Journal Entry #2

So far with my project, I've been finding really helpful resources that have contributed to the work I've been doing on engineering my salt tablet. I've already procured some NUUN electrolyte tablets to work with, but I'm holding out on testing with them until I can get a better grip on what I'm testing for. 

With regard to my flow chart, Atul Gawande's book, The Checklist Manifesto, has been nothing short of a nostalgic throwback: we read part of his incredible piece last year during my Intro to Medical Sciences class. In my opinion, I think Gawande does a fantastic job of covering a wide variety of fields, not just those in medicine, where checklists have made a large improvement to the working environment, the safety, and the overall final outcome for the customers/patients. While there haven't ever been checklists made to mediate the gender bias that exists in medicine, I think The Checklist Manifesto is helpful for me to see how these resources are created and implemented, such that I can model the same plan for my flowchart.

Including Gawande's book, I've been looking into the following sources:

From my resources, I have a couple key takeaways that are critical in my learning as I progress through my project: 

• Glucose-based oral rehydration solutions are far more effective at improving orthostatic intolernace, compared to simply saline or salt-based oral rehydration solutions. 
• This is important for me to take into consideration as I'm making my salt tablets because this means that I should look to making my salt tablets glucose-based so that I'm maximizing the hydration effects. 

• In most cases, oral rehydration solutions do not need to be taken every day by POTS patients in order to have positively hydrating effects. In fact, according to one of my healthrising.org sources, a 2017 study has shown that an ORS (oral rehydrating solution) taken every "10 days or so for three to six months dramatically improved the symptoms of young women with POTS." 
• For me, this means that I have the option of either engineering a salt tablet that is of the same hydration level, meaning POTS patients wouldn't need to take it as frequently, or I can choose to work with lower doses of potassium chloride, sodium, glucose, etc, and make a less potent hydrating salt tablet. 

• For POTS patients, laying with their heads elevated at night has been shown to improve blood volume by activating cells to produce more blood in the body.
• I'd like to look into this further and perhaps ask Mrs. Peck about it because it seems like this is a key detail to trying to solve hypovolemia. 

Looking forward, I'm probably going to start testing on my NUUN tablets next week. Depending on how well those tests go, I'd like to make my own ORS with the ingredients I've been reading about. From there, I'll look to turning that solution into a powder, or a more compact form instead. 

Over the next few weeks, I'd also like to get a rough draft of my flow chart written, and possibly test it out on some "patients" by running mock doctors' appointments with friends and family members of mine.