Drinking Water: update

In August 2003, The Daily Mail newspaper published an article in their health section encouraging people to drink more water in order to stay healthy. The author claimed that if you didn’t drink at least 8 glasses of water a day, your health would suffer. I used to always read the health sections in newspapers when I was living in London but when I read that article, I thought to myself “how ridiculous”. In response, I wrote an article stating the reasons why drinking too much water is bad for you. I asked my PR agent at the time to find a magazine or newspaper to publish the story, but she told me that no one would be interested in it.

Now, eight years later, on July 24, 2011, the very same paper, The Daily Mail, wrote a piece stating that drinking too much water won’t actually do you much good and on the contrary is in fact bad for you. This article was written by a British medical doctor and published originally in the British Medical Journal. Why has it taken the British doctors to confirm after all this time that drinking too much water is bad for you? Do we really need a doctor or scientist to confirm the obvious? In my opinion we weren’t born today, we were born yesterday. Before bottled water was all over the marketplace, water wasn’t the daily drink of choice. Instead, we used to drink coffee, tea, soda, juice, or beer. Drinking water was often the last resort when other options weren’t available or we couldn’t afford an alternative. The entire drinking water culture is just another corporate conspiracy to market bottled     water products and get us to spend excessive amounts of money on something that isn’t as necessary or beneficial as we are led to believe.

Besides that, do we really understand where water comes from? Basically, water is recycled from what is already on the Earth. It collects in the atmosphere and comes back down as rain. Whatever moisture is on the Earth can originate from dead animals, bodily excretions, sputum, or moisture rising up from the ground. When all that moisture goes up, it must come down. Therefore, we have rainfall and water to drink. Besides this, water companies recycle our domestic water to make it available for drinking.  This recycled water is not naturally pure but rather must be purified through industrial processes. Why then would we believe that recycled, industrialized water would have some sort of purifying or cleansing abilities?

When we are told by the so-called experts that we must drink more water to stay healthy, then some people with less common-sense will follow without question and obsess about it. It’s the same as   being told to do more exercise in order to stay fit and keep the heart healthy, or to avoid certain foods after a certain time of day to control the metabolism and avoid putting on weight. People who are mad about exercise are so because after exercise you feel good, but mostly for psychological reasons… because you think are doing something good for your body. For some people, exercise has been fatal. Remember the stories of people dropping dead in the middle of jogging or running on their treadmill? For others, the unnecessary wears and tears on the joints, back or neck have led to far worse problems than those they were trying to fix. More often, we tend to forget about the principle of moderation and the need to stay balanced in all that we do.

At the end of the day, we all have a body and must understand how it functions, what it needs, and how to keep it in good balance. Listen to what your body is telling you and you won’t go wrong. If you listen to what others have to say, don’t forget to use your common sense and add a pinch of salt then decide for yourself what makes the most sense for you. You don’t need anybody to tell you what’s best for you.

The new “water-drinking culture”. In the last ten to twenty years, we have been told by health care professionals, GPs, therapists, chiropractors, masseurs, and those who practise complementary medicine- that we should drink more water or our health will suffer. Their mantra is “Drink more water” and the recommended amount is usually at least 8 glasses to 2 litres per day. Their solution for tiredness, back pain, headaches, insomnia etc. is to drink more water. Do we really need so much water to stay healthy? All of a sudden everybody carries a bottle of water wherever they go but is it necessary?

What are the benefits of water? The body’s water makes up 75% of the total body weight, is the principal constituent of all body chemical substances, (blood, lymph, tissue fluid, salivary juice, gastric juice, bile, sweat, etc.) and all excretory fluids. The water we drink replaces the bodily fluids that we lose every day and is, of course, used to cool down our system when it is over-heated, in hot weather, for example when we perspire or after excessive exercise or when suffering from diarrhoea, fever or hot flushes or even after too much pungent food. Water has no nutritional nor any internal cleansing powers.

Too much water, what can it do? In France recently a lady was apparently so obsessed with drinking a lot of water that she actually over-loaded her system, saturated her lungs and drown, she died of water intoxication. Water intoxication results from the consumption of large quantities of water or in cases of kidney malfunction when urinary secretion is reduced. This is of course an extreme example, but excessive water intake can also cause headache, dizziness, vomiting, and convulsions, among other problems. Naturally the more we drink the more we have to urinate and urine contains salt and hormones. Salt is an energy source and a cleansing agent which has a tenderising effect, protecting the organs. Drinking too much water causes exhaustion of the kidneys and the bladder subsequently leading to the build-up of minerals (gall &   kidney stones) Through frequent urination we lose more vital chemicals-it is the “river of no return” the urine becomes clearer but not because there are no more toxins in the body. In Traditional Chinese medicine, the urine of a healthy body should be slightly yellow. If it is clear, this indicates that the body is suffering from a cold or some kind of deficiency.

Bad advice. Many doctors and therapists considered that constipation is the result of not drinking enough water and advised drinking more water to ease constipation, but water goes through the kidneys to the bladder and not to the colon or bowel. Too much water in the stomach can only cause embarrassment. It releases oxygen from the water resulting in   belching and other digestive problems such as a bloated stomach. The notion that drinking a prescribed amount of water per day will cure a myriad of problems is similar to the idea that stress is the cause of many common illnesses – water is merely a placebo.

I recently read in a newspaper that we should take 5 pints of water a day, three of which should be obtained by drinking and the other two from the food we eat. This suggestion is disturbing because if we obtained two pints of water from our food, we would be grossly over-eating and overweight. More harmful advice from the same article suggested that we should drink before we feel thirsty. Instinctively if our body needs water, it will give out signals, such as thick saliva, dry lips and throat and a feeling of thirst. Too much water doesn’t taste sweet any more it only causes imbalance and disharmony.

Good Advice. Intake of water is determined principally by the sense of thirst. Excessive intake may lead to water intoxication. Therefore, you should understand the working of your own body- if you’re not hungry, don’t eat-if you are not thirsty, don’t drink. Food and drink maintain health and balance, excess causes upset.