Water: For Health, For Healing, For Life (15 page)
A Typical Case History
J. B., a company administrative secretary, developed peptic ulcer disease when she was thirty-three years old. The usual medications—antacids that neutralize the acid in the stomach—could not give relief. Stronger prescription medications (which are actually very strong histamine-blocking agents that temporarily stop acid production in the stomach) would at best partially relieve her symptoms of severe dyspeptic pain. On and off, the disease recurred several times a year for a number of years. On a number of occasions, she had to seek her doctor's advice for her stress and ulcer pains on a weekly basis.
A few years ago, during one of these periods of persistent stomach pains that seemed reluctant to yield to the effect of very strong medications, her doctor— with much caution—told her that severe peptic ulcer pain seemed to have been satisfactorily relieved with ordinary tap water. J. B. was encouraged to increase her water intake anytime she developed stomach pain to see is this could be effective. The treatment worked. For a number of years now, J. B. has followed this advice. With the slightest indication of her pain coming back, an increase in her daily intake of water makes it disappear. As a result of a program of drinking eight glasses of water a day, J. B. no longer suffers from ulcer pains. She has no more need for any medication other than the water she now drinks regularly to pre-vent the pains from recurring.
The explanation for the occurrence of heartburn as a signal of water deficiency is very simple. When we drink water, it is immediately passed into the intestine and absorbed. It seems that, within a half hour, it is once again secreted into the stomach from the base of the dents in the mucosa. One of the major events that take place is a backwash of the mucus layer that expands and stores naturally secreted bicarbonate that neutralizes the acid on its surface.
For the cells under it, the mucus layer lining the stomach is a protective insulation against the acid, which is poured on food for the process of digestion. This backwash of the mucus by the water we drink is an essential part of the maintenance of the protective system of the stomach wall. Water flowing through the mucus layer brings about the expansion and thickening of this protective layer in the stomach. Mucus is 98 percent water and 2 percent scaffolding that holds the water in place. The water in turn dissolves the bicarbonate that acts as the buffer for the acid that will try to pass through the mucus. This is a constantly active process. Dehydration alters the consistency of the mucus barrier, rendering it ineffective as a buffer against the acid in the stomach. It allows the acid to go through and reach the cells below, thus causing pain—“heartburn.”
Figure 8.2:
Schematic drawing of the shape of the stomach and its mucus layer. A hydrated mucus barrier is uniform in consistency and prevents acid penetration. Dehydrated mucus becomes stringy and allows acid penetration.
HIATAL HERNIA AND HEARTBURN
A dome-shaped muscle called the diaphragm separates the chest cavity from the abdomen. It is attached to the rib cage and to some of the lower vertebrae of the spine. At the back of the diaphragm, where it is attached to the spine, is an opening through which the esophagus and the main blood vessels pass. This opening is called the hiatus and it acts as a “purse-string” gate. It is composed of a band of overlapping muscle that keeps the gate closed. It relaxes only when food is passing through the esophagus in the chest cavity to enter the stomach, which is normally positioned below the diaphragm in the abdomen. The automatic opening and closing of the gate is synchronized with the flow of food through the esophagus. When food is not passing through, the gate is closed and the chest cavity is well separated from the abdomen and its contents. In some people, the gate becomes lax and its opening less firm. In these people, the upper part of the stomach may bulge or become herniated through the hiatus and shift into the chest cavity—hence hiatal hernia. The reason why the hiatal gate becomes lax is chronic dehydration.
From its opening in the mouth to the orifice of the rectum, the intestinal tract is a long tube that has developed special characteristics in different segments along its length. The intestinal tract works like a conveyor belt that pushes its contents downstream. The intestinal tract can also reverse the direction of its waves and push its contents upward. This process is involved when the contents of the stomach must not go downstream and must be forced out of the body— heralded by nausea and then vomiting.
The esophagus is a long tube that carries food and fluids into the stomach, which is situated in the abdomen. The stomach is a pouch that produces acid and protein-breaking enzymes that liquefy the solid foods we eat. The duodenum is the segment of the small intestine that connects to the stomach and is separated from it by a special gate called the pyloric valve. In the duodenum, the pancreatic enzymes are secreted along with a watery bicarbonate solution to further digest the liquefied food from the stomach and neutralize the acid that gets into the intestine. The stomach has a protective mucus coating on its mucosa that prevents the acid from damaging it (figure 8.2). The duodenum does not have the same protective mucus coating to defend it against the acid from the stomach. It depends on the watery bicarbonate secretion from the pancreas to do the job. In dehydration, the quantity of the watery bicarbonate solution made by the pancreas is insufficient to deal with all the acid that is going to reach the duodenum. There comes a point where, if the entire acidic contents of the stomach were to enter the small intestine (the duo-denum), its mucosa would be irreparably damaged.
Figure 8.3:
Pancreas where watery bicarbonate solution is manufactured and secreted into duodenum.
