Don't Pee when in a survival scenario?

I was wondering if this is correct case: lost somewhere in the forest, in winter-time, and having the need to go pee. I know the reason why our bodies have more of a need to urinate when the weather is cold is because the urine is taking up energy needed in order to heat the body.

But, it has been said numerous times, water is more important than energy due to the 333 rule. So, looking at it from that perspective, holding in your pee would be a benefitial thing to do in order to conserve liquids?

What struck me as odd is, if there is the need to (that is, if you can't hold it in any longer), than drinking your pee is better? Then I guess the fluids would cycle through the system again. BUT, if the fluids are needed that badly, wouldn't the body compensate by absorbing as much before urinating?

I remember Bear grills tried, in a safari episode, drinking his own urine. Is there any relevence in that?

-FishMode David

Don't pee too frequently because you do lose a lot of body heat when you pee (both by exposed skin and loss of hot fluids) but forcibly holding it in could cause you problems too...I have nothing to back this up but I've been told that people who do that can get serious urinary tract problems.

During Coast Guard training in the 80s, we were taught that in a survival at sea situation not to drink for the first 24 hours. The reasoning was that it takes this long for the body to adjust to the deprivation and start conserving water, rather than passing it though. Once in the bladder, I don't think the body will reabsorb, but I'm not a medical expert.

It is also possible (likely?) that that is now old advice.

I have no recall of being taught to not pee in a survival at sea class, and I had a couple. However, I do remember being told not to drink urine (or seawater) because you would become dehydrated more quickly. I was surprised when I saw Bear Grylls peeing into his canteen.

And I also seem to recall that you would reabsorb urine from your bladder. I doubt this would be a big issue for most people in a liferaft or lifeboat, at first. I'd be either too scared to pee or so scared I would be able to stop it.

Inuit pee, end of discussion.

And that would be because you are going to pee at one point or another whether you want to or not. It is much better to pee under controlled circumstances than to have your wet pants freeze to your… um… you get the point.

A full bladder accidently emptied into your clothes in winter, will give a number of unwanted problems. When you need to go, go, IMHO.

Actually, in a survival situation and maintaining that 98.6 degree core temp. you should go urinate as well as move your bowls. that will cause much of the needed blood to go back to where it counts most instead of trying to regulate your bladder and such.

Alan

i say pee in a plastic bag and use the warmth from the heated wee and once cooled then drink it. just kidding. but if my life depended on it i would not drink the wee. i would rather not survive and not have wee breath then to have bad after taste and still end up dying.

Hmmm...

I do know that NASA studies of the heat economy of the human body noted that waste products combined amounted to about 2% of the total heat loss. I remember this because it is one of those oddball useless factoids.

Heat loss from head and neck amounted to something like 50% of the heat loss. IMHO the lesson is that your better off putting on a hat and winding on a scarf than worrying too much about what your losing when you pee.

Holding your water when water is short has some logic to it but I think the body does this pretty much automatically without having to burden yourself with consciously holding water.

While generally the bladder is viewed as just a holding tank, with little if any absorption ability, I wonder if this is the whole picture. Many times I have climbed into a hot enclosed space, 150F or so (I used to carry a thermometer before it dawned on me that Too Hot wasn't made any better by knowing the actual number.), when I could take a pee. Nothing desperate but a moderately full bladder.

I climb in thinking it will be just a couple of minutes. Half an hour or more later I'm fully cooked. When I come out all I can do is sit down, cool off, sip water and embrace the brain damage. Somewhere along the line I notice that while I could pee before I went in I have no urge to after I get out. I have sweat out something like a liter of water. And now I will drink another liter or two before I feel the need.

Seems to me that the contents of the bladder had to go somewhere. And if the bladder and body can do this on its own there really isn't much need to second guess the system. IMO it amounts to the body knowing what it is doing.

Also It has been said that he brain is your most important survival tool. I don't know about you but I can't much think straight while clenching my loins and hopping from foot to foot like a fool trying to hang onto a few ounces of polluted water.

IMO if your body demands that you empty your bladder your better off saluting and complying instead of second guessing.

