Water: For Health, For Healing, For Life (17 page)
What Happens to a Dehydrated Joint?
Cartilage cells die at a fast pace because of the constant abrasive friction in the dehydrated joint. These cells need to be replaced. When there is damage to the cartilage because of its overuse and under-repair, the sensors in the area begin to indicate a desperate need for urgent repair. An attempt is made to supply water to the cartilage cells from the blood supply. This action supplies some lubrication inside the joint, but is not effective in maintaining the rate of cartilage growth to replace the dead tissue. In the lining of the joint capsule are cells that can secrete local hormones to stimulate repair activity at the same time that they begin to produce pain. Several things happen when these hormones are secreted:
1. The dying tissue is broken up from inside the cells and the broken fragments are extruded. They are ingested by white cells—the “garbage collectors”— and are recycled.
2. More blood circulation is brought to the affected area, and this results in swelling and stretching in the joint capsule, which causes stiffness and, eventually, added pain.
3. There is an associated protein breakdown, and more amino acids are mobilized for the pool that may be needed for the repair of the damage.
4. In the inflammatory environment inside the joint, some white cells begin to manufacture hydrogen per-oxide and ozone for two purposes: one, to keep the joint space sterilized and to prevent bacteria from infecting the joint cavity; two, to supply with adequate oxygen the cells that are engaged in the repair process and have less access to the blood oxygen.
5. There is a local remodeling growth factor that promotes the growth of tissue, causing the typical gnarled joints of arthritis.
6. Knowledge gained by the brain from its ongoing experience is put to use for the rest of the body. The remodeling and fortification—gnarling, deformity—of other similarly structured joints will also be carried out. This seems to be the reason rheumatoid joints of the hands show a mirror-image inflammation and eventual gnarling of the joints on both sides.
LOWER BACK PAIN
As mentioned earlier, lower back pain has two components—muscle spasm that causes pain, and disc degeneration that puts strain on the tendons and ligaments in the spinal column. Lower back pain indicates exactly the same problem that was explained regarding rheumatoid joint pains of the hands, except the circulation system to the spinal disc space is difficult, and the disc core depends on the creation of an intermittent vacuum in the disc space. This natural process is a component of the walking movement. Of course, the body must be well-hydrated for water to leave the circulation and enter the disc spaces.
In the spinal column, the weight of the body is supported by twenty-three discs and twenty-four vertebrae. The discs are housed between plates of cartilage that cover opposing flat surfaces of the vertebrae. The end-plate cartilage attached to its flat weight-bearing surfaces is part of the structure of each vertebra. During the movement of each vertebra, the disc is meant to glide minimally between the end-plate cartilage located on its upper and lower surfaces. Seventy-five percent of the weight of the upper body mass is supported by the hydraulic properties of the discs that absorb and hold water in their central cores. In a dehydrated state, when the body mass constantly squeezes out the water content of the discs during movement and bending, not enough of the lost water can be replaced. The dehydrated discs with their shrunken cores gradually become less supportive of the weight of the body. The discs lose their wedge quality, and the spinal joints become less firm. In a well-hydrated and taut state, on the other hand, the discs themselves do not physically move, but get continuously squeezed of water and then, through force of vacuum, absorb water again and expand to function as the natural shock absorbers they are designed to be.
In a dehydrated state, the discs can shift backward to press on the local nerves. When this happens in the lower spinal region, the pain becomes projected into one or the other leg. This is called sciatic pain and is far more serious than local pain in the back. It means the spinal joint structure has become so disorganized that one of the discs that has to shock-absorb for the spine is out of its normal position and is pressing on the nerve. Dehydration and bad posture are involved in this condition. For more information, and to learn a new technique for the reduction of the disc displacement and relief from sciatic pain, I encourage you to refer to my book
How to Deal with Back Pain and Rheumatoid Joint Pain.
OSTEOARTHRITIS
When the cartilage in the joint dies, bone-to-bone contact begins. Whereas cartilage cells have a water-given resilience and can survive the trauma of movement against one another, the hardened bone surfaces produce a friction force against one another. This friction force produces an inflammatory process that destroys the bone surfaces. Thus osteoarthritis of the joint occurs—a second-stage process to dehydration that first destroys the cartilage surfaces.
Given that osteoarthritis sufferers are so often prescribed painkillers—acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and aspirin—I found this recent article particularly interesting. “Link Suggested in Hypertension and Painkillers” is the title given by the
New York Times
of October 28, 2002, to a report on an article published in the
Archive of Internal Medicine
by a group from Harvard Medical School. The study involved more than eighty thousand women between the ages of thirty-one and fifty, who participated in a nurses' health study and were not known to have high blood pressure at the outset. These people were using painkillers since 1995 and their blood pressures were obtained from a survey two years later. In the two years, 1,650 women had developed hypertension. Women who used acetaminophen (present in Tylenol) and ibuprofen (sold under many different names, including Motrin and Brufen) as their painkiller were 86 percent more susceptible to develop hypertension than the nonusers of these brands of pain medication. The article seems to whitewash aspirin and did not involve it in causing hypertension.
