Water: For Health, For Healing, For Life (23 page)
SKIN AND DEHYDRATION
In a dehydrated state of the body, the first site for establishing water conservation is the skin. Skin has the ability to perspire or sweat to cool and regulate body temperature. If there is dehydration, the water reserves in the skin may be used up without being replaced at the same rate as the water is lost. Thus, dehydration is a primary factor in the production of dry and lusterless skin: One, the skin loses moisture and becomes dry and prunelike; two, there is less capillary circulation to the skin area to give it the healthy color it should have. To promote a healthier skin, adequate water intake is essential.
Human skin is the tissue that houses the inner workings of the body. Its cells need water all the time. They are exposed to the environment and lose water through surface evaporation, perspiration, and sweating—three different rates of water loss from the skin surface. If water does not reach the skin from the circulation at its base, the rate of skin repair will decrease, and dehydrated cells will cover the body.
This is one of the reasons why you often see young women with their skins already aged beyond their years; why you see middle-aged women with deep furrows—crow's feet—all over their faces. The face is most exposed to wind and the sun's rays, elements that enhance water loss from the skin's surface. Men have coarser skin than women, which is why men's skin does not show its damage from dehydration as readily as women's skin. Men have another advantage. In order to make facial hair grow, male hormones bring more circulation to the skin of the face. Nonetheless, persistent dehydration does produce rough and fur-rowed skin in men's faces, too.
The ultimate in dehydration-produced skin problems is scleroderma—the skin becomes atrophied and thin, or scaly like an alligator's hide. In its early stages of scleroderma, the skin begins to resemble a crocodile's. Exposed areas of the skin—arms, knees, shins, hands, and feet—are first to show the sign of the disease. The skin becomes fibrous, thick, and scaly. At later stages the skin becomes very thin and almost “shrink-wraps” the anatomical parts under it. When it affects the face, it can disfigure the nose, mouth, and eyes, as if the person is wearing a pale, shiny mask. The condition is very painful as well.
The good news is that at its early phase, scleroderma can be reversed by increased water intake. I have seen the change back to normal skin in a young woman who was ecstatic with the outcome. She had been dreading the progress of her seemingly incurable crippling problem. What amazes me is the number of ways the human body can manifest dehydration—and how we in medicine have never understood the missing role of water in the conditions we have labeled diseases.
The most common irritant to the skin is the deter-gent residue on washed clothes that are not well rinsed. The detergent can dissolve in sweat and cause contact dermatitis and even hives. Always double rinse anything you wash.
OSTEOPOROSIS
Osteoporosis is normally recognized in the sixth decade of life, although it often starts in the body fifteen to twenty years earlier. It occurs in both sexes and in all population groups. The total bone mass seems to decrease. It seems that the rate of bone resorption exceeds the rate of bone formation. Consequently, bone consistency and volume begin to decline. No one knows why osteoporosis occurs as we age. What I am about to discuss is my view. It is new and not necessarily subscribed to by others in the field of scientific research.
By linking osteoporosis to chronic dehydration and a gradual rise in cholesterol levels of the body, I am sure I will incur the wrath of many of my colleagues who are looking at the condition through solutes-directed research. Be that as it may, the following is my scientific belief and worthy of being exposed. Should my views prevail, the solution to osteoporosis will become simple. It will be a matter of
prevention,
nine-tenths of any sensible cure. To expose the relationship between osteoporosis and dehydration, we need to understand how bone formation takes place in the human body.
As an example, and depending on the availability of raw materials at a construction site, the use of concrete for the building of the skeleton of a building seems to be the most practical, long-lasting, and economical method. If sand, gravel, and cement are locally produced, water is the only other necessary element to mix these components and the interwoven steel rods, which act as internal trusses for the cement to hold on to, as well as providing the rigidity needed for any durable building construction. Exactly the same principle is employed in the manufacture of skeletal bones.
The architecture of dense bones employs myriad interwoven collagen fibers. Single fibers are anchored together and woven into a three-ply band. The woven bands are laid side by side and anchored together. It seems these thicker ropelike structures are now inter-woven in such a way that “hole zones” or gaps are created for the deposit of a number of different calcium and sodium crystals. While the elastic collagen fibers provide the inner scaffolding for the calcium, the calcium itself establishes the necessary rigidity for the bone to become weight-bearing. Also, much of the 24 percent deposit of sodium in the body—along with the other minerals, such as magnesium, that are not dissolved in extracellular fluid—is stored as crystals in the bone. Thus, bone formation depends on calcium, sodium, and, to a lesser degree, other mineral deposits.
Now that we are discussing sodium, let us recognize an important fact. Sodium and its “attached” chloride or bicarbonate constitute 90 percent of all the solids dissolved in the fluid surrounding the cells of the body. Thus, sodium is the most important ingredient for the maintenance of extracellular fluid volume. Twenty-four percent of all the sodium in the body seems to be in a solid and crystalline form, mainly stored in the bones. The stored sodium in the bone must be assumed to compose the sodium reserves of the body, at the same time as it is employed for bone crystallization and rendering it hard. Thus, sodium in its own right serves an important function in the process of bone formation. Sodium shortage in the body, now that we understand its role in bone formation, may be a contributing factor in the establishment of osteoporosis. A sodium-free diet and the long-term use of diuretics may be a contributory factor in the establishment of osteoporosis.
Collagen fibers are manufactured from amino acids that are connected in a linear fashion. The amino acid pool of the body seems to regulate the manufacture of these fibers. These fibrous strands are protected from being enzymatically broken if they are deeply embedded in the calcium deposits. As soon as the calcium is removed from around the fibers, their enzymatic breakdown and the reentry of their amino acid components into the amino acid pool becomes possible. This is how bone formation of the body has to do a balancing act between bone construction and bone breakdown. A tip of balance in the direction of one or the other state determines whether bone becomes thicker and more solid, or weak and lighter in construction.
