Your Body's Many Cries For Water
This is the title of a book published by Dr Feyedoon Batmanghelidj, an Iranian medical doctor who documented revolutionary discoveries about water metabolism in the human body. He had received first class medical training at St Mary's Hospital Medical School in London, one of the most respected medical schools in the western world.
Dr Batmanhelidj was of aristocratic lineage in his native Iran, and when the Shah was overthrown, the doctor was arrested and jailed along with more than 3000 well-born victims of the Khomeini revolution.
All the prisoners were awaiting execution and Dr Batmanhelidj was assigned as their medical officer, pending his own execution. He had no access to medications, and was working in what he came to realise was a large stress laboratory. Prison disciplines, the uniformity of the prison diet and environment, and the fact that his patients could not evade him, provided Dr Batmanhelidj with the perfect conditions to conduct clinical trials.
Using the only medicine he had - water - he made discoveries about how water functions in the body and how important adequate hydration is to human health. His discoveries had eluded medical research, hospital complexes, universities and the vast resources of the pharmaceutical industry, whose focus is always on what is dissolved in body fluids (the solute), not on the solvent, water. Dr Batmanhelidj's research indicates that we must pay more attention to the solvent - that is, how much water is present.
After three years in the Teheran prison, Dr Batmanhelidj was released and went to America, where he continued to research water metabolism for another ten years, working with the University of Pensylvania, lecturing to doctors, and writing papers for professional publications. After many years of working with and researching water and dehydration, Dr Batmanhelidj had a large number of completely cured people, including medical doctors, and including cases of "incurable" diseases.
Ailments Caused By Not Drinking Enough Water
Many seemingly un-related conditions were shown by Dr Batmanheldijh to respond to adequate daily water intake: Dyspeptic pain, stress, depression, high blood cholesterol, high blood pressure, excess body weight, chronic fatigue, arthritis, asthma, allergies, insulin-dependent diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, back problems and impotency are just some of these conditions.
Results With Asthma
The first astonishing clinical result achieved by Dr Batmanhelidj in prison was with asthma patients, who, by increasing their daily water intake were able to stop wheezing and asthmatic attacks without using medications.
Dr Batmanheldijh concluded that asthma is due to the body's natural histamines constricting the lungs to limit any further loss of water via the breath. Your body does this as a "drought control" reaction. While it remains true that allergens in the environment can bring on an asthma attack via histamine release, the spasm that causes wheezing is more likely to happen if the lungs are already partially constricted in response to dehydration.
Dehydration and High Blood Pressure.
According to Dr Batmanheldijh, it is absurd to treat high blood pressure with drugs without first increasing water intake. He explains that high blood pressure is the result of the way your body adapts to total body water deficiency. When your total fluid (water) volume decreases, your blood vessels decrease their aperture by constriction of the muscles, to maintain fluid pressure within. Otherwise gases would separate from the blood and fill the extra space forming "gas locks". The result is high blood pressure.
Successful recoveries from ulcers, asthma and high blood pressure were achieved in just months by increasing daily water intake.
Chronic Dehydration Is The Real Problem
One day of low water intake is not what causes problems. It is weeks, months and years of low water intake that causes the problems. Therefore, you can't solve the imbalance by drinking gallons in one day. You need to increase your water intake every day and keep it up, for weeks, months and years - in fact, for the rest of your life.
The Water Prescription
Adults should drink at least eight 8oz glasses of water a day to hydrate their body properly. Dr Batmanheldijh advises that you should have teaspoon salt per day with your food, so that your body can use the added water intake effectively. The salt is crucial.
Water should be drunk between meals, not with meals. This means at least half an hour before meals, and 2 hours after food, for best results. This time schedule helps digestion, improves bowel activity and reduces craving for food between meals. Many people are so dehydrated that they confuse the thirst signal from their brain with hunger.
Coffee, soda, diet drinks, and fruit drinks containing sugar are not substitutes for water, because they are dehydrating. The caffeine and/or phosphates they contain cause water loss from your kidneys, which cancels out any water present in the drinks.
Some Interesting Facts
1. 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated. (This likely applies to half the world population)
2. In 37% of Americans, the thirst mechanism is so weak that it is often mistaken for hunger.
3. Even MILD dehydration will slow down your metabolism as much as 3%.
4. One glass of water will shut down midnight hunger pangs for almost 100% of the dieters studied in a U-Washington study.
5. Lack of water, is the # number 1 trigger of daytime fatigue.
6. Preliminary research indicates that 8-10 glasses of water a day could significantly ease back and joint pain for up to 80% of sufferers.
7. A mere 2% drop in body water can trigger fuzzy short-term memory, trouble with basic math, and difficulty focusing on the computer or on a printed page.
8. Drinking 5 glasses of water daily decreases the risk of colon cancer by 45%, plus it can slash the risk of breast cancer by 79%, and one is 50% less likely to develop bladder cancer.
Are you drinking enough water every day?
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