A Few Facts About Dehydration That Can Save Your Life
“You’re not sick; you’re thirsty. Don’t treat thirst with medication.”
Dr. F. Batmanghelidj
Most people don’t think they need to worry about dehydration. In fact most people are not only dehydrated, but they are chronically dehydrated.
Think you’re hungry? Maybe you’re just thirsty! By the time you feel thirst you are already over 75% dehydrated. In fact, most hunger is actually in reality thirst
Water is the basis of all life and that includes your body. Your muscles that move your body are 75% water; your blood that transport nutrients is 82% water; your lungs that provide your oxygen are 90% water; your brain that is the control center of your body is 76% water; even your bones are 25% water.
Chronic dehydration is widespread in the present day and affects everyone who is not drinking enough hydrating liquid. You’ll discover that coffee, tea, caffeinated, carbonated, sweetened liquids and most fruit juices are NOT hydrating at all.
You want to drink pure water. You might use a splash of fresh lemon or lime in the water, a dash of natural whole salt to make it more palatable and absorbable. Products such as Willard Water, Crystal Energy Tincture or MegaHydrate help structure water and make it more absorbable.
Ideally you drink enough water to have clear to light yellow urine. (Note that B vitamins can color your urine yellow.) When well hydrated you usually need to urinate every 2 hours. Waking up at night to urinate a little bit more than once a night is often due to dehydration. Concentrated urine will irritate your urinary bladder and cause you wake up to urinate, but you find your bladder is not that full. You can pinch the skin on the back of your hand, if it stays up rather than flattening out instantly, this indicated dehydration.
The list of 14 symptoms from The Water Prescription will motivate you to go get a glass of water, and then another, and another. Every cell of the body must have adequate water to perform optimally. Dehydration has many consequences that are unpleasant and threaten your health, vitality and longevity.
1. Fatigue, Energy Loss: Dehydration of the tissues causes enzymatic activity to slow down. Lack of water, the #1 trigger of daytime fatigue. A mere 2% drop in body water can trigger fuzzy short-term memory, trouble
with basic math, and difficulty focusing on the computer screen or on a
printed page.
- Constipation: It should be easy to clean yourself with a couple of swipes after elimination. Elimination should occur easily after every meal on a daily basis. 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.
- Digestive Disorders: In chronic dehydration, the secretion of digestive juices is less. Even MILD dehydration will slow down one’s metabolism as much as 3%.
- High and Low Blood Pressure: The body’s blood volume is not enough to completely fill the entire set of arteries, veins, and capillaries.
- Gastritis, Stomach Ulcers: To protect its mucous membranes from being destroyed by the acidic digestive fluid it produces, the stomach secretes a layer of mucus.
- Respiratory Troubles: The mucous membranes of the respiratory region are slightly moist to protect the respiratory tract from substances that might be present in inhaled air.
- Acid-Alkaline Imbalance: Dehydration activates an enzymatic slowdown producing acidification.
- Excess Weight and Obesity: We may overeat because we crave foods rich in water. Thirst is often confused with hunger leading to over eating and further dehydration. One glass of water shut down midnight hunger pangs for almost 100% of the
dieters studied in a U-Washington study.
- Eczema: Your body needs enough moisture to sweat 20 to 24 ounces of water, the amount necessary to dilute toxins so they do not irritate the skin.
- Cholesterol: When dehydration causes too much liquid to be removed from inside the cells, the body tries to stop this loss by producing more cholesterol
1 1. Cystitis, Urinary Infections: If toxins contained in urine are insufficiently diluted, they attack the urinary mucous membranes.
- Rheumatism: Dehydration abnormally increases the concentration of toxins in the blood and cellular fluids, and the pains increase in proportion to the concentration of the toxins.
- Headache: One of the early signed of dehydration. You will find if you drink 6-8 ounces of pure water the headache will disappear.
- Aches and Pains: Preliminary research indicates that 8-10 glasses of water a day could significantly ease back and joint pain for up to 80% of sufferers.
- Premature Aging: The body of a newborn child is composed of 80 percent liquid, but this percentage declines to no more than 70 percent in an adult and continues to decline with “age” to as low as 40%!
Are you drinking the amount of water you should every day?
References:
The Water Prescription: For Health, Vitality, and Rejuvenation by Christopher Vasey N.D.
The Body’s Many Cries for Water by Dr. Batmanghelidj.
The Water Cure by Dr. Batmanghelidj.
Katharine Clark, RN 