How does bone resorption takes place? How is it related to dehydration?
There are many different factors involved in bringing about bone resorption to the point of causing osteoporosis. I will not get involved in the variety of conditions that have bone resorption as their indirect consequence. I will concentrate on the possible direct relationship of dehydration to osteoporosis. Remember that there is normally a time gap between the expo-sure of a disease process and the initiating factors that began the process. In the case of the onset of chronic dehydration and its consequence of osteoporosis, my opinion is there may be a gap of one to three decades.
It is my understanding that the very gradual loss of thirst sensation—the primary cause for the establishment of chronic dehydration—begins after the third decade of life, while the establishment of osteoporosis is mostly seen during the sixth decade of life. Thus, the tip of balance in favor of gradual and incipient bone resorption becomes established over the span of many years. Inactivity and disuse of the bone structure accentuate the rate of osteoporosis, while physical activity and the full use of the bones favor the laying down of calcium deposits and strengthening the frame of the bones.
One of the main factors for the establishment of osteoporosis is the process of bone breakdown— osteolysis—that is brought about by prostaglandin E (PGE). As we know, PGE is a subordinate that routinely becomes active at the command of the neurotransmitter histamine. Bone marrow has an abundance of mast cells that manufacture histamine.
The consequence of the prolonged activation of PGE by histamine is tapping into the calcium reserves by means of the breakdown of bone (osteolysis) and the removal of calcium from the bone deposits. The removal of calcium exposes the collagen for ultimate breakdown. In this way, dehydration that commissions histamine into activity will produce the consequent osteoporosis in the bone structures of the body. Osteoporosis is the negative outcome between the rate of bone formation and osteolysis.
The only way to decommission histamine and prevent the bone resorption that is associated with dehydration is to adequately increase daily water intake to no less than eight glasses of water, eight ounces each. You also need sufficient exercise to tip the balance in favor of bone formation. Exercise has many other beneficial effects, of course. Not only does it cause strengthening of the bone itself, as well as its joints and its muscle connections, but it also promotes better circulation—it opens and creates a more extensive capillary bed and builds a larger blood pool to draw on when the body is in need of more water and raw materials. This is why well-exercised people are able to endure hardship and stress with fewer detrimental effects. An adequate and balanced protein diet is also essential to maintain the amino acid pool that ultimately determines the rate of manufacture of different collagen fibers.
CANCER FORMATION
In September 1987, I was asked to deliver the guest lecture at a select cancer conference and workshop, because I had introduced a new understanding to this major health problem of our society. I scientifically explained why chronic unintentional dehydration is, in my view, the primary cause of pain and disease in the human body, including cancer. I explained that dehydration produces a drastic system disturbance in the physiology of the body and causes four major disruptions that ultimately and collectively allow for cancer formation and the invasive growth of the new tissue. My lecture was published in the September-October 1987 issue of the
Journal of Anticancer Research.
You can retrieve this article from my Web site
www.watercure.com.
Further scientific information is available in my article “Neurotransmitter Histamine: An Alternative Viewpoint,” which was presented at the Third Interscience World Conference on Inflammation in 1989. In September 2002, I was invited for the second time to highlight my understanding of dehydration and cancer formation in the body at the Thirty-first Annual Cancer Control Society Conference in Los Angeles.
The detailed explanations are too complicated for the scope of this book, but the highlights are as follows:
Persistent dehydration causes a multisystem dysfunction in the entire physiology of the body, including:
1. DNA damage in the cell nucleus
2. Inefficiency and eventual loss of DNA repair system inside the cells
3. Cell receptor abnormalities and loss of balancing processes of the hormonal control systems
4. General immune system suppression, even at the level of the bone marrow, causing lack of ability to recognize abnormal cells, the inability to destroy them, and loss of the filter system for removal of abnormal and primitive genes from the time-refined and sophisticated gene pool in the body.
In short, dehydration will gradually cause the body to lose its edge against the disruptive cascade of chemical combinations that constitute makeshift processes until the body gets back to its normal pattern of chemistry. You see, the body is a chemical refinery; it is the outcome of a most sophisticated pattern of chemical reactions that depend on the adequate presence of water and, naturally, other food-contained ingredients. If you shortchange it the water it needs to maintain efficiency and run the myriad chemical formulas every second of every minute of life, you cause the creation of new chemical pathways that produce pain, disease, and premature death. Cancer formation is the outcome of a series of such chemical formulas and pathways to early death. Four of these primary pathways have been mentioned above.
The relationship of dehydration and DNA damage is easy to understand. Every cell has the tendency to produce some highly acidic by-products from its chemical reactions. Water has the job of washing these acidic elements out of the cell and taking them to the liver and the kidneys to be processed. When there is not enough water to circulate to these cells, the acid the cells produce will gradually and eventually erode the fine and detailed transcription patterns in the DNA repertoire stored in the cell nucleus. In time, the erosions can become permanent and disruptive, causing aberrant cells with the power to reproduce. These types of cells are more primitive and are locked into uncontrollable reproductive patterns.
For the benefit of those who want the scientific knowledge, in these cells the protein kinase C of normal cells gets converted to protein kinase M, which is an autonomous and unstoppable smaller enzyme that continues to stimulate cell reproduction without regard for boundary limitations. This is why cancer cells develop bulky masses and lumps that encroach on the adjacent tissues and interfere with the tissues' normal functions.
