How the Lack of Water and the Wrong Water Type Can Destroy Your Health and Cause Heart Disease, Cancer, and all other Diseases
A Vegan Health Article from All-Creatures.org

These vegan health articles are presented to assist you in taking a pro-active part in your own health.

See All-Creatures.org Health Position and Disclaimer

From Kevin Nemec, M.D.

How the Lack of Water and the Wrong Water Type can Destroy Your Health and Cause Heart Disease, Cancer, and all other Diseases

Our bodies are made up of almost 75 percent water, and to stay healthy, we must replenish the water lost from respiration, perspiration, and excretion of urine and feces.

In his book, Your Body’s Many Cries for Water, Dr. Batmanghelidj says most people are slightly dehydrated. He also says that for all the body’s systems to work right, including the immune system, we need an ample supply of water — eight 16-ounce glasses per day or, more accurately, 1 quart per 50 pounds of body weight per day.

When Dr. Batmanghelidj was in prison in Iran over an unjust political issue, a man was brought to him suffering from an acute asthma attack, which can be fatal. The doctor had no medicine, but told the man to drink as much water as possible. Upon doing this, the man’s asthma attack subsided. Dr. Batmanghelidj was obviously on to something very important. As the body water content goes down the secretion of histamine (a bronchial contractor) goes up. This lower water intake predisposes one for possible bronchial contractions and asthma onset.

Dr. Batmanghelidj also documented 3000 cases of patients who suffered from dypepsia (gastritis, duodenitis and heart burn) were all improved with nothing more than the very large amounts of water consumed. These findings were published in the journal of clinical gastroenterology.

Some of the other symptoms and conditions that can occur when the body becomes more subclinically dehydrated:

• pain of all types increases
• stress increases
• blood pressure increases
• body weight imbalances
• allergies increase
• more prone to tumor formation
• skin disorders
• immune dysfunction or weakness (more prone to bacteria, viruses, parasites, candida and cancer

Some other dehydrating agents include:

• salt
• caffeine
• sugar
• alcohol
• stress

Our bodies need a lot more water than we thought. Unfortunately, we’re not getting enough of it. And what water we do get isn’t necessarily the best.

Three categories of water drinkers:

1) Just do not drink much water.

2) Drink water, maybe even a lot, but is not absorbed into the cells because all this water is going to dilute all the salt, sugar and chemicals in the diet. This group tends to retain water in the tissues just to dilute the excessive salt and chemicals. This water is non functional to the cells.

3) Those that live in total health. They drink the allotted amount of water daily and are almost never thirsty because the foods they eat are high water content and do not contain salt, sugar or other chemicals that need to be diluted with water. These people drink water for the health of it and see water as preventative medicine. They power drink their water drinking 32oz. at a time and drink no closer than 30 minutes prior to a meal and at least 11⁄2 hours after a meal so not to interfere with digestion and assimilation.

The average American doesn’t get even close to the recommended 1 quart per 50 pounds of body weight per day; I have many patients who don’t drink water at all. Second, is the water that we’re drinking safe? More than 700 contaminants have been found in public drinking water, including pesticides, solvents, metals, radon and harmful microbes. Unfortunately, the EPA has set legal limits on, or maximum contaminant levels (MCLs), for just 54 of the 700-plus contaminants. Still, these 54 include some particularly nasty chemicals like arsenic and benzene, both carcinogens.

Here are some of the many chemicals polluting our water supply:

• Chlorine supposedly makes water safe because of its ability to kill bacteria, viruses, parasites, algae, yeast and mold. But when chlorine is combined with other compounds, it forms new ones called trihalomethanes (ThMs), such as chloroform, bromoform and carbon tetrachloride, all very hazardous to your health. Dr. Kurt Donsbach links a high incidence of kidney, bladder and urinary tract cancers in New Orleans with the fact that water there is chlorinated beyond government standards. The result: 66 new carcinogenic compounds. ThMs, along with cadmium and fluoride, are also known causes of atherosclerosis. Studies have also shown correlation between chlorination and colon and rectal cancer.

• Fluoride has been added to our water since 1945 because dentists believed it helped prevent tooth decay. But those opposing routine fluoridation of water say it causes cancer and other diseases. Fluoride is probably a weak carcinogen; nonetheless, it shouldn’t be added to our food or water.

In the book, Fluoride: The Aging Factor, Dr. John Yiamouyiannis describes a village in Turkey where residents age prematurely. Many villagers show signs of wrinkling skin and brittle bones, etc. in their 30s, and many don’t live to the age of 50. The cause of this condition is a 5.4 ppm (parts per million) level of natural fluoride found in their drinking water.4 Parts of India have this same fluoride level — with similar age accelerating effects.

It is also documented that bone cancer and bone tumors occur in laboratory animals that have been treated with fluoride. Another study, done in the 1970s, showed a higher rate of cancer in areas with fluorinated water than in unfluorinated areas.

