A COMMON saying states that we are what we eat. Yet, we are also what we drink. This is so because water, as a fact in East Asian traditional medicine, has natural healing powers. In more recent times, Dr. F. Batmanghelidj passionately taught in his work, “our health is truly dependent on the quality and quantity of the water we drink.”
Water is the basis of all life, and that includes our body-- the muscles that move our body are 75 percent water; the blood that transport nutrients is 82 percent water, while the lungs that provide our oxygen are 90 percent water. To top it all, the brain that is the control center of our body is 76 percent water, even as our bones are 25 percent water. Not commonly known is the truth according to Dr. F. Batmanghelidj that “we can all change the way we drink – by drinking pure, natural water that is good for our health, our pocketbook, and our environment.”
Our health is truly dependent on the quality and quantity of the water we drink. Water is the major channel of energy distribution in the cell, carrying magnetic and electrical power for living. Water also protects the skin that it energizes to receive actively sensory signals through our sensitive nerve endings by the hair. Water helps protect the skin.
As Dr. Batmanghelidj reveals in his pioneering work, The Bodies Many Cries For Water, many people are ailing without knowing because of chronic dehydration. Body dehydration adds up to the body toxins that could lead to many types of ailment: arthritis, asthma, colitis, depression, diabetes, dyspeptic ulcer, duodenitis, gastritis, heartburn, headache, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, lower back pains, neck pain and osteoporosis.
Continuing body dehydration is also the root cause of "kidney stones" and other kidney problems. In place of water, it has become habitual for many to drink alcohol, coffee, non-herbal tea, soft drinks, etc. Such water replacements do not add up to the body liquid needs but, in fact, worsens its dehydration.
Dr. Batmanghelidj and other holistic doctors recommend doing away with addicting drinks and replacing them with mineral water. As he advised, “Your body needs six to eight glasses of eight-ounce size glass each day”. Batmanghelidji believes that a dry mouth is not the first symptom of thirst but one of the last. In fact, as people age, their ability to recognize thirst decreases. This means they drink less and age even faster.
The best time to drink an eight-ounce glass of water is 30 minutes before eating in the morning, lunch and supper, and also two and a half hours after eating. This is the least amount of water intake that answers the body water need. It is also good to drink two glasses of water during the heaviest meal like lunch or before sleeping.
Motivated by the universal water contamination, especially in the cities, drinking distilled water has become a fad in recent times. Yet, unknown to many, distilled water is totally void of all minerals. Prolonged use of distilled water may leach out the body’s own mineral reserves and lead to severe mineral deficiencies resulting in such diseases as osteoporosis, diabetes, tooth decay and heart disease. Empirically, extensive worldwide studies have proven that there is a lesser incidence of these diseases where people drink naturally “hard” or heavily mineralized water. As Dr. Airola points out, minerals as they are naturally present in drinking water, have been an essential part of man’s mineral nutrition from time immemorial.
Sad to say, worldwide, it has become really difficult to secure uncontaminated pure natural water. In highly urbanized, industrialized regions of the world, “there is a 40 percent chance that the next water you drink will have passed through someone’s sewer or an industrial conduit filled with wastes, poisons, and bacteria.” This scenario holds true because of radically reduced freshwater supply, worldwide.