Natural Remedy Tips #7 - Water

Here is a surprise you may not have been expecting, as a wonderful natural remedy you can't beat good old fashioned water to put right a host of health wrongs. Yes, water!

As us humans are mostly made of water (around 55-65%), it stands to reason that a lack of it can make us feel ill and suffer a number of symptoms that we may not immediately connect as being the cause.

Dehydration is the cause of many "common" ailments that most people would never attribute to lack of the wet stuff.

Lack of Water

Here are a few statistics to highlight the importance of proper hydration (source):

1. It is believed that as much as 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated
2. In 37% of Americans, the thirst mechanism is so weak that it is often mistaken for hunger
3. Even MILD dehydration will slow down one’s metabolism as much as 3%
4. One glass of water will shut down midnight hunger pangs for almost 100% of the dieters studied in a University of Washington study
5. Lack of water is the number One trigger of daytime fatigue
6. Preliminary research indicates that 8-10 glasses of water a day could significantly ease back and joint pain for up to 80% of sufferers
7. A mere 2% drop in body water can trigger fuzzy short-term memory, trouble with basic math, and difficulty focusing on the computer screen or on a printed page
8. Drinking 5 glasses of water daily decreases the risk of colon cancer by 45%. It can also slash the risk of breast cancer by 79% and one is 50% less likely to develop bladder cancer

Auto-Immune Related Problems

There's more to this, some of which I can relate as having personally experienced a painful side-effect of chronic dehydration that I was not aware of.

As a sufferer of arthritis in my past, I found that dehydration brought on severe and painful attacks of gout.

At first, I was not aware of the connection, but discovered much after speaking to several people who had major operations and found that upon recovery, they suffered attacks of gout. This, their doctors informed them, was due to the natural dehydration that their bodies suffered because of the operation in that they were unable to take liquid pre-op and also during the long sleep afterwards.

The saline drip does not always provide enough liquid to completely stave off dehydration.

Can This Be True?

I did some of my own research on this new-found information and came up with this:

This state of dehydration seems to tie in with reduced kidney function reducing their ability to purge sufficient uric acid from the bloodstream. Increased levels of uric acid in the blood is a known cause of arthritis and gout.

Actually rheumatoid arthritis and gout are very closely related illnesses. Gout can be considered as a severe, localised arthritic attack in one joint or another.

Summary: Drinking Water Benefits

From what my researches came up with, there appears to be only benefits to drinking plenty of water each day.

Water should not be substituted with fizzy drinks (soda) which are only bad for you, being loaded with sugar and additives. Tea and coffee can make up some of your daily liquid intake, but it should be remembered that they, like alcoholic drinks, will also act dehydrate you.

Aim to drink around two litres of water a day and you'll be surprised at the improvement in your general health, skin complexion and state of mind!



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Posted on Tue, 28 Aug 2007 in Remedies | 0 Comments