In experiments with rats, Dr. Leo Pira found that fluoride interferes with the proper usage of B vitamins, damages the thyroid and kidney, and causes heart muscles to lose their tone and degenerate.

Dr. Dean Burk, former chief biochemist at the National Cancer Institute, made the astonishing statement that more than 50,000 Americans a year die of cancer caused by fluoridated drinking water. Dr. Yiamouyiannis says fluoride interferes with the body’s use of oxygen and depresses the making of ATP, from which we receive all of our energy for body and mind functions.

Meanwhile, it’s interesting to note that Europe banned the use of fluoride more than 20 years ago.

How much fluoride is too much? The amount of fluoride in our drinking water is 1 ppm. And even at 1 ppm, the fluoride has been shown to cause such problems as birth defects, mental retardation, heart and kidney damage, allergies and cancer. Fluoride also decreases the migration rate of white blood cells, which leads to suppression of the immune system.

One report (prepared by the Library of Congress Congressional Research Service for the United States House Subcommittee on the environment and the atmosphere) lists fluoride (along with chlorine, asbestos, nickel and mercury) as a pollutant, dangerous due to its adverse effects on the central nervous system and increased rates of cancer, heart disease, and genetic mutations. According to chemistry indexes, sodium fluoride is more toxic than lead, and only slightly less toxic than arsenic.

Lead is a major offender of the nervous system, causing impairment, especially in children. It is commonly found in very old houses in the plumbing.9 Since lead can leach out quicker in water that it sits in, it’s not a good idea to drink tap water. If you decide to drink from the tap or cook with the water, let the water run until it is very cold, which can take two minutes or more. Even very low levels of lead are very dangerous to children and unborn children.

So, what’s the best kind of water to drink? These kinds, in this order:

1) distilled 2) reverse osmosis 3) filtered water 4) spring water (filtered through carbon) 5) mineral water (filtered through carbon)

Distilled water is the best kind to drink. It has been boiled and the steam condensed down back into pure water with no contaminants (either inorganic or microbial) and no minerals.

The next best type of water is that treated with a reverse osmosis with carbon filtration system, which can be bought (they range from $500 to $800) and placed under your kitchen sink. A key advantage to this type of filtration is that it does get rid of some radioactivity, if any, while distillation does not. Reverse osmosis filters out most everything: inorganic contaminants, like the heavy metals mercury and lead; microbial contamination from bacteria, viruses, and parasites; and organic contaminants, like pesticides, solvents and other chemicals. But reverse osmosis also has its disadvantages. It uses a lot of water; it takes 10 gallons of regular water to make one gallon of reverse osmosis water. It’s also a slow process, and for households that use a lot of filtered or bottled water, it will be difficult to keep up with the demand. Also the filters have to be changed on the set schedule or they can build up bacteria. This would cause the filter to not only fail to filter out toxins and chemicals but also put bacteria into the drinking water.

One controversy concerning distilled water is that mineral-less water is supposedly not good for you. But the answer to this lies in your pipes. Look at a cross-section of a pipe that’s at least 10 years old. You’ll see thick mineral deposits which narrow the pipe, causing the water pressure to drop and the flow of water to slow down — similar to the narrowing of an artery, causing blood flow to slow down. The same thing happens in our bodies with regular water. Not only do these minerals deposit in the body’s tissues, but they’re predominantly metallic minerals, which are absorbed in minimal amounts compared to the amount consumed. A 10 percent absorption rate would be considered high, which means that for every 500 milligrams of calcium taken in, maybe 50 milligrams actually is absorbed for use.

So where do we get the necessary minerals that distilled water lacks? Almost all our minerals should come from plants. These are called organic minerals (from live plants) rather than inorganic (from the earth.) In other words, inorganic is like getting it from dirt, while organic is like getting it from a vegetable.

When a plant takes an inorganic mineral from the earth, it changes the mineral to a very small particle suspension (called a “colloid”) that actually loses its conductivity in water — the sign of a true organic mineral. The nice thing about plant colloid minerals are that they are so small they can go everywhere in the body, and they don’t deposit in tissues like metallic minerals do.

Excerpt taken from the book Total Health = Wholeness: A Body, Mind and Spirit Manual by Dr. Keith and Laurie Nemec. For more information go to Total Health Institute http://www.totalhealthinstitute.com.

---

Return to Vegan Health Articles
Visit Food Hazards in Animal Flesh and By-products

All-Creatures.org Health Position and Disclaimer

We began this archive as a means of assisting our visitors in answering many of their health and diet questions, and in encouraging them to take a pro-active part in their own health. We believe the articles and information contained herein are true, but are not presenting them as advice. We, personally, have found that a whole food vegan diet has helped our own health, and simply wish to share with others the things we have found. Each of us must make our own decisions, for it's our own body. If you have a health problem, see your own physician.