Dry Diet

DRY DIET, a dietary regimen with a sharply limited intake of fluid, is used for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. Dry diet is employed in studying the functional capacity of the kidneys to determine whether the kidneys have preserved or lost their concentration function. As a therapeutic factor, dry diet has also found wide application in a number of diseases accompanied by edema (acute nephritis) or inflammatory exudation in the tissues (for example, in lung abscesses). In the healthy body, a dry diet causes dehydration, manifested by a drop in diuresis and an increase in the percentage of chlorides and protein in the blood. Under pathological conditions, the effect of a dry diet is expressed much more sharply. However, it can be masked and distorted, on the one hand, by the resolution of edema and, on the other hand, by increased sweating or perspiration associated with a febrile state. In true diabetes insipidus, it is possible to conduct a dry diet for only a few hours, because it is tolerated by patients with great difficulty due to the extreme thirst associated with it. During the experiment with a dry diet, proteinemia in such patients can increase by 12-20% of the initial value. In patients with sharply pronounced edema of cardiac or renal origin, a dry diet entails a significant increase in diuresis, caused by an intensification of water-salt metabolism between the blood and tissues, as well as between the blood and kidneys. In chronic nephritis, especially in the presence of at least partial renal insufficiency, a dry diet must be used with great caution. In such patients with restricted renal concentration function, a dry diet can entail the retention of toxic slag products and phenomena of autointoxication—up to the occurrence of a uremic seizure. Dry diet is an underestimated therapeutic factor in acute lung abscesses accompanied by the discharge of large amounts of sputum (100-500 cm³ and more per day). Dry diet causes a rapid decrease in the amount of secreted sputum, shrinkage of the cavity in the lung tissue; simultaneously, there is a drop in temperature and a decrease in exudative-inflammatory phenomena. A similar effect of dry diet is observed in large, acutely developing exudative processes in serous cavities (pleurisy, pericarditis, etc.). Technique. Complete dry diet can be implemented only during starvation, since any food contains water in a greater or lesser amount (10-98%), therefore the introduction of food even without drinking is only a relative dry diet. Practically, however, nutrition with dry food is characterized by the same results that were noted above for dry diet. The degree of this effect depends on the severity of the case and on the amount of water contained in the food. In cases where the implementation of a dry diet is difficult, recourse is made to a sharp restriction of drinking to 200-400 cm³ per day. Such a dietary regimen is close to a dry diet in its results.

M. Votsis. St'hum lie