Cellular Health – Longevity – Water
Hydration is an integral component of health and should be considered alongside nutrition for promoting optimal well-being. Here is a recap of what to keep in mind with hydration:
- Dehydration is associated with an increased risk of chronic disease and may advance the aging process. Older adults may experience a higher risk of dehydration.
- Drinking clean water is important to reduce exposure to harmful substances. Local tap water quality can be checked for contaminants via the EWG Tap Water Database. If using private wells, water should be tested for contaminants.
- Whenever possible, choose to drink water from glass or stainless-steel containers to reduce exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals in plastic.
- Hydration can come from many sources, including water, food, teas, broths, and soups. Those drinking demineralized water may need to add minerals back into their diets.
- Sole therapy involves using a supersaturated salt solution diluted in purified water. The Original Himalayan Crystal Salt® has been found to contain 84 trace minerals and would be a source of salt to use as part of the sole.
- Sodium is important for fluid balance, and while excessive amounts of sodium may be linked to disease risk, it remains an essential mineral in the body. If desired, water can be enhanced with a sugar-free electrolyte product, such as Metagenics’ Endura.
- As a general recommendation, men and women should drink 3.7 liters and 2.7 liters per day, respectively. This amount needs to be personalized to an individual’s needs, which may vary day to day. It is health-promoting to drink water upon waking when the body is theoretically most dehydrated from an absence of intake for several hours.
Water is the basis of all life and that includes your body. Your muscles that move your body are 75% water; your blood that transport nutrients is 82% water; your lungs that provide your oxygen are 90% water; your brain that is the control center of your body is 76% water; even your bones are 25% water.
“Medical professionals of today do not understand the vital roles of water in the human body. Medications are palliatives. They are not designed to cure the degenerative disease of the human body.
The current practice of clinical medicine is based on the application of pharmacological chemistry to the human body.
At the medical school, more than six hundred teaching hours are allocated to the use of pharmaceutical products. Only a few hours are allocated to instructions on diet and nutrition.
The simple true is that dehydration can cause diseases. Everyone knows that water is good for the body. They seem not to know how essential it is to one’s well-being.
They do not know what happens to the body if it does not receive its daily need of water.”
“We misinterpret thirst signals as pain, and treat them with drugs which silence instead of cure the problem.
Because dehydration eventually causes loss of some functions, the various signals given by water distribution system regulators during severe and lasting dehydration have been translated as indicators of unknown disease conditions of the body. I discovered that histamine is a vital chemical messenger in the brain.
Histamine has a most important function not written about in medical textbooks. It is in charge of water intake and drought management in the body.
It is less active when the body is fully hydrated, and becomes increasingly active when the body becomes dehydrated.
Thirst
To hush the body’s call for water by masking the symptoms with drugs is like turning out the dashboard light that signal us that our car is about to overheat.”
“Every function inside the body is regulated by and depends on water. Water must be available to carry vital elements, oxygen, hormones, and chemical messages to all parts of the body.
Without sufficient water to wet all parts equally, some more remote parts of the body will not receive the vital elements that water supplies. Without sufficient water to constantly wet all parts, your body’s drought-management system kicks into action.
The histamine-directed chemical messenger systems are activated to arrange a new, low quota of water for the drought-stricken area. When histamine and its subordinate “drought managers” come across pain-sensing nerves, they cause pain. This is why dehydration produces pain as its first alarm signal. If the dehydration persists and is not corrected naturally with water, it becomes symptom-producing and, in time, develops into a disease condition.”
“In advanced societies, thinking that tea, coffee, alcohol and manufactured beverages are desirable substitute for the purely natural water needs of the daily ‘stressed’ body is an elementary but catastrophic mistake. While these beverages do contain water, they also contain dehydrating agents. They get rid of the water they dissolved in plus some more water from the reserves in the body.”
“Soda and caffeine-containing beverages don’t replace water needs of the body. Caffeine is a dehydrate substance. It does not allow the water to stay in the body long enough.
Within an hour you will urinate more than the cup of beverage that you drank. When children are give fruit juice and soda to the exclusion of water, it only compounds the dehydration problem.
At the same time, a cultivated preference for the taste of sodas will automatically reduce the free urge to drink water when sodas are available.”
“Ordinary tap water, unless there is proof of its being contaminated with chemicals and heavy metals such as lead, is a good source of water supply.
However if you are not convinced that your tap water is free of contamination and impurities, save yourself from this anxiety by installing a small filtration unit on your kitchen faucet.
There are effective filter unit that can save you from the hassle of carry its containers day in and day out.”
