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Richard A. Cash, who saved millions from dehydration, has died
- joecool1029 2y agohttps://archive.ph/wTJu9 https://archive.ph/wTJu9
- kylehotchkiss 2y agoWhat a legacy to leave behind. RIP Mr. Cash, thank you for your contributions to humanity. May many others follow in your footsteps.
- Scoundreller 2y agoAlso mitigated many millions of hangovers, including my own. Too bad the commercial nature of “sports drinks” have dialed up the sugar and broke away from the clinical goal of rehydration.
- paulpauper 2y agothey sell sugar free sports drinks
- willcipriano 2y agoGatorade has a entire line of drinks for different purposes. Zero is what OP is looking for: https://performancepartner.gatorade.com/content/products/hydrationPortfolio.pdf https://performancepartner.gatorade.com/content/products/hyd... The normal one is for high powered endurance activities and contains some carbs (sugar) to help fuel you through them. They have one with even more carbs, sodium and potassium for people running marathons. The last two on that chart aren't a good choice for someone who isn't active. Stick to the first two for that.
- bigfatfrock 2y agoPropel and Zero (the first options) both contain sucralose, aka Splenda - I'd prefer to just drink salt water personally, or take the hit on a tablespoon of sugar mixed in and walk it off.
- willcipriano 2y agoThe majority of Americans are overweight, as far as the science shows artificial sweeteners are the best choice for them vs full calorie. If you look up the evidence for the downsides of artificial sweeteners anything that finds one is generally an observational study. So for example, the claim that they cause obesity is backed by the observation that obese people consume it in greater amounts than people who are not obese. That's like standing in front of a hospital and noticing everyone with a broken leg is on crutches and coming to the conclusion that crutches are the problem. Double blinded, placebo controlled studies don't find this effect. The best evidence we have indicates they are safer than the obesity that full calorie sweeteners cause in most people.
- swatcoder 2y ago> The majority of Americans are overweight, as far as the science shows artificial sweeteners are the best choice for them vs full calorie. This is a false choice and has nothing to do with the above commenter's preferences. Many people just desperately long for convenient foods/drinks that aren't so sweet in the first place and feel frustrated that the largest brands don't want to bother with them.
- xtracto 2y agoI maje my own electrolyte drink with water, spoonful of sugar and spoonful of "low sodium" salt: they add potassium to those, which completes the electrolyte menu. Sometimes I add a dash of lime Veeeey low cost and great. And you can pre-mix it in a zip lock bag to have it always available. And add some orange flavour kool-aid powder if you need flavour. Commercial Rehydration drinks are overpriced and overhyped IMHO
- foxyv 2y agoI like pickle juice. The vinegar helps the salt go down better.
- ajb 2y agoYeah, although worth noting that glucose is useful to promote absorption of the electrolytes, you may not need it in a sports drink but it's an integral part of the diarrhea med.
- thinkingtoilet 2y agoThat's the point. A little sugar is good. Too much sugar is bad. No suger is not as good. It's very modern to have two options, one with waaay too much sugar and one with zero sugar (or some sugar replacement).
- soperj 2y agoYou can always go with a Roman sports drink. Salt, water and some red wine vinegar (apple cider vinegar works too)
- Reason077 2y ago> "Too bad the commercial nature of “sports drinks” have dialed up the sugar and broke away from the clinical goal of rehydration." The ones that come as tablets which dissolve in water give you the electrolytes without the sugar. Less packaging waste, too. SIS (Science In Sport) is good, and other brands are available.
- Scoundreller 2y agoYou want some sugar, but putting even more than necessary sells better. Sugar, like salt, is a solute and will impair water absorption.
- tmoertel 2y agoYou can always make your own sports drink, starting with the recipe from the World Health Organization: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/WHO-FCH-CAH-06.1 https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/WHO-FCH-CAH-06.1 Just 4 ingredients: Glucose, anhydrous (dextrose) Sodium chloride (salt) Potassium chloride Trisodium citrate, dihydrate Of course, the batch size of 75 kg may not be the most convenient for home use, but it's easy to scale down.
