The Water Prescription For Health, Vitality, and Rejuvenation

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 LOSS OF THE SENSATION OF THIRST

5. What to Drink
WATER
TAP WATER
MINERAL WATERS AND SPRING WATERS
DRINKS WITH A STRONG HYDRATING CAPACITY
DRINKS WITH A WEAK HYDRATING CAPACITY

6. The Body’s Water Needs

ELIMINATIONS
MEASURING YOUR DAILY FLUID CONSUMPTION
INDIVIDUAL NEEDS
WHEN TO DRINK
HOW TO REMEMBER TO DRINK
BIG GULPS OR SMALL SIPS?
HOT BEVERAGES OR COLD?

7. Ten Remedies for Rehydrating the Body

HYDRATION REMEDY
REHYDRATION REMEDY #1
REHYDRATION REMEDY #2
PURE WATER HYDRATION AND DETOXIFICATION REMEDY
THE DRY–WET ALTERNATION DETOXIFICATION REMEDY
DRY–WET ALTERNATION REMEDY (SHORT VERSION)
HYDRATION AND REMINERALIZATION REMEDY
HYDRATION AND DEACIDIFICATION REMEDY
HYDRATION AND SPORTS
HYDRATION AND BEAUTY

Bibliography
Resources
Footnotes
About the Author
About Inner Traditions • Bear & Company
Copyright & Permissions
 Introduction

It is said that water is the ideal drink for the human being, and that drinking
water is good for one’s health. The reasons why this would be the case,
however, are rarely stated. As a consequence, water, as a drink, is often
neglected as a factor in health.
This is especially unfortunate considering that water is so widely
available and so low in cost.
Water plays a fundamental role in health. Drunk on a daily basis in
sufficient quantity, it not only maintains the body in good working order but
can also prevent and heal many disorders and health problems.
Who would imagine that fatigue, energy depletion, depression, eczema,
rheumatism, high and low blood pressure, high cholesterol, gastric
disorders, and premature aging could all be caused by a chronic lack of
water in the body? Science has discovered that these problems—and a great
many others—can be effectively prevented or treated by correct hydration.
Most people assume they are drinking enough fluids. Certainly they
consume copious amounts of coffee, tea, and all sorts of soft drinks, but
these beverages are far less effective in hydrating the body than plain water.
Furthermore, in today’s world, our bodies’ need for water is much higher
than it once was. Our food is too rich, too concentrated, and too salty, and
the use of dehydrating substances such as alcohol and tobacco is very
widespread. Stress, overheated and artificially ventilated homes, offices,
and stores, air and water pollution—all contribute to our increased need for
water.
As a consequence, large numbers of people do not realize that they are
chronically dehydrated, much less that lack of water is the cause of many of
their health problems. There is only one solution: drink a lot more water.
But for people to make a permanent change in their habits, they need to
know why water is so important. What exactly happens when water enters
the body? What are the health conditions that can be traced to dehydration?
How should we drink, and what water should we choose? These are just a
few of the many questions answered in this book.
The final chapter presents ten simple remedies that show how drinking
water as a therapeutic agent can have powerful curative effects.
 1
Water and the Human Body

Our image of how the body is constructed and our understanding of how it
functions determine how we use the body and treat it in the event of illness.
Unfortunately, an old mechanistic vision of the body that has been disproved by
current physiological research still survives—most often unconsciously—in the
way we consider the body. This outdated concept can lead us to overlook a
fundamental factor: the important role in health played by water.
The old concept, known as solidism, views the body as a machine made up of
solid cogs (the organs) in which fluids circulate (blood, lymph). The body is
constructed of a combination of “dry” and “hard” materials, with fluids or water
constituting a negligible or very minor component whose role is limited to oiling
the machinery and transporting different substances from one part of the body to
another.
This way of looking at things so permeates our reasoning process that when an
illness makes its presence known, we focus our attention on the solid parts of the
body: the organs. We give very little attention to the organic fluids from either a
qualitative or, more important, a quantitative point of view.
Is there any justification for this lack of interest in the body’s fluids? No, quite
the contrary. In fact, what is the human body primarily constructed from, if not
water?

