Do Animals Lose Water In Low Pressure Weather?
I feel I do and I wrote a post called My Strange Skin, which is explained by water being driven out of my body.
So I asked Dr. Google, the question in the title of this post and got this answer.
Yes, animals can lose more water in low-pressure weather conditions. Lower atmospheric pressure, often associated with unstable weather, can increase water loss through evaporation and other physiological processes.
Here’s why:
Low pressure often means lower relative humidity, which increases the vapor pressure deficit between the animal’s body and the environment. This difference in water vapor concentration drives more water to evaporate from the animal’s body, particularly through the skin.
That’s all very sound physics.
Last night, I was woken by an intense strange itch in the sole of my right foot.
- As I often do, I rubbed the itch on the a genuine Indian rug I have on the floor by my bed, but it didn’t work.
- So I had to get up and apply a dollop of Udrate cream and rub it in.
About, half-an-hour later I got back to sleep.
Today, I got a similar intense itch in the sole of my left foot. Again it was stopped by a dollop of cream rubbed in. But this time it was Body Shop’s Hemp Foot Protector.
Does water find it easier to get out through the soles of my feet?
The Story Of An O-Ring
I have a very unusual skin, as is partly shown by these pictures.
Note.
- There is a scar on the back of my left hand, where I cut it on the glass bathroom door in my bedroom.
- But with skillful gluing at the Royal London hospital and TLC and stern words from the practice nurse at my GP’s it healed perfectly.
- If I give blood samples or have an injection, I don’t need a plaster.
- My left foot is a deeper shade of red to the right. No-one has given me a reason for this.
- My previous now-retired GP, always took his own blood samples, when he needed them and had smiles all over his face. Perhaps, he was proving to himself, that it was happening?
- I wrote about my skin before in My Strange Skin, in 2020.
- One therapist said unusually for someone, who had a left-sided stroke, that my left leg is the stronger.
As my ancestry is part-Jewish and part-Huguenot could it just be that only the strongest genes survived from their poor living conditions my ancestors endured in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries?
My Cardiologist And His Wife, Have Suggested I Use An Emollient In My Bath
I am now adding Oilatum Emollient to my bath water, which I get delivered by Ocado.
It is not cheap, but my feet are now more made for walking.
I put three cap-fulls in a bath and lie in it for about 10-20 minutes.
An O-Ring Failure On Bad Friday
A rubber O-ring sitting in a groove on the plug, should keep the water in the bath, but as this picture shows the O-ring had seen better days.
The picture of the new O-ring shows how it should look on the plug.
On Bad Friday, the O-ring finally gave up and any water put in the bath, went straight down the drain.
A Fruitless Bad Friday
Internet searches proved fruitless in my search for a shop that was open on Bad Friday.
So I vowed to try again today.
Searching For cp Hart At Waterloo
cp Hart, from whom I bought the original bath, appeared to be open at Waterloo, so after breakfast on Moorgate, I made my way to look for the branch of cp Hart at Waterloo.
Note.
- Why does South London and its trains have to be covered in graffiti?
- Most of it, is not even good graffiti.
- In my view, the Bakerloo Line should not get new trains, until the graffiti has stopped.
- I wandered round Waterloo for about ninety minutes before I found cp Hart, with the help of two police constables.
- And when I finally found cp Hart, they didn’t do spares.
- I tripped over the uneven pavement in the last picture. But as I usually do, I retained my balance and didn’t fall. Is that all the B12 I take for coeliac disease?
My mother always used to say, that you shouldn’t go to South London without a posse.
Eventually, I had a coffee in Costa and took the 76 bus home.
Success At Last!
To get home on a 76 bus, I have to change in De Beauvoir Town and whilst I waited for the 141 bus to take me home, I checked out the local builders merchants.
The owner was his usual self and fitted my plug with a free new O-ring.
I was now able to have a bath.
And watch the snooker.
I can certainly recommend a television in your bathroom.
Note the vertical handrail, that allows me to step easily in and out of the bath.
Silvertown Tunnel Works From The Cable Car – 8th January 2025
I took the pictures in Silvertown Tunnel Works – 1st January 2025 from the Docklands Light Railway.
I took these pictures from the Emirates Air Line or whatever it is called today.
Heights And Me
I find a ride on the Cable Car to be very refreshing.
I also used to like being at height in an unpressurised light aircraft.
Is this unusual? A doctor, who has appeared in mountaineering documentaries on the BBC thinks so, but then doctors have a good laugh about my skin, which doesn’t seem to need a plaster after a blood test or injection.
An Incident In My Childhood
I must have been about five or six.
All I can remember, is that she found me very red all over, grabbed me and took me upstairs where she put me in a bath.
I don’t think, she called the doctor.
