Water: For Health, For Healing, For Life (29 page)
Once you understand the logic behind the cascade of the chemical events in the body, you will realize the vital importance of cholesterol to cell metabolism and the health of the cells in the body. You should put the higher cholesterol levels of the body to full use by making more vitamin D from it and promoting better-functioning and fully energized and operational cells in your body. Use sunlight to your advantage to lower your cholesterol and promote formation of denser bones. Some of you might immediately react negatively to this statement and express your fear of melanoma. It is my thoughtful understanding that cancers in the body are produced by dehydration, inactivity, and poor choices of foods and beverages. For more than twenty years, I played three hours of tennis six days a week, in the heat of the early-afternoon sun in Tehran. I did not develop any form of cancer.
You cannot sit at a desk in an artificially lit office and expect to have a normal cholesterol level and normal bone density in your body. And in this situation, you will probably have a health professional— one who does not understand the mechanisms and relationships of sunlight energy conversion—label this natural outcome of an incomplete chain of metabolic events a “disease”; a vital element, cholesterol, will also be labeled “bad.”
Sunlight was first used successfully as medication when children with deformed bones (rickets) were exposed to it, which corrected the deformity. They called it heliotherapy. I interpret the gradual rise in cholesterol as we grow older through my scientific understanding of the many roles of cholesterol, and associate its increased production by the liver with the gradual decrease in bone density.
I think the rise in low-density cholesterol is a significant indicator of the onset of osteoporosis.
To prevent osteoporosis, a gradual exposure to early-morning sunlight could be a natural way to increase calcium absorption into the body and the bones.
EXERCISE
The most important factor for survival, after air, water, salt, and food, is exercise. Exercise is more important to the health of the individual than sex, entertainment, or anything else that might be pleasurable. Here is why exercise is crucial for better health and a longer pain-free life:
• Exercise expands the vascular system in the muscle tissue and helps prevent hypertension.
• It opens the capillaries in the muscle tissue and, by lowering the resistance to blood flow in the arterial system, causes the blood pressure and blood sugar to drop to normal.
• Exercise builds up muscle mass—positive nitrogen balance—and prevents the muscles from being broken down as fuel.
• Exercise stimulates the activity of fat-burning enzymes for manufacturing constantly needed energy for muscle activity. When you train, you are in effect changing the source of energy for muscle activity. You convert the energy source from sugar that is in circulation to fat that is stored in the muscle itself, and elsewhere in the body.
• Exercise makes muscles burn as additional fuel some of the amino acids that would otherwise reach toxic levels in the body. In their greater-than-normal levels in the blood—usually reached in a sedentary body—certain branched-chain amino acids cause a drastic destruction and depletion of other vital amino acids. Some of these discarded essential amino acids are constantly needed by the brain to manufacture its neurotransmitters. Two of these essential amino acids are tryptophan and tyrosine. The brain uses tryptophan to make serotonin, melatonin, tryptamine, and indolamine, all of which are antidepressants and regulate sugar level and blood pressure. Tyrosine is used for the manufacture of adrenaline, noradrenaline, and dopamine—vital for the coordination of body physiology whenever it has to take a physical action, such as fighting, running, playing sports, and so on. Tyrosine depletion is also a primary factor in Parkinson's disease.
• Unexercised muscle gets broken down. As a result of the excretion of muscle parts from the body, some of the reserves of zinc and vitamin B
6
also get lost. At a certain stage of this constant depletion of vitamin B6 and zinc, certain mental disorders and neurological complications occur. In effect, this happens in autoimmune diseases, including lupus and muscular dystrophy.
• Exercise makes the muscles hold more water in reserve and prevents increased concentration of blood that would otherwise damage the lining of the blood vessel walls.
• Exercise lowers blood sugar in diabetics and decreases their need for insulin or tablet medications.
• Exercise compels the liver to manufacture sugar from the fat that it stores or that is circulating within the blood.
• Exercise causes an increase in the mobility of the joints in the body and creates an intermittent vacuum inside the joint cavities. The force of the vacuum causes suction of water into the cavity. Water in the joint cavity brings dissolved nutrients to the cells inside the cartilage. Increased water con-tent of the cartilage also adds to its lubrication and smoother bone-on-bone gliding movements of the joint.
• Calf muscles act as secondary “hearts.” By their con-tractions and relaxations when we are upright and moving, the leg muscles overcome the force of gravity. They pump into the venous system the blood that was sent to the legs. Because of the pres-sure breakers in the vein and one-directional valves, the blood in the leg veins is pushed upward against gravity by frequent contraction of the leg muscles. This is how the leg muscles act as a kind of heart for the venous system in the body. This is a value to exercise that not many people appreciate. Leg muscles also cause an equally effective flow within the lymphatic system and cause edema in the legs to disappear.
• Exercise strengthens the bones of the body and helps prevent osteoporosis.
• Exercise increases the production of all vital hormones, enhancing libido and heightening sexual performance.
• One hour of walking will cause the activation of fat-burning enzymes, which remain active for twelve hours. A morning and afternoon walk will keep these enzymes active around the clock and will clear cholesterol deposits in the arterial system, as well as fat from the fat stores in the body.
• Exercise will enhance the activity of the adrenaline-activated sympathetic nerve system. Adrenaline will also reduce the oversecretion of histamine and, as a result, will prevent asthma attacks and allergic reactions—providing the body is fully hydrated.
• Exercise will increase production of endorphins and enkephalins, the natural opiates of the body. They produce the same high that drug addicts try to achieve through their abusive intake.
What Are the Best Forms of Exercise?
Exercising the body for endurance is better than exercising it for speed or for building excess muscle. In selecting an exercise, you should consider its lifetime value. A long-distance runner will enjoy the exercise value of long-distance runs into old age. A sprinter will not sprint for exercise at a later phase of life.
The best exercise—one that you can benefit from even to a ripe old age, and without causing damage to your joints—is walking. Other exercises that will increase your endurance are swimming, golf, skiing, skating, climbing, tennis, squash, bicycling, tai chi, dancing, and aerobics. In selecting an exercise, evaluate its ability to keep the fat-burning enzymes active for longer durations. Outdoor forms of exercise are more beneficial for the body than indoor forms. The body becomes better connected to nature.
Four Simple Steps to Vibrant Health
The four most vital steps to better health are balancing the
water
and
salt
content of the body;
exercising
the muscle mass of the body to enhance the efficiency of brain function;
avoiding beverages that dehydrate
and make the body more toxic; and eating a
balanced daily diet
of proteins and vegetables in a ratio of 20 percent protein and 80 percent vegetables, legumes, and fruits, with as little starch and sugar as possible. It is the high starch and sugar content of the diet that makes a person fat.
Higher protein and fat contents of the diet do not make you fat!
If you stick to these recommendations, I am confident that you will seldom fall ill and will live a long and productive life.
I do hope you will share the information in this book with others who might need it.
