Water: For Health, For Healing, For Life (3 page)
THE STEPS IN SHAPING PRESENT-DAY MEDICINE
The explanations that follow are based on clinical observations made in one of the worst stress laboratories in the world. These observations have given birth to a new physiology-based explanation of how diseases of the body occur. My findings have been presented at several international gatherings of scientists. Detailed scientific explanations that support my findings have also been published.
It does not require a detailed knowledge of science to understand that water should be used to prevent and cure certain dehydration-produced disease conditions. Nor does the use of water as a “medicine” require Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval. Water is the main source of life, and everyone knows about it. Still, there is shameful ignorance about the health dangers we expose our bodies to when we do not drink enough water. Our saving grace is that the human body understands the role of water in maintaining its physiological and physical well being, even though mainstream medicine does not. It seems we doctors have not been well informed about the different functional relationships of water in the human body. We have been caught in a most embarrassing situation. We do not yet know when the human body is truly thirsty. We do not understand what happens if the body does not receive adequate water on a regular basis.
The current practice of clinical medicine is based on the application of pharmacological chemistry to the human body. At medical schools, more than six hundred teaching hours are allocated to the use of pharmaceutical products. Only a few hours are allocated to instructions on diet and food. It seems that in most “disease” conditions, medical educators are trying to force the test-tube understanding of chemistry into the human body.
The trouble is, pharmaceutical or chemical products do not cure most disease conditions. Nor are most of these products safe for long-term use. They only temporarily mask and silence the outward manifestations of the problem. No matter how seemingly scientific, sophisticated, and appealing the justifications for the use of these chemical products might seem, they often do not remove the medical problem—except for the use of antibiotics in infections. People with hypertension, who begin treatment with diuretics or other chemicals, are not cured. They are told they must continue the treatment for the rest of their lives. They often need to supplement the diuretic and use other types of medication at the same time. People with rheumatoid arthritis are not permanently cured by any of the many analgesics on the market. They have to use analgesic medications for the rest of their pain-filled lives. No diabetic is cured; no person with myasthenia gravis is cured; no person with muscular dystrophy is cured. How is it possible that, despite extensive research, no cure for any one of the prevalent conditions such as heartburn, dyspepsia, back pain, rheumatoid arthritis, migraine, or asthma has been found?
Dehydration eventually causes loss of some functions and produces damage (pathology). The various signals or symptoms produced during severe and lasting dehydration have been interpreted by doctors as various disease conditions of unknown origin. The signal, however, is actually for water shortage, and the local damage is because of water shortage. Because doctors don't recognize chronic dehydration as the original cause, the “disease” conditions receive all sorts of explanations and labels, and all of them are said to have an unknown cause. This is the basic mistake that has distorted the truth in medicine and devastated people needing professional advice and guidance for their health issues. This is the crack through which all past research on the origin of some disease conditions has fallen.
Water, water everywhere, yet not enough did we drink.
Water, water everywhere, still our bodies did shriek and shrink.
WATER—THE BIZARRE AND THE SIMPLE
The human body is about 75 percent water and 25 percent solid matter. The brain is said to be 85 percent water and is extremely sensitive to any dehydration or depletion of its water content. The brain is bathed constantly in salty cerebrospinal fluid. The water content of the body is called the solvent, and the solid matter that is dissolved in the water is called the solute. The chemical understanding of the human body brought about an almost total concentration of research into the detailed molecular composition and minute fluctuations of the solid matter in the body. Thus a chemical-pharmaceutical perception of the human body took shape, resulting in the development of the “medical-industrial system.” Adherence to the understanding that it is primarily the body's solid composition that governs all its functions has produced much misinformation and has contributed to the present chaotic status of medicine.
The flaw in the above approach to understanding the body lies in the fact that, even with all our amassed knowledge, the human body is still an almost unknown structure. We know no more than 10 percent of how the body functions and is integrated chemically.
The practice of clinical medicine today benefits the manufacturing and commercial arms of the healthcare system. The ignorance-promoting and money-making solutes focus is strictly guarded and forcefully dispensed—it is good for selling drugs. Although the knowledge of the physiology of the human body is advanced, the practice of clinical medicine does not benefit from the advancement of this discipline of science.
WE ARE STILL WATER-DEPENDENT
The role of water in the bodies of all living species, humans included, has not changed since the earliest creation of life in water.
When life on land became an objective—the stressful adventure beyond known boundaries and the immediate vicinity of water supply—a gradually refined body-water-preservation system and drought-management system had to be created. In other words, the body began to adapt to transient dehydration. Over time, this drought-management process became permanent—and currently exists in the body of modern humans.
Even now, when humans are under stress or confronting situations that may be perceived as stressful, the physiological translation of that stress reflects a water-regulation process. It is as if nothing has changed from the first time water-dwelling species ventured beyond their water supply. A similar process for rationing water reserves and an anticipated limited future supply becomes the responsibility of a complex system in the body. This multisystem water-distribution process remains in operation until the body receives unmistakable signals that it has once more gained access to an adequate water supply.
One of the unavoidable processes in the body-water rationing phase is the ruthlessness with which the body functions are monitored. No structure receives more than its predetermined share of water, based on its functional importance. The brain takes absolute priority over all the other systems.
