When to start hydrating
Body Hydration: The Key to Improved Performance, Health, and Life | Chris Gintz | TEDxHiltonHead
[Music]
so about every 25 years or so somebody
asked me to come out and talk
normally normally I don't like to very
much because you all afraid the hell out
of me
and it's not so much you as individuals
but what you do with some of the things
that I've been involved in creating
people say gosh you must be really proud
that you invented the notebook computer
and when I think about the fact that
people spend 30 percent of their day
looking at pornography on it wasn't
exactly what I had mine wouldn't move in
it
the other reason I don't come out and
talk very much it's because I'm a felon
and even my best friends one of whom is
Rex Gayle who I went to college with
which is why I'm really here today I got
to follow the band so you see where I am
in the sequence why am i why am ia felon
I have an Interpol number my family
refuses to travel with me because when I
go through customs I always get stopped
for extra screening which I appreciate
ever so much it's because when I was
working on the first computer that had a
hard disk drive I had a very young wife
who I was trying to impress so I took
her to England over the fourth of July
and I was promptly arrested by Her
Majesty's Customs because I didn't have
a document called a karne for the
prototype of the first portable computer
that had two disc drive in it we were
actually designing this in England I had
a 40 million dollar development contract
in my pocket and you can imagine how
thrilled the commerce department was in
England when they found out that the guy
that had the contract was in jail in the
Tower of London for four days over the
fourth of July holiday so every time I
go through England now since I have an
Interpol number they always say ah mr.
Ganz so so nice to see you what are you
smuggling today
and so being a felon doesn't enable me
to get out you know and travel as much
as maybe I would like to but it's it's
interesting in the marketplace of ideas
when you start talking about invention
and you try to explain to people what
you do every day it's a challenge you
know sort of like listening to the van
where does music come from who makes
that stuff up and so I've spent the
better part of the last 40 years being
called by people that have asked me to
think about their problem and to try to
come up with a practical idea on how to
go translate some vision they have of
whatever it is that they want to make
into something practical that you all
can use so for the past three or four
years I've been working on an idea about
using something as simple as your breath
to determine how hydrated you are and
the reason that that's an important
problem to go solve is that if you have
an elder relative and they forget to
drink water it's about a $10,000 trip to
the hospital every time that they go on
their path to suffering from congestive
heart failure
having been on Hilton Head for the past
30 years I've enjoyed the fact that I'm
also a volunteer as the voice of the
Hilton had prepped fighting dolphins and
I've been watching people every Friday
get cramps from heat which is another
symptom of having a hydration problem
and so the one idea that I took from
watching all the presentations today is
the idea that you have to remember
something from this talk so I'm going to
give you a very simple thing to remember
and that is eight can everybody remember
eight
what does eight stand for you remember
when we were kids somebody said you
should drink eight glasses of water at
and so being you know an engineer I keep
asking myself what is significant about
8:00 and I've read all the research and
what I found out was it seems like a
good idea is there any you know actual
you know reality to why we should drink
eight glasses of water and so the other
thing I want you to remember is it seems
like a good idea so behind me is my
graphic on what we all are and what we
mostly are is water and whether you're
talking about your you know your lungs
or you're talking about virtually any
other part of your Anatomy
once the water drains out of you there's
not really very much left so keeping
yourself hydrated every day is really
important and the problem is unlike your
Chevy out there you don't have a
dipstick so how do you know if you're
properly hydrated or not and so I'm
going to share with you some of the
Voodoo ways that we currently use to
determine if people are hydrated or not
my personal favorite is color okay so
I'm going to conduct a little experiment
and you should all go when I get done
with this in almost every facility in
the country we have color charts where
we compare the color of our urine to the
chart and we're supposed to be able to
turn and determine how hydrated we are
thank God it's the T my second favorite
way is the one that the NCAA uses now to
determine if students can go out and
exercise after lunch so for kids that
are just a moment you have two people
you have a 95-pound gymnast and a
300-pound football tackle the
n-c-double-a says that we're going to
weigh everybody before they exercise and
then we're going to weigh them again
after they exercise and we're going to
determine how much weight they've lost
in between those two measurements and
when they replace oh I don't know let's
think of some arbitrary like half of
their weight then they can go out this
afternoon and work out again so if you
did the math on those two things and you
looked at the number of bottles of water
that a 300-pound linemen would have to
drink you'd literally have to waterboard
that 95 pound gymnast for her for her to
to have the equivalent amount of water
so we have color we have weight what
other kind of innovative ways can we
figure out how to measure hydration my
third favorite one is blood every TV
show that you watch what happens
Fire Department shows up and they
immediately stick an IV in somebody's
arm how do we know that that works what
why do they do that so if the answer is
1/8 what's the answer well it seems like
a good idea but does it actually work we
don't know so for the past three years
I've been thinking about how one
actually determined so if a person is
properly hydrated and if you stop and
think about what we all have lungs and
we inhale and exhale every day we
realize that the secret is there and
every time you exhale you exhale about
300 gases and many of those gases are in
varying minut parts like parts per
trillion so how do I go measure some
thing that's in parts per trillion and
the answer is my friend everybody does
this is right everybody's got one
well maybe not blackberry but everybody
has a cell phone this is this is a micro
way okay and so the way that we're going
to do calculations is we're going to
take the chips out of this and make some
special chips that enable us to make a
device called a microwave rotational
spectrometer but you can think about a
cell phone because which you're going to
really care about is the results from
the test are gonna show up on your cell
phone you can go oh I'm about a quart
low so people always ask me what a
device for measuring breath is going to
look like and we all do things that are
analogous to things that we understand
so I brought my invention and the
invention is a device that I blow into
and it's going to have my state after me
microwave rotational spectrometer
microwave three rotational spectrometer
stuck it on the back of it I look at the
display go oh my god I'm down a court
when does this get occur we're hoping in
the next two to three years because I'm
not sure we can continue to rely on
looking at the color of our peak or
giving people IVs that they may not need
or or last you know but not least is my
least favorite one I've been a great
audience thank you so much
[Applause]
