Your Body’s Many Cries for Water by Feyedoon Batmanghelidj M.D.

"You're not sick; you're thirsty. Don't treat thirst with medication."

Dr. Batmanghelidj says the human body is vitally dependent on an adequate supply of water inside cells and outside of the cells:

• to circulate nutrients and oxygen to the cells and wastes away for elimination
• transport signaling substances from the brain that deliver messages to nerve endings to control actions and processes in the body
• provide the solvent needed to maintain proper concentration and viscosity levels in the body
• support needed chemical reactions
• generate hydroelectric energy stored in the form of ATP and GTP from osmotic flow of water through cell membranes

 How to properly hydrate the body

• Minimum amount is to drink an 8 ounce glass of water 8 times per day
• Suggested amount is the number of ounces of water per day that is equal to the number of pounds that is half your weight (e.g. 200lb guy should drink 100 ounces of water and a 100 lb woman should drink 50 ounces of water per day).
• If you drink anything else, then drink the same quantity of water to flush it out of your body.

Barriers to Maintaining Proper Hydration

• Reliance on tea, coffee, alcohol, juices and manufactured beverages for hydration.  These beverages have dehydrating agents which remove water from the body, preventing needed amounts of hydration
• Reliance on a “dry mouth” as the sole thirst indicator.  “Dry Mouth” is a signal the body is significantly dehydrated.
• The thirst sensation decreases with age.  The result of this  phenomenon is that our cells lose hydration.  The ratio of overall water content in the cells to the water content outside of the cells drops from 1.1 in young people to .8 in our seniors.  Want to lose those wrinkles?  Drink more water!

 Effects of Chronic Dehydration

• The body engages in drought management in times of dehydration maintaining water flows to vital organs like the brain and restricting the flow of water to less important parts of the body.  Dr. Batmanghelidj says that many aches and pains in different parts of the body are Cries For Water.


• Morning sickness of mothers is a thirst indicator of both the fetus and the mother.


• Dyspepsia (indigestion) is often caused by dehydration and if not corrected can lead to ulcers.  The mucous that lines your stomach, protecting it from the hydrochloric acid, is 98% water.  Sodium bicarbonate within this mucous material neutralizes the acid before it reaches the stomach wall. When your body has insufficient water, this mucous barrier becomes thinner and indigestion pain is caused by stomach acid eating away the stomach wall lining. When water is added, it immediately goes into the stomach, restoring the mucous membranes.

• Allergies and Asthma often result from dehydration as the bodies sends histamines to the lings to cause the secretion of more mucous to line the walls of the lung to prevent the loss of water while breathing.  Water is a natural antihistamine and costs much less than the drugstore varieties!

• Chronic Low Back Pain frequently can be caused by dehydration.  The intervertebral joints and disc structures are dependent on different hydraulic properties of water stored in the disc core as well as the cartilage.  Water acts as a lubricant to cartilage and also the water in the disc core supports the compression weight of the upper body.  75% of the upper body weight is supported by the water volume held in the disc core.  The other 25% is supported by the fibrous material around the disc.  When the discs are not fully hydrated, they are less rigid requiring the back muscles to work harder to maintain spine alignment.  As the discs become more dehydrated, they begin to bulge or weaken and rupture. The 5^th lumbar disc is affected in 95% of bulging or ruptured disc.  Dr. Batmanghelidj recommends exercises to draw water quickly back into the disc space and to relieve back spasms in his book How to Deal With Back Pain and Rheumatoid Arthritis.

• Excess Body Weight is compounded the human brain often mistaking the thirst sensation as a hunger sensation, resulting in people eating when the body really wants water.  Try drinking water when you feel hungry between meals.  You will be surprised by the number of times that what you thought was hunger is satisfied with a big glass of water. 
  

Dr. Batmanghelidj explains that the human body needs muscle activity to maintain normal function.  If the body functions normally, it will know when to eat and how much to eat without storing fat.  However, if the body muscle is not exercised regularly, the less-disciplined ones will give in to eating more frequently and in larger quantities.  Regular exercise in any form such as walking, running, sports, calisthenics or weight-training will burn fat and remove excess body weight and get eating habits back to normal.

There is a complete chapter devoted to Diet Sodas Can Cause Weight Gain.  The books states that even though diet sodas contain no appreciable amount of calories, they are possibly the cause of more weight gain in people who resort to taking them to control their weight.  It also says that 84% of all sodas are sold by Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola and that only 5.5% of the 84% is caffeine-free sodas; therefore a very high percentage of all sodas are caffeinated sodas, of which 22% consists of diet sodas. 

Caffeine has addictive properties, is a diuretic (increases urine production and reduces body hydration) and lowers the threshold of ATP (stored energy) stockpile control by converting ATP to the spent fuel product AMP.  These additive and diuretic properties of caffeine force the consumer to drink more due to addiction and the inability to quench thirst.

The prevalent artificial sweetener in diet soft drinks is aspartame which is converted by the intestinal tract into two highly excitatory neurotransmitter amino acids: aspartate and phenylalanine, as well as methyl alcohol/formaldehyde-wood alcohol considered by some to be toxic.  Aspartate converts another stored fuel called GTP into the spent fuel product GMP.  Thus, aspartate and caffeine combine to cause the brain to receive thirst/hunger signals due to the depletion of stored energy reserves (ATP and GTP) repeating the cycle of drinking more sodas and eating more food resulting in storing more fat in the body.

There is another response in the body called “cephalic phase response” that intensifies the thirst/hunger signals to the brain.  This conditioned reflex is the bodies association with the sweet taste sensed by the tongue with the introduction of new food to the stomach.  When this happens the brain programs the liver to prepare for new food causing the liver to stop metabolism of starch and protein reserves into sugar and to store metabolic fuels circulating in the blood.  When the sweet taste is not followed by nutrient availability, the body signals an urge to eat, which defeats the purpose of diet drinks.

In summary in light of these observations, the best ways to lose weight are to hydrate only with water, to not drink diet or caffeinated drinks and to exercise regularly.

In his book Your Body’s Many Cries for Water, Dr. Batmanghelidj also explains the influence of dehydration on:

• Colitis
• Hiatus Hernia
• Rheumatoid Arthritis
• Neck Pain
• Headaches
• Stress and Depression
• High Blood Pressure
• High Blood Cholesterol
• Diabetes



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