I now wonder, if the incident was when a low-pressure went over and it drained the water out of my body.
Last night, there was rain in the night, and I’ve woken up with a pain in my hip. I shall have a bath soon.
Strangely, none of my three boys seemed to suffer similar incidents. So perhaps, they don’t have my strange leaky skin?
Last Night, I Had A Very Bad Night’s Sleep
I usually sleep very well. In fact like my father, if I need a nap, I can even take it on a hard upright chair.
He would have a nap like this every day in his printworks. It also looks like my 53 year old middle son has this ability to take a quick nap.
Last night, I slept very badly and woke about two, with a pain in my hip.
I nearly phoned 111, as I felt so rough. Luckily I didn’t!
I didn’t get much more sleep and eventually had perhaps a nap of an hour or so, before I gave up and got out of bed to do a few puzzles on the Internet.
After a large mug of tea, the pain in my hip receded.
My now-retired GP, reckoned I suffered when the atmospheric pressure was low.
So, did an area of low pressure pass through last night and suck water out of my body?
After a good bath, I certainly feel better now, with no pain in my hip.
In My Strange Skin, I describe an incident, where weather sucked water out of my body!
It’s Now Ten O’Clock
I’ve survived the day and managed to take a train to Reading and back.
I had intended to take pictures in Oxford, but when I got to Reading, it was raining hard and I turned back.
Is There A Research Dermatologist Out There?
Consider.
- I have mused about my skin before in My Strange Skin.
- I have been feeling a bit odd because of Babet.
- I have had problems with my left humerus for a few days now and my left hand has not been very co-operative.
- Yesterday, I kept dropping my bag for a start.
- Last night, I needed to go to the loo in the middle of the night. I could hardly walk, because of pain in my right lower leg.
- But I’d forgotten to put the magic Udrate on my feet, before I went to bed. It does seem to stop the water leaking out of my skin.
This picture shows my left hand.
I damaged it badly in a fall, where I took the back off on the edge of a glass door. But with some glue from the Royal London and some TLC from the practice nurse, there are no scars. Surely, it shouldn’t mend that well.
As my ancestors include both Jews and Huguenots, did all those centuries in poor living conditions ghetto-harden my skin?
I hate mysteries and I suspect some of my questions could be answered by an experienced dermatologist.
My Strange Skin
As a coeliac, a stroke survivor on Warfarin and a lab rat for a medical research centre, I’ve had my blood taken many times in the last ten years. I also have several injections a year for vitamin B12 and a yearly one for flu.
I never need a plaster, as despite being on Warfarin, once the needle is taken out, the skin seems to shut the hole tight.
On the other hand on a typical night, I’ll lose just over a kilo in weight, whilst I sleep. I once spoke to a sleep expert on the radio and they said that was normal.
But the funniest thing that happened, was one day not unlike today for weather with rain about and not cold, I fell asleep on the living room floor in my underwear.
About half-an-hour later, I awoke and thought for a moment, that I’d gone blind, as I couldn’t see a thing.
I then realised that the room was full of water vapour, as if I’d left the kettle on the stove. But I have an automatic kettle and there was nothing on the stove.
So where had all the water vapour come from?
There was only one place! It had leaked from my skin and the temperature and pressure, were just right for the fog to form.
My skin is often very dry and I usually start the day with a deep bath, when I put my head under the water and irrigate my dry eyes, which an eye surgeon, once described as the driest he’d seen.
My Unusual Body
I say unusual, but I suspect there are others out there with similar problems to me.
I was delivered in 1947, by the almost exotically-named; Dr. Egerton White, who was the family GP. He had all the expected characteristics of a three-piece suit, a corporation, a long watch chain and the obligatory Rover car. He also had a rather unusual blotchy skin, that leads me to think he was probably of mixed race.
I was small in stature, not the healthiest of children and was always going to see him and his partner, a Doctor Curley!
- At times, I would cough my guts out for hours on end.
- Later I remember my mother saying to my future wife, that I had difficulty eating as a baby, and I would fall asleep as she fed me.
- Often I would spend three or four months away from school and I can remember spending hours with my head over a large jug of hot Friar’s Balsam.
- At one point, someone said it could be the lead in the paint in our house, so my father burnt it all off and replaced it.
- My mother used to make gallons of home-made lemonade according to one of Mrs. Beeton’s recipes, which must have helped, when I drunk it.
- Doctors White and Curley were puzzled and at one point prescribed the new-fangled drug penicillin.
- It should be remembered that in the 1950s, even in leafy Southgate, where we lived, the air was thick with the pollution from coal fires for a lot of the year.
In the end, one thing that helped was a nasal spray cooked-up by a pharmacist called Halliday. I can still smell it and suspect it was little more than the base chemical still used in some nasal sprays available from pharmacies.
