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For Those Long Coding Sessions: The Food Patch
rtphokie writes "The U.S. Army has created a Transdermal Nutrient Delivery System which works similarly to to nicotine or birth control patches but delivers vitamins and other micronutrients. It was developed to help "warfighters sustain their physical and mental performance" during high intensity conflict. Is this what ./'ers need during those long coding sessions."
repeat from a story posted a couple of years ago.
Actually, you could use nicotine patches. Nicotine is a stimulant, and when you first start using the patches, you can really tell. When I first started using patches to quit smoking, I was racing around and away much later than usual, but always full of energy. I stopped taking them abruptly one day, and I crashed, just like what happens after any other stimulant binge.
Well, since these don't provide calories, I don't think it will help anyone fight overeating.
I am an avid cyclist, and I can tell you this:
It takes more than just nutrients to get the job done. They don't say exactly what chemicals will be delivered by this system, but a cyclist would need:
Carbohydrates, and lots of them. This is the body's main source of fuel during aerobic exercise.
Electrolytes, to maintain the proper chemical balances in your body. This helps muscles perform at peak efficiency and staves off cramps.
Water, because buckets of it are lost from sweating. Dehydration is perhaps the easiest way to ensure a poor performance.
IANAN (nutritionist), but I've been cycling in both recreation and competition for about 10 years, and the things mentioned above are common knowledge to most cyclists.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
Yes, carbohydrates, protein, and fatty acids are macronutrients, that is, nutrients your body needs in fairly large amounts (protein 30g/day, carbohydrates 250g/day, fatty acids 100g/day or thereabouts). These patches only contain micronutrients, that is, nutrients we only need in sub gram amounts (e.g., vitamin C 65mg/day - 500mg/day depending on which authotity you believe, and what stresses you're under).
So I really don't see how these patches could be a complete solution, although they might be useful for replacing lost electrolytes like potassium, sodium, calcium, and magnesium. When you're engaged in physical exertion for long periods of time though, you really need macronutrients. This is why marathon runners and triathletes drink sports beverages and/or eat power bars. In addition to the electrolyes in, lets say gatorade, you also get a load of sugar (carbohydrates) for energy. These patches would only help with half the problem, and the smaller half at that.
Maybe they just expect that with the right micronutrient balance and some hormones the field soldiers will burn their own body fat for energy. Then when they do get some down time, they eat a meal rich in protein (for muscle/tissue repair), carbohydrate (to replace muscle and liver glycogen stores), and fatty acids (to replenish body fat stores, for repair and growth of nerves/neurons, and for various hormone precursors, etc.)
What gives?
-Jordan
Going long-term without eating cannot happen... big problems if you don't feed the gut.
Critically ill hospitalized patients with long-term abdominal pathology that prevent them from eating (severe Pancreatitis, shotgun wound to the abdomen, Gastric Outlet Obstruction from cancer, Crohns Disease, etc) are at high risk for all kinds of problems. It can even happen with anorexics. They often end up on TPN (total parenteral nutrition)... AKA Intravenous feedings. Long term TPN puts you at risk for some nasty complications (see below), even aside from the risk of TPN itself (you have to have the electrolytes, osmolality, etc just right).
The current theory is that the intestinal wall needs to be "fed" by absorbing food. Like many things in the body, the gut needs exercise. If it doesn't get it, you get atrophy of the viscera, and bacterial translocation across the gut wall. This results in severe gram-negative sepsis from enteric organisms (think about intravenously injecting feces... it's about the same effect). Overwhelming gram-negative sepsis has a tremendous mortality rate... most don't survive.
Even without the above complication of not eating, the amount of material (think in terms of simple mass of nutrients) you could get from a transdermal patch is miniscule. There is no way you could absorb enough nutrients to stay alive. Even TPN requires that huge volumes be infused, since it can only be concentrated so much. Some components are not even water soluble (lipids), and have to be given as a suspension. Even worse, TPN has to be given through a central IV line (subclavian, jugular, femoral, PICC), since peripheral veins quickly become unusable from the irritation and osmotic load.
Honestly, I can't see this satisfying anyone's caloric needs.
I suspect this will be used primarily to deliver drugs... something we already do.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
MREs are MUCH better now. (I've been in since '81 and sampled the whole range.) They even have Kosher and vegetarian MREs. :)
Of course, YMMV. I also liked Ham and Lima C-Rations.
Of course, Zoloft, Xanthax, Prozac, Lithium and other popular happy pills which are regularly consumed by a third of americans are considered to be a normal way of life
What you say is more true than you know. When I started taking Prozac, my life turned around. My life became normal again. So yes, a lot of people probably shouldn't be taking the drugs they do. But a lot of other people should. Please don't associate scientifically tested and proven useful medical drugs with common street drugs. Anybody who scoffs at the use of medications such as SSRIs and thinks of them as nothing more than "happy pills" probably hasn't been or known someone in their life who has suffered from and been diagnosed with major depression.
