The drinking urine thing is very simple, just as is drinking sea water: If necessary, one's body draws water from the bloodstream to dilute seawater or urine [or even whatever you ate for lunch today, which is why a glass of water should accompany every meal]. And it IS necessary in the case of liquids too salty or too full of toxins to be absorbed as they exist when swallowed. So drinking sea water, or urine, will take more liquid out of your blood that it will put in, resulting in, inevitably, death. Washing in urine is mentioned in every ethnography of the polar inuit that I have read. And I have read a bunch. Urine for washing hair used to be stored in a bucket in the home. Babies were washed in urine just at birth, since it was a readily available supply of hot water. I've paddled in different parts of Greenland in each of the past three summers and never saw anyone wash in anything other than water, but the reports from a hundred years ago, and even fifty years ago, are that urine was readily used. Jim Tibensky _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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