Thinking that tea, coffee, alcohol, and manufactured beverages can substitute for the pure natural water needs of the body is an elementary mistake, particularly in a body that is stressed by confronting daily problems. It is true that these beverages contain water, but most of them also contain dehydrating substances, such as caffeine. These substances rid the body of the water they are dissolved in, plus additional water from the body's reserves. When you drink coffee, tea, or even a beer, your body gets rid of more water than is contained in the drink. If you measure your urine volume after the beverage is taken, you will see that you have passed more urine than the volume of the drink. Another way the body loses water after drinking hot beverages is through perspiration from the pores of the skin to cool the body that has been warmed from the inside.
The economic principles are the same in the body as they are in society. The law of supply and demand rules absolutely. When there is a comparative shortage of a needed substance, a strict rationing system rules the marketplace of the body with an iron fist.
When the human body is dehydrated, it redistributes and regulates the amount of available water. Within the body, alarms signal to show that areas in question are in short supply, much like the light signal that goes on when a car is running low on gas or oil. The available water is rationed and used where needed. The presence of water will ultimately regulate the production mechanisms in a drought-stricken area of the body.
When chronic dehydration begins to set in, up to a certain level the shutdown of water-dependent functions is silent because there is a reserve capacity for endurance. As time passes and the body becomes more and more dehydrated, however, a threshold is reached where the system becomes inadequate for the responsibilities thrust on one or another function of the body. Depending on the type of demand, the organ or organs in the firing line of activity begin to indicate their particular signal of inadequacy.
While the various signals produced by the water distributors and drought managers indicate regional body thirst and drought, and can naturally and simply be relieved by an increased intake of water, they are, instead, often improperly and ignorantly dealt with by highly potent chemical products. Because many doctors are not educated about the symptoms of dehydration and the importance of the fluid in the body, they often diagnose the problem incorrectly. Many physicians mistake dehydration for one or another disease and treat the symptoms with medication rather than water. The result: Pharmaceutical companies get rich, patients are not cured, and doctors are helpless in dealing with often recurring disease states of the body.
Silencing the different signal systems of water shortage in the body with chemical products can be immediately detrimental to the patient's body cells, including the genetic apparatus. Chronic dehydration can have a permanently damaging impact on a person's descendants. While the human body is entirely dependent on the many complicated functions of water for its survival, it has not developed a water-storage system in the same way it stores fat. The dehydration-produced loss of body efficiency and resulting loss of chemical know-how and function in one generation can be projected onto the next generation. If the root cause of a disease state is dehydration, the same malfunctioning sensor systems that permit dehydration to establish in an individual can eventually be inherited by some of the offspring. This is why asthma, allergies, and heartburn are very serious conditions that should be prevented by full hydration at all times. It is essential to become educated about the functions of water in the body at all ages. This is how disease can be prevented in individuals and the next-generation descendants.
We must learn to recognize the symptoms of dehydration and understand that the treatment is simple: water. It's vital to our health.
In an article in the
New England Journal of Medicine,
September 20, 1984, Dr. Paddy Phillips and seven associates showed that elderly men were far less able to recognize their body thirst than younger men in the same experimental setting. When the elderly were dehydrated, they seemed not to feel thirsty. Even when blood tests showed an obvious water shortage in the body, and even when water was within reach, some of the persons tested did not seem to want to drink. They remained dehydrated. An editorial in
The Lancet
of November 3, 1984, discussed the experimental results of Phillips and his associates and mentioned other findings to support the conclusion that in the elderly, the thirst mechanism is gradually lost. Steen, Lundgren, and Isaksson reported in
The Lancet
of January 12, 1985, that, in their long-term observation, they had discovered significant body-water loss in the elderly—about 3.5 to 6 liters over ten years. This is a large loss from the fluid content of the body—mostly from inside the cells.
To give further scientific support to the new paradigm, let us briefly mention the single most important point of a scientific paper by Ephraim Katchalski-Katzir of the Weizmann Institute. The far-reaching significance of the finding is that proteins and enzymes function more efficiently in solutions of lower viscosity. They need adequate water in their immediate environment to “diffuse” and work efficiently. In other words, in solutions of higher viscosity—produced by the loss of water from the cell content—the enzyme system within the cell becomes less efficient. As an analogy, could a competitive swimmer have room to practice in a pool full of kids? Obviously not. The same logic seems to apply to the enzymes in the cells of the body that “swim in cell water” to contact their chemical partners and to produce a desirable outcome.
A gradual loss of sensations in the body should be assumed to involve all aspects of the sensory mechanisms. As we grow older, we gradually lose sharpness of vision and become dependent on glasses. We lose sexual appetite. Our ability to hear some ranges of sound is gradually lost. Our feelings become less tender and lose alertness; our emotional stimulation becomes dull and less satisfying, and so on. These are the apparent outward manifestations of a gradual loss of the ability to differentiate and respond to the stimulation of the senses at some time or another in the life of any individual.
Although we do not know how and when the dulling of senses in the body begins, logical interpretation from the above scientific experiments, in addition to my personal observations, has led me to believe that reliance on our sense of thirst, and waiting to feel thirsty before we drink water, is the basic problem. The most significant and major complication of dehydration is the loss of a number of essential amino acids that are used to manufacture neurotransmitters.