Inside the pyloric valve are sensors—like spokes of a wheel that stick out when the stomach contents are passed into the duodenum—that register the consis-tency and the acidity of the stomach contents. Only if the acidity of the stomach contents can be neutralized completely by the amount of the alkaline secretion from the pancreas will the pyloric valve open and allow the stomach contents to enter the intestine. What goes through is proportionate to the amount that can be neutralized. At a crisis stage of dehydration, when heartburn or dyspeptic pain is also produced, the high acidity in the stomach cannot go into the intestine. It cannot stay in the stomach for long, either.
In this situation, some of the acidic contents of the stomach can bubble upward, particularly when you are lying down. This is when you feel the discomfort of heartburn. At the same time, the upper part of the stomach can also slide through the hiatal valve into the chest cavity. You might have to vomit to get rid of the stomach contents, or get sufficient antacid treatment to suppress the symptoms. Nonetheless, the diagnosis of hiatal hernia will stick. Given sufficient water every day, the situation can reverse itself and the pain and hernia can disappear.
Bulimia
I am sure you are very sympathetic to people who have been given the label of “bulimic.” These people eat and then throw up whatever they have eaten. The most famous bulimic was probably the late Princess Diana. Bulimia sufferers are constantly hungry, and are also depressed and antisocial, as seems to have been the case with Princess Diana throughout her private and married life.
There is a belief among pundits who profess to understand bulimia, that the whole problem is caused by an undercurrent of psychological issues within the thought processes of bulimics. Since more women suffer from the problem than men, it is assumed that the act of eating and then throwing up whatever has been eaten is a measure to remain thin. I disagree.
Uncontrollable and repeated vomiting of the stomach contents, which has been given the medical labels of “heartburn” or “bulimia,” could be one of the ways the body prevents irreparable damage when it is severely dehydrated. When it is said that bulimics feel hungry all the time, there is confusion. As far as I am concerned, they are confusing their sensation of thirst with the sensation of hunger. When they should be drinking water, they eat. Naturally, the body rejects the food because it does not possess enough water to digest and assimilate the food. This is the reason why bulimics grow so thin. The same dehydration can also be responsible for some of the emotional and psycho-logical changes in these people.
I met Amir in the prison where I started to research the impact of water on the treatment of peptic ulcer disease. For more than ten years, on and off, he had been suffering from heartburn. During the flare-up phase of the problem, he would routinely vomit in his sleep—so forcefully that part of his stomach contents would jet out of his nose. Often he could not clear out of his bed in time to avoid making a mess. You can imagine he had difficulty sleeping during these times. Because none of the regular medications could stop such vomiting, he had taken it for granted that his problem was incurable.
I asked him to drink a full glass of water a half hour before his food and increase his daily water intake. As simply as you read these lines, his heartburn disappeared and never came back while he was in the prison with me.
Let me share with you the human side of Amir's story. It is interesting that in his immediate family, his daughter, his wife, and his brother had similar problems—heartburn that culminated in vomiting when the disease flared up. At this time in the life of the family, when there was a lot of fear that Amir might not get out of prison anytime soon, none of them was in a good state of health. They were stressed beyond words. They would travel for miles every week to see Amir. They would wait outside the prison walls for hours, in the heat of the summer and the cold of the winter, to have a ten- to fifteen-minute visitation.
On one of these occasions, he shared with them the fact that increased water intake had cured him of his “disease.” He was jubilant that now his family could do the same. One by one they got rid of their devastating heartburn and the social complications of the problem they had experienced for many years. Luck was with Amir. He was released unexpectedly. Before he left, he came to me and thanked me for what I had done for him. He told me, “It was worth coming to prison to get cured of my disease.”
The Danger of Antacids
Antacids that contain aluminum can be dangerous. They should not be freely used for dyspepsia that responds simply to an increase in water intake. Excess aluminum in the circulation has been strongly implicated as a precipitating factor in Alzheimer's-type diseases. It is imperative to understand the relationship between taking antacids for a long period and their possible toxic side effects, the local brain damage and plaques seen in Alzheimer's disease a number of years later. Plaques are tangled masses of tissue that contain high aluminum deposits. Fortunately, the drug industry in America is now producing some antacids that do not contain aluminum.
Zinc is a very important metal for genetic transcription and manufacture of important hormones and brain chemicals. Metals have a special transport system across cell membranes. If aluminum is carried across into brain cells in place of zinc, much damage will occur. Although the body can repair and replace cells in most tissues or organs, brain cells are not regenerated or replaced. They die and leave a cyst, or are replaced by fibrous tissue—the sort of pathology seen in Alzheimer's disease.
The older antacids on the market contained between 60 and 150 milligrams of aluminum per spoonful of the liquid. It had been assumed the body cannot absorb this metal; it acts locally in the stomach. However, the fact that aluminum is found in high concentration in the brain tissue of those suffering from Alzheimer's disease should make us aware that a high intake of aluminum over a long period can lead to some absorption of the metal—enough to cause damage at some point.