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heat pill
Warm-fuzzy feeling... brought to you by your friendly neighborhood pharmaceutical company | |
I love those chemical heaters you can find in hand-warmers and military MRE's (Meals Ready to Eat). Such a wonderful concept... Dry powder + Water = Heat.
I'd like a pill with a non-toxic, heat-producing chemical in it to warm up in cold weather, from the inside-out. Basically, the same stuff used
in those items mentioned above, in a non-toxic form. Having no experience in pharmaceuticals, I haven't the faintest idea what chemicals might do the job... any suggestions?
PG Tips
http://www.unilever...ds/foods/pgtips.asp
[po, Nov 13 2006]
of course, there are always these things
http://www.fishermansfriend.com/
[po, Nov 14 2006]
[link]
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it's non-toxic, and will definitely produce warmth when it comes in contact with water, or even moist bodily tissues. The hydrogen gas might be a problem. So mighht be the resulting calcium hydroxide, but hey, at least you'd be warm. |
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I think you'll have trouble finding a non-toxic exothermic reagent. |
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Now a cool down pill, that'd be a winner. |
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Tea's very nice, po, and I drink it almost religiously every morning when I get to work (I make point to get here early just for that reason). I *love* Celestial Seasonings many varieties, in particular Mandarin Orange Spice. The point of this idea is to have something on-hand that I can carry in a pocket-size pill case and just pop one in my mouth when I'm felling very cold. |
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I think we're meant to be at an optimum temperature for a purpose! |
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Not so optimum in cold climates, otherwise we wouldn't need coats when we go outside. Were that the case, we'd all be naked..... |
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didn't we lose our hair because we started to wear clothes? |
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we're warm blooded like polar bears and they have great coats. |
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"We humans don't seem to like hair very much," says Pagel. |
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If baldness means fewer parasites, it pays to choose hairless mates: Bald becomes beautiful. Pagel and Bodmer point out that women having less body hair than men could be due to the greater sexual selection that is conventionally exerted by men on women. Meanwhile, humans only have retained proper hair on the head as a shield from the midday sun perhaps, and the darker, danker body recesses, where it might function as a pheromone trap, enhancing sexual chemical communication. |
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The theory is not problem-free. Our sexual preferences are influenced by culture and biology; for example, men who previously flaunted their hairy chests would now be hesitant to do so. Pagel accepts that fashions come and go, but he observes that no cosmetics have ever been designed to emphasize body hair (excluding the head). Nonetheless, recent research found that women prefer men with chest and abdominal hair. Timing might also be a problem, especially in light of new evidence that clothing is a more recent innovation than was believed. |
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If Pagel and Bodmer are correct, then we didn't so much lose our fur as reinvent it, which implies that our aptitude to solve problems has had a significant bearing on the way we look today. |
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Of course, this sheds little light on the evolution of our peculiar bipedal gait. But, then again, walking on only two legs does let us pace the room, pondering our baldness for twice as long before our carpets wear out." :) |
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The celestial seasonings factory is just one town over from where I live! I like PG Tips and Typhoo when I can get them in the US. Of course, if we all relied on a constant intake of tea to keep us warm in the winter, then we would also be very jittery. |
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I don't know if hairy people are really all that much warmer. You probably need a LOT of hair to make much of a difference. |
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One way to create an internal heat source would be to create a pill a bit like a glowstick, where the two reactants are separate until you pop something appart and they combine. The trick would be to keep it from heating up too much; otherwise it would boil and explode inside you. Of course, you could just tape a hot water bottle to your stomach, but that is far too ordinary for the halfbakery. |
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Uncle Joe's Mint Balls (but I think it's a personal placebo effect (for me that is, not Uncle Joe)). |
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//if we all relied on a constant intake of tea to keep us warm in the winter, then we would also be very jittery.// |
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That explains it. (Yorkshire Tea - but there's nowt t' be found round here). |
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[po] I love it when you talk scientifically! I read something similar about peacocks, and all manner of species, who, largely due to the forces of sexual preference (rather than the more traditionally cited survival of the fittest process), have evolved into some of the most extreme and ungainly shapes and sizes we observe today. (Interesting point about the balance of selection falling on one side, or the other - not thought about that before) Not least, Dawkins suggests (it was in his 'The Blind Watchmaker') that our mental capabilities have exploded into being (in geological terms) primarily down to the fact men and women find intelligence sexy. |
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On tea, I once had a particularly refreshing herbal infusion whilst visiting South America. Apparently, you can't get the stuff over here. Which, to be perfectly honest, is a bit of a shame. It tasted like green tea, but it was sharper, and much more refreshing. I do like a drop of green tea though, or good old English breakfast tea with a splash of milk and a cube of sugar. Grand. |
