Healing with water: the work of "water cure" pioneer Dr. Batmanghelidj

Those of you who are familiar with the work of the late Dr B. may own his book called "The Water Cure," or "Water for health, for Healing, for Life: You're Not Sick, You're Thirsty." He's also the author of "Your Body's Many Cries for Water." Essentially, Dr. B is the foremost authority on the relationship between the consumption of water and states of health or disease in the human body.

As he explains in great detail in his many books, most common diseases (for which there are a variety of names such as asthma, arthritis, hypertension and so on) are really just names given to patterns of symptoms created by the body's drought management system. When the human body begins to get dehydrated, it initiates a drought management system that seeks to conserve water. The symptoms characterized by this drought management effort are given disease names by conventional medicine and then treated with toxic prescription drugs.

Here's a straightforward example of what I'm talking about: the brain must be kept hydrated at all times. So the body, when it is lacking water, will do everything possible to keep supplying adequate water to the brain. This involves limiting the loss of water in other areas of the body. As Dr. B points out, simply breathing causes the loss of a significant quantity of water each and every day, depending on the climate in which you live and your level of physical exercise.

If you are experiencing chronic dehydration from not drinking enough water, or from drinking water-depleting drinks such as coffee, beer or beverages containing sugar, your body tries to prevent respiratory water loss by producing histamines which close off the capillaries in your lungs. Through the constriction of these capillaries, water loss is reduced, but of course breathing is made far more difficult. It's important to understand that the body is doing this on purpose. The body is producing histamines as a strategy, not as a disease or something gone awry. The body wants to constrict the capillaries in your lungs because it is trying to save your brain.

What is conventional medicine's answer to this production of histamines by the body? Well, of course, it is the prescription of antihistamines, or drugs that are designed to counteract the histamines produced on purpose by the body in order to conserve water. These antihistamines then open up the capillaries in the lungs, making breathing seem easier. As you can see here, then, the conventional medicine approach treats nothing but the symptoms, and in doing so it counteracts the body's own intentions and strategies in trying to conserve water. What patients with asthma really need is lots of water on a regular basis, not histamine prescription drugs.

As Dr. B explains in his books, the same sort of destructive cycle of medical treatment is taking place with other diseases as well -- most notably hypertension and arthritis. Many of the prescription drugs profitably marketed to doctors and patients today are, in effect, various forms of histamines which counteract the body's efforts to conserve water.

What we need to be doing as a population, of course, is simply drinking more water. But there's more to it than just that -- we also need to stop drinking beverages that deplete our water supplies. Believe it or not, most beverages that are consumed by American consumers today actually don't offer hydration; drinking soft drinks results in a loss of water in your body, not a gain in water. Once you drink one can of a soft drink beverage, you feel like you still need more, and thus the body is trapped in a never-ending cycle of craving for hydration that simply cannot be met by consuming soft drinks. What your body truly craves is water.

Caffeine is also another water-depleting drug. Consuming caffeine in any form, whether soft drinks or coffee or pills, creates a diuretic effect in your body, which means your body begins to eliminate water through urination. Sadly, most Americans continue to drink alarming quantities of soft drinks, coffee and other beverages that actually deplete water from their systems.

There's another fascinating point on chronic dehydration and weight loss that's worth mentioning here, too: many people who are attempting to lose weight end up in a state of chronic dehydration because they don't want to drink water for fear that it will add "water weight" to their bodies. They actually impair their body's ability to metabolize fat because they're afraid to drink enough water on a regular basis. In reality, being fully hydrated is a prerequisite to weight loss. If you want to lose weight, you have to give your body enough water so that it's no longer in a state of emergency. When the body is in a state of chronic dehydration, or a state of emergency, it will not let go of fat supplies easily. It wants to hold on to everything it can eat or drink. The only way to convince your body to let go of body fat, and start metabolizing body fat, is to drink a lot of water - enough water so that your body feels safe in letting go of unneeded calories. (Remember: water has zero calories, is low-carb, and has zero grams of fat, so drink up!)

It's also interesting to note that many people who go on short term diets and who think they're losing five or ten pounds over a couple of days are really only losing water weight. They haven't lost any body fat at all but they have managed to put themselves in a state of chronic dehydration that will inevitably lead to weight gain once they return to normal habits of eating and drinking.

