Click to view our Accessibility Statement or contact us with accessibility-related questions
mjmiller
19
Mar 19, 2018
Nobody in this discussion of hydration has brought up the subject of how age and health have an impact on hydration especially if you live in a hot area with high humidty. For this population the advice to wait till you are thirsty to start drinking is not good advice. A lot of people in this population will loose water faster than it can be absorbed by the body after drinking. This is particularly true for people on medications to control high blood pressure and that is a huge slice of the population. A lot of these meds work by keeping people in a constant state of mild dehydration. Additionally they leach salts out of the body. Add that to the fact that many of lower blood pressure by dialating blood vessles which means these people have lost a means of cooling their bodies during periods of prolonged exertion. Staying hydrated for this populaion is much more important because they are more vulnerable to issues associated with dehydration. These people need to be drinking a bit at a time constantly. Even then most will end up somewhat dehydrated at the end of the day. I hike with a group of older people people and after a 7 - 9 hr backpack up and down mountains (there is virtually no flat ground where we hike), many are playing catch up over night with their hydration needs based on the amount of fluids they drink at night. Also, a lot of older people may be dealing with arthritis which makes using either pump or squeeze filtration more difficult if not painful. Gravity filters are the only way to go for this population. They look for a filter with water bags big enough so that they do not have to make multiple trips to the water source at night to have enough water for drinking, cooking and washing up. They look for models that are easy to hook up and take apart with stiff fingers. Since nobody wants to be the last ready to break camp in the AM, they look for filters which work quickly because they know they may not pack up as quickly as a younger hiker. MSR and Platypus filters appear to be the most commonly purchased by this group. Think many still think of Sawyer filters as just squeeze models and the BeFree as not as versatile as filters made by other vendors. People may not think of this group as being a substantial portion of the buying public but that was made very clear to me when I attended a presentation on hiking the AT at Amicola State Park by Springer Mountain in GA. The majority of the group making plans to hike the AT were retirees rather than the younger college aged person I expected to find.
PRODUCTS YOU MAY LIKE
Trending Posts in More Community Picks