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Issue 22, July 15, 2006
Drinking More Water Is Key To Alleviating Some Of Today's
Most Common Diseases and Disorders
by Kelly Joyce Neff
 Everyone knows we should drink water. This may seem obvious.
But could you actually be chronically dehydrated?
Are You
Chronically Dehydrated?
Many people are and never realize it. Contrary to popular belief,
a dry mouth or feeling thirsty is by no means the first sign
of dehydration. Our bodies require at least eight glasses of water
per day more during exercise, illness, and hot weather. People
often think that even if they don't actually drink water, they're
getting enough by drinking coffee, tea, soft drinks, juice, or beer.
The truth is that many of these drinks have a diuretic effect,
encouraging the body to excrete
water through urination,
rather than retaining it.
Your Body, a Grape or a Raisin?
Think about a grape versus a raisin. The one is plump, full, and juicy,
 containing all its natural water. The other is small, dry, and shriveled its water gone. Although a grape in dehydrated condition is still a valuable and nutritious fruit, the
human body when dehydrated does not function at its best and may be at risk for many ailments.
Bodies are 70% Water
The body is composed of about 70 percent water, and water is required for
 many of its essential functions. Water is utilized as a solvent and also provides the means to transport nutrients, hormones and other vital supplies. It's used to produce hydroelectric energy, especially in
the brain. It's essential for maintaining cell structure. Water is also necessary to enable proteins and enzymes to function more efficiently. Chronic
dehydration can lead to a loss or decease in all these functions and may ultimately result in disease or can worsen an existing condition.
Most of the body's water is found within the cells, and the next largest amount is in the fluid surrounding the cells.
If water is not replaced frequently, this surrounding fluid may continue to accumulate waste material and other contaminants. The pumps in your cell membranes may not work as efficiently because allowing dirty water into the cell can cause cellular damage or cell death. You wouldn't bathe in the same bath water without first cleaning the tub and adding fresh water. Why would you allow your cells to be surrounded by an accumulation of waste material?
Begin the Begun - Water!
Life on this planet began in water; even the developing fetus is surrounded by water. When the body is deprived of water, a water rationing system takes effect. Histamine, a neurotransmitter, becomes active and
 redistributes water throughout the body. The order of circulatory priority is the brain,
lungs, liver, kidneys, and glands, and then come the muscles, bones, and skin. During periods of dehydration, histamine insures that these vital organs have enough water to function properly. If enough water is not supplied, it must be taken from within the body. Chronic dehydration can cause histamine to become excessively active. This may result in symptoms that may be mistaken for other disorders such as
allergies, asthma, dyspepsia, colitis,
constipation, rheumatoid arthritis, and chronic pains in various parts of the body, such as
migraine headaches. Here are some details of why increasing one's water intake can help:
Angina
Heart pain
angina is a sign of water shortage in the heart-lung axis. It should be treated with increased water intake until the patient is free of pain and independent of medications. Medical supervision is prudent; however, increased water intake is angina's cure.
Arthritis
Another possible complication of dehydration is
joint pain. The cartilage in your body, including your joints, is composed mainly of water. As cartilage surfaces glide over one another, some exposed cells become worn and peel away. New cartilage is normally produced to replace the damaged cells. But due to the lack of
blood vessels in cartilage, water is needed to transport the nutrients required for maintenance and repair. Dehydration may increase the abrasive damage and delay its repair, resulting in joint pain.
Asthma and Allergies
Asthma and allergies can be other indications that the body has increased its production of histamine. Asthma, which affects tens of millions of children in the Western world and kills several thousand of them
 every year, is a complication of dehydration in the body. It is caused by the body's
drought management programs. A large amount of water is normally lost from the lungs as water vapor through expired air. Histamine, which also controls bronchial muscle contractions, may attempt to restrict water loss through expiration by constricting the bronchial muscles. Increased water intake will prevent
asthma attacks. Asthmatics need also to take more
salt to break the mucus plugs in the lungs that obstruct the free flow of air in and out of the air sacs.
Not recognizing asthma as an indicator of dehydration in the body of a growing child not only will sentence many thousands of children to die every year, but also will permit irreversible genetic damage to establish in the remaining millions of asthmatic children.
Cholesterol
High cholesterol levels are an early indicator of drought management by the body. Cholesterol is a clay-like material that's poured in the gaps of some
 cell membranes to safeguard them against losing their vital water content to the osmotically more powerful blood circulating in their vicinity. Cholesterol, apart from being used to manufacture nerve cell membranes and hormones, is also used as a "shield" against water depletion of other vital cells that would normally exchange water through their cell membranes.
Colitis
Colitis pain is a sign of water shortage in the large intestine. It's associated with constipation because the large intestine constricts to try to squeeze the last drop of water from the excrements thus the lack of water lubrication.
Not recognizing colitis pain as a sign of dehydration will cause persistent constipation. Later in life, it will cause fecal impacting. It also can cause diverticulitis, hemorrhoids, and polyps and appreciably increases the possibility of developing cancer of the colon and rectum.
Constipation
Dehydration causes constipation.
