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Drink Enough Water


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#1 bobdrake12

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Posted 07 December 2002 - 02:01 AM


http://story.news.ya...nk_enough_water


Fri, Dec 06, 2002

Drink Enough Water



HealthScoutNews) -- If you're struggling to drink the recommended eight glasses of water a day, the Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island suggests you try adding one glass of water a day until you reach your goal.

Following a water drinking routine can also help. For example, make it a habit to consume one cup of water before and after each meal. Another way to increase your intake is to eat lots of fruits that have high water content, such as oranges, watermelon, pears and peaches.

Cut down on coffee, caffeinated soda and alcohol, which are all beverages that cause you to lose fluids.

#2 Malpoet

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Posted 07 December 2002 - 09:01 AM

Why drink 8 glasses of water a day?

Dehydration is obviously to be avoided, but what is the basis of the 8 glasses, what are the claimed benefits?

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#3 bobdrake12

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Posted 07 December 2002 - 09:44 PM

Dehydration is obviously to be avoided, but what is the basis of the 8 glasses, what are the claimed benefits?


Malpoet,

A few of the benefits of drinking water are shown in the article below.

bob

http://www.rheumatic.org/water.htm

Julian Whitaker, M.D. reports in his Oct. 1994 Health & Healing newsletter on Dr. F. Batmanghelidj's book "Your Body's Many Cries for Water". Dr. Batmanghelidj argues that "water activates your body's systems, and the lack of it causes a variety of "thirst" responses that we call disease.

For instance, histamine, which causes the bronchioles in your lungs to constrict, is the primary trigger for asthma. However, histamine release is also the body's primary mechanism of stopping water loss from your lungs.

Dr. B argues that most of us are chronically dehydrated, and we have to discipline ourselves to drink water to avoid this. If you drink only when you are thirsty, it's too late - you are already dehydrated. In addition, as you get older, your sense of thirst doesn't work properly.

The mechanism of ulcer formation is particularly interesting. The mucous that lines your stomach, protecting it from the hydrochloric acid, is 98% water. Within this mucous material, sodium bicarbonate neutralizes the acid before it reaches the stomach wall. When your body has too little water, this mucous barrier sloughs off, and the stomach acid eats away at ther stomach cells. When water is added, it immediately goes into the stomach, restoring the mucous membranes.

Once you recognize how devastating dehydration can be, you see how it could be at the root of many illnesses. Arthritis, for instance, is a fiery inflammation of the joint - it is the body's way of burning up. It's a hot spot. . . .Without adequate hydration around the joints, once inflammation starts, it runs rampant, just like a forest fire.

The lubricating material of the joint - called synovial fluid - is almost all water with some protein-carbohydrate molecules. Cartilage also is very high in water content, much higher than bone. When your body has plenty of water, both the lubricating fluid and the cartilage that covers the end of your bones glide smoothly on each other. Obviously, when there is not enough water, neither the synovial fluid nor the cartilage is able to maintain the smooth, gliding action."

Dr. B also describes in his book how lack of water is the primary cause of hypertension.

Water lubricates the body, carries nutrients to the cells and carries off toxins, so drink lots of it - no less than two quarts a day.

#4 bobdrake12

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Posted 07 December 2002 - 09:53 PM

http://www.canoe.ca/...inghealthy.html

Monday, August 17, 1998

The body's need for water

By DR. ALAN N. CHARNEY -- The Associated Press


It may seem as though the human body is made up of mainly skin and bones, but think again. Like most mammals, our bodies are composed of about two-thirds water. Not only are we made of a lot of water, but our bodies are in a constant state of balancing its need for water with its output of water.

Everyone, regardless of age, needs water -- and needs it year round. But our need for water is greatest during the summer months when the body's water-loss is at its highest.

