Chronic dehydration -effects and how to solve it-
日本語訳はこちら。
This is perhaps the blog that has the most chance of impacting people’s lives for the better, so I will try to be as clear and concise as possible.
For years I had health issues. I either had tonsillitis or sinusitis up to 4 times a month, every time ending up taking huge amounts of antibiotics. At 33 I decided to put a stop to it, I just didn’t know how.
It is not that I hadn’t tried. Up until that point I had seen specialists around the world. MRI scans, new antibiotics, personal vaccinations developed only for my problem, and nothing, the tonsillitis and sinusitis kept coming over and over.
“Yet, I kept getting sick, so I decided not to be stubborn and follow his lead. I started researching on water and hydration.”
Then there was this doctor in Thailand that always told me the same thing: “You are dehydrated”. At first I dismissed his comments as nonsense. I was drinking all the water I could possibly drink, to the point that I was running to the toilet for my life! How could I be dehydrated if I was drinking so much water? And, in any case, how could my problems be resolved by something so simple and common as water?
Yet, I kept getting sick, so I decided not to be stubborn and follow his lead, I started researching on water and hydration.
At around the same time I had started researching about food and its effects on the body. After years of injuries (I was into sports all my life), surgeries and overall discomfort, I wasn’t happy with the idea of using pain-killers for the rest of my life. So the idea of using food (and water) to heal my body wasn’t as alien as it had been in the past.
At first I found the usual recommendation of “drink 8 glasses of water a day and you will be fine”, but that couldn’t be all. I was drinking way more than 8 glasses a day, yet somehow, I was continuosly thirsty and going to the toilet where my urine was absolutely transparent, no indication of colour whatsoever!
“Our cells DON’T HAVE the capacity to “hold” water on their own. They need the minerals to “hold” the water inside their walls for them”
So armed with those facts I kept digging, until I found a concept that closely described my problem: Chronic dehydration.
What I learned was simple but empowering: Chronic dehydration occurs when the cells of our bodies have been depleted of most of the minerals they need. Why are minerals so important? Because our cells DON’T HAVE the capacity to “hold” water on their own. They need the minerals to “hold” the water inside their walls. Boom! I finally was onto something!
If your cells have been depleted of minerals for too long, your body has lost its capacity to hold water, so no matter how much water you drink, your body can’t keep this water. In fact, every glass of water you drink after you reach such a state, only “washes out” even more minerals from your body. That is why most people don’t drink water, because after reaching this dehydration point, they have the annoyance of constantly having to go to the toilet with urgency.
Then we make the problem even worse, by drinking juices, coffee, tea or sodas. Why so? Because these drinks have a Ph (acidity level), that if left unchanged, would kill you once it enters your bloodstream. So the little water in our cells has to be “sacrificed” to change the Ph of those drinks before they reach your bloodstream.
In terms, this whole process acidifies our bodies, making them a perfect place for disease to affect you – quite a problem really.
So, what to do? First of all, realize the importance of all this, and as I always say, take matters in your own hands. Stop being cynical (I am going to die anyway), and take action. Realize that you have the power to change things by changing your behaviour.
How? By getting your minerals back to a healthy balance. You didn’t lose them in a day, so you won’t get them back in a day, or two. It will take effort and patience, but you will get there.
The best way by far is to ingest minerals by way of eating wholesome foods, such as fruits and vegetables (organic better), since they pack much more minerals than normal fruits. This is not a matter of belief, but simply a matter of recognizing that the depletion of nutrients in our soils have decreased the quality of our food vastly in recent decades.
Eat lots of fruits and vegetables, and by that I mean all kinds of them. If you are one of those people that start by “oh but I don’t like this or that”, then I will tell you: grow up and eat everything that is good for your body regardless whether you enjoy it or not, your body is a machine that needs to be fed, and you are not a baby that can’t control your mind.
Second : drink coconut water, not bottled* or canned. Drink it from the source, and please, do a favour to the world: don’t use straws (unnecessary waste!), you aren’t a baby anymore, you can do without them.
Coconut water is so absorbable by the body, so close to human chemistry, that you can actually inject it into the bloodstream without any adverse effects. Many poor countries in war, use coconut water in the operating room when there is no saline solution available!
Third, start drinking water with high mineral contents. Cheap water that has been treated by reverse osmosis or chemicals has been denaturalized and contains little or no minerals at all, so instead of hydrating you, it is “robbing” your body from the scarce minerals you have already. So if you can get water from a well or a spring, indulge in it. If you don’t have access to that but you have the sea around, mix 1/10 of seawater with your normal water, you will then have access to the best source of minerals you can (no, it won’t kill you). In Thailand the best “local” brand you can drink is Aura.
