Where Did Modern Medicine Go Wrong?

Excerpted from
Water: For Health, for Healing, for Life: You're Not Sick, You're Thirsty!
By F. Batmanghelidj, M.D.

One of the unavoidable processes in the body-water rationing phase is the ruthlessness with which the body functions are monitored. No structure receives more than its predetermined share of water, based on its functional importance. The brain takes absolute priority over all the other systems.

Thinking that tea, coffee, alcohol, and manufactured beverages can substitute for the pure natural water needs of the body is an elementary mistake, particularly in a body that is stressed by confronting daily problems. It is true that these beverages contain water, but most of them also contain dehydrating substances, such as caffeine. These substances rid the body of the water they are dissolved in, plus additional water from the body's reserves. When you drink coffee, tea, or even a beer, your body gets rid of more water than is contained in the drink. If you measure your urine volume after the beverage is taken, you will see that you have passed more urine than the volume of the drink. Another way the body loses water after drinking hot beverages is through perspiration from the pores of the skin to cool the body that has been warmed from the inside.

The economic principles are the same in the body as they are in society. The law of supply and demand rules absolutely. When there is a comparative shortage of a needed substance, a strict rationing system rules the marketplace of the body with an iron fist.

When the human body is dehydrated, it redistributes and regulates the amount of available water. Within the body, alarms signal to show that areas in question are in short supply, much like the light signal that goes on when a car is running low on gas or oil. The available water is rationed and used where needed. The presence of water will ultimately regulate the production mechanisms in a drought-stricken area of the body.

When chronic dehydration begins to set in, up to a certain level the shutdown of water-dependent functions is silent because there is a reserve capacity for endurance. As time passes and the body becomes more and more dehydrated, however, a threshold is reached where the system becomes inadequate for the responsibilities thrust on one or another function of the body. Depending on the type of demand, the organ or organs in the firing line of activity begin to indicate their particular signal of inadequacy.

While the various signals produced by the water distributors and drought managers indicate regional body thirst and drought, and can naturally and simply be relieved by an increased intake of water, they are, instead, often improperly and ignorantly dealt with by highly potent chemical products. Because many doctors are not educated about the symptoms of dehydration and the importance of the fluid in the body, they often diagnose the problem incorrectly. Many physicians mistake dehydration for one or another disease and treat the symptoms with medication rather than water. The result: Pharmaceutical companies get rich, patients are not cured, and doctors are helpless in dealing with often recurring disease states of the body.

Silencing the different signal systems of water shortage in the body with chemical products can be immediately detrimental to the patient's body cells, including the genetic apparatus. Chronic dehydration can have a permanently damaging impact on a person's descendants. While the human body is entirely dependent on the many complicated functions of water for its survival, it has not developed a water-storage system in the same way it stores fat. The dehydration- produced loss of body efficiency and resulting loss of chemical know-how and function in one generation can be projected onto the next generation. If the root cause of a disease state is dehydration, the same malfunctioning sensor systems that permit dehydration to establish in an individual can eventually be inherited by some of the offspring. This is why asthma, allergies, and heartburn are very serious conditions that should be prevented by full hydration at all times. It is essential to become educated about the functions of water in the body at all ages. This is how disease can be prevented in individuals and the next-generation descendants.

We must learn to recognize the symptoms of dehydration and understand that the treatment is simple: water. It's vital to our health.

In an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, September 20, 1984, Dr. Paddy Phillips and seven associates showed that elderly men were far less able to recognize their body thirst than younger men in the same experimental setting. When the elderly were dehydrated, they seemed not to feel thirst)'. Even when blood tests showed an obvious water shortage in the body, and even when water was within reach, some of the persons tested did not seem to want to drink. They remained dehydrated. An editorial in The Lancet of November 3, 1984, discussed the experimental results of Phillips and his associates and mentioned other findings to support the conclusion that in the elderly, the thirst mechanism is gradually lost. Steen, Lundgren, and Isaksson reported in The Lancet of January 12, 1985, that, in their long-term observation, they had discovered significant body-water loss in the elderly-about 3.5 to 6 liters over ten years. This is a large loss from the fluid content of the body-mostly from inside the cells.

To give further scientific support to the new paradigm, let us briefly mention the single most important point of a scientific paper by Ephraim Katchalski-Katzir of the Weizmann Institute. The far-reaching significance of the finding is that proteins and enzymes function more efficiently in solutions of lower viscosity They need adequate water in their immediate environment to "diffuse" and work efficiently. In other words, in solutions of higher viscosity-produced by the loss of water from the cell content-the enzyme system within the cell becomes less efficient. As an analogy, could a competitive swimmer have room to practice in a pool full of kids? Obviously not. The same logic seems to apply to the enzymes in the cells of the body that "swim in cell water" to contact their chemical partners and to produce a desirable outcome.

A gradual loss of sensations in the body should be assumed to involve all aspects of the sensory mechanisms. As we grow older, we gradually lose sharpness of vision and become dependent on glasses. We lose sexual appetite. Our ability to hear some ranges of sound is gradually lost. Our feelings become less tender and lose alertness; our emotional stimulation becomes dull and less satisfying, and so on. These are the apparent outward manifestations of a gradual loss of the ability to differentiate and respond to the stimulation of the senses at some time or another in the life of any individual.

Although we do not know how and when the dulling of senses in the body begins, logical interpretation from the above scientific experiments, in addition to my personal observations, has led me to believe that reliance on our sense of thirst, and waiting to feel thirsty before we drink water, is the basic problem. The most significant and major complication of dehydration is the loss of a number of essential amino acids that are used to manufacture neurotransmitters.

A major hidden advantage to adequate hydration seems to be the increased efficiency of the many thousands of proteins and enzymes whose physiological responsibilities are not yet recognized. They, too, will be more efficiently integrated due to the fact that they are obedient to the influence of free water in their environment. Thus, adequate hydration of the body might be the best insurance against premature aging and an early loss of our different sensory systems.