First, we need water to replace what we lose. Even at rest, we lose water daily -- about 10 ounces (300 milliliters) from the lungs through breathing, 17 ounces (500 milliliters) from evaporation through the skin (in the absence of sweating) and 3 ounces (100 milliliters) through bowel movements. The second reason we need water is to excrete waste products in urine and more dilute urine also protects us from forming kidney stones. As for taking in water, it happens naturally when we eat. There is water in most of the foods we eat (lettuce is 95 percent water; potatoes are 80 percent; meat and fish are 50 percent to 70 percent; cheese, 40 percent; even crackers weigh in with 5 percent). Also, when food is metabolized in the body, oxidation occurs and this generates water as a byproduct. Luckily for the body, the amount of water in food and produced during oxidation almost equals the amount of water lost daily through the lungs, skin and stools. Physicians urge people to drink about 1 to 2 quarts of liquid (or 4 to 8 8-oz. glasses) during cool months. But add hot weather, fever and-or exercise to the equation and you throw off that "water in-water out" balance. During heat or exercise, the body loses more water through the lungs and skin (excess sweating). (Similarly, we lose a lot of water when suffering from diarrhea.) That's why when people are not eating well, and during the summer, physicians usually recommend increasing liquid intake to 2 to 3 quarts per day (8 to 12 8-oz. glasses), with athletes and those spending time outdoors taking in even more.

How does the body know that it's losing more water than it's taking in? Thirst is the body's signal that it has a moisture deficit. Although scientists aren't certain about why it happens, there is some evidence that the elderly have a decrease in their ability to sense thirst.

Many physicians agree that most people simply don't drink enough liquid. One way to know: If you are not urinating four or five times during the day, you are not drinking enough. Remember, too, that you can fulfill your requirement for liquid with milk, juice or other beverages. When choosing a drink, consider your needs. Orange juice has vitamins and calories; milk contains calcium. If you are watching your caloric intake, water is the best choice. Coffee, cola and alcohol are mild diuretics (they tend to increase urine output) and should be consumed in small quantities when water loss is excessive. Dehydration or "water deficit" occurs when you fall behind in your intake of water. The result is that body fluids become more concentrated and you may develop confusion, lethargy or muscle cramps. In extreme cases of dehydration, seizures and coma can occur. That's what happened in Texas this summer as people succumbed to months of temperatures over 100 degrees. When the weather is warm, it's important to drink adequate quantities of fluid. Remember, your body has no way to make up for water loss, except by drinking and eating.

#5 bobdrake12

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Posted 07 December 2002 - 09:55 PM

http://www.uihealthc...h/ghea5288.html

Why You Should Drink More Water

Water is needed for all body functions, but it is not included on most lists of required nutrients. Water contains no calories. It is absorbed into the body through the stomach and gut, and leaves the body as urine, sweat, and, at times, vomiting and diarrhea.

Some water intake is always needed to balance the water lost by meeting normal body functions. However, losing more water through a lot of sweating or severe vomiting or diarrhea increases the body’s need for water intake.

The body has ways of showing when it needs more water. Thirst is the most obvious sign. However, thirst is also a late signal. The body usually needs more water long before a person feels thirsty. That is why it is important to drink water before thirst is noticed, and even after thirst is quenched, to make sure the body gets enough. Drinking 6 to 8 glasses of fluid each day generally ensures that the body is getting enough water. People who are physically active or live in hot climates need even more water to replace sweat loss. Exercise experts recommend drinking water while doing physical activity to prevent a shortage of water.

Many people chose soft drinks as a source of fluid. The average American drinks as many gallons of soft drinks yearly as he drinks of water. However, soft drinks contain empty calories, artificial colorings and flavorings, and have as many as 6 teaspoons of sugar in one 8 ounce drink.

Some soft drinks contain an artificial sweetener called aspartame. This lowers the calories per serving but does not increase the nutritional value. Not only do sweetened drinks offer little or no nutritional value, they actually INCREASE the body's need for water. Soft drinks containing caffeine draw water from the body, and those containing sodium cause the body to hold water. Alcohol also may cause fluid loss and add empty calories to the diet. All of these factors can contribute to dehydration, which is a shortage of water in the body.

Some dieters drink fluids during meals and throughout the day to help avoid filling up on extra calories. However, drinking water instead of juices and soft drinks will help avoid even more extra calories.

