Water Shortage Effects in the Body 

Understanding dehydration or water shortage in the body, will empower you to become much healthier and live longer.  You might think: "I now know I need to drink water; that is enough."  But you knew that all along.  What you did not know - and need to know - is why and what happens when we become forgetful and complacent.  When this water shortage has become symptom-producing, the reversal of its complications take time and understanding.

Case Scenario: A woman in her mid fifties, who suffers from chronic pain in her low back, one night is rushed to the hospital when her medication just isn’t working anymore.  The first course of action is to hook the patient up to an intravenous IV, which, by the way, is merely a $400 bottle of water and salt.  It takes at least 3 days to rehydrate the body, so after about three days the patient is feeling great.  I have heard my mom say she was totally pain free after spending a number of days hooked up to those expense bottles of IV water.  The patient is feeling great, and the doctors hand them a number of medications to take home, and might make a comment off to the side to drink plenty of water with this medication.  What does plenty of water really mean anyway?  Medication misuse causes over 100,000 deaths a year and are the cause for 1/4 of hospital omissions.  1.3 Trillion dollars were made last year in the medical arena.  400 billion of those dollars was paid to the government.  The government or pharmaceutical companies are not going to educate you on the benefits of water consumption.  It’s time to take charge of your own health.

Based on Dr. Batmanghelidj’s book “Water: Rx for a Healthier Pain-Free Life,” dry mouth is not the only sign of dehydration.  The first perceptive signs/feelings will appear with tiredness (when the condition isn’t followed by intense activity), feeling flushed, feeling irritable or anxious, feeling dejected, depressed, or inadequate, feeling a “heavy head”, cravings for manufactured beverages such as coffee, tea, sodas and alcoholic drinks(specifically if this is your body’s fluid intake norm), and/or agoraphobia - fear and dread of public places. 

Water, he explains, is our main source of energy.  Through hydrolysis water energizes the food we eat aiding in metabolism, digestion, and our body’s conversion and utilization of energy.  Much like if you add two powder chemicals together in a test tube nothing happens until you add water to the mix.  Water carries the energy needed for conversion.  Water generates electrical and magnetic energy inside each and every cell of the body, and is the bonding adhesive in the architectural design of the cell structure; in turn it prevents DNA damage and makes its repair mechanisms more efficient.  Water greatly increase the efficiency of the immune system.  It is the main solvent not only for all food intake, but for vitamin and mineral absorption, and is used for the transport of all substances inside the body.  Finally, water increases the efficiency of the red blood cells in collecting oxygen in the lungs.

The first physical ailment symptoms to appear when our body is seriously lacking water is Asthma, Allergies, Hypertension, and Diabetes.  Today 12 million children have childhood asthma.  Because the lungs require water to contract the alveoli in order to push the air out, in preservation the lungs shut down to prevent more water loss from the body.  Our children are bombarded daily at school with vending machines and advertisements for the popular soda revolution.  Caffeinated beverages, as well as soda, dehydrate the body as well as leaching out important minerals needed for proper growth and body function.  In addition, caffeine is a neurotoxin which suppresses the brains enzyme system in memory making, producing loss of memory and inability to learn.  When you consider that our brains utilize 85% of the body’s water, it’s no surprise that between dehydration and caffeine consumption our children are plagued with learning disabilities and ADD. 

Normal blood tests will not reflect the dehydration of the body, since the vascular system will have the least amount of water loss.  66% of the loss is reflected inside the cells themselves (reducing cellular actitivity drastically), followed by 26% loss outside the cells, with only 8% loss in the vascular system.  Water binds cell membranes together and when such a great loss is present it can lead to DNA damage and immune suppression.  Nothing can live without water.

After a significant amount of time and depletion, the physical emergency signals kick in, which can include early morning sickness, migraine headaches, heartburn, anginal pain, rheumatoid joint pain, back pain, lower leg pain, collitis, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and appendicitis pain when no temperature is present.  As the body draws what little water it has left to maintain brain and vascular functions, circulation becomes severly limited impending the body’s need to wash toxic molecular wastes away.  Since these waste bi-products are acidic in nature, acid levels rise throwing off the pH balance of the body.  With lack of circulation, muscle fibers begin to stick together, forming adhesions and trigger points, producing pain.  The lubrication need in the cartilage of the vertebral discs and within the body joints is dimimished causing dryness and roughness at its connections, producing arthritic pain.  In return, the muscles supporting these joints must work harder to keep everything in alignment trying to support proper movement and keep our structures erect.  Such constant stress on these muscles will eventually lead to muscle spasms.

So how much water is enough?  A minimum of 2 quarts of water a day is often recommended, but many experts believe our water intake should be in proportion to our body weight.  1/2 ounce for every pound, or basically 1/2 your body weight in ounces of water is need for basic normal functioning.  If you are involved in a very active lifestyle, much more is required. 

It is important to keep in mind that quality of drinking water is as important as quantity.  Water is a scarce commodity these days with only 1% of the earth’s drinking water available (the rest being locked up in glacial ice), our industrial society has resorted to pouring more and more chemical and toxic wastes into those lakes and rivers providing our drinking water.  Compound that with the age of water pipes that were laid in urban areas many decades ago now having layers upon layers of collected deposits, and the inadequacy of water filtration and treatment plants, the concerns are alarming.  Public water supplies in 42 U.S. states are contaminated with 141 unregulated chemicals for which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has never established safety standards, according to an investigation by the Environmental Working Group (EWG).  According to a report by the EWG, the top 10 states with the most contaminants in their drinking water were California, Wisconsin, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, New York, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Illinois—in that order.  You can begin to see how important a good water filtration system can be.