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One example of evidence that humans are not meant to grow lots of body hair (compared to most other mammals) is a Chinese punk rocker named Yu (I forget the last name). He's the hairiest human in the world, looks like Sasquatch, and it's caused him loads of medical problems, like having hair growing into his ears, making him partially deaf, among other problems. |
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Thank you, Guinness Book of World Records! |
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Sticking something warm up ones' sphincter would work just as well i imagine |
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If you swing that way, I guess. Tell you what, Mind_Boggle, I won't ask if you won't tell. |
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Last winter I became very ill, and I ended up in the hospital. They gave me an iodine contrast to drink (it was pretty repulsive, by the way) and then wheeled me into a white room with a big scanner. The nice, soothing scanner-operator lady injected the iodine (or the contrast--whichever I didn't drink) into my vein. The very most delicious sensation of warmth spread across my body. It was like I was snuggled up by a toasty fire, snow falling out the window, hot chocolate by my side. True, it also made me feel like I was peeing down my leg, but it was just an illusion. Besides the fake peeing, it was great! And as a bonus, it isn't just your mouth that get's warm! Everywhere your blood goes, there goes the warmth. |
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Take a little Niacin. It causes your body to feel prickly and warm throughout. Plus it adds a little color to your cheeks |
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Whiskey also has a well-known mind-numbing, sense-dulling effect. |
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Erythroxylum is well known for its use in high-altitude environments as a stimulant, appetite suppressant, and as a way of spreading out the metabolism of glucose (Erythroxylum has been shown to relax the gut, and slowing down peristalsis) enabling people to work for longer periods between meals. In addition, it is suggested that it aids body heat conservation in cold environments, by stimulating vasoconstriction. Simple. |
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you don't need to sign your annos, [zen-tom] |
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Sign my annos? Ridiculous. |
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Instead, to a swallowable ampule fashioned from some reasonably sturdy sugar glass, attach a smooth flexible pipe similar to those used for colon/endoscopy, this pipe being the means by which air - or more specifically oxygen - can get to the ampule, which will, before be filled with or brandy (or, for those favouring absolute temperance, kindling) whereupon the ampule (and with it, the pipe) is swallowed, where it will work its way to the cold gut of the patient, a warming effect of the fire being felt not just on the way down but actually *inside the tumbly* until such time as the sugarglass ampule disintegrates, or water is poured down the tube, extinguishing the flame. The user can either choose to have the tube withdrawn, or keep it in place in the hope of recreating a human-form "Elephants on a Rope" (under strict disinfecting medical supervision) at some as yet unspecified juncture. There. |
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Many years ago, some folks sold an all-natural foot-warming powder made of "capsicum, zingiber and brassica seeds". I figured out that meant chile peppers, ginger and cabbage, IIRC. Inspired by that, I mixed up some cayenne, mustard and cocoa powders, put that in gelatin capsules and thought I had a morning pick-me-up. I could feel it when the capsules dissolved, and not always in a good way. |
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Again, it could be the case that an upright gait just happens to be more attractive (going on my own preferences here), supporting the contention that sexual selection is the predominating factor in its (and other phenotypical) adoptions within our (and other) species. |
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Quite what might have originally made these things more attractive is an interesting question. |
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Possibly these things are linked directly with survival and those more capable would have tended to be healthier (and therefore sexier) than those without. It might not have taken long before the default link between health and attractiveness became entangled with the link between larger cranial size, upright gait, smooth skin, the ability to use language, kindness, nice hair (among numerous other attributes) and overall attractiveness. |
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glass of Black Bush (by Bushmills - the
oldest distillery in the world) - works
wonders on a cold day |
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The first problem is going to be finding a reaction that is sufficiently exothermic that the amount of stuff we can pack into a pill will give off the necessary heat. Obviously, the reaction should have no toxic or gaseous products. We might call this the "thermodynamic" part of the problem. |
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To give an idea of how much heat we need, let's adopt drinking a cup of hot tea as a model system. An 8 oz cup of hot tea at a "comfortable drinking temperature" of 65C contains 8 oz = 237 mL of water at 65 C - 37 C = 28 C above body temperature. The heat required to elevate 237 mL of water by 28 C is (237mL)(28C)(1 cal/CmL) = 6636 calories, or about 7 Kcal. |
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Dry calcium chloride (CaCl2) gives off about 18 Kcal/mol when dissolved in water. Dividing the required heat by the heat of solution of CaCl2 gives us (7 Kcal)/(18 Kcal/mol) = 0.39 moles of CaCl2 that we must dissolve to give off 7 Kcal. Unfortunately, the molar mass of CaCl2 is 111 g/mol, so 0.39 moles of it weighs 43 grams! With a density for CaCl2 of 2.15 g/mL, we're left with 20 mL of dry salt that we must consume. Even though the solution products are the harmless and physiologically ubiquitous ions Ca2+ and Cl-, the consumption of this much salt is bound to produce a strongly hypertonic solution in the gut, which will almost certainly cause dehydration and diahhrea. |
