Water: For Health, For Healing, For Life (18 page)
Gross obesity afflicts 37 percent of the American population. Now even children are getting grossly obese. It is estimated that obesity prematurely kills more than four hundred thousand people every year. Yet this killer disease can be prevented, and even cured, by proper hydration. The reason is simple. Collecting and storing fat is one of the major complications of dehydration. It is caused when the sensation of thirst is confused with the sensation of hunger, and instead of drinking water, the person eats. Brain function prefers to receive clean energy (so to speak) from hydroelectricity. When it is forced to use dirty energy from food, only 20 percent of this energy reaches the brain. Unless used in movement, exercise, or energy-consuming occupations, the rest of the energy from food is stored in the form of fat.
When fat is formed and stored, its breakdown is initiated only by specific chemical commands. Lipase is the enzyme that breaks down fat and converts the lumps into small fatty acid particles that are then used by the muscles and in the liver. Certain hormones that regulate body activity stimulate lipase activity. At the top of the list is adrenaline of the sympathetic nervous system. It has been shown that a glass of water stimulates the sympathetic nervous system for one and a half to two hours. The end result of adrenaline secretion is clearly a gradual loss of stored fat and a dramatic reduction of excess weight. This kind of weight loss is more stable and permanent than other ways of dieting and reducing calorie intake.
The fat-burning enzymes are sensitive to the hormones of physical activity—adrenaline and its family. These hormones are produced when the muscles are active and begin to burn fat as their staple diet— hence the value of regular walks. I have seen some people lose twenty-five to forty-five pounds in a comparatively short period of time through increased water intake and increased regular exercise. I have seen a man lose 290 pounds in one year; another lost 305 pounds in sixteen months. One of them needed two operations to remove the loose skin from his body. You will read testimonials of dramatic weight loss with my protocol. With my approach to weight regulation, not much dieting will be needed. You are free to eat any form of food the body calls for. The body itself becomes selective. All the body sensations become sharp, including the selection sensors that identify the body's needs.
The direct connection between muscle activity and stimulation of the hormone-sensitive lipase was discovered in Sweden. A few years ago, the Swedish army did a field test on a company of soldiers that was taken on a three-week march. At repeated intervals, blood samples were taken and various tests were done to monitor the impact of marching on the body physiology of the soldiers. They discovered that after an hour's march, the same hormone-sensitive lipase became active and stayed in the circulation for no less than twelve hours. They also discovered that continuous walking had a cumulative effect; the activity of the enzyme could be measured around the clock and in a much more pronounced way. In effect, the outcome of this experiment indicates that two sessions of daily walks would program the body into a round-the-clock fat-burning mode. Thus, walking should always be a part of any weight-loss program. One success story of how water was effective in a dramatic weight-reduction program is presented in the letter below.
Dear Dr. Batman,
For most of my life, I have been overweight. Every family has a “fat child” and this was me. I was told that I was just “big boned” and I should be content with who I was. Then I heard about The Water Cure. I was skeptical at first, because how could drinking iced tea and cola be such a problem? But I thought that all I really had to lose was my weight. Over a period of a year and a half, I have lost approximately 100 pounds and am no longer the “fat kid” that everyone knew.
But besides losing the weight, I have noticed that acid reflux, which had been a major part of my life, was also now gone. I could now enjoy foods that previously had brought me nothing but sickness. I have also noticed that I no longer get ear infections that also seemed commonplace and inevitable problems of life to me at one time.
I also have more energy and feel as if I have become a whole new person. I have energy to do things that would have easily worn me out previously.
Thank you Dr. Batman for helping me!
Losing weight through proper hydration of the body, some salt intake, and exercise is more prudent than drastic dieting. Complications of drastic dieting and of focusing only on the readings of the weight scale can cause an unbalanced intake of essential ingredients and precipitate deficiency diseases. The good thing about water as the primary source of clean energy is the fact that any excess is passed out in the form of urine. Fat, on the other hand, has to be burned through many steps until it is converted to carbon dioxide and passed out in the lungs.
Woman's World Magazine
of September 4, 2001, dedicated its cover and two inside pages to a dramatic splash on the weight-loss program of The Water Cure. The headline read, REVOLUTIONARY MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGH, THE SLIMMING NEW WATER CURE! LEARN HOW TO
DRINK
AWAY 40 LBS. OR MORE! The cover shows a picture of Finola Hughes, star of the television series
All My Children,
who lost thirty pounds without dieting. Among other stories, the article also highlights how a radio talk-show host lost forty pounds without effort and has gone down from a size 20 to a size 14. She not only lost her flab, she also got rid of her hot flashes, fatigue, aching joints, and sinus headaches, all in one sweep.
Unfortunately, the children in America are now showing an astounding tendency to gain weight. This subject has become an issue in the media and within the government. Fat children and adolescents are showing a tendency toward developing the same diseases as grownups, such as early-onset type II diabetes, known as adult-onset diabetes. The reason, I believe, is twofold. One, they are being pushed into overeating by the food industry's constant advertising that promotes different fast foods. Two, these children are pushed to drink sweetened drinks instead of water. Any form of sweetness sensed by the tongue will stimulate the pancreas to secrete insulin. Insulin is a weight-gain-promoting (anabolic) hormone; it promotes fat cells to convert sugar and carbohydrates in the diet into fat.
Let me briefly touch on the importance of salt to weight loss. When the body becomes dehydrated and needs to increase its water reserves, it can do so only if salt is available to expand the extracellular water content of the body. In dehydration, the body seeks salt in the foods that are eaten. This search for salt is another reason for overeating.