Fourth, stop drinking any liquid that isn’t coconut water or highly mineralized water. No, not even juices, why? Again, if you drink fruit juices, your body has to “waste” the little minerals you have in your body to change the Ph of what you are drinking. If you must drink a coffee, juice or alcoholic drinks, then drink good quality water in a ratio of 1:3. Then your body has enough water to process those dehydrating drinks.
Fifth, be patient. Re-mineralizing and therefor rehydrating your body will take time, at least 3 months, but once you achieve it, you will see immense rewards. You are protecting your body against disease, inflammation, and pain.
Sixth, Stay away from sport drinks. Most sport drinks on the market are filled with sugars and no electrolytes, so they get you fat and dehydrate you even further. Instead make your own sport drink by mixing 1 spoon of baking soda, 3 spoons of raw honey, 2 spoons of himalayan salt and 5 spoons of lemon juice on a liter of water. Another great “sports drink” is made by soaking dates in water for a few days and then removing the dates before drinking.
If you follow these simple steps, you will be giving your body a chance to work in an optimal way. Not only now your body will be properly hydrated, but your fascia will be supple, your immune system will be stronger than ever, and degenerative diseases won’t have an easy prey on you. Not bad for such a simple change in your lifestyle.
So drink smart, get your minerals, and stay away from all the stuff out there that claims to hydrate you while doing the absolute opposite. You are now primed to enjoy a level of health and vitality that is second to none!
How to spot chronic dehydration?:
* Cracked lips (stop applying balm, unless you are in cold countries, there is no reason to have cracked, dry lips). Your lips are “dry” because you are dehydrated from the inside. Imagine having a heart attack and placing a “plaster" on a tiny cut in your finger to fix it.
* You are getting a sore throat often. When at night your throat gets really dry, and you have swallowing reflex while asleep, the walls of your throat are rubbing each other creating friction first, then irritation, which allows infection to grow.
*Your urine is completely transparent. This means the water you are drinking is not doing it’s job of replenishing your cells and get toxins out of them. It is just going from your mouth to the toilet without having any beneficial effect. On the contrary, that water is stripping your cells further of minerals.
*Bad breathe. If you are as sensitive to smell as I am, you may have noticed already that people who have cracked lips often also tend to have bad breath
*Constipation. This is a catch 22 for most women I know. They don’t drink water so they don’t have to got to toilet often, and then complain of having constipation problems. While this problem can have the lack of fiber consumption as its core, lack of water in the body creates hard, difficult to move stool.
*Injuries and lack of mobility. Most people have never heard of the fascia and doctors are only catching up with the importance of it in our living. Imagine that you are wearing a transparent suit from head to toe, kind of a spider web that goes in a three dimensional pattern connecting ligaments, tendons, muscles and even organs together. Now imagine this web is old and tight, try moving with fluidity, impossible; and since the fascia is composed mostly of water then you are wearing this horribly tight suit, constricting movement and making you prone to injuries.
*Injuries take a long time to heal. Cell inflammation is a thing, a big thing, and if all your cells are in an inflammatory state, then your injury will take much longer to heal than usual, or it will become a chronic injury.
So in short,how to reverse chronic dehydration?
*drink coconut water, lots and lots of it
*eat plenty of vegetables and fruits of the highest possible quality
*switch to use himalayan salt instead of table salt
*drink water according to your activity levels: if you workout, speak too much or are inside air-conditioned places, you need more than if you don’t
*stop caffeinated drinks, juices, and alcohol. If you indulge then drink good quality water on a ratio of 3:1 (drink 3 glasses of water for every cup of coffee or juice you drink)
*be patient, it will take at least 3 months to reverse the condition
*drink sea water mixed with your regular water on a 1/10 proportion
*go to the sea and soak in all the minerals. The skin absorbs some minerals better than by ingesting them orally, plus your skin will glow and be smooth!
*ditch mineral supplementation for the real thing. Unless you are paying top dollars for chelated minerals and even then, up to 95% of the minerals taken this way will go to waste, since your body can’t absorb the minerals from supplements.
*if you are in a ketogenic diet, increase your water intake and all the points above dramatically, or your health will pay a hefty price. Keto diets demineralize your body in the long run.
So why not get up from your computer and drink a glass of water? Enjoy!
* In Thailand you can get bottled coconut water under the brand “Maprao”. They use a highly sophisticated way of bottling the content without pasteurizing it, so the quality of the water is untouched. I am not advocate of plastic usage, so if you can, just go to the market and get a bag of 10 coconuts for a few hundred baht and learn how to open them with a big knife (a very empowering activity)!