Urine contains waste products-urea, salt, ketones. The more concentrated, the more products per milliliter. probably not a good idea not to eat excreta (even if you can see the undigested kernels of corn, it is a bad idea) and analogously, unwise to drink urine, cuz it will recycle the waste products, Urine is sterile, unless something nasty is going on between bladder and the great outdoors. In WWI, soldiers in the trenches took turn urinating on each others hands to salvage the lost heat. One could pee into a solar still and collect condensate for drinking purposes. NASA has some technology for recycling waste-http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20071021/nasa_urine_071021/20071021?hub=TopStories.
Nasa apparently uses reverse osmosis, which is kinda tricky for survival kit use http://www.freedrinkingwater.com/infocenter.htm

Uhm... I don't know how long you think an emergency will last. Let's call it 14 hours, for the sake of argument. I base that on having an approximately 13.5 hour "night" for both of us, less that first hour you spend blundering about thinking you are right next to the parking lot, but plus hour and half that you spend in the morning actually getting there.

Fishmode, if you are willing to conduct a test, from the moment you read this, for the next 14 hours, you are NOT to urinate. I hope you peed before you checked this.

Honestly, I don't think you can do it. I think your bladder will whine, complain, and eventually grab you by the nose and say point blank "look buddy, I'm full, I'm going to be emptied- your call how and where, but the when is going to be in the next sixty seconds." If it has been more than ten hours since your last pee, you are probably in trouble.

It seems to me that the sensible thing to consider in a survival situation is that you would want to hold your liquid past the initial urge, but not to the point of excessive discomfort or distress. Heat loss is a practical consideration, as is a full bladder will tend to diminish the production of urine by the kidneys slightly, thereby having some positive effect on reducing dehydration, but this is a marginal consideration at best.

On my first big hike in the Canadian fjords, I was able to refrain from defecating for three days with reasonable comfort. I don't know what benefit that was for me, other than conserving the TP, and possibly scaring a bear when I did finally seek relief. You can find a purpose in all things I guess.

The last thing I want if I come face to face with a bear is a full bladder.

Sue's Basic Survival Rules

1. Relieve yourself when you have to, at the earliest opportunity within reason. In a survival situation, conditions may deteriorate rapidly.

2. The water in your bottle won't help your mental or physical condition if it stays there. Drink!

3. Always carry a little food with you. Even if you don't eat it, you'll know you've got it, so you don't have to worry about THAT right now. You probably have other, more pressing problems. And if you don't have anyone to outrun, you can drop the honey-dipped granola bar and maybe the bear will stop and check it out. (Also read #1 again.)

Sue

You PEE to get rid of by-produts. I do not think any of you case to pee or not to pee is valid, cold or not. In peeing in cold weather you actually losing heat. You are not generating heat to keep you bladder warm. All the fluids going into you bladder are at body temp.
Also drinking you urine is bad because you just talking back into you body thing you have attempted to get rid of. It can tax you kidneys and cause renal failure. So Bear is STUPID in this case.
cheers

NO fluid reabsorption occures in the bladder but in the large intestine.

The way that I retained water in my body for up to 6 hours WITHOUT discomfort,,,,,,,,We would eat a couple of Fig Newtons every hour. After 6 hours, my eyeballs were yellow but I wasn't in discomfort and I could walk normally to the Head once the bird was secured.

And no, drinking urine is NOT a solution to dehydration. Keeping a wet bandanna around your throat and sucking on a pebble or button helps to ease the symptoms (at least psychologically speaking).

Back as a young scout winter camping, I always had to pee at 3am. I would lay there for 20 minutes trying the get up the courage to get out of my very warm bag and do the deed. I was always warmer after. You gotta go, go!

A trick from the Inuits and homeless is to keep a jar or jug handy and to do the deed while laying on your side. It isn't a hard trick to learn. Saves time and heat. Unfortunately the solution is not so clear or simple for the distaff campers.

A particularly game, adaptable, and flexible, lady claimed that it is doable using a little device called a "Lady-Jay", essentially a small funnel I think, but, despite my requests, I was not allowed to observe this evolution in any detail so I can't really testify as to how easy or practical this might be.