THE BODY’S WATER CONTENT

Although the body is constructed of both liquid and solid materials, fluids are
present in much greater quantity than solids. Physiology teaches us that water is
actually the most important constituent of the body, accounting for 70 percent of
the human body’s composition.
A human body weighing around 150 pounds therefore consists of some 105
pounds of fluids (in the form of blood, lymph, and cellular fluids), representing a
little over two thirds of the body’s entire weight. The solid part of the body
consists of only about 45 pounds. This is a far cry from a body built from “solid”
materials with a little liquid thown in.
Furthermore, these figures are for the water content of an adult body. It is still
higher during infancy, especially during the period of gestation. The body of a
newborn is 80 percent water; that of a seven-month fetus, 85 percent; and that of a
four-month fetus, 93 percent.

TABLE 1.1
THE BODY’S WATER CONTENT BASED ON AGE

Age Water Content (%)

4-month fetus 93
7-month fetus 85
newborn 80
child 75
adult 70
elderly person 60

The fluids of the body are not all mixed together as if they were inside a large
sack of skin. Rather, they are separated and allocated to different compartments
throughout the body.
The fluid closest to the body’s surface is blood. It is the first to receive
substances taken in by the body from the outside, such as oxygen brought in by the
respiratory tract and nutritive material passed through the mucous membranes of
the digestive tract. The blood represents 5 percent of the body’s weight, yet it
circulates only within the arteries, veins, and capillaries of what is known as the
vascular network.
Directly beneath the vascular network is another compartment containing
extracellular fluid and lymph (figure 1.1).
 Figure 1.1. The three physical compartments or levels and their weight percentages in the
body

As its name indicates, extracellular fluid is found outside the cells. It surrounds
them like a bath, filling the small spaces or interstices that separate the cells from
one another; it is also known as interstitial fluid. It forms the external environment
of the cells, the great ocean in which they “float.” This fluid receives oxygen (in
fluid form) and nutritive substances carried by the bloodstream, and then it
transports them to the cells, where this cargo is utilized. The extracellular fluid
also receives the waste products and residues produced by the cells and transports
them up to the higher compartment, the bloodstream, which in turn takes them to
the excretory organs (liver, kidneys, etc.) so they can be filtered and eliminated
(figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2. What the fluids transport

 The lymph, which is located on the same level as the extracellular fluid,
removes a portion of the toxins it has absorbed from the cells and carries it up to
the bloodstream. The lymphatic vessels in which lymph circulates spill into the
blood at the level of the subclavian arteries. From this point, the toxins are directed
toward the excretory organs.
Together, extracellular fluid and lymph represent 15 percent of body weight, a
weight three times greater than that of the blood. (To simplify this summary, from
here on lymph and extracellular fluid are discussed as if they were a single fluid.)
The next compartment, the third and deepest, is that of the intracellular fluid. It
is composed of all the liquids located within the cells.
Although the internal space of each individual cell is incredibly tiny, when all
these spaces are put together, they nonetheless constitute a volume of considerable
size. The intracellular fluid that fills them represents half the weight of the entire
body.
The oxygen and nutrients carried here by the extracellular fluid penetrate into
the intracellular fluid by traveling through the cellular membranes. Once inside the
cell, they are used by the organs of the cell (the organelles) and by the cellular core
(figure 1.3).
The body—and hence the organs—consists of much more water than solid
materials. The lungs and heart, for example, consist of 70.9 percent water; the
muscles are 75 percent water; the liver is 75.3 percent; and the spleen is 77
percent. These percentages account for about 75 percent of the weight of the
organs in question.
The brain is the organ with the highest fluid content, 83 percent. It has a
proportionately high need for fluid to function properly. The brain alone receives
20 percent of the body’s available blood supply, although it accounts for only 2
percent of total body weight.
So how is it that our bodies, with such a substantial proportion of liquid, seem
so solid?
With the exception of a few organs or body parts (the skin, the nails), whose
concentration of solid substances is quite high (78 percent for the skeleton), cells
paradoxically acquire their solidity from the water that fills them. We can see the
same phenomenon in an ordinary garden hose: soft and flexible when empty, it
becomes rigid and firm when filled with water. The water that fills the cells exerts
pressure on the cellular envelope, which gives the cells their shape and solidity.
 1. The oxygen and nutrients transported by the blood cross through the walls of the
capillaries and enter the extracellular fluid.
2. This fluid transports them to the edge of the cell.
3. They enter the cell by crossing through its membrane.
4. CO2 and toxins leave the intracellular fluid.
5. The extracellular fluid carries them into the capillaries.
6. The blood carries them to the excretory organs.

