Here’s the secret I’m keeping from my wife
With the weather heating up in Beijing, my wife and I were happy to find a swimming pool not far from home. But it wasn’t just the weather. Her heart’s desire for years has been to learn how to swim.
Good hubby that I am, I wanted to help.
Learning to swim is a bit scary for anyone, regardless of age. My wife, who is in her 50s, was no exception. In the beginning, she thrashed around like a wet chicken and gulped water like a beer-swigging sailor on shore leave.
I’m sympathetic, since she has low body fat and — unlike me — sinks like a stone. (In my youth I, too sank like a stone, but over the years I’ve become more … shall we say … buoyant.) But mostly her problem was panic.
Two lessons from a Chinese instructor settled her down. On the deck, she practiced proper kicking technique: Crouch, spread, pull together. Crouch, spread, pull together. In the water, the instructor calmly taught her how to put her face down — and breathe only after coming out. The lessons did wonders.
After that, I got her to swim underwater. Now she can breaststroke the length of the pool, kicking and breathing rhythmically, and only occasionally reverting to the chicken thrash.
I have now pronounced her pool-safe. The amount of water she has ingested has decreased markedly over the past two weeks.
But it’s the swallowing that gets a swimmer to thinking: What’s in this stuff ?
Swimming pool water has a distinctive odor, a chemical byproduct of chlorine interacting with body oils, sweat and urine. Yes, urine. Some bad-mannered people actually pee in pools around the world.
The amount of pee has been difficult to measure until now. Li Xingfang of the University of Alberta, Canada, explained in February how her team did it. Instead of trying to measure pee directly, they measured the level of an artificial sweetener — acesulfame potassium, or Ace-K — which is carried in most people’s urine, including in China. It’s found in many foods, such as yogurt. It’s not metabolized. In other words, it goes right through you, thereby providing a urine yardstick.
Li’s team collected water samples from public pools, hotel hot tubs and recreation venues and tested for Ace-K. Result: An 833-cubic-meter pool contains about 0.08 cubic meters of pee.
Other products of the body pose a problem, too. Li advises a one-minute shower before entering a pool to remove much of the perspiration residue and oils that might react with chlorine to form the harmful byproducts.
When I was a kid — long before the advent of artificial sweeteners — you’d get thrown out if you didn’t shower first, but at the Beijing pool, I notice that many swimmers don’t bother. Instead, they sit on the edge of the pool and perform a little ritual of splashing water on their bodies before plunging in. For them, it’s literally bathing.
I want my wife to continue swimming, so I’m not telling her any of this.