Can a goat run as fast as a giraffe?
Did you know that your small bowel is approx. the size of a giraffe (5-6 m) and is longer than the so called “large” bowel (~ 1.5 m)? At that length it manages to absorb most of the nutrients from the food and drink you eat every day. With that length, it is the part of your digestive system responsible for the majority of nutrient absorption from the food and drink you ingest every day.
Collage by KNAUER
Imagine this crucial organ is reduced to the size of a Llama (~ 1.4 m) or even of a goat (~ 0.6 m). What would be the effect on your well-being?
The medical term for this pathological condition is Short Bowel Syndrome (SBS). In most cases it´s the result of surgical intervention and its incidence has doubled in the last 40 years. Symptoms of the SBS are abdominal cramps and diarrhea. Due to consequent dehydration and malnutrition, it can have severe effects on skin and bone structure and on the overall physical and mental health condition in general.
Next to surgical treatment, which aims to regain some of the original bowel length, a major approach to improving patient health is a nutrition therapy.
How can osmometry help?
With SBS, drinking half a liter of liquid can at worst result in a net loss of one liter of water. One reason for this is the drastically reduced capacity for water resorption of the truncated small intestine. The other reason are osmotic driving forces, which - depending on the composition of the drink – can cause drainage of water from the cells into the intestine.
Crucial for this process is the osmolality of a solution, which is a measure of the solved particle in it. Blood, as well as many other body fluids, has an osmolality of 275 - 295 mOsmol/kg and is defined to be isotonic.
If a beverage is rich in sugar or other supplements its concentration of solved particles is higher than the one of body fluids – it is hypertonic. As physics tends to an equilibrium, water diffuses into the higher concentrated intestinal fluid which equates to water loss. Hence, patients with SBS often suffer from a sensation of thirst, although, or more correctly, because they drink a lot. Therefore, establishing optimal conditions for absorption is key.
At this point osmometry comes into play, as it determines the osmolality of a solution, and helps to assess if it´s hyper- hypo or isotonic. The latter being ideal for liquid transfer and electrolyte resorption from the intestinal fluid.
Photo by T. Myrach
Make your Favorite Drink Isotonic!
In January 2024 “Die chronischen Experten” (engl. The Chronic Experts) contacted KNAUER with a request for help. They are an Austrian interest group that passionately tries to improve the life of SBS patients. Their aim was to make a bottle designed as a kind of measuring cup to provide a tool allowing for easy dilution of commercial beverages.
The idea: fill the bottle with your desired drink up to a mark and fill it up with tap water to dilute it to isotonic concentration.
This project was named MyFDI (Make your Favorite Drink Isotonic) and as simple as the idea was, it required data for numerous drinks regarding their osmolality and their dilution factor. As this information didn´t exist they asked us to help them generate the data. We were immediately enthusiastic about the idea to improve the quality of life of SBS patients and therefore happy to provide them our freezing point osmometer K-7400S along with training on how to use it.
The MyFDI bottle is a simple as effective tool that helps to improve fluid intake and thereby general health of SBS patients. - Prof. M. Nagl
The team around Prof. Manfred Nagl measured more than 40 commercially available beverages and determined for each the appropriate dilution to get an isotonic drink. Within some months they not only gathered all the data needed, but also found additional partners to realize the brilliant idea of the bottle, which is available on their website.
We ourselves also got a sample of the bottle
and tried some beverages. Despite the dilution they are still tasty and we hope that it will help many people to improve their daily life.
Please contact us, if you also have a project where KNAUER might able to support. #ScienceWithPassion
For more information on the Short Bowel Syndrome and the work of Die Chronischen Experten, please visit their website: https://www.chronisch.at/
For more information about osmometry please visit our website.
For further information on this topic, please contact our author: Dr. Till Myrach, myrach@knauer.net