Effect of long-term long-distance hiking on health

"Extended Aqua Mira use: I'm certainly no expert here, but my recollection is that chlorine dioxide is what's used in city water systems — no?"

I don't believe that chlorine dioxide treatment of public water supplies is all that common. I think that the generic forms of chlorination are cheaper and easier to manage. Chlorine dioxide treatment and chlorination are actually quite different.

Chlorine dioxide is one popular choice for backpackers simply because of its portability and stability (before mixing).

–B.G.–

Hoping this doesn't turn into a major thread drift issue, but …

"I don't believe that chlorine dioxide treatment of public water supplies is all that common. I think that the generic forms of chlorination are cheaper and easier to manage. Chlorine dioxide treatment and chlorination are actually quite different."

I imagine that everyone agrees on the latter statement (that use of Chlorine Dioxide is not the same as chlorination), non-issue I believe.

But your comment made me curious, and in fact a quick web search with text like "chlorine dioxide city water supply" turns up lots of links. I don't know how common it is, but some cities definitely are using chlorine dioxide for water treatment; here's a somewhat random example:
http://www.mesaaz.gov/water/chlorine_dioxide.aspx

I think I'll keep on with Aqua Mira. For me, at least, there are additional benefits including weight, and knowing that with sufficient dose and treatment time it kills everything. And (back to original topic) I've not seen any clear data suggesting that long term use is dangerous.

If anyone is interested in an update regarding the problems I've faced since walking across the United States last year (self-diagnosed piriformis syndrome), here ya go:

I think it's been five months since I first posted here (nine months since my difficulties began), and it's still hard for me to walk. At times I've been really focused on stretching and staying well-hydrated, but at other times I've kind of slacked off. I've felt a gradual change throughout these last five months, which feels like improvement, yet it's still really hard for me to walk, and I can't run or jog. Even though I feel definite improvment in some ways, sometimes I think I've declined in other ways. Also, people have told me I look like I have more trouble walking now than I did five months ago.

One major improvement has been in my feet. For several months my feet were cold, purple, and numb. And they weren't just cold; they were uncomfortably cold. So cold that I regularly had to soak them in about 130-degree water. Even after soaking them in hot water for half an hour or longer, they still wouldn't feel warm. At one point my feet were also covered with small raised white spots that looked almost like warts, which I could rub off without any pain. (I once googled some of the characteristics and found a name for this condition, but I can't remember what it's called. It was the least of my concerns at the time.)

For the last couple weeks I've been pretty serious about stretching several times a day, as well as staying hydrated. I've also been using a swimming pool as tool to help me incorporate more lateral movement into my gait. I can already feel a difference in my feet, which are starting to feel close to normal. (It's been at least a few months since my feet felt cold.) However, my hip sockets still feel destroyed.

This has been so hard. I can't do any physical labor, and just being out in public is really difficult because people can't tell how hard it is for me to get where I'm going without tripping or losing my balance and running into them. To them I look very able-bodied, so they don't give me the room I need to avoid running into them awkwardly. Every step is an adventure. Even taking a shower wipes me out. (I tend to take long, hot showers, though, so that's part of it.)

As frustrating and difficult as this has been, I still feel like I might be one minor adjustment from walking normal again. In fact, earlier this week I started thinking about doing a much longer walk than the one I did last year. I'm now thinking about doing a 48-state walk, which would be around 10,000 miles. If I can walk remotely normal by the end of next month, I'm gonna hitchhike to Maine and start this two-year walk.

Even with as much as I think I've learned about what's going on with my legs, there's one thing that really puzzles me: Why didn't this problem present itself during the walk? I was fine until a couple weeks after finishing the seven-month walk. In fact, I felt so good toward the end that I was doing 22 miles a day for the last month. It hurt like hell, of course, but I didn't have any trouble doing that kind of mileage. ?????

Ryan, your symptoms sound very much to me like chronic Lyme disease.
I had some foot pain for a few months after my PCT thru but since then nothing. The only other hikers I met that had long lasting pain had Lyme disease.

Thank you. I'm gonna look into that right now.

A lot of responses to this thread seem to assume that humans have evolved to live long lives and that modern civilization has interfered with this trend. This is simply wishful thinking.

During human evolution, reaching old age was largely a matter of luck, not diet or exercise or pure thought. Those who were able to avoid disease, predators, genetic flaws, male combat, childbirth death, and starving to death may have lived to old age. But, old age then was nearer 40 than 80 and has been for most of the evolution of humanity. That is not to say that some humans did not live to be old and wise but these individuals were the exception rather than the rule.

Simply put, old age, per se, does not confer any evolutionary advantage to the continuation of the species. Sure, mature wisdom might have contributed something to survival of the population but age does not necessarily equal wisdom. And, a major premise of evolutionary ecology is that evolution acts on populations, not individuals.

Discussions of whether humans evolved to eat vegetables or fish or whatever, theories of how far our ancestors walked each day and notions of how all this made for long and healthy lives ignores the fact that most humans, over evolutionary time, simply did not live very long. Certainly most did not live long enough for joint and connective tissue damage to become an issue.

OTOH, there's been some recent articles on long-term sitting being hazardous to human health too (in terms of sedentary lifestyles), if one cares to Google. The Doritos lift and 3-liter Pepsi chug does not count as exercise.

Actually, old age does confer an evolutionary advantage for humans in that child-rearing takes a lot of work and a lot of time and also interferes with the productivity of the parent. A grandparent is in a position to be very helpful, and is in a position to actually care enough to help.

I appreciate the tip regarding Lyme Disease, but I'm almost positive I don't have that. Right after my most recent post, I started using a tennis ball to massage my piriformis muscles, and it seems to be making a huge difference.

I left out a lot of details in my original posts, including the fact that I probably had serious piriformis issues before I even began my coast-to-coast walk. I just didn't know it until the last few days. Now that I can feel improvement, I can connect a lot of new dots, and now I realize this condition was building for a long time before and during my walk.

Going through what I've been going through for so long is probably a blessing in disguise. Sometimes you just have to learn things the hard way. If I am finally on the right path, as it seems, you can bet I'll never have to go through this again because now I know how important my butt muscles are. Now I know how important my hips are, and how the piriformis muscles allow the hips to function. Now I know how to spot potential problems with these muscles. Now I know how to keep these muscles in ideal condition.

I'll let y'all know if this tennis ball therapy continues helping me walk more like I used to walk. Thanks, everyone, for your help.

pretty good point. I was a carpenter before I went in the army. I was an infantryman in the army. Spent 20 years or so carrying loads around, running around, hiking all day every day.
Now I got the government to send me to college, grad school too, and have a nice cushy office job. My back hurts every day. Knees too.
Is it from running around every mountain range on the planet carrying 200 pounds of water, food, and machine gun ammo?
or is it from sitting in a chair?
Im not sure.