When water is in short supply in the body, the colon will act to restrict unnecessary water loss through the stools. Colon muscles will contract to squeeze out and subsequently reabsorb water back into
circulation. This can result in harder stools that are not only more difficult to pass, but may also irritate and weaken the walls of the colon, resulting in small pockets known as diverticuli. Since the water that the colon reabsorbs back into circulation is not filtered water, but wastewater that was originally due to be excreted, the liver and the kidneys must then filter it. This may place additional strain on these overworked organs.
Diabetes
Diabetes is also another disease that's strongly influenced by water consumption. Adult-onset
diabetes is brought on by severe dehydration of the human body. In order to have adequate water in circulation and to meet the brain's priority water needs, the release of insulin is inhibited to prevent insulin from pushing water into all the body cells. In diabetes, only some cells get survival rations of water. Water and salt will reverse adult-onset diabetes in its early stages before it becomes an autoimmune disease with a destruction of insulin-producing cells. Not recognizing adult-onset diabetes as a complication of dehydration will, in time, cause massive damage to the blood vessels all over the body. It can cause eye damage and even blindness. It's capable of causing loss of the toes, feet and legs from gangrene. And the diabetes industry is a multi-billion dollar industry of sickness treatment and prescription drugs. Why would that industry want to tell people that all they need to do is drink more water, avoid
soft drinks and cut down on caffeine in order to greatly improve their health?
The answer is that there's no motivation whatsoever for any medical industry or group or drug company to educate people with the truth about water and human health. They're not only unwilling to tell the truth, they're also intellectually unwilling to accept the truth about the importance of adequate
hydration because it runs counter to their profitable paradigms of disease treatment. In other words, an executive working at a pharmaceutical company, making millions of dollars a year from pharmaceutical sales, is unlikely to accept, psychologically, the idea that diseases could be prevented or reversed by drinking something freely available to the public. The thought will not penetrate that person's belief system.
Depression
Depression can be another symptom of
chronic dehydration. The amino acid tryptophan is required by the brain to produce the neurotransmitter serotonin, which in turn is needed to make melatonin. An adequate amount of water is required for tryptophan to be transported into the brain. Dehydration may limit the amount of tryptophan available to the brain and to worsen things, high histamine levels (also triggered by dehydration) may actually stimulate tryptophan's breakdown in the liver.
Dyspepsia
Dyspeptic pain, which can range from simple
heartburn to gastro-esophageal reflux disorder (GERD), may be one of the early signs of dehydration. During the early digestive process when food enters the stomach, hydrochloric acid (HCl) is secreted to activate the enzymes to breakdown the proteins found in meat and dairy. The acidic contents of the stomach, called chyme, are then pumped into the small intestine by passing through a valve, called the pyloric sphincter. This acidic chyme must be neutralized before it damages the intestinal lining. The pancreas is responsible for secreting the bicarbonate ions, which neutralize the acid. A large amount of water is required to produce this bicarbonate solution. If sufficient water is not available, the digestive process may be delayed and food may remain in the stomach longer than necessary. Over a period of time, the stomach acid may rise and if allowed to enter the esophagus, will produce the sensation known as heartburn. Ideally, water should be drunk half an hour before meals, during meals and again a couple of hours afterwards.
High Blood Pressure
High
blood pressure,
also known as hypertension, is a state of adaptation of the body to a generalized drought when there's just not enough water to fill all the blood vessels that diffuse water into vital cells. As part of the mechanism of reverse osmosis, when water from the blood serum is filtered and injected into important cells through minute holes in their membranes, extra pressure is needed for the "injection process." Just as we inject intravenous "water" in hospitals, so the body injects water into tens of trillions of cells all at the same time. Water, with balanced, unrefined salt intake, will often bring
high blood pressure back to normal. Not recognizing hypertension as one of the major indicators of dehydration in the human body, and treating it with diuretics that further dehydrate the body, will in time cause blockage by cholesterol of the heart arteries and the arteries that go to the brain. It will cause heart attacks and small or massive strokes that paralyze. It will eventually cause kidney disease. It will cause brain damage and may give rise to neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.
Migraines
 Migraine headache is a sign of water need by the brain and the eyes. It will totally clear up if dehydration is prevented from becoming established in the body. The type of dehydration that brings on
migraines might
eventually cause inflammation of the back of the eye
and possibly loss of eyesight.
Weight Gain and Loss
There's another fascinating point about chronic dehydration and
weight loss that's worth mentioning here: Many people who are attempting to
lose weight end up in a state of chronic dehydration because they don't want to drink water for fear that it will add "water weight" to their bodies. Consequently, they actually impair their body's ability to metabolize fat because they're afraid to drink enough water on a regular basis. In reality, being fully hydrated is a prerequisite to weight loss. If you want to lose weight, you have to give your body enough water so that it's no longer in a state of emergency. When the body is in a state of chronic dehydration, it will not let go of fat supplies easily: It wants to hold on to everything it can eat or drink. The only way to convince your body to let go of and start metabolizing body fat is to drink a lot of water enough water so that your body feels safe in letting go of unneeded calories. Remember: Water has zero calories, is low-carb and has zero grams of fat, so drink up!
It's also interesting to note that many people who go on short term diets and who think they're losing five or 10 pounds over a couple of days are really only losing water weight. They haven't lost any body fat at all but they've managed to put themselves in a state of chronic dehydration that will inevitably lead to weight gain once they return to normal habits of eating and drinking.
Original article published by Kitchenmedicinebook.com
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