Syrup in the vains

This is something I thought about for the first time this week (Back in October). It should be a simple calculation. Amount of blood times blood sugar level.



A normal blood sugar level when fasting (Including after just waking up) is 72 to 99mg/dL.

A normal blood sugar level 2 hours after eating would be below 140mg/dL.


The amount of blood in the body normally accounts for around 10% of the body weight. 


Given that blood is mainly water its density won’t be far off that of water so it stands to reason that the average 70kg human will have about 7 litres of blood.


Multiplying through this gives a waking total blood sugar of 5g and an after lunch blood sugar of 10g.


Since this is the body’s preferred source of energy, it would be interesting to know how long the body can survive on just the sugar in the blood.


Sugar is about 375 cal/ 100g



That means that we have 38 calories of sugar in our blood after lunch and 19 after fasting.

Assuming a 2000 cal daily energy use the body requires about 1.4 calories/minute. (This happens to be about 100w interestingly enough)


That means that the body has about 13.5 minutes to just under half an hour.



 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Some thoughts on solving transcendental equations

Image
My thinking here is that although transcendental equations don’t have algebraic answers are there still links between them? That theory is supported by the contour lines in the following  So I wasn’t going to look into this but sometimes I just get captured by the mathematics. I have known for a while that most equations can’t be solved. The unsolvability of most equations leads to transcendental numbers. Numbers which aren’t the result of a solvable algebraic equation like 5x+1=7 or 2x^2=3 but can be computed, at least approximately. These numbers include pi and e. There isn’t a formula for pi or e, we can define them, we can even define them without the use of geometry. As I have found out in my curious investigations both numbers seem to crop up only when calculus is involved. e is the solution to the problem of The functions that produce these two have always seemed arbitrary to me. Why is it the case that when we don’t know the answer to we just say, the answer is the answer? We
Read more

Structural engineering with cardboard

Image
Moving into a new flat I have ended up with a lot of cardboard and have actually struggled to get it to all be taken away. I then saw this Kickstarter on hacker news which introduced me to the idea that I could perhaps use the cardboard I had been throwing away the whole time. I have been toying with some ideas for building myself a robot, or at least a robot arm but they seem to be just ludicrously expensive and still not able to lift much weight. One of the problems with the advancement of robotics is that although processing power has come down in price at a rate that no other product ever has, the cost of actuators (The motion inducing components like motors) has remained largely the same. I want to explore an idea I have for using cheaper motors in a robotic arm in another post though. The problem I want to look at here is the possibility of being able to use cardboard, a material which can almost be considered to have a negative price, as the structure to the robot. I love the
Read more