Emergency use hydration products - effectivness vs cost
My medical kit already has some MRE style clean water bags, purification tablets, as well as OTC anti-diarrheal pills at the ready. However, now, I am researching what options there are for hydration in a life-threatening scenario (severe dehydration, possibly including prolonged diarrhea or vomiting). I want to include such a product in my medical kit in case I or someone I encounter while hiking has life-threatening dehydration. While I must concede that much of the bio-chemistry is way over my head, I would still like to think I have compiled a reasonably well-informed list of products. I tried to find not only the hi-tech premium products but also products more on the thrifty-side. Here are the products I researched in order of most expensive per unit gram:
Ceralyte
- Site: https://ceraproductsinc.com/
- Market: medicine, military
- Price: 100g for $23.00 (10x 10g sticks)
- Price per unit gram: $0.23
DripDrop
- Site: https://dripdrop.com
- Market: military, firefighters and athletes
- Price: 84g for $9.99 (4x 21g sticks)
- Price per unit gram: $0.12
Pedialyte Powder
Site: https://pedialyte.com
Market: pediatrics, health enthusiasts?
Price: 272g for $27.00 (24x 8.5g sticks)
Price per unit gram: $0.10
Gatorade Powder
Site: https://www.gatorade.com
Market: athletes
Price: 588g for $15.00 (12x 49g sticks)
Price per unit gram: $0.03
Pedialyte and Gatorade are not marketed as emergency hydration products; Pedialyte has a disclaimer on their website that their hydration powder is only suitable for mild to moderate diarrhea. That being said, the low-end products are quite a bit cheaper.
Question:
Perhaps this is just a classic case of "you get what you pay for," but I'm wondering if it's considered over-kill to buy military/pharmaceutical grade hydration powders for a hiking kit (72 hour bag). I'd like to hear from anyone with experience using any of these products. Are the high-end products like Ceralyte and DripDrop really heads and shoulders above cheaper products like Pedialyte Powder and Gatorade Powder? Better enough to warrant the price premium as shown above?
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/q/19958. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1 answer
I can't say I have any experience on these specific products, but I do have quite a bit of experience of diarrhea in an environment where you need to manage it yourself. I was fortunate enough to travel with some very knowledgeable people in that respect - they are studied pharmacists with lots of experience. Where it mattered, they had all the tools and pharmaceutics with them - there was definitely no bias towards low-tech solutions.
When it comes to hydration they simply carried pre-mixed "WHO-powder" with them. This is a mixture of salts that you can get from any halfway decently equipped pharmacy.
In grams per liter (common name in brackets added by me):
- Sodium chloride (salt): 2.6
- Glucose, anhydrous (sugar): 13.5
- Potassium chloride: 1.5
- Trisodium citrate, dihydrate: 2.9
For early stages of dehydrated a imprecise solution of just salt and sugar is fine according to WHO, but in case of prolonged diarrhea this formula should be used.
Extensive research has been done on this formula and it is widely used. Any commercial products may have additional benefits, but in terms of rehydration this is the solution.
http://www.who.int/maternal_child_adolescent/documents/fch_cah_06_1/en/
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