In addition to helping maintain water balance in the body, drinking water throughout the day benefits people with respiratory and kidney diseases. Increased fluid intake helps thin mucous secretions that worsen asthma. Many women who experience recurrent urinary tract infections are encouraged to drink more water to increase their urine flow.

Although drinking plenty of water daily is important, certain medical conditions may increase or restrict the need for water. Therefore, it is important to check with your healthcare provider to see if you have a medical condition that affects the amount of water you need daily.

Copyright © 1998. HBO & Company (602) 230-7575. All Rights Reserved.

#6 bobdrake12

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Posted 07 December 2002 - 10:01 PM

http://www.watercure.com/Topics15.htm

Waiting To Get Thirsty Is To Die Prematurely And Very Painfully

F. Batmanghelidj, M.D.



Heinz Valtin, M.D. an emeritus professor at Dartmouth Medical School, has ventured the opinion that there is no scientific merit in drinking 8 x 8-ounce glasses of water a day and not waiting to get thirsty before correcting dehydration. This view, published in the American Journal of Physiology, August 2002, is the very foundation of all that is wrong with modern medicine, which is costing this nation $1.7 trillion a year, rising at the rate of 12 percent every year. Dr. Valtin’s view is as absurd as waiting for the final stages of a killer infection before giving the patient the appropriate antibiotics. His views are based on the erroneous assumption that dry mouth is an accurate sign of dehydration.

Like the colleagues he says he has consulted, Dr. Valtin does not seem to be aware of an important paradigm shift in medicine. All past views in medicine were based on the wrong assumption that it is the solutes in the body that regulate all functions and that the solvent has no direct role in any of the body’s physiological functions. In medical schools it is taught that water is only a solvent, a packing material and a means of transport, that water has no metabolic function of its own. I have come across this level of ignorance about the primary physiological role of water at another Ivy League medical school from another eminent professor of physiology who, like Dr. Valtin, researched and taught the water-regulatory mechanisms of the kidney to medical students and doctors. Only when I asked him what “hydrolysis” is, did the penny drop and he admitted the scientific fact that water is a nutrient and does indeed possess a dominant metabolic role in all physiological functions of the body.

Dr. Valtin’s emphasis on the water-regulatory role of the kidneys limits his knowledge to the body’s mechanisms of “deficit management” of the water needs of the body. He seems to base his views of thirst management of the body on the vital roles of vasopressin, the antidiuretic hormone, and the renin-angiotensin system, the elements that get engaged in the drought-management programs of the body, when the body has already become dehydrated. Indeed, he thinks dehydration is a state of the body when it loses 5 percent of its water content; and that one should wait until at some level of such water loss the urge to drink some kind of “fluid” will correct the water deficit in the body. This view might have seemed plausible 25 years ago. Today, it exposes the tragic limitations of knowledge of the human physiology that is available to a prestigious medical school in America.

In his recently published and widely reported assertions, Dr. Valtin does not take into consideration the fact that water is a nutrient. Its vital “hydrolytic” role would be lost to all the physiological functions that would be affected by its shortage in its osmotically “free state.” Another oversight is the fact that it is the interior of the cells of the body that would become drastically dehydrated. In dehydration, 66 percent of the water loss is from the interior of the cells, 26 percent of the loss is from extracellular fluid volume and only 8 percent of the loss is borne by the blood tissue in the vascular system, which constricts within its network of capillaries and maintains the integrity of the circulation system.

Philippa M, Wiggin has shown that the mechanism that controls or brings about the effective function of the cation pumps utilizes the energy transforming property of water, the solvent; “The source of energy for cation transport or ATP synthesis lies in increases in chemical potentials with increasing hydration of small cations and polyphosphate anions in the highly structured interfacial aqueous phase of the two phosphorylated intermediates1.” Waiting to get thirsty, when the body fluids become concentrated before thirst is induced, one loses the energy-generating properties of water in the dehydrated cells of the body. This is a major reason why we should prevent dehydration, rather than wait to correct it. This new understanding of the role of water in cation exchange is enough justification to let the body engage in prudent surplus water management rather than forcing it into drought and deficit water management, which is what Dr. Valtin is recommending people to do.

