OT to the original question, but how does a company come along and register a trademark on the name of an Australian marsupial? :dubious:
Wouldn’t drinking all your water right away be bad if you’ve got a large amount of water and a long period of time before refill? You might not sweat faster, but you’re sure as hell gonna have to pee sooner. Of course, I guess you could just pee into your platypus and recycle. But barring that, I’m thinking there’s some rate at which leakage is less than the increased urine output.
I read somewhere that the Israel Army did a study (I’d be surprised if most armies didn’t) that it’s best to let soldiers with limited water drink at their own pace, neither gulping nor rationing to some pre-designed schedule.
They came up with a bite valve that looks to the imaginative eye like something between a beak and lips – they called it “duck lips” and i guess the rest kind of followed from there.
Same way a computer company comes along and registers a trademark for a common fruit. Trademarks are limited by market segment and the name has to be unique to that segment. So you can trademark an Apple computer or a Platypus water-thingy. But you can’t trademark an Apple apple. (Or Platypus brand platypi.)
And I think you’ll find that it’s Greek, not Latin, and “platypi” is a colloquialism that should be about fifth choice behind “platypodes”, “platypoda”, “platypus” or “platypuses” - as with “octopus”.
Incidentally, you could probably win money asking people to describe members of the genus platypus, subfamily platypodinae.
If the leak is only in one place, can you turn the platypus so that the hole it’s leaking out of is at the top? Then it won’t leak at all anymore, and you can continue as normal.
In my opinion, this is the pivotal idea. If, at any point, you drink so much that your blood becomes “diluted” (i.e. hypotonic), you will pee it out until your blood tonicity is back below that threshold.
So, the key is to only drink enough to just get to the point of disinhibiting ADH secretion. How you figure that out is anyone’s guess.
Except you can no longer use it as intended - the hose will no longer be at the bottom. It’s become a large, awkward water bottle. Might still be the best way to deal with it. For some models, turning it upside down simply puts the fill cap at the bottom, rather then the hose, which might leak, too.
There’s a huge number of factors here, but I suspect the optimum solution, at least in a theoretic sense, would turn out to be to drink the water at a somewhat accelerated rate which balanced the water lost to leakage against less than optimal hydration.
I use a CamelBak, and I DO wonder about it springing a leak. I tend to carry a backup bottle of gatorade. It hasn’t sprung a leak yet, except for the fact that the mounthpiece dribbles if allowed to dangle below the level of the water bag.
Thanks for the answers, although I’m still not sure what to do. Thinking on this question also got me wondering what I would do if I was stuck out in the forest over night (it’s happened to others before). I always carry water purification tablets with me, but I’d prefer to mostly rely on the clean, fresh water in my packs.
I used to have a camelbak, but I broke that from sitting on it too much. They have new models which you can run a car over without breaking it, but I’ve not had the chance to return my old one and get a new one.
Platypus tend to leak near the nozzle (we break a lot of things in this job) which is at the bottom, so you can turn them over and use them as an awkward water bottle should they start leaking while hiking. However, when I broke the camelbak, it broke not down by the nozzle, but near the opening which is on the side. I tried filling the camelbak half-way, but it still leaked.
What I ended up doing was gulping down a large amount (I think almost a litre) and then drinking the rest at the normal rate. The rest of the day was rather sedentary and I got to stay in the shade, so I didn’t need as much water as normal anyway.
