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Research has shown that our body is made up of about 2/3rds water. These ratios are even higher in our vital organs: “According to H.H. Mitchell, Journal of Biological Chemistry 158, the brain and heart are composed of 73% water, and the lungs are about 83% water. The skin contains 64% water, muscles and kidneys are 79%, and even the bones are watery: 31%.” So would you then be surprised if I told you that our earth is also made up of about 2/3rds of water? Probably not. We all know inherently know that life on earth is largely dependent on water. However, what many of us don’t know is that a lot of us are dehydrated and when we go without adequate amounts of water for too long, there are many chronic conditions (that I believe are untreatable) that follow.
My intentions are to keep this article as short as possible, because at the core of it is to simply drink more water. But there’s a catch–in some instances, you can still be dehydrated even if you’re drinking more water. Your body has to be the right condition in order to fully utilize the water you’re drinking. Therefore, I will sharing with you what you can do to optimize your fluid intake, a brief overview of the disease-dehydration link, and some references that will help make things flow more fluidly 😉
The Elixir of Life: What Happens When We’re Not Getting Enough of it
The only thing that precedes water in terms of how vital it is to our survival is oxygen. With that being said, water is truly the Elixir of Life. It’s been said that one can go on average three days without it before perishing. This makes a lot of sense because if you recall from earlier the percentages that were presented, you can see that a large portion of our vital organs are made up of water. Therefore, if we aren’t getting enough water, our organs literally get sucked dry. Sadly, a lot of us are walking around chronically dehydrated and are unaware of the severe damages we’re causing on our bodies.
Think of your body as a pond. When your body is healthy, the pond is nice a vibrant green with a few adorable species and healthy algae growing. Drinking clean water would be synonymous to getting a fresh stream of water through a nearby lake or river. However, over the years due to human intervention, this supply gets cut off because nearby farmers divert and use it for their own crops and plantations. Not only this, but a lot them use fertilizers and pesticides on their crops and all of these chemicals start leaking into the pond. Overtime, this accumulates and the pond becomes an icky green, filled with toxic waste and parasites (I’m sure you’ve seen some of these around). And with no clean source of water coming in, the pond is bound to dry up and perish.
This is very much so in terms of our own bodies. Depending on where you live, you are subject to breathing in a number of toxins. On top of that, if you also eat processed food and other things that are unnatural and inorganic, then it is akin to streamlining your body with harmful chemicals. That’s why it’s critical that we are getting enough water to wash out and dilute any toxic build up.
But this brings another issue to mind–instead of drinking water, people are using energy drinks and coffee to “get more energy”. This is a big no-no, since caffeine has a dehydrating effect on the body and when you’re already dehydrated, you’re pretty much setting yourself up for some serious health issues. And you’re not exactly getting more energy, but rather a false sense of it.
Another common issue is that people think they are getting adequate fluid take by drinking lots of store-bought juice, soda, alcohol, etc. Store bought juice is void of life force and is basically sugar water. And if you didn’t know, sugar is highly acidic and a bottle of soda contains a whopping 50g of sugar. So when all of this sugar hits our blood stream and we don’t the environment conditions necessary to alkalize it, then it literally starts to burn away at our body, which can be seen in many of our health problems today.
Impaired Cellular Function and Other Diseases
Similar to the effects of being malnourished, lack of water in the body also leads to significant impairment of cellular function. This should be of no surprised again, since the majority of our body is made up of water. Although it’s not possible to isolate whether a condition is related to improper nutrition or dehydration, there’s no doubt that they go hand in hand. I do believe however, due to its importance, water ranks higher in terms severity. A great resource written by Your Body’s Many Cries for Water that does a fantastic job articulating all of the underlying causes of disease can be found here (he has a whole a book on it; this is the shorter version). Dehydration has been linked to many issues such as arthritis, cancer, asthma, goiters, diabetes, and many other “diseases” that the medical industry have trouble curing.
It’s not to say that being hydrated is the end all be all in terms of cure, because as you’ll discover when you read all six pillars of health, everything is a necessary component in achieving optimum health; they all play a part in supporting each other. If you’re suffering from a certain health problem, it could be that you’re lacking certain nutrients on top of being dehydrated which then creates the specific condition that causes a the disease. So rather than thinking that what you’re missing in your life is holy water, it’s important to address your situation from a holistic point of view.
Which brings us to the final point: the no-brainer solution would be going to the nearest drinkable water station and going at it. But before you start guzzling it down, keep in mind that our bodies need to have adequate minerals inside of our cells in order to even hold onto this water. To explain this better, I’ll be quoting Paul Chek, the old wise-man that I’ve gained much of my invaluable nuggets of life wisdom from:
A person can be drinking adequate volume of water, yet still be dehydrated; this is common with people using reverse osmosis filters, which often produce water that is acidic (below 7pH), and is stripped of essential minerals and other life elements normally found in quality drinking water. This also occurs when people drink distilled water because it sucks the minerals and salts out of the cell; the body tries to balance, for example, the sodium potassium balance between intra and extracellular water/spaces. This is why I talk about water quality, hardness, and total dissolved solids in water in my book How to Eat Move and Be Healthy.
Just a quick side note: this was a direct response from Paul to a question I had during the process of writing the six foundations of health (this was one of his teachings anyways). I was curious to know which was a greater source of cellular impairment and disease: dehydration or malnourishment. He later wrote a short article based off of this question, which when I found out, had me excited as a kid 😀
Anyhow, you don’t have to go out and buy his book to find the anwer, but I highly recommend that you do if you want to revolutionize your health (and knowledge of it).
So what can you do? Put salt in your water. Yes, salt.
Not just any salt though. Salt that is high in minerals. For example, Himilayan Pink salt or Sea Salt. Both of these have been shown to contain up to 80 trace minerals. This is much different than your typical table salt, which only contains NaCl or is made up of that and other additives.
Place a small pinch or two in your water, shake it up and enjoy 😉