Human body is 75% water
The human body is about 75 percent water and 25 percent solid matter. The brain is said to be 85 percent water and is extremely sensitive to any dehydration or depletion of its water content. The brain is bathed constantly in salty cerebrospinal fluid. The water content of the body is called the solvent, and the solid matter that is dissolved in the water is called the solute.
It is water (solvent) that regulates all the functions of the body, including the action of all the solid (solutes) that water carries around.The role of water in the body of all living species, human included, has not changed since the earliest creation of life in water.
When life on land became an objective – the stressful adventure beyond – a gradually refined body-water-preservation system and drought-management system had to be created. In other words, the body began to adapt to transient dehydration. Over time, this drought – management process became permanent – and currently exists in the body of modern humans.
When human body are under stress or confronting situations that may be perceived as stressful, the physiological translation of that stress reflects a water-dwelling species ventured beyond their water supply.
A similar process for rationing water reserves and an anticipated limited future supply becomes the responsibility of a complex system in the body. This multi-system water-distribution process remains in operation until the body receives unmistakable signals that it has once more gained access to an adequate water supply.
The chemical understanding of the human body brought about an almost total concentration of research into the detailed molecular composition and minute fluctuation of the solid matter in the body. Thus a chemical-pharmaceutical perception of human body too shape, resulting gin the development of the “medical-industrial system.” Adherence to the understanding that it is primarily the body solid composition that governs all its functions has produced much misinformation and has contribute to the present chaotic status of medicine.
The whole structure of modern medicine is built on the pitifully flawed premise that dry mouth is the only sign of dehydration. This false premise is responsible for the lack of understanding about various painful health problems that result in premature death to many millions of people.
Water is too important to the body to signal its shortage only through the experience of a dry mouth. The human body has many other sophisticated signals to indicate when it is short of water. The body can suffer from deep dehydration without showing a dry mouth. Dehydration produces severe symptoms, even to the point of causing life-threatening crises.
Dry Mouth
Dry mouth is one of the very last indicators of dehydration of the body. By the time dry mouth becomes an indicator of water shortage; many delicate functions of the body have been shut down and prepared for deletion. This is exactly how the aging process is established – through a loss of enzyme function. A dehydrated body loses sophistication and versatility.
We have always looked for a drug solution to throw at a health concern. We have not succeeded at limiting these health concerns; rather, we have constantly expanded the list and thrown more drugs at them. We have truly caused a costly chaos in the name of modern medicine, with no end in sight. We now have significant problems that beg urgent solutions.
The solutions to the present human-made and drug-industry-protected health problems of society can only be physiology-based. Understanding the molecular physiology of dehydration will restructure the future practice of clinical medicine.
It will cause a fundamental paradigm change in the science of medicines. By showing the way to enhance the natural healing powers of the body within the discipline of physiology, the pharmaceutical approach to our present health problems will be completely replaced. The primary focus in medicine will become disease prevention rather than its protracted, cost-intensive, and invasive treatment protocols.
~Fereydoon Batmanghelidj, M.D.
What is Dehydration?
Dehydration is defined as an excessive loss or depletion of body fluids (1). This occurs when the amount of water being ingested is less than the amount leaving the body. The majority of the human body is made up of water with water resulting in approximately 75% of the total body weight.
Water is the most important bodily substance in that it resides in all the cells (intracellular space) and outside of the cells in the extracellular spaces.
Total body water = intracellular space H20 + extracellular space H2O (2)
As dehydration occurs, it results in a change in the body’s chemistry and effects the body’s ability to easily maintain a homeostatic state.
Causes of dehydration:
*sweating and evaporation from the skin
*evaporation from the lungs while breathing
*excessive urination
*severe diarrhea or vomiting
*inability to drink enough fluids
Dehydration at the Cellular Level
Water is a basic need for cellular health. Cells contain water and are surrounded by water. In dehydration, cell membranes become less permeable, hampering the flow of hormones and nutrients into the cell and preventing waste products that cause cell damage from flowing out.
About 60% of body weight is water: Extracellular fluid accounts for 1/3 of body water and intracellular fluid accounts for 2/3 of total body water (1).
Extracellular fluid is lost through sweat
Cell membrane becomes less permeable
Osmosis, the diffusion of water across the cell membrane, causes the cell volume to shrink as water moves from the inside of the cell to the outside to try to sustain homeostasis.
Decreased generation of energy as less water is flowing through cation pumps through cell membrane
Decrease metabolic breakdown of ATP
Sodium concentration outside cell increases, increasing the Nerst resting potential
* Increasing the sodium concentration on the outside of the cell membrane increases the Nernst potential for sodium on the inside of the cell membrane. This decreases the resting cell membrane potential.