If ever you wonder about the validity of water as the natural “preventive” medication in staying slim and in avoiding the many diseases listed above, remember: Dehydration means shortage of water in the body. It means that a rationing system goes into effect for the available water in the body to determine when, why, and where water should reach various parts of the body. Naturally, the areas that become comparatively dry cannot function normally. These regional or local abnormally functioning areas often produce pain and, eventually, the degenerative disease conditions.
Another way to understand the situation is to compare the effect of dehydration in the body with a shortage of cash flow within the business community in any society. In an economic slump, when the public is not spending money, all business sectors suffer to some extent, some more than others. People cannot go without food, so the producers of food will survive, but not thrive. The housing industry will shrink, the banking industry will suffer from bankruptcies, the car industry will sustain losses, the travel and tourism industry will go broke, and so on.
Another reason why the brain gets priority for water distribution is the
inability
of brain cells to give birth to new daughter cells. They are one-time-living units. If they die, no other cell takes their place. From birth to death, the same cells become educated, cultured, and more and more responsible for controlling the routine functions of the body. To make sure brain cells do not suffer or come to harm, they receive 20 percent of the total circulation, although they constitute only 2 percent of body weight.
Dehydration also causes damage to the liver and its essential manufacturing systems. The liver is the manufacturing and exporting center of many of the most vital elements in the body. It is also the center for detoxification of the chemical by-products of the body. If the liver becomes dehydrated, a number of functions can be lost, some permanently. Likewise, the body's muscles and joints—its locomotive systems— sustain serious damage in dehydration.
For more information about obesity, read my forthcoming book
Obesity: The Deadly Disease of Dehydration.
DEHYDRATION AND BRAIN DAMAGE
Diseases of the nervous system are so devastating that, unless you have come across people suffering from some of these conditions, you cannot appreciate their devastation. You do not have to be a genius to know that Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, Lou Gehrig's disease, multiple sclerosis, hemiplegia, quadriplegia, aphasia, autism, attention deficit disorders, and epilepsy, to name some, are dreaded conditions.
I am of the opinion that some of these conditions are produced by persistent dehydration in the body. We need to understand the role of water in the nervous system to realize how easily some of the above problems—those that are not the result of accident or injury, but are gradually establishing degenerative conditions—can be prevented and even cured. An added advantage of preventing brain disease by keeping the brain optimally hydrated is that water increases the brain's efficiency for processing information.
On average, the human brain weighs 1.4 kilograms, or about 3 pounds. It is estimated that the brain consists of 85 percent water, whereas all the other soft-tissue cells are said to be about 75 percent water. The brain is extremely sensitive to water loss. It is said that the brain cannot tolerate even a 1 percent loss of water. If it were to be dehydrated to the point of being only 84 percent water for long, the brain would not function properly. Remember that nerve cells in the brain are one-time-living units. They do not give birth to daughter cells in the same way as other cells in the body. Thus, dehydration that affects a brain cell to the point of causing it damage will leave a permanent mark.
Still, nature is wiser than we think. To make sure that the brain gets all it needs, including all the water, the brain, which is approximately one-fiftieth of the total body weight, is allocated about 20 percent of the circulation. In addition, the brain is constantly bathed in a special fluid composition that is different from blood or serum. The capillaries of the brain manufacture this highly specialized and exact fluid composition. The bulk of these capillaries are inside large chambers of the brain. The fluid they manufacture specially for the brain is called cerebrospinal fluid. It contains more salt and less potassium. This bathing fluid also provides a physically shock-absorbing protection for the brain against knocks to the skull. Also, when the head has to change position rapidly, the fluid surrounding the brain protects it from being thrown about. The brain capillaries also filter and take away the toxic waste produced by the continuously working brain cells. Brain cells function around the clock. The body sleeps, but the brain does not.
THE BLOOD-BRAIN BARRIER
The brain is most effectively protected from fluctuations in the composition of the blood. Unlike the capillaries elsewhere, brain capillaries have no perforations in their walls for the free diffusion of elements. The capillary walls are perfectly sealed. Everything that has to reach the brain side of blood circulation has to be transported by highly specialized and specific mechanisms through the cells lining the capillary wall. You could say the brain capillaries are part of a filter system that regulates the entry of materials into the space that houses the brain itself. In this way, the brain is protected all the time from sudden changes in the composition of the blood. The capillary system of the brain establishes a natural barrier to accessing the brain without a safeguard. This barrier system is called the blood-brain barrier.
Dehydration can cause a breach in the blood-brain barrier. Any such breach compromises the integrity of normal brain functions. I am of the strong opinion that dehydration that compromises the protective shield of the blood-brain barrier is the primary cause of most of the diseases of the central nervous system. When the barrier becomes compromised, the solid waste of such microscopic bleedings is converted into plaques that are the hallmark of most neurological disorders, such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease. I think the same process takes place in migraine headaches.
The same emergency way of hydrating a sensitive area of the body can take place in different organs and tissues. When the system dumps blood into the upper intestine, or if it bleeds into the muscle tissue, 94 percent of the blood volume consists of only water and is immediately put back into circulation. The rationale behind this type of microscopic bleeding in the kidneys and the lungs is that both of these organs need lots of fresh water to begin working properly again. Getting it this way is the only logical process when the body is already dehydrated and no fresh water is coming in to satisfy these organs' needs.