Getting back to Dr. B, it's curious to note that he's a conventionally trained medical doctor, and yet, like so many of the doctors I interview on this site, he has the calling of a true scientist. He has the willingness to venture beyond modern medicine and explore the true causes of health and disease. In doing so, he has pioneered the understanding of how water can create health (or lack of water can create disease) in the human body. This is groundbreaking work and Dr. B deserves to be widely recognized for his contribution to medical understanding. And yet, that is precisely what is not happening. Rather than being nominated for a scientific prize, Dr B has been marginalized by the conventional medical community. His critics refuse to recognize the true role of water in the human body. And, of course, the tremendous financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry and the "sick care" industry (also known as the healthcare industry) all have a vested interest in making sure that doctors treat diseases with extremely expensive prescription drugs and high profit medical procedures rather than low-cost substances like water.

This is an important point: there's no money in the treatment of disease with water, so there's no motivation for any organization whatsoever to reveal the truth about the role of water in preventing chronic disease in human beings. Why would a pharmaceutical company or a doctor or a hospital tell you that you can prevent arthritis, asthma, hypertension and other diseases by simply drinking water? They wouldn't. And they don't. Medical schools don't even teach it.

Diabetes is also another disease that is strongly influenced by water consumption. And the diabetes industry is a multi-billion dollar industry of sickness treatment and prescription drugs. Why would that industry want to tell people that all they need to do is drink more water and avoid drinking soft drinks in order to greatly improve their health?

The answer is that there is no motivation whatsoever for any medical industry or group or drug company to tell people the truth about water and human health. Not only that they're not willing to tell the truth, they're also not willing to intellectually accept the truth about water because it runs counter to their profitable paradigms of disease treatment. In other words, an executive working at a pharmaceutical company, who's making millions of dollars a year from the sale of pharmaceuticals, cannot psychologically accept the idea that diseases could be prevented or reversed by drinking something that would be freely available to the public. The thought doesn't even penetrate that person's belief system.

And yet the truth of it all is that most illness in the United States can be easily prevented by strategies that are inexpensive or even free of charge. Two of the most powerful therapies for health and disease prevention are pure water and natural sunlight. I've written many articles about sunlight, about how it prevents and even reverses mental disorders, schizophrenia, prostate cancer, breast cancer, osteoporosis and even nervous system disorders. And that's available free of charge, all you have to do is walk outside and get some sunshine on your skin. Now, with the work of Dr. B being published and widely available, we also know that water is one of the most powerful healing substances available to each and every consumer in the United States and around the world. It's virtually free; all you need to do is keep drinking it, and don't wait for your thirst perception to tell you when to drink more. You have to make a commitment to hydrate yourself throughout the day on a regular basis. At the same time you have to make a commitment to avoid drinking beverages that result in dehydration, such as soft drinks, sport drinks or any beverage with caffeine or added sugars. That means avoiding cow's milk, fruit juices, beer and alcohol, fruit punches or any other drinks that simply don't substitute for the healing power of pure water.

The bottom line to all of this is that Dr B is a true international hero when it comes to having the wisdom to recognize the fundamental causes of disease and the courage to speak up about it and tell the truth as he sees it. If we had more doctors like this in the world, our world would be free of 90% of all chronic disease. The healthcare industry would be a fraction of its current size, and the pharmaceutical industry would be practically nonexistent. We'd all be healthier, happier, and we'd live longer. We would have less violence in society, lower crime rates, stronger families, better educational outcomes for our children, and we would even experience great increases in our collective quality of life. This is the promise we can have if we accept the fundamental truth that health is our right, and that many highly effective health strategies are freely available to us right now.

At the same time, we must also reject the current sick care treatment system that prevents and suppresses information that would help people get better and that profits handsomely from a population that remains chronically diseased.

Even after his passing in late 2004, Dr. B remains a pioneer in the fight for restoring freedom and fundamental health to the human population, and I strongly encourage you to go to http://www.amazon.com or http://www.barnesandnoble.com or your local bookstore and check out the books by Dr. B. They represent some of the most interesting reading you will ever find, and once you read his books you will never go back to drinking soft drinks, coffee or fruit juices ever again. These books will change your life, and if you follow the strategies they offer, they will even help you prevent chronic disease for a lifetime.

The world owes Dr. B. a debt of gratitude, and I only hope that some day he will be considered for the Nobel Prize or some other worthy recognition for his pioneering and courageous work on the healing effects of water.