I had an old guy in our hunt camp one time explain to me that in the days before alarm clocks, having to get up to use the outhouse was how you woke yourself up in the morning.

This fellas English was poor and my French was worse but I think the way he said to do it was this; before going to bed when you absolutely had to get up early the next morning (e.g. to go hunting) you drank a lot of liquids, that way your body would not allow you the comfort of sleeping in.

This fellow was 76 years young and got up about 3 times a night, the best thing was that he added wood to the woodstove each time so our uninsulated camp was nice and warm at 4.30am when the rest of us got up.

Merry Christmas,

Mike

Lot of bad advice in this thread.

Rules to live by...or pee by.

1. Dont drink urine.

2. If you need to urinate, then, go.



I would rather lose the heat by urinating than wet myself trying to hold it in and have to deal with wet clothing and cold.

I thought that up all by myself. When the temp really drops, to 17F or so, I really do need to feed the fire at night. If I had a decent wood stove, it might be another story, but I have one of these tiny "mobile home approved" stoves. There is no way to get enough wood in it to keep it burning all night. So I drink quite a bit of water before I go to bed (and again when I get up to feed the fire).

I HATE getting up when it's cold! First, I fight my way past the two cats who have me pinned down and grown roots into the mattress, then I let the dogs out, then run to the bathroom, feed the stove, let the dogs in, then jump back in bed after peeling the cats off the center of the bed.

If I ever get rich, I'm going to build a straw bale house with heated floors.

Sue

When you're cold, your blood vessels constrict to conserve body heat so your kidneys excrete more water to maintain the proper blood pressure since the total volume of your circulatory system has shrunk. I find that I'm fairly susceptible to this effect in the wintertime. It doesn't take very long after stepping out into the cold until I really have to go. Anyway, the phenomenon is called thermal diuresis.

Or, maybe, like me, you just produce more urine when sleeping in new environments? I don't know why this happens, but I usually have to pee two or three times at night for the first few nights when I take trips, although I never have to at home. I'm not cold, so I can't blame it on thermal diuresis.

I guess I missed that episode. Is this the same episode where he pee'd on his head covering to keep his head cool in the Sahara?

If his canteen already had some water in it and he wasn't already fairly water deprived and producing really concentrated urine, the diluted urine may have been beneficial. Well, like I said, I didn't see the episode so I'm just guessing here.

Lots of bad or irrelevant info on this thread. Yes, you lose heat when you pee, since the pee is warm. However, you will have to pee inevitably, so you will lose that heat regardless of whether you pee immediately or after tormenting yourself for hours of holding it in.
As was mentioned, the body does not reabsorb urine once it is in the bladder, so you have already lost that fluid before you even pee.

There are some practical uses for urine, such as solar distillation or treating certain types of jellyfish stings, and perhaps even as a last ditch cleaning rinse for minor wounds since it should be sterile(this last one is an educated guess, please correct me if there is a medical reason not to do this).

I guess it would also make sense to apply urine to the skin or cloting to increase evaporative cooling in a desert situation, but if you're already sweating a lot I don't know if that would increase the cooling very much, and if you're not sweating then you probably are too dehydrated to have much urine anyway.

I don't think urinating on your hands to warm them would make much sense since the moisture would make them even colder after the brief moment of warmth.

Drinking urine in any way is never a good idea, it will only dehydrate you more and waste your body's resources.

As beauty is to the eye of the beholder, so too is good(or bad) advice to the ear.

The use of urine to treat jellyfish stings has been fairly well debunked, vinegar having been shown to be the only effective treatment to stop the continued stinging from tentacles lodged on the skin after initial contact.

I guess the bottom line, though, still remains: When you gotta go, you gotta go...

Lets ignore Bear. No this is not something you should do.

I find Bear to be the most enjoyable when I mute the sound and just look at the scenery (and he does go where there is beautiful scenery).


The stress on your body trying to hold on to your urine is stress you don't need in a survival situation.


Taking a good long pee is a great morale booster.


Plus, checking out your urine (color, volume, odor, NOT TASTE) is an important tool in keeping tabs on your own bodies condition.