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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • To properly answer, we need to define what we mean as “airborne” which has gotten a bunch of people very upset recently. Prior to the COVID pandemic, the transmission model for respiratory viruses focussed on 3 distinct models of transmission:

    • Fomites are collections of excretions on surfaces containing live virus. An infectious person cough into their hand, pick their nose, or similar, then touch the doorknob. The next person touches the doorknob, then their mucus membrane (nose, eye, mouth) and they get infected.
    • Droplets are large collections of excretions that are transmitted during talking, shouting, singing, coughing, or sneezing. They are ballistically expelled, but don’t remain in the air. An infected person expels these droplets, and must be in range of another person who is struck by these droplets in their mucus membranes to be infected.
    • Finally, airborne transmission occurs when micro droplets small enough to ride on air currents are expelled from infected people, and non infected people inhale them into their airways.

    COVID was presumed to only be transmitted through the first 2 methods. But weird things were observed, where transmission occurred when people (or ferret model experiments) were separated by barriers through which ballistic droplets couldn’t pass, like air ducts with multiple 90° bends. People also got sick after being in rooms many minutes after infected people had been present, long after ballistic droplets would have harmlessly fallen to the ground.

    In reality, droplet models were just close range transmission, and airborne long range transmission of bio-aerosols, or micro droplets created from breathing, shouting, singing, coughing, or sneezing. The range was more a function of the transmissibility of the virus. Highly infective things can infect at low doses at long range. Less infective things occur with much higher doses, when people are quite close to one another. This folded in the prior models quite nicely. It was, however, not well accepted.

    If a disease is to be transmitted by bio-aerosols, the disease vector needs to be able to enter the body through the surfaces with which it will interact upon being “breathed in”. This doesn’t work well for the STI viruses or bacteria, nor the malarial parasite, as they aren’t actively expelled in the respiratory system, so don’t generate bio-aerosols, and require access to highly specific host cells not easily accessed through the respiratory system at the necessary volumes to create an infection.

    So, no, not really possible for non-respiratory viruses to become “airborne” in that sense.there would need to be a LOT of intermediate steps.

    But diseases that we used to consider to be transmitted by the now defunct ballistic droplet model can become “airborne” (instead of “droplet”) if their ability to infect a subject becomes more successful at lower doses of pathogen such that it can occur at longer range, and over longer times.


  • How do you boost intramuscular water retention? I get so dehydrated sometimes my brain burns and hurts.

    Those sound like two very different things. Typically your cells manage this just fine on their own with just plain water intake provided the kidneys are working fine. Time to attain equilibrium is also important. For example, dumping a bag of IV fluid into someone’s veins will help replenish the volume of fluid in their blood vessels quickly at the outset. But it will move to the other parts of the body (or get dumped by the kidneys if the intravascular volume is already adequate).

    I need serious electrolytes like 1 to 3 body armours to replenish followed by 48oz water. Followed by hours to recalibrate my body from nausea and migraines.

    How well hydrated a person is before activity matters more for performance and recovery than we often recognize. Lots of studies of elite athletes and dehydration on performance and recovery. Also of these drinks have artificial sweeteners, that may be playing against you.

    Urine can be clear but I can be so thirsty its unbearable. Literally feels like my brain is shrinking.

    That sounds miserable. If better pre-activity hydration doesn’t solve the problem, you might want to speak to a care provider and make sure everything is ok with some tests.


  • The water moving right through is probably a good sign someone is well hydrated! There can be total body water versus intravascular volume depletion scenarios, but not super likely unless someone is sick in other ways.

    The xylitol itself may be contributing to GI water losses (it’s only about 50% absorbed through the gut, and osmotically draws water into/keeps water from being absorbed from the intestinal lumen). Depending on the SSRI, this could be exacerbated by bowel irritability that can present as diarrhea (sertraline is notorious for this).

    Some folks also report more urination with intake of sugar alcohols like xylitol. I don’t have a mechanism of action for that, so take those reports with a grain of salt. (And also some glucose because sodium-glucose symport allows for water absorption without the need for an ATP pump.)



  • Okay, so this isn’t actually about hydration, it’s about the fact that SSRIs commonly cause dry mouth as a side effect due to anticholinergic effects which reduce saliva release Some SSRIs are worse than others, and older TCAs are worse still. But OP is not dehydrated.

    Water is great for hydration, but it is unfortunately not very effective at managing dry mouth due to these side effects. Flavoured beverages typically work better because they promote saliva release.

    I would suggest OP add something with a sour note to their water, like lemon or lime juice which are unsweetened and have effectively no caloric component. Alternatively even just a splash of carbonated water will also work as the bubbles are irritants and will similarly stimulate saliva release.












  • Lots of great suggestions but none really focussed on your concern about keeping track of magic in combat. If this is a question of keeping track of buffs, concentration, magical effects, or conditions, I found using “condition rings” on the players’, creatures’, and NPCs’ minis made this much easier. I started off with just the plastic rings off milk jugs or pop bottles, but fancy ones with the words written right on them make a nice gift request for a birthday etc.