In his research on the “conformational change in biological macromolecules,” Ephraim Katchalski-Katzir of the Weizmann Institute of Science has shown that the “proteins and enzymes of the body function more efficiently in solutions of lower viscosity2.” Thus, water loss from the interior of the cells would adversely affect their efficiency of function. This finding alone negates Dr. Valtin’s view that we should let dehydration get established before drinking water. Since it is desirable that all cells of the body should function efficiently within their physiological roles, it would be more prudent to optimally hydrate the body rather than wait for the drought management programs of the body to induce thirst. Furthermore, it is much easier for the body to deal with a slight surplus of water than to suffer from its shortfall and have to ration and allocate water to vital organs at the expense of less vital functions of the body. The outcome of constantly circulating concentrated blood in the vascular system is truly an invitation to catastrophe.

The tragedy of waiting to get thirsty hits home when it is realized that the sharpness of thirst perception is gradually lost, as we get older. Phillips and associates have shown that after 24 hours of water deprivation, the elderly still do not recognize they are thirsty: “The important finding is that despite their obvious physiologic need, the elderly subjects were not markedly thirsty3.” Bruce and associates have shown that, between the ages of 20 to 70, the ratio of water inside the cells to the amount of water outside the cells drastically changes from 1.1 to 0.84. Undoubtedly this marked change in the intracellular water balance would not take place if the osmotic push and pull of life could favor water diffusion through the cell membranes everywhere in the body—at the rate of 10-3 centimeters per second. Only by relying on the reverse osmotic process of expanding the extracellular water content of the body, so as to filter and inject “load-free” water into vital cells by the actions of vasopressin and the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone systems—when the body physiology is constantly forced to rely on its drought- management programs—could such a drastic change in the water balance of the body result.

Two other scientific discoveries are disregarded when Dr. Valtin recommends people should wait until they get thirsty before they drink water. One, the initiation of the thirst mechanisms is not triggered by vasopressin and the renin-angiotensin systems—these systems are only involved in water conservation and forced hydration of the cells. Thirst is initiated when the Na+-K+-ATPase pump is inadequately hydrated. It is water that generates voltage gradient by adequately hydrating the pump proteins in the neurotransmission systems of the body1. This is the reason the brain tissue is 85 percent water5 and cannot endure the level of “thirst-inducing” dehydration that is considered safe in the article published by Dr. Valtin.

Two, the missing piece of the scientific puzzle in the water- regulatory mechanisms of the body, which has been exposed since 1987, and Dr. Valtin and his colleagues need to know about it, is the coupled activity of the neurotransmitter histamine to the efficiency of the cation exchange; its role in the initiation of the drought- management programs; and its role in the catabolic processes when the body is becoming more and more dehydrated5. Based on the primary water-regulatory functions of histamine, and the active role of water in all physiologic and metabolic functions of the body—as the hydrolytic initiator of all solute functions—the symptoms of thirst are those produced by excess histamine activity and its subordinate mechanisms which get engaged in the drought- management programs of the body. They include asthma, allergies and the major pains of the body, such as heartburn, colitis pain, rheumatoid joint pain, back pain, migraine headaches, fibromyalgic pains, and even anginal pain5, 6. And, since vasopressin and the rennin-angiotensin-aldosterone activity in the body are subordinates to the activation of histamine, their role in raising the blood pressure is a part of the drought-management programs of the body6. Their purpose of forced delivery of water into vital cells demands a greater injection pressure to counteract the direction of osmotic pull of water from inside the cells of the body, when it is dehydrated.

From the new perspective of my 22 years of clinical and scientific research into molecular physiology of dehydration, and the peer-reviewed introduction of a paradigm shift in medical science, recognizing histamine as a neurotransmitter in charge of the water regulation of the body, I can safely say the 60 million Americans with hypertension, the 110 million with chronic pains, the 15 million with diabetes, the 17 million with asthma, the 50 millions with allergies, and more, all did exactly as Dr. Valtin recommends. They all waited to get thirsty. Had they realized water is a natural antihistamine5, 7, 8 and a more effective diuretic, these people would have been saved the agony of their health problems.