Figure 1.3. Cellular assimilation and elimination

There are such high quantities of water in the human body because the original
environment from which all living species emerged was liquid. Water is therefore
essential for life even to make an appearance.

WATER, THE ORIGINAL ENVIRONMENT OF LIVING

CREATURES
The first living creatures appeared in a marine environment. It was only thanks to
a very slow process of evolution that certain animal species were able to leave that
liquid environment to establish a partial foothold on solid ground, becoming
amphibians. Later adaptive processes enabled some of these amphibians to leave
the aquatic environment for good to make their homes permanently on solid
ground.
Firm evidence that a marine environment was the original milieu from which all
animal species have emerged was provided by the discovery that the composition
of blood plasma (the fluid component of blood) and extracellular fluid of the
different animal species is quite similar to the composition of seawater. This is true
for not only the kinds of minerals present, but also their individual relative
proportions.
Although the animal species living on land left the primordial ocean a long time
ago, their dependence on water is still total. Cells still need to be bathed in a liquid
to survive; and the regular, uninterrupted intake of water in sufficient quantity is
absolutely essential to their function.
For the animals living in it, the sea represented not only their external
environment but also an immense reservoir of water from which they could draw
—in other words, drink—the entire time they were immersed in it. But the animal
species that left the marine milieu to enter the dry, airy surroundings of terra firma
no longer had an always-accessible reservoir of water from which they could serve
themselves at any time.
For these creatures to survive, two things became indispensable: an
internalization of the external fluid environment, and a very high-performance
internal management system for the available water.

THE INTERNALIZATION OF THE LIQUID ENVIRONMENT

Internalizing the liquid surroundings of the original marine milieu created the
extracellular fluid in which the cells of land-based animal life forms now bathe. It
forms a vast “inner ocean” in which the cells of our own bodies are located.
But internalizing the external water was not sufficient to ensure the survival of
the organism. Henceforth functioning as an almost-closed circuit, the organism
had to accomplish numerous tasks with a very limited quantity of water. Alexis
Carrel, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1932, calculated that to irrigate
properly a surface corresponding to the three-quarters of a square mile of cellular
tissues in the human body would require some 200,000 liters of water! If the mere
several dozen liters of liquid the human body requires to meet its needs are able to
sustain life in all circumstances, it is because that liquid is not motionless but in
constant movement.
Thanks to this movement, the cells of our tissues do not have to move to find
food, as is partly the case for the single-celled organisms—amoebas, for example
—in an aquatic milieu. Instead, food is brought to the cells by the fluids circulating
throughout the body. Nor do the cells of the body have to find a way to distance
themselves from the toxins they have recently released into their external
environment, because the toxins are carried off by these same constantly moving
liquids.
The different bodily fluids circulate at the speed most appropriate to them.
Blood is the most rapid; it can make a circuit through the entire body in around a
minute. The intra-and extracellular fluids move more slowly, but very rapid and
very intense exchanges take place among the different levels. This is how the
depths of the body—the cellular environment—can be rapidly affected by any
substance entering the body. For example, several minutes is all it takes for the
alcohol contained in a drink to enter the bloodstream, travel through the
extracellular level and on into the cerebral cells, where its effects quickly become
evident.

