More Info On This Please

Hi. I remember reading years ago in a very old book about unsolved mysteries and that kind of thing about this:

A man, I think a Count or some kind of Lord went mad or at least was locked in a room for some reason. With no food and no water. He survived for at least a few weeks but I think it was months by drinking his own blood. This is a true story and I'd like more info, would be cool to read about it again.

unlikely. the ratio of water reuptake in that equation isn't very favorable, even without considering the effects of blood loss itself.

now, drinking his own PISS, on the other hand...

Very old books about unsolved mysteries don't tend to be very accurate. There's no way that the loss of blood could rehydrate you because it takes far more water to create blood than you would get out of it. You might be able to last a couple weeks without any water if you expended as little energy as possible, and even then you'd have to be a healthy individual at the start. Blood would provide little nourishment and irritates the digestive tract.

There have been true stories of people surviving a long time by drinking seawater in small amounts though.

yea, blood loss in one factor. drinking own blood would not increase hydration.

bout seawater, it takes more water to excrete the salt in the saltwater, dehydration would happen then. i dont think its truw also...

you can purify seawater to some extent by evaporating it in the sun and collecting the condensation. not a whole lot, but probably enough to survive on for a limited time.

Krueger: drinking your own piss might sustain you for a while because it has your excess water, but trouble is piss basically contains everything bad that your body wanted to get out of it along with salts, urea, and water.

Just to throw into th mix that blood is actually poisonous.

Ingesting large quantities of blood or ingesting it over an extended period of time will kil lyou, as it leads to a build up of toxins and stuff in places that your body doesnt know how to deal with them.

Or something. It was once explained to me in detail.

I think the overview is that your body cant really process blood that has been ingested, it doesn thave the mechanisms or chemicals to do so, soit jsut has to try and get rid of it, so if you drink a lotof blood you get a buildup of toxins and stuff your body just cant do anything with and so it has a meltdown and you die.

Basically.

maybe yes...

blood, hemoglobin specifically (what makes blood red), when broken down by the body, will break down into bilirubin.. which is bad in increased amounts.. bilirubin also causes jaundice in young newborns....

bilirubin is excreted in the urine, so as with Kreuger, it is also bad to drink piss, because you are just circulating again and again toxins and chemicals bad to your body...

This sounds so improbable that I doubt it would ever have made "Ripley's Believe It Or Not." By the way, what ever happened to Ripley? Does anyone know?

Several commented on this and then left it hanging. It is my uderstanding that unless you have a kidney or bladder infection, your urine is stirile. So, yes you can drink it in very extreme situations. However, it is a short term solution. It will only add a little time to your life. Maybe enough time to be rescued. I haven't seen the statistics on it so I don't know how many extra days it can give you. But it is not many.

So, your advice is to eat rare steaks, er...rarely?

So, your advice is to eat rare steaks, er...rarely?
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lol

I dont think there would be enough blood in rare steaks to kill you :P

But you are supposed too not eat Red Meat too often - 'tis bad for you.

But then again everything on this damned planet is bad for you in some way!

Especially coffeee - do not atempt to wash your eyes with coffee.