Effect of water load in human body systems upon tolerance to +Gz acceleration

A possible improvement of +Gz acceleration tolerance, obtained in human subjects through administering specific volumes of water, viz. 7, 14 and 21 ml/kg body weight, to be drunk immediately before centrifuge examination in order to increase the volume of plasma, thus increasing the circulating blood volume, was the starting-point for this work. Two hundred healthy male subjects, aged 19.9 +/- 0.9, were classified in 4 main groups and 2 supplementary groups for examination. It was found that the water intake in volumes of 14 ml/kg body weight produced a significant mean increase in the acceleration tolerance of 0.8 G, and that of 21 ml/kg body weight improved acceleration tolerance by 1.1 G on the average. The increase tolerance to acceleration was maintained throughout a period of about 30 minutes (for 14 ml/kg body weight) up to approximately 50 minutes (for 21 ml/kg body weight). The favourable effect of water load in the body systems upon +Gz acceleration tolerance was probably due to the increase of plasma volume (by 5.24% and 6.98% for 14 and 21 ml/kg body weight, respectively).