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A better candidate is calcium oxide (CaO), also known as quicklime. Although the hydration of calcium oxide is slightly less exothermic than that of calcium chloride at 15.5 Kcal/mol, it also has a significantly lower molar mass of 55 g/mol, meaning we can pack more reactivity into the same mass. It has higher density, too. What's more, besides heat, hydration of calcium oxide produces calcium hydroxide (CaOH2), a medium-strong base that will react exothermically with bile acid (HCl) to give off even more heat, water, and *hydrolyzed* calcium chloride (i.e. we're not going to get any more heat out of CaCl2 at this point). Assuming that the biggest horse-pill we can swallow is 3 mL, multiplying by CaO's density of 3.35 g/mL gives us about 10g of CaO that we can reasonably ingest in a single pill. 10g CaO is 0.18 moles, so the hydration step alone should produce (0.18 moles)(15.5 Kcal/mol) = 2.8 Kcal. What's more, each mole of Ca(OH)2 is 2-normal in hydroxide, so we end up with 0.36 moles of base. Acid neutralization of hydroxide liberates 13.7 Kcal/mol as a rule, so we can expect an additional (0.36 mol)(13.7 Kcal/mol) = 4.9 Kcal from the acid-base chemistry. Summing contributions from hydration and neutralization of CaO gives us 2.8 Kcal + 4.9 Kcal = 7.7 Kcal given off by our 10g quicklime pill. From a strictly thermodynamic point of view, we could actually afford to make our horse-pill a bit smaller. Incidentally, the hydration of quicklime is, I believe, the same reaction that is used to heat MREs. |
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So it looks like we've solved the first part of the problem. We've found a reaction with the necessary energy density that is without toxic or gaseous byproducts. We're still basically eating a salt pill and have to contend with the expected consequences of that, but we haven't produced any particular substance that's going to poison us. The problem now is one of kinetics, i.e. it has to do with how fast things happen. The hydration and neutralization of quicklime in the stomach are going to happen lickety-split fast, and so we're essentially going to get all 7 Kcal dumped into the gut over the course of a few seconds. This will probably produce sufficient local heating to generate steam. What we need is a sustained release (SR) formulation for our pill that will prevent all of it from reacting at once. |
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More insight can be had from our model system. Although I've never tried it myself, my guess is that, while 65C may be a comfortable "sipping" temperature for hot tea, a person who took a whole cup at that temperature and slammed it down his or her throat all at once, which is approximately the same effect our pill would have, wouldn't be very happy or very comfortable. This, of course, is not how people drink hot beverages. It takes minutes to drink a cup of hot tea, during which time it probably cools considerably. To get a realistic idea of how much heat we actually absorb from a cup of hot tea, and how long it takes us to do it, it would be necessary to measure the temperature time-course of a real cup of tea as it is being consumed and integrate to get the area under the curve. This would not be a difficult experiment. Once we knew the absolute heat absorbed from a real hot beverage, we could adjust the absolute energy goal for our pill accordingly. More importantly, once we knew how long it takes to comfortably drink that beverage, we'd know the time-course over which our pill was expected to give off its energy. This information, in turn, would determine the composition of our SR formulation. |
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SR formulation entails a slowly-dissolving matrix which releases the active ingredient into the gut at a measured rate. This matrix, unfortunately, is going to add mass and volume to an already ungainly pill. Because we don't need a particularly long-lasting SR formulation, however, it's probably possible to keep the volume gain as low as 100%, i.e. we can probably safely assume that SR formulation will no more than double the volume of the pill. If we then half our target heat, so that one pill equals about half-a-cup of tea, we've both solved the pill-size problem and provided a more versatile dosing system: One pill for light warmth, two for full strength, and three for extra strength. |
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This is an interesting inquiry both because it is fairly easy to model and because it suggests a couple of simple experiments. The first, mentioned above, involves measuring the real heat absorbed by a real body from a real cup of hot tea, and the second, readily implied, is to pack 10g of quicklime into one or more gelcaps, dump them in an unstirred container of 0.1N HCl, and see what happens to the temperature and other observables. |
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// Whiskey also has a well-known mind-numbing, sense-dulling effect. // [21_quest] |
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Sigh. Yes, that it does... <smacks dry lips> |
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[phlish] // Oh, and antelope can't carry canteens either, which also helps. // Or rifles. |
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How about wrapping a small coil (insulated of course) around a nice fat artery and giving it a little juice from a battery? Warm the blood as it leaves the heart and you should be all good now. Its kinda like a pipe warmer for your body. |
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apparently (so says an article in the New Scientist) there is a theory that the hair on our heads is only there to be cut and groomed. Chimps and other primates spend hours grooming, it forms social bonds. Hair is there to display our social status. |
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I think that makes a lot of sense. Different socal circles have different hair styles (especially within music) and the social outcasts (hobos, eccentric mad scientists etc...) stereotypically have messy/ungroomed hair. |
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Anyway, how about a pill that fills your insides with hair?! |
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Perhaps some kind of microbe that creates heat as it goes about its business. It would have to be kept in check somehow to makesure it doesnt mess up the delicate balance of your innards and there would have to be some way of stopping it when you need to cool down. |
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<edit> Then again, don't all warm blooded animals naturally keep their innards warm anyway? |
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Try exorcizing after drinking some hot caffienated tea, wassobi, liqoure, hot salsa, or jalapenio peppers. |
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Any mild virus would do the trick. |
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