- leereeves 2y agoIs the trisodium citrate necessary or just for flavor?
- spondylosaurus 2y agoGeneric Pedialyte is great for hangovers and migraines—way less sugar. You can even get the individual powder packets instead of having to buy a huge jug of liquid.
- MisterTea 2y agoThere's a bananna bag mix you put in water. Comes in packets. Quite invigorating.
- bsder 2y agoSo they DID tamper with Gatorade. I thought it was just me. It used to be when I was sick I could down those literally like water. The last time I got sick, I gagged at how cloying the taste was at my second one. I also noticed it didn't have that characteristic "salty aftertaste". I guess I'll go have to keep some low-sodium salt on hand for when I get sick and make my own from now on. Bummer.
- greentxt 2y ago“We’re enamored by high technology,” he said at the Council on Foreign Relations. “And we’re not in love with low-tech. Low-tech is always seen in our eyes as second-class. Why would you do this, when you could do that? And I would argue just the opposite.” Noteworthy that others tried to gatekeep thier low tech approach and experimental efforts. So much "perfection, enemy of the good" in expert circles.
- cyberax 2y agoPeople tried oral rehydration before with isotonic solutions, even going as far as matching the concentration of minerals in plasma. It didn't work well for cholera. The amazing discovery was that just a bit of glucose made the world of difference.
- avery17 2y agoA spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down???
- cyberax 2y agoNo, it activates receptors in the gut cells that let the water in. Without this bit of sugar, water just passes through, without getting absorbed.
- wholinator2 2y agoWell, i'd argue your statement should start with the word "yes" then. Sugar, is in fact making the medicine go down (absorbed). My interpretation is that obviously a rehydration solution is just very slightly salty water, the taste is not the problem. But the water running straight through you is. Maybe the phrase could be corrected in this case, "makes the medicine stay down". Hmm
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- andrewinardeer 2y agoOn a side note, his Wikipedia page has one of the worst, low res leading photographs for a topic I've ever encountered on that site. Surely a man of his stature deserves better?
- WarOnPrivacy 2y agoThis caught my attention. From the article: Other doctors and nurses found their experiment [drinking water w/ sugar+salt] bizarre and tried to stop them. To me that seemed like professionals clinging to orthodoxy for orthodoxy's sake. They forget that endless reevaluation is needed for a practice to remain 'best'. And maybe it was that. But I also found this talk from Dr Cash; he gives other examples of resistance (along with their causes). Whereas, in one country I went to, Jamaica, I was puzzled, even though I was working at that time for PAHO, that there was terrific opposition. It seemed that they wouldn’t cooperate with anything. Even they wouldn’t give my assistant a bed in the residence quarters. So I found out gradually—I was investigating this—and I found out several things. One is, the head of the hospital was so skeptical about this working that he had made a hundred dollar bet with his residents that it would fail. So obviously there was an incentive for it to fail. (Laughs.) Secondly, the head of hospital stores, I found out, was making a lot of money on kickbacks from the IV company. So he had no interest in terms of resource flow of substituting oral for IV. ref: https://www.cfr.org/event/simple-solution-saved-fifty-four-million-lives https://www.cfr.org/event/simple-solution-saved-fifty-four-m...
- wetpaws 2y ago>people clinging to orthodoxy for orthodoxy's sake. Always been like this. Even something as simple as making them wash hands was a pain.
- WorkerBee28474 2y ago> To me that seemed like professionals clinging to orthodoxy for orthodoxy's sake. There's much I don't know about medicine in Bangladesh, but I'm guessing doctors think it's unethical to treat patients with anything other than the best accepted standard of care, unless engaging in an experiment for which the risk and benefits can be described and there exists a reason to believe the benefits outweigh the risks. I suspect that was not communicated well by the experimenters.
- encoderer 2y agoReminds me of Norman Borlaug. Talk about leaving a dent.
