Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Water, Water, Everywhere...

It's raining in Dallas, so perhaps that is why I'm blogging about water...

...or it may be that was the topic of some discussion on the "Natural Living and Garden Show with Ron and Mona Hall" Sunday, October 31st.

Mona (sans Ron) asked me to be a guest on the show which airs each Sunday at 8:00 AM on 570 KLIF Talk Radio. It was a pleasure to join her on Halloween to talk.

The question came up about whether coffee, soda, and fruit juices can be counted as the right amount of liquid we need each day to run our body systems. Weight Watchers tells their clients that any liquid can be counted as part of the daily requirement they recommend.


But this is just not healthy thinking.

Caffeine is found in the leaves, seeds or fruits of over 60 different plants. It is commonly found in chocolate and is a flavoring agent in many cola beverages.

Coffee has been used in enemas for almost as long as doctors have been doctoring. It does a good job of purging the colon because it is an irritant and stimulates gastric secretion. When coffee hits the lining of the intestinal tract, peristalsis (rhythmic waves of contraction of the digestive muscle that pushes food along the colon and triggers bowel movement) is stimulated because the body is trying to eliminate the irritant. There is no point at which coffee stops becoming an irritant to your intestinal tract.

While the effects of caffeine are stimulating, it is quite addictive (ever tried to go cold turkey?) and can cause loose stools. It is also a diuretic. Diuretics dehydrate the body and combine one that produces loose stools and you have an accident waiting to happen...no pun intended.

In addition, coffee has a half life of 6 hours. If you drink coffee all day long, you can do the math and figure out how much caffeine is still in your system when you try to go to sleep at night.

If you replace coffee with teas like Yerba Mate, the effects of caffeine withdrawal will be minimized without more irritation of the digestive tract