Decrease generation of action potentials
Skeletal muscle weakness and fatigue.
Keeping your cell’s membrane with optimal fluidity is vital to great health and longevity.
In addition to the cell plasma membrane providing a protective barrier around the cell and the intracellular organelles, it has many essential functions:
*transporting nutrients into the cell
*transporting metabolic wastes out of the cell
*preventing unwanted materials in the extracellular milieu from entering the cell
*preventing loss of needed metabolites
*maintaining the proper ionic composition, pH (≈7.2), and osmotic pressure of the cytosol
*provides cell to cell communication
*provides hormone sensitivity and utilization
*support the many enzymatic reactions that occur along their surfaces
Cell Membrane and Cancer
“Cancer cells have low oxygen because their cell walls are compromised, because they are not receiving enough oxygen because there is not plentiful oxygen available.
In everyone, for multiple reasons, oxygen levels go down in certain tissues and they are the ones most vulnerable to respiration disturbances on the mitochondria, which eventually force them to go cancerous.
Given enough time, cancer will develop whenever there is a proliferation of damaged cells and when oxygen levels fall far enough.
When cells are damaged, when their cell wall permeability changes, when toxins and free radicals build up, when the mitochondria lose functionality in terms of energy ATP production, when pH shifts to the acidic in cells, when essential gasses like carbon dioxide are not present in sufficient concentrations, and when essential nutrients are absent, and stress levels are high enough, cells will eventually decline into a cancerous condition”.Dr. Mark Sircus, Ac., OMD
Phospholipids and the cell membrane:
The fundamental building blocks of all cell membranes are phospholipids. About 50% of the mass of most cell membranes are composed of phospholipids.
Polyenylphosphatidylcholine, (PPC)
Phosphatidylserine (PS)
Alpha-Glycerophosphocholine (a-GPC)
phosphatidylethanolamine (PE)
A decrease in mitochondrial PE impairs cell growth, respiratory capacity, and ATP production and profoundly alters mitochondrial morphology.
Mitochondrial PE is required for normal morphology and function of mammalian mitochondria. Modest reduction of mitochondrial PE might contribute to mitochondrial dysfunction in some disease states.
Production of ATP, which initiates on the inner membrane of mitochondria, is newly recognized to be dependent on PE (phosphatidylethanolamine) – not on PC (Böttinger, Joshi, 2012, Tasseva 2013). PE is generally ~half the concentration of PC in cell membranes; however, the dynamics responsible for the separation of protons that drive the production of ATP, sit on the inner membrane of the mitochondria, and are enshrouded with a predominance of PE for the ETC chemistry to play out.
Forty percent of the total lipid content of the cell membrane consists of glycolipids and cholesterol. The glycolipids include:
Digalactosyldiacylglyceride (DGDG)
Monogalactosyldiacylglycerol (MGDG)
Adequate intake of phospholipids and glycolipids is important for the integrity of the cell membranes
A mitochondrion contains outer and inner membranes composed of phospholipid bilayers and proteins.
The inner and outer mitochondrial membrane contains the major classes of phospholipids found in all cell membranes:
Phosphatidylcholine (PC)
Phosphatidylethanolamine (PE)
Phosphatidylinositol (PI)
Phosphatidylserine (PS)
Phosphatidic acid (PA)
Phosphatidylglycerol (PG), the precursor for Cardiolipin (CL)
The inner mitochondrial membrane can be subject to oxidative damage due to the presence of a very oxidation-sensitive phospholipid named Cardiolipin which represents 20% of the total lipid composition of the inner mitochondrial membrane.
Cardiolipin is functionally required for the electron transport system, and it is synthesized inside the mitochondria from two phosphatidylglyerol molecules.
The inner mitochondrial membrane can become damaged and altered due to an increasingly “leaky” membrane. This is caused when Cardiolipin is damaged by oxidation.
Once the Cardiolipin in the inner mitochondrial membrane becomes oxidized, the membrane become compromised and no longer form a tight ionic/electrical “seal” or barrier. With the loss of this ionic/electrical barrier the mitochondria losses electron transport and cellular energy. Ultimately this could result in cell death.
Nutraceutical supplements that Enhance the Function of the Cell Membrane
Phosphatidylcholine (PC)
Phosphatidylserine (PS)
Nutraceutical supplements that Enhance the Function of Cardiolipin
Acetyl-L-Carnitine (ALCAR)
CDP-Choline
You can order the above supplements in our online dispensary store