Before you jump on the what-about...-train, I'll admit that drugs like marijuana do have ligitimate medical uses. However, recent research has isolated the elements of the plant that work for pain relief from the other elements, such as those that cause the "high" that can permanently damage the brain's pleasure receptors after frequent use. If that first element can be administered seperately in a refined form, say in a pill, shot or nasal spray, it can be safely taken. Heck, even a patch (strangely, sounds almost on-topic). That is the difference between street drugs and prescription drugs.
Now if advocates put half the energy into fighting the medical industry as they did getting their pet stoner-drug legalized, these prescriptions would be cheap enough for anyone (who needs them) to afford. But prescription drugs make a nice scapegoat (mischaracterise, scream "me too!") for anyone who is cranky that they can't get their daily high.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
FOLKS!
This patch is nothing but a fancy vitamin pill. It won't "feed" you any more than a vitamin pill would. RTFA!
The only advantage this patch has is that it lasts many days - the idea being to prevent soldiers from coming down with beri-beri, scurvy, and other diseases due to lack of vitamins (which MREs are not exactly high in). If you can issue a soldier a patch every week,
a) You can quickly determine if the soldier is using it - "INSPECTION - Pruuu-zent PATCH!" This is harder to do with a pill.
b) You only need worry about it once a week - for guys on long range patrol this simplifies life. In combat, simple is good.
For geeks driving a keyboard, just take your multivitamin every (virtual) morning, along with your coffee, and you will get the same effect.
www.eFax.com are spammers
I am a US Army vet, but my only exposure to field food was MREs, I never got to see the next generation MREs used now or the older C-rations. When I was in the service the MREs came in diverse enough configurations that there was something for everyone, plus of course the little black market we had running using the M&Ms as a bargain tool.
:-)
Still, MREs had a small problem, it took time to eat them. The MRE not only gave us a certain caloric load per bag, but it also kept us busy for up to 30 minutes (some of us looked forward to getting MREs instead of a chow truck because you would be literally guaranteed 30 minutes of peace from the cadre as long as you looked busy tearing open packets of food). If you are really in a hurry and you don't eat your MREs whole then over time in a long deployment you could start suffering vitamin deficiencies, which is where a patch like that would rock.
Of course, we know the first three patches that are going to be issued will be:
1. Caffeine
2. Tylenol/Motrin
3. Go pills
The concept sounds great, but it is just too obvious that they are looking for a clean way to deliver chemicals without needles or pills (plus the patch allows a time release).
If any of you has never tasted an MRE and has a chance to, go ahead and try it. I have always been picky about food but I never thought I would be so damn well pleased with cold food (the warming jackets were not widely distributed to non-deployed units). Chicken-a-la-King, Beef Stew and "Ham and Omelette" where the best
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
The big news is that they weren't on "crank". And the pilots were not told there was a live-fire exercise in a freakin' war zone.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagena
"Canadian soldiers were shooting into the air during a live-fire training exercise in Afghanistan at least 10 minutes before a U.S. F-16 mistakenly dropped a bomb on their position, killing four Canadian soldiers and injuring eight, according to testimony by surviving soldiers."
They were taking Dexedrine.
http://www.psyweb.com/Drughtm/dexed.h
It's not just American pilots, but the pilots of pretty much every air force that has long missions.
"PSYCHOSTIMULANTS, particularly amphetamine, became available in America for clinical use in 1937, and since then have been widely prescribed. More recently, their beneficial effects have been overshadowed by the recognition of a significant abuse potential. Nevertheless, the military services, particularly the Air Force, have recognized the value of psychostimulants under certain conditions. Use of amphetamine, at the direction of the unit commander and under the supervision of the flight surgeon, has been sanctioned by some components of the Air Force since 1960 and by the tactical air forces until 1991. In March 1991, following successful completion of Operation Desert Storm, the chief of staff of the Air Force sent a message terminating the policy of allowing in--flight medications, including amphetamines, by Air Force personnel."
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicle
"Some military services recognized the potential of psychostimulants to combat fatigue and boredom. The greatest use of the drug reportedly occurred during World War II by German, Japanese, and English troops.Although American troops reportedly did not have access to the drugs, studies were initiated in the late 1940s and 1950s to determine the military significance."
Friendly fire has always happened, and I'm sure that in WW1 and WW2 and Korea somewhere a Canadian killed an American or three.
http://members.aol.com/amerwar/ff/ff.htm
Around 20-40% of war time casualties are from friendly fire typically.
Mistakes in war are the consequence of what Clausewitz called "friction,"
"everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate, and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has lowered the general level of performance, so that one always falls far short of the intended goal... The military machine ? the army and everything related to it ? is basically very simple and therefore seems easy to manage. But we should keep in mind that none of its components is of one piece: each part is composed of individuals... the least important of whom may chance to delay things or somehow make them go wrong... This tremendous friction, which cannot, as in mechanics, be reduced to a few points, is everywhere in contact with chance, and brings about effects that cannot be measured, just because they are largely due to chance.