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A review by qtpieash3
Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War by Mary Roach
5.0
Really, really enjoyed this one! I'm so jealous Roach gets to research such fascinating things and write about them. This was a really comprehensive look at military science, touching on everything from injuries to the sleep schedules of submariners. It's hard to summarize, so here are a few things I bookmarked as being especially interesting.
- The VA spends over $1B a year on hearing loss and tinnitus.
- When you start to overheat, vessels in your skin dilate, encouraging blood to migrate there. From the capillaries in the skin, the hot plasma is offloaded through sweat glands onto the surface of the body to evaporate. The evaporation carries heat away from the body in the form of water vapor. It's an efficient system - a human in extreme heat can sweat as much as 2kg an hour over a few hours. 10kg of sweat loss over a day is not rare for workers in overheated factories and active soldiers stationed in the tropics.
- Those who are "easy sweaters" - tending to sweat at the least bit of exertion - actually have super-efficient
- Between 2007 and 2011, there were 14,577 cases of heat illness among active US Armed Forces personnel. When soldiers work hard - and given the climes many are in and the amount of gear they wear which only exacerbate the problem - the muscles they're using demand the blood that the body needs to use for sweating. Best case scenario, you faint as your blood pressure isn't high enough to push the blood to your brain. Without enough blood to the brain, your body faints, forcing your head level with your heart. Interestingly, overheated people often pass out not in the midst of their exertion, but when they stop and rest. This is because contracting the leg muscles helps keep blood from pooling the legs.
- With regards to heat stroke, US military life rafts include sour balls int her survival food packets. But if you're suffering from heat stroke and your digestive organs are shutting down, the acidity of the sour balls stimulates saliva flow.
- When the air is cooler than 92*, the body can cool itself by radiating heat into the cooler air. The sweaty air your body generates rises away from your skin allowing cooler air to takes its place. This is also how a breeze cools you.
- The International Flavors and Fragrances developed a proprietary vomit scent at the request of a company that intended to use it as a dieting aid, a stick-up dispenser that would discourage eating by making your fridge smell like vomit. It was never produced because during testing, a certain percentage of people, particularly if they were hungry, had a positive response to the smell. As in, they wanted to eat it.
- There were some crazy tests for shark repellent and bear repellent, the latter done with the aid of used tampons. Turns out, bears looooove them. Hork.
- On the USS Tennessee, the average person gets 4 hours of sleep.
- The VA spends over $1B a year on hearing loss and tinnitus.
- When you start to overheat, vessels in your skin dilate, encouraging blood to migrate there. From the capillaries in the skin, the hot plasma is offloaded through sweat glands onto the surface of the body to evaporate. The evaporation carries heat away from the body in the form of water vapor. It's an efficient system - a human in extreme heat can sweat as much as 2kg an hour over a few hours. 10kg of sweat loss over a day is not rare for workers in overheated factories and active soldiers stationed in the tropics.
- Those who are "easy sweaters" - tending to sweat at the least bit of exertion - actually have super-efficient
- Between 2007 and 2011, there were 14,577 cases of heat illness among active US Armed Forces personnel. When soldiers work hard - and given the climes many are in and the amount of gear they wear which only exacerbate the problem - the muscles they're using demand the blood that the body needs to use for sweating. Best case scenario, you faint as your blood pressure isn't high enough to push the blood to your brain. Without enough blood to the brain, your body faints, forcing your head level with your heart. Interestingly, overheated people often pass out not in the midst of their exertion, but when they stop and rest. This is because contracting the leg muscles helps keep blood from pooling the legs.
- With regards to heat stroke, US military life rafts include sour balls int her survival food packets. But if you're suffering from heat stroke and your digestive organs are shutting down, the acidity of the sour balls stimulates saliva flow.
- When the air is cooler than 92*, the body can cool itself by radiating heat into the cooler air. The sweaty air your body generates rises away from your skin allowing cooler air to takes its place. This is also how a breeze cools you.
- The International Flavors and Fragrances developed a proprietary vomit scent at the request of a company that intended to use it as a dieting aid, a stick-up dispenser that would discourage eating by making your fridge smell like vomit. It was never produced because during testing, a certain percentage of people, particularly if they were hungry, had a positive response to the smell. As in, they wanted to eat it.
- There were some crazy tests for shark repellent and bear repellent, the latter done with the aid of used tampons. Turns out, bears looooove them. Hork.
- On the USS Tennessee, the average person gets 4 hours of sleep.