- textlapse 2y agoPeople are so against GMOs without realizing how many millions of lives GMO’ed wheat and rice saved in India and elsewhere. Both (Norman Borlaug and Dr Cash) go to show that modern and traditional medicines can be carefully manipulated in amazing ways to save millions of lives.
- marcosdumay 2y agoIf you press them, you'll discover most people are against Monsanto and only a tiny minority actually cares about GMO.
- alecco 2y agoBut most people worship vapid celebrities. As a species, we need some more evolving.
- throw0101a 2y agoRegarding the dehydration work see: > Oral rehydration therapy (ORT) is a type of fluid replacement used to prevent and treat dehydration, especially due to diarrhea.[1] It involves drinking water with modest amounts of sugar and salts, specifically sodium and potassium.[1] Oral rehydration therapy can also be given by a nasogastric tube.[1] Therapy can include the use of zinc supplements to reduce the duration of diarrhea in infants and children under the age of 5.[1] Use of oral rehydration therapy has been estimated to decrease the risk of death from diarrhea by up to 93%.[2] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_rehydration_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_rehydration_therapy
- emmelaich 2y agoORT seems to have been developed in the mid 1960s, around the same time as Gatorade. I wonder how much one informed the other.
- throw0101d 2y ago* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatorade#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatorade#Origin
- emmelaich 2y agoYep, I read that. But what particularly is relevant to Richard Cash?
- myworkinisgood 2y agoIf you read the article, you'll see the knowledge of electrolytes to prevent dehydration was commonly know. The more difficult part was to get it in a form that is cheap enough and robust enough to be able to distribute in distant, hot parts of Indian subcontinent.
- Suppafly 2y agoWhat happens after age 5 that zinc no longer helps?
- zusammen 2y ago[dead]
- CalChris 2y agoSo I had cholera. I was in a cholera study at the University of Maryland for a week. Read a lot of sci fi, played ping pong and drank fluids with electrolytes. There is a first phase which is uncomfortable but otherwise, as the docs said, cholera is a piece of cake if treated with hydration.
- throwaway4220 2y agoWhoa! I didn't know you could do such studies on humans this day and age. Were you compensated handsomely?
- plorkyeran 2y agohttps://eukaryotewritesblog.com/2024/10/21/i-got-dysentery-so-you-dont-have-to/ https://eukaryotewritesblog.com/2024/10/21/i-got-dysentery-s... is a writeup of a similar trial that hit HN recently. That person got $4000 for 10 days.
- foxyv 2y agoYup, they are called Human Challenge Studies. Compensation is typically modest. Most participants are students at universities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_challenge_study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_challenge_study
- nelblu 2y agofor a few moments I was thinking "saved millions of dollars from dehydration". The title could be clearer if it said "saved millions of people from dehydration".
- joemi 2y agoI thought the same thing before clicking on it.
- ricksunny 2y agoI wonder if headline writers these days generate several permutations of a headline via GPT, and have some way of A|B testing the early readers to figure out which one generates the most clicks (especially due to people clicking through to satiate curiosity of a freshly quizzical headline from what would otherwise have been an at-a-glance comprehensible one that would fail to elicit the all-lifegiving click.)
- acyou 2y agoI also have a feeling that the pH of rehydration drinks should be low (acidic). To an extent, my body knows pretty well what's good for it. The salt+water tastes terrible, add a little acid and it's delicious. Maybe it takes a little load off of the digestive system by providing the acid that would otherwise need to be generated.
- gus_massa 2y agoThe Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_rehydration_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_rehydration_therapy recommends to add sodium citrate or bicarbonate to make it basic instead and prevent "Acidosis".
- FrancoisT 2y agoAnother unsung hero that contributed to improve the world, IMHO it's a beautiful example of the fact that in the end it's not the degree of sophistication (even of the road to find it is steep) that really matters but how it translates into positive outcome in the physical world that eventually matters. Rip
- glimshe 2y agoIn poor countries the government sometimes runs TV ads explaining how to make the rehydrating solution this at home. This simple program saved millions of children. Boil the water, add sugar and salt... Voila