FLUID MANAGEMENT
The second essential for the survival of the organism is a management system that
closely monitors the entrance and exit of all fluids, making sure that any deficit is
rapidly compensated. Body fluids eliminated through urine, sweat, and so forth
must be replaced by an intake of equal amounts of water.
The driving element of this management system is the sensation of thirst that
pushes us to drink. It is triggered immediately when the body begins to dehydrate.
If the water deficit becomes too great or endures for too long, it is the water we
ingest that prevents us from withering away and dying. It takes only a few days of
complete fluid deprivation—theoretically it is three days, but in practice it is closer
to seven—for the body to cease functioning and die.
Our dependence on water is certainly not as great as our dependence on air; we
can survive only a matter of minutes (approximately three to six minutes) without
breathing. But air surrounds us; we are bathed in it, so it is always available, which
is not the case for water.
Although thirst tells us when and how much we need to drink, we do not always
absorb as much liquid as is necessary to enjoy the benefits of optimum health and
vitality. This water deficit is not life-threatening, but it is enough to have negative
consequences for our health. Like a plant that withers and droops from lack of
water, a person suffering from partial dehydration loses strength and energy and
becomes ill. Unfortunately, the cause of the illness often goes unrecognized.
 Qualitatively and quantitatively, the importance of water is at the core of the
approach called humorism (from the old meaning of the word humor, which was
used to refer to the various body fluids). Contrary to solidism, which considers the
body an aggregate of solid and dry organs and views healing as actions directed at
the organs, humorism views the body as a collection of fluids in which the cells
are bathed and on which they are deeply dependent. Anything affecting the quality
or the quantity of these fluids (intra- and extracellular fluids, lymph, and blood)
creates health problems whose seriousness is in proportion to the degree of
variance from the optimum state. The therapeutic methods advocated by humorism
aim to maintain and restore the ideal condition of the fluids. Humorism is the basis
of all medical systems that deal with the internal cellular environment
(naturopathy, homeopathy, and so on).
To the proponents of humorism, water is not merely an accessory element useful
for filling empty spaces (its structural role) and carrying nutrients (its role as a
transporter); it plays a fundamental role in the very functioning of the body. Water
is not just used by the solid parts but has a direct effect on these parts by virtue of
its presence, motion, and properties.
The functions performed by water are many:

Energetic. By entering and exiting the cells, water produces hydroelectric energy
that is stored in the form of adenosine triphosphate, or ATP.
Hydrolytic. Water triggers chemical reactions by decomposing the substances
suspended in it.
Activating/inhibiting. The thicker body fluids become, the more slowly
biological reactions take place, which means that a sufficient intake of liquid
enables the body’s organic “motor” to resume its normal operating speed.
Eliminatory. The purification of the blood by the kidneys occurs because of the
pressure applied to the renal filter by the liquid carried there by the renal
artery.
Thermoregulatory. When water evaporates on the skin, it cools the body.
Circulatory. The quantity of water in the body regulates blood pressure and the
movement of the blood.
Osmotic. The numerous exchanges that take place between the inside and outside
of the cells occur as a result of the different pressures applied by the fluids
located in various parts of the cellular membranes.
Furthermore, it turns out that the heart is better described not as a pump that makes
fluids circulate throughout the body but as an exchanger that is set in motion and
kept working by the fluids themselves (circulatory function). Corroboration of the
experiments performed in this area by Professor Leon Manteuffel-Szoege*1 is
provided by the fact that, in the fetus, the circulatory system is formed and begins
to function before the heart.
Therefore not only is water present in the body’s structure in much greater
quantity than is commonly believed, but it also plays a fundamental role in the
body’s physical functioning.
Having examined some of the little-known roles played by water in the body,
we now turn to the ways water enters the body, what happens once it has entered,
and how it exits the body.