Water: For Health, For Healing, For Life (7 page)
WATER MANAGEMENT IN ADULTS
After full physical growth has taken place and the body is no longer in its growing phase of physical development, the effect of the growth hormone is no longer a dominant factor in the regulation of the body's water intake. At this stage of life, the body's water regulation becomes the primary responsibility of nerve centers in the brain that employ histamine as the chemical messenger.
It is at this phase of life that the thirst sensation becomes insufficient to regulate for adequate water intake. The reason for this failing thirst sensation seems to be very delicate, but simple. Our bodies, although many millions of years down the road of development from the earlier species that stepped out of water and ventured onto land, still depend on the same adaptive processes that were developed by their water-dwelling progenitors. They formed strong water-management systems to enable them to stay out of water for longer and longer periods. Although the body does not possess any means of retaining excess and spare water in the same way that fat is stored, it still has to be able to cope with periods of drought.
The physiology of the body is always dependent on water. Management of drought does not mean that the body cells become independent of water. It only means that certain areas of the body that are less in demand and not used all the time will be given survival rations only. The entry of water into these cells will not be by free flow, but will be coupled to the need-to-act commands to the cell. Water intake is regulated by a decreased flow of circulation to the inactive area. Then, if the area is forced into activity, the vascular (circulatory) system opens up and water is brought to the region.
From the age of about eighteen to twenty-five, when the body has reached full height and breadth, our regulation of water intake depends on the thirst sensation and our attempts at satisfying this sensation. Unfortunately, our thirst sensation, as it is understood today—a dry mouth—is not an accurate indicator of the body's actual water needs. If we don't feel thirsty, we tend not to drink water. We wait to become thirsty before we even begin to think of drinking water. The whole problem of health deterioration begins by this very attitude toward water intake—deficit management only—and even that is only in half measures. By the time the body reflects its thirst through invoking its thirst sensation, it is short of two to three glasses of water. We may drink only one glass, leaving the body with two glasses less than it needs. Unfortunately, this gap expands as we grow older.
REDUCTION OF THIRST SENSATION
The body has an ability to adapt to some hardship. Low food intake and temporary shortage of water in the body seem to invoke an adaptive process. The essential functions of the body are managed until we have access to food and water. In this process, the sensation of thirst can be confused with the feeling of hunger, because both sensations are similar in the way they register—they stem from low energy levels in the brain. This is one of the main contributing factors in the development of obesity in the young and the old. They mistakenly eat food to satisfy their thirst sensation.
They seem to respond to both calls—thirst and hunger—as if they are only hungry. They begin to eat until the thirst sensation gathers greater strength as a result of the additional load of solid food within the system, and only then do they drink some water. This type of thirst satisfaction is not enough for the urgent needs of the body, but is just enough to fall inside the body's limit of temporary adaptation to water shortage. In this way, the water shortage in the body becomes a steadily expanding chronic state, and new thresholds of adaptation are forced on the body. This process results in a slowly deteriorating loss of thirst sensation, so much so that the need for regular water intake as a sensation gradually becomes forgotten.
Histamine can act as a temporary substitute for water by releasing energy for some extremely sensitive body functions. In this way, the body can survive some dehydration. It seems the body begins to rely on the emergency functions of histamine and allows dehydration to continue. Still, no matter how useful the possession of these emergency powers, dehydration is damaging to some less-used functions of the body. Gradually establishing chronic dehydration produces constant changes, initially in the physiology and eventually in the chemistry of the body. The body begins to survive on the constant verge of failure.
The histamine-operated centers of the brain seem to recognize the levels of water that enter the body. If sufficient water enters the body, the active histamine centers gradually become disengaged from their full-time responsibility as water regulators. The engagement of histamine in drought management and its substitution for some energy-transforming functions of water decrease and are eventually phased out. It seems that the body begins to realize there is no water shortage and becomes more alert to and conscious of its calls for water—it begins to understand and manifest thirst. It seems to me that
the loss of the thirst sensation is an adaptive process to false information that water is not available because we don't drink it.
If the body is once again conditioned to regular and adequate water intake, however, the thirst sensation becomes sharp and the urge to drink water becomes strong. The body begins to indicate water shortage more forcefully. The rehydration of the cells takes place slowly. The cells of the body are just like sponges—they get soaked slowly. Do not imagine the body will become optimally hydrated after just the first glass or two of water. The water that is taken will not immediately enter all the cells. Upon regular and adequate intake of water, the process of full hydration of the cells will take a few days. Only when you realize what damage dehydration can cause will you take seriously the need for strict adherence to hydrating the body regularly and well. The quantity and timing of water intake is very important and will be discussed in a later chapter.
Everyone knows water is essential. What is not fully realized is what happens when the body is not provided with adequate water on a regular basis. Also, what is meant by “the body begins to survive on the constant verge of failure”?
The human body is a composite structure made of many different systems. All these systems are dependent on the various properties of water for their normal function. When there is not enough water in the body for all the functions to take place, something has to give. When the body is only just managing to cope with daily routine activities and then a sudden emergency situation arises and an action has to take place, how will the body show its limitations? Suppose the body is in equilibrium within a threshold, and all of a sudden new obligations are thrust on it until the threshold is passed. How will the body show its shortfalls? In short, how will the body cope with the sudden stress of having to cope with emergency situations that demand water-dependent responses, when the body is already dehydrated? In essence, the answer to this question is the main topic of this book.
