Hot answers tagged health
11
Around sunrise and sunset, the sun is much less intense. You would get around 5 times less intensity in the first or last hour of sunlight than in the middle of the day. Here is a graph of this effect (It's from a paper, though the paper itself is behind a paywall), and another one which also shows the effect of latitude.
Therefore, while you can’t say ...
8
There are two types of water-based concerns while doing strenuous activity in the desert: dehydration and hyponatremia.
Dehydration occurs when your body is not getting enough water, and is the most common. Symptoms include irritability, headache, lack of energy, bright yellow/orange and infrequent urine. You lose water while you sweat, but in hot climates ...
7
As found here:
"With every 1000 m in altitude, UV levels increase by approximately 10 per cent."
Percentages are tricky to work with, so here is a worked-out example. Suppose you start out at sea level (0m), and you climb all the way up to Mt. Everest's summit (8848m). Suppose also that at sealevel, you normally need to apply sun block factor 15. Then, ...
7
My mother suffers from every form of travel sickness, and the only solutions she has found that help to ameliorate the symptoms (if not actually remove them entirely) are:
Drugs: specifically Stugeron
Bracelets: I am a bit skeptical of these, as is Skeptics.SE, but they seem to work for her. Example here
If I feel at all queasy in really heavy seas (ie ...
6
The wikipedia article on sun protective clothing is very informative. A summary of the relevant parts:
Apart from clothing specifically marketed as protecting against the sun most clothing will not block all sun to fully protect you against sunburn depending on circumstances.
Some general rules of thumb:
Darker clothes provide more protection than ...
5
Your blood and body need sodium, potassium and various other solutes in order to function (without the correct potassium levels, your heart will start to fail etc)
In a hot country, where you may sweat a lot, and top up your liquids by drinking water, you lose these solutes quite rapidly. The quantities you require are generally a lot higher than you might ...
5
Dimenhydrinate (popularly known as Gravol in Canada and as Dramamine, Driminate, Gravamin, Vomex, and Vertirosan in the USA) is an over-the-counter drug used to prevent nausea and motion sickness that's considered highly effective.
Anecdotally, I was constantly throwing up on boats in South East Asia until I started taking gravol.
5
This is really up to you, but I think if postholing is enough of a issue it would be good to wear snowshoes. If nothing else, it just makes things easier.
One problem of postholing can be sometimes difficulty in getting out. You're not likely to actually get hurt, because "falling" onto the snow isn't a problem when it's deep and soft enough for your foot ...
4
I don't think that a limited diet will cause you health issues. (caveat, I'm not a doctor...)
But, keep in mind that hiking is typically a strenuous activity. You need energy, and lots of it. You need short-term energy, medium-term, and long-term. A meal of whole-wheat pasta with some tuna or salmon from a pouch and some added olive oil and salt will ...
4
I used to think I knew the answer to this, from having a couple of very small leeches, but this guidance from wildmadagascar.com is quite comprehensive:
Identify the anterior (oral) sucker which will be found at the small end of the leech.Put your finger on your skin adjacent to the oral sucker
Gently but firmly slide your finger toward the wound where the ...
3
Talked to my doc today during a visit for something else. It's Iliotibial Band Syndrome. The ligament that runs along the outside of the knee becomes irritated and inflamed. It's often caused by over-pronation and poor gait which is exacerbated on the weight bearing leg (not the landing leg) when going downhill. Once injured, the only good solution is ...
3
Just grab and pull.
Seriously, after years living in the leach-infested tropics where I would find 20 or so on me just from walking up to base-camp for breakfast, the only wrong way to remove a leech I have noticed, is by freaking out and shaking your appendage violently yelling "eeeeeewwwwww!"
Yes, as Rory Alsop mentions, gently prying the sucker away is ...
2
Post-holing has very real risks due to the simple fact you have no idea what lies beneath the surface of the snow until you punch through and bang, scrape or wedge your leg under, against, between or in a hidden tree, log, rock, hole, creek, etc.
Some of the risks:
Barked Shins: Often you'll post-hole the deepest beside buried logs where the snow might be ...
2
I would split your nutritional needs into long, medium, and short term.
Things like Vitamin C and Vitamin A are long term. A week or two of being short on them will not cause you problems during the trip, nor afterwards when you return to your normal eating patterns. You can essentially ignore them, which is kind of a bummer because this would be the ...
2
I have experienced the same when trail running.
I can pretty consistently reproduce the symptoms on downhill stretches when running distances that are much longer than my regular runs, when starting to hit the trails again after not running for a while, and when running downhill at a faster pace than I would run uphill.
The following is my hypothesis, ...
2
I've had this, too. You're just stressing different ligaments than when traveling uphill. I think it's a matter of getting the right exercise, which is to say, do the same thing on training hikes.
I've also experienced pain in that area after crossing an ice-cold creek, then hiking after. Alleve is my drug of choice since I can take it at the beginning of ...
2
I'm a seasoned traveler, former deckhand, and a budding reference librarian, all qualities that uniquely situate me to answer your question. When I was working as a deckhand in Alaska I battled seasickness everyday. I found these things helpful:
sit or stand near the rear (stern) of the vessel
sit near a source of fresh air
face forward
rest your head ...
2
I'll weigh in on the Gatorade part. No, you don't need Gatorade, or any other drink with the right salts in it. However, you do need to replace the salts somehow.
I use Gatorade because it's convenient (I have to carry the water anyway), the amount of electrolytes I need to replace is well matched to the amount of water I need to replace so having them in ...
1
So-called "sports drinks" such as Gatorade are miracles of modern marketing, surpassed only by bottled water. They are expensive and contain large amounts of sugar.
If you're hiking long distances in high temperatures (say 40 C or 105 F), then you have a long list of hazards to worry about, one of which is getting low on electrolytes. Higher on the list ...
1
Agree with both LBell and Rory Alsop.
I come from the leech infested Western Ghats of the Indian subcontinent. I must have been bitten by these guys innumerable number of times. Most of the times, just pulling them would suffice. Leeches use both a local anaesthesia and an anti coagulant. Hence, just pulling them off wont cause any pain. If you are worried ...
1
It's a problem with the momentum that your body builds up. While going uphill, you exert force to climb. And the gravity tries to pull you down. While going downhill though, the gravity still pulls you down. Now your body builds up a higher momentum and the default action of your brain is to arrest this momentum(Else you will end up running at an ever ...
1
Generally there are no known health side effects to eating mostly or only freeze-dried food.
Freeze-dried food tends to hold more nutrients, and hold them longer, than most other shelf-life extending approaches. Freeze-dried fruits hold nearly the same amount of vitamins and antioxidants as their fresh equivalent. Freeze-dried food also does not need to ...
1
I use Solarcaine, which contains a local anesthetic, on both mosquito bites and sunburn. Just don't get any in your eye, nose, or other tender areas. It's sold for sunburn relief but works just as well for preventing itching.
It's readily available in Canada and this page lists some brand names around the world for the same active ingredient.
1
This would also depend on what your limited diet includes. You can live quite well on nothing but beans and rice for many months if needed. Trail mix and jerky, probably not so much.
One of the worst things you can eat on a trail is trail mix. Nuts take a very long time to digest and much needed calories are burned to digest them. Meat of any kind is ...
1
Some people have great resistance for limited diet.
I've heard a lot of stories from the people I've met during mountaineering about their high mountain trips, where their diet was based mostly on semolina powder mixed with milk powder (something uneatable for me because of lactose intolerance). One of them said he had lost after about 1.5 weeks 10 kg ...
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