I have no idea who funded the research and which company stands to gain from the results of this study. I am perturbed by the shameful limitation of knowledge that exists at one of the most prestigious medical schools in the world—Harvard University—about the variety of ways the human body manifests dehydration. The researchers who conducted the study are oblivious to the fact that pain is one of the crisis calls of the body for water, and that hypertension is the body's adaptive process to the same dehydration—one of its drought-management programs. They do not realize that hypertension and pain are different proclamations of the same problem: water shortage in the body. All that painkillers do is mask one of the localized signals of dehydration until hypertension, the next indicator of generalized drought, reveals itself.
I believe that this is scientifically a more accurate conclusion to the above study: Go and take water, and do
not
go and take aspirin in preference to acetaminophen. Reading this book, you will be able to see this logic. Who knows, in the future you might even be in a position to save many people from their very drastic health problems with this simple information.
DEHYDRATION AND DISEASE
The following conditions are produced by persistent dehydration in the fourth dimension, time: the time it takes for the damage to slowly erode the body, emerge, and show itself in a characteristic way that can be identified and labeled according to various symptoms we routinely come across. These conditions (states of dehydration) have been labeled “diseases of unknown origin” by the mainstream medical establishment. Creation of jargons around different ways the body shows it is dehydrated seems to have given the main-stream medical establishment license to treat these manifestations of dehydration with bizarre and unnecessary protocols. Some of these conditions include:
1. Obesity
2. Raised low-density cholesterol in the blood circulation
3. Raised triglycerides
4. Cholesterol plaque formation in the arteries
5. Coronary thrombosis
6. Osteoporosis
7. Osteoarthritis
8. Heart failure
9. Repeated strokes
10. Juvenile diabetes
11. Alzheimer's disease
12. Multiple sclerosis
13. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig's disease
14. Muscular dystrophy
15. Parkinson's disease
16. Scleroderma
17. Cancers
18. AIDS
What has been discovered for the first time in the history of modern science-based medicine is the way to prevent and cure degenerative diseases of the human body—simply and naturally with water. The cause of these health problems has been discovered and exposed for everyone's benefit. In short, prevent dehydration to prevent disease!
Some of the conditions listed above have already been discussed.
In this chapter we will discuss obesity. The other topics will be discussed under separate chapters and headings.
OBESITY
A simple solution to obesity is of interest to many, many people. I think if we understand the relationship of overeating to the dehydration of the body, we will also understand how to prevent obesity. The next step is how to reduce the volume of fat that has been deposited. The answer to both these enigmas is simple. To institute the advice, however, you need discipline and determination. It should also be remembered that the metabolism of fat, in a way to reduce many pounds of excess weight, is a slow process if it is to be done without adverse effects to your general health. The most important step in this direction is to build a mental image of a slimmer you. Visualize your body with many pounds off it. Store this image in your subconscious mind and keep impressing upon your brain your desire for this outcome.
There are two general sensations associated with eating habits. The one for food is often termed hunger pain. The second is a sensation for thirst. Both are felt in the same area and are brought about by histamine. It is easy to confuse the two signals and to think we are hungry when we are really thirsty. We mistakenly think we are thirsty only when the mouth becomes dry. Relying on the dry mouth stage of dehydration is the basic problem. This signal for water intake is a last-stage situation and is often seen after heavy eating. The best way to separate the sensation of thirst from that of hunger is to drink water before food. In some animal species, this order is maintained. Animals make an early-morning visit to a water source before going into the field for grazing, even when vegetation with high water content is their diet. In humans, the reverse has become a habit. We often first take food and then water—and sometimes only after the body gets thoroughly dehydrated by the intake of solid foods that use up the available free water in the body. This, I believe, is the root cause of obesity.
Obese people consume food to satisfy the initial calls of histamine for water. This is because food is also converted to ATP and is more satisfying to the taste buds than water. To satisfy the brain's needs for ATP, however, water is infinitely more efficient and immediately more effective. With food we can generate energy for brain function only from sugar. However, we consume five times more than the full needs of the brain itself. After all, only about 20 percent of the circulation goes to the brain. The other 80 percent, now laden with sugar, goes to the other organs, including fat cells that store the sugar in the form of fat. The more food we eat, the more sugar will end up as fat, when all the time the brain wanted water to generate hydroelectricity, a clean source of energy.
Over time, this process of histamine response to dehydration, or mental and social stresses of the body, can become the basis for overeating when the initial need of the body is simply water by itself. Thus, dehydration of the body can be the root cause of obesity that is more often than not associated with hypertension and will ultimately lead to diabetes at a later stage. The information on diabetes (see chapter 7) will complement this understanding of obesity.
There is a very simple solution to this problem. A half hour before each meal of the day, and two and a half hours after each meal, drink two glasses of water. It seems to take about a half hour before the physiology in search of water is separated from that of hunger for food. You will feel full and will eat only when food is needed. The volume of food intake will decrease drastically. The type of craving for food will also change. With sufficient water intake, we tend to crave proteins more than fattening carbohydrates.
The next desirable step is the shedding of already gained fat. Increased water intake by itself will begin to reduce some of the gained weight. About eight to fourteen pounds may be lost in less than three weeks. This immediate weight loss will be from the collection of edema fluid that is stored in the tissues to operate the reverse-system of water delivery into vital cells. If, in addition to increased water intake, you activate hormone-sensitive, fat-burning enzymes, the weight loss will be more pronounced and well proportioned.