The damage of dehydration is established when the proteins and enzymes of the body become gradually, but increasingly, inefficient. The individual cells in the zone of dehydration begin to function less efficiently until eventually the loss of cell function becomes permanent. In any state of free-water loss from the body, 66 percent is lost from the cell content, 26 percent is lost from the fluid between the cells, and only 8 percent is lost from the blood volume. This causes concern in light of research by Bruce and associates. They have shown that as we grow older, from the ages of twenty to seventy, the water content inside the cells becomes less than the amount of water outside the cells of the body. The water inside the cells is gradually lost until the osmotic balance is reversed. This reversal of balance makes it gradually more difficult for our cells to absorb and hold water as we get older. The question we need to ask ourselves is: What happens to our bodies when they are allowed to undergo such a drastic transformation of their cell water content and composition? Read on for the answer.
WHAT IS CHRONIC DEHYDRATION?
Imagine a juicy plum picked from the tree and left exposed to the sun or wind—it becomes a prune. The dehydration of the plum produces the shriveled interior and wrinkled skin that are typical of a drying fruit. Loss of water causes the internal and external structures of living things to change, be that dehydration in a fruit or in a person.
There are up to one hundred trillion cells in the body of a human being. Depending on the area where the dehydration has settled most, the cells in that region begin to wrinkle, and their inner functions are affected. A shortage of water in any region is reflected by different signals that denote dehydration and are the body's indicators of its local or general thirst. At present, these indicators of dehydration of the body, some of which I listed in a previous chapter, are not understood and are treated as indicators of disease conditions of unknown origin.
IDENTIFYING DEHYDRATION
• What are the common indicators of dehydration?
• What happens to our bodies when we don't drink enough water?
• What is “enough” water?
We now need to find the answer to these three important questions. A must-do before we begin: You need to turn on your brain's logic powers and put aside any preconceived ideas you might have. Whatever you have read about health matters in the past probably did not reflect the true importance of water to health and well-being.
From my perspective, there are three different sets of sensations that signal local or general thirst. At most of these stages, the presenting symptoms are reversible without much damage.
1. The General Perceptive “Feelings”
They include feeling tired, feeling flushed, feeling irritable, feeling anxious, feeling dejected, feeling depressed, not sleeping well, feeling heavy-headed, having irresistible cravings, and having a fear of crowds and leaving the house. Some of these will be discussed in the next chapter.
2. The Drought-Management Programs
The second group of conditions that represent indicators of dehydration are the body's drought-and resource-management programs. There are five distinct conditions that denote states of dehydration and operative rationing processes that can be corrected easily. The sixth in this group consists of a number of conditions that have been classified as autoimmune diseases, but should be looked at as a sort of cannibalistic process of resource management at the expense of the body's own tissues brought about by persistent dehydration. The conditions are:
1. Asthma
2. Allergies
3. Hypertension
4. Constipation
5. Type II diabetes
6. Autoimmune diseases
3. The More Drastic Emergency Indicators of Local Dehydration
After much clinical and scientific research, my understanding is this: Depending on the location of acid buildup inside the cells, the following forms of pain are early indicators of potential genetic damage produced by chronic dehydration in the human body:
1. Heartburn
2. Dyspeptic pain
3. Anginal pain
4. Lower back pain
5. Rheumatoid joint pains, including ankylosing spondylitis
6. Migraine headaches
7. Colitis pain
8. Fibromyalgic pains
9. Bulimia
10. Morning sickness during pregnancy
There is a further set of conditions that represent complications, tissue transformation, and organ damage caused by persistent dehydration in the fourth dimension, time. Each of these conditions will be explained thoroughly in upcoming chapters.
NEWLY RECOGNIZED THIRST PERCEPTIONS
The following are perceptive feelings (some of which are labeled “psychological disorders”) that I believe signal dehydration:
1.
Feeling tired without a plausible reason.
Water is the main source of energy formation in the body. Even the food that is supposed to be a good source of energy has no value to the body until it is hydrolyzed by water and energized in the process. Furthermore, the energy source for neurotransmission and for the operational directives that get things done is hydroelectricity, which is formed in the nerve pathways and their connection to the muscles and joints in the body.
2.
Feeling flushed.
When the body is dehydrated, and the brain cannot draw sufficient water from the circulation to satisfy its needs, it commands a proportionate dilation of the blood vessels that reach it. Furthermore, the face is not a simple organ that supports two eyes, a mouth, a nose, and two ears. It is a receptor dish with an abundant supply of nerve endings that constantly monitor the environment and report their information to the brain. In other words, the face is an extension of the brain with highly sensitive functions. Its nerve endings need to be hydrated, too; hence the increased circulation to the face at the same time as the brain gets its increased blood supply. If you see someone with a red nose and flushed face—often seen in alcoholics, because alcohol truly dehydrates the brain, leading to hangover headaches—that person is dehydrated and in need of water.