Although my poor health persisted at times, I still managed to pass the 11-Plus and get to Minchenden Grammar School.
But I remember in the first year, I had virtually a term away.
From about ten or eleven, my health gradually improved.
I can suggest these reasons.
- Getting older helped in some way.
- I was exercising a lot more by cycling around, although it was up a hill to get home.
- My parents had bought a house in Felixstowe and we would spend weekends there. Although, as I got older I hated being away from my friends with little to do, so I tended to stay in and read.
In the 1960s, my health seemed to improve dramatically, when I spent three years at Liverpool University and a year afterwards working for ICI at Runcorn.
Liverpool is a Maritime City and in those days, the air was much better than London.
But I also got married in 1968 and I can never remember serious boughts of coughing, sneezing and breathing difficulties in the time Celia was alive.
Although, she did often say that before I went to sleep, I would always sneeze three times and sometimes she would even count them.
She also regularly said, that my sneezes were rather violent at times. They still are!
In the late nineties, I was diagnosed as a coeliac. Regularly, I’d go to the GP around the turn of the year with a general run-down feeling.
Nothing specific, but then an elderly locum decided I ought to have a blood test, which would be the first of my life!
The result was that I was very low in vitamin B12. As a series of injections didn’t improve the situation, I was sent to Addenbrooke’s Hospital for tests.
I was diagnosed as a coeliac, initially on a blood test and then by two endoscopies. Note that Addenbrooke’s used to do them without anaesthetic, as it means the patient can easily get into a better position and doesn’t break teeth. It also means that the hospital doesn’t have to provide as many beds for recovery. Certainly, I’ve had worse experiences with highly-capable dentists!
I thought this was the end of my health problems.
It certainly seemed to be, except for occasional breathing difficulties early in the year. I can remember having difficulty climbing Table Mountain.
My stroke was brought on by atrial fibrillation three years after Celia died.
It happened in Hong Kong and before it happened in the restaurant of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, I had had a walk and remember how well the air felt early in the morning in the City.
The doctors said I had had a serious stroke and I was kept in hospital for twelve weeks on the 29th floor of a hospital with the sun streaming through the windows.
I remember one incident, where I was accused of throwing my water away and not drinking enough, as I wasn’t urinating. But I was drinking, so they checked my waterworks thoroughly and put in a catheter. Nothing improved. Thankfully, eventually they gave up!
So where was all that water going?
Another curious thing in Hong Kong was that their automatic blood pressure machines sometimes didn’t work well on me in the morning. So they resorted to traditional devices and a stethoscope. Strangely, these blood pressure machines never fail these days.
After the stroke, I was put on long-term Warfarin and I have been told several times, that I if I get the dose right, I won’t have another stroke.
Now moved to London, I possibly made the mistake of moving to a house, which gets too hot.
One day I collapsed, panicked as I thought it was another stroke.
It wasn’t and UCLH thought that I needed to be put on Ramipril, Bisoprolol Fumarate and Spirolactone.
Since then another cardiologist has dropped the Spirolactone.
As I said my body is unusual in strange ways.
- If I have an injection or give a blood sample, I don’t bleed afterwards or need a plaster. With a new nurse, it often causes a bit of a laugh!
- My nose seems to be permanently blocked and I rarely am able to blow it properly.
- My feet don’t have any hard skin, which is probably unusual for my age.
- I used to suffer from plantar fasciitis, which seems to have been partly cured by the Body Shop’s hemp foot protector.
- I drink a large amount of fluids, with probably six mugs of tea and a litre of lemonade or beer every day.
- I always have a mug of decaffinated tea before I go to bed.
- I often have half-an-hour’s sleep in the middle of the day. As did my father!
- My eyes are very dry and I have a bath most mornings, where I put my head under the water and open my eyes.
Perhaps, the strangest incident was when I went to sleep on the floor after a lot of tea, with the window open.
I woke up to find I couldn’t see! There was nothing wrong with me, but my large living room was full of steam, like you’d get if you leave the kettle on.
I came to the conclusion after that incident, that the only place the water could have come, was through my skin.
This was also suggested by a nurse, who said he’d got leaky skin.
As someone, who understands physics, could this leaky skin be the cause of my problems?
And do the drugs make it worse?
My Grandfather
He died at forty, long before I was born.
He was an alcoholic, who eventually died of pneumonia.
Could his drinking like mine, have started because of a need for fluids?
I used to drink a lot of beer until I was about twenty-four, but my father had suffered so badly emotionally because of the death of his father, that he had instilled the right attitude to drink deep in my mind.
Conclusion
This has been a bit of a ramble!
The Anonymous Widower 