Re: The Importance of Gravity to our Health and Wellbeing

[Guest guest]

Hi,

From " Inclined Bed Therapy "

<http://www.eregimens.com/therapies/MiscTherapies/Inclined%20bed%20therapy.html>

" Horizontal bedrest, produced a urine density lower than normal daily

activity. Inclined bedrest produced urine density substantially higher that

either horizontal bed rest head down tilt bedrest and normal daily activity and

as we eat and drank the same during 3 weeks of measuring our urine the results

were even more compelling.

But here is the crunch for this simple experiment. Head down tilt produced

urine of near water density, no salts or minerals were being excreted in the

urine! Which means that the salts end up in the bladder because of the effects

of gravity on the salts and our posture in relation to the effects of gravity on

said salts!

An additional effect of gravity on the body in the head up tilt position is

the production of more heat during the night and this increases evaporation from

the respiratory tract and skin, therefore reducing the amount of urine we

produce and increasing the density of the urine produced. "

The idea that salts are retained in the bladder is scientifically crazy. In

order for the salts to not dissolve in the urine in the bladder they would have

to be at saturation for that salt in the urine (over 6 Molar for NaCl (table

salt), about 48 times as concentrated as NaCl in blood, which is around 120 mM),

and the salts in urine are nowhere near saturation. In fact, if they were near

saturation the density would be very high.

If in fact there is additional loss of water through evaporation in

respiratory tract and skin from sleeping head-up, this alone might account for

the relative lack of water in the urine of head-up sleepers.

The kidney works by actively pumping salt out of blood plasma, with potassium

being especially conserved (sodium less so - the kidney will trade a sodium ion

for a potassium ion), and water being resorbed by pumping chloride ions out,

causing an osmotic gradient which draws water along with it.

If there is an effect on urine density above and beyond the water loss of

additional evaporation in the respiraory tract and skin, what I would guess is

happening is that even the slight incline is producing an effect on

baroreceptors (pressure sensors) in the kidney, affecting how much fluid vs.

salt is retained.

That raises the interesting possibility that if horizontal bed rest produces

lower ionic strength (more watery) urine, it might indicate that the kidney is

losing chloride ions more than sodium or potassium, creating a minor, but

cumulative, ionic imbalance, with the negative ion requirement (to balance the

positive sodium and potassium ions) being fulfilled by sulfates and phosphates

(think soda pop). However, I would want to see a lot of highly controlled

research on this before I bought into such an idea.

As for " The Importance of Gravity to our Health and Wellbeing, and its

Relation to Rest & Sleep "

<http://www.the-tree.org.uk/TreeTalk/3Spring2003/Gravity/gravity & health.htm>

I found the science to be sound (the idea of using a siphon to raise water

more than 10 metres or 33 feet had occurred to me previously - and was known to

engineers, who use giant siphons and inverted siphons on aqueducts all the

time). Whether anyone gets medical benefits, and to what extent, I would expect

to vary as much as whether they benefit from magnetic fields (though not

necessarily correlated between the two). But the ease of producing a tilted bed,

and the near-complete lack of side effects, suggests it is worth a try.

Jerry

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