References:
1- Wiggins PM; A Mechanism of ATP-Driven Cation Pumps;
PP-266-269, Biophysics of Water, Eds. Felix Franks and Sheila F. Mathis, John Wiley and Sons, Ltd.1982

2- Ephraim Katchalski-Katzir: Conformational Changes In Biological Macromolecules; Biorheology, 21, PP. 57-74, 1984.

3- Phillips PA; Rolls BJ; Ledingham JGG; Forsling ML; Morton JJ; Crowe MJ and Wollner L; Reduced Thirst After Water Deprivation In Healthy Elderly Men; The New England Journal of Medicine, PP.753-759, Vol. 311, No. 12, Sept. 20 1985.

4- Bruce A; Anderson M; Arvidsson B and Isacksson B; Body Composition, Predictions of Normal body Potassium, Body Water and Body Fat in Adults on the Basis of Body Height, Body Weight and Age; Scand. J. Clin. Lab. Invest, 40, 461-473, 1980.

5- Batmanghelidj F. M.D. Pain: A Need For Paradigm Change; Anticancer Research, Vol. 7, No. 5 B, PP. 971-990, Sept.- Oct. 1987; full article posted on www.watercure.com.

6- Batmanghelidj F. M.D. Your Body’s Many Cries for Water; Global Health Solutions, Inc.

7- Batmanghelidj F. M.D. Neurotransmitter Histamine: An Alternative View; Page 37 of the Book of Abstracts; The 3rd Interscience World Conference on Inflammation, Analgesics and Immunomodulators, 1989 Monte-Carlo. The Abstract and the full article are posted on the Website www.watercure.com

8- Batmanghelidj F. M.D; ABC of Asthma, Allergies and Lupus; Global Health Solutions, Inc.

#7 Malpoet

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Posted 08 December 2002 - 08:23 AM

Thank you for that very thorough information Bobdrake.

Although I am not qualified to comment on this detailed medical information there are a couple of things that I would draw from it personally.

I am prepared to accept that the ability of the body to manage water surplus (perhaps especially in older age) is better than the capacity to cope satisfactorily with water deficiency. This certainly argues in favour of taking in sufficient fluid to ensure regular urination. However, I would have some minor concerns about large and rigid guidelines for water consumption of half a gallon per day being the trigger for some people to become obsessive about water consumption with unhealthy consequence.

Even without medical knowledge it seems unlikely to me that arthritis, allergic reaction, diabetes and the other illnesses cited have the single cause of dehydration and that greater water consumption would, by itself, eliminate all the cost, pain and suffering resulting from those disorders. Excessive claims can discredit perfectly sensible hypotheses and in some cases lead researchers away from areas of study that could have been beneficial.

Thanks for this. I will probably consume more fluid!

;)

#8 bobdrake12

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Posted 08 December 2002 - 06:57 PM

However, I would have some minor concerns about large and rigid guidelines for water consumption of half a gallon per day being the trigger for some people to become obsessive about water consumption with unhealthy consequence.


Malpoet,

I would like to comment on a couple of points.

o One is to drink water throughout the day (not just large quantities two to three times a day).

o Second, which was brought out in one of the articles, the weather and your personal physical activity can dramatically change a person's daily water requirements.

bob

#9 Malpoet

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Posted 09 December 2002 - 08:50 AM

Yes

Important points to emphasise.

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#10 kurdishfella

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Posted 29 April 2022 - 10:19 AM

 

Cut down on coffee, caffeinated soda and alcohol, which are all beverages that cause you to lose fluids.

 
 

Liquid drinks also get absorbed in the mucous in the mouth into the system. 



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#11 adamh

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Posted 02 May 2022 - 09:27 PM

Its very true that most of us should drink more water, likewise most are Deficient in mg and vit D. I saw a stupid article promoted by microsoft saying the opposite that people should drink less water. It railed against the "fad" of carrying a water bottle with you like its going to harm you somehow. Stupid crap like that is why the public is so dumb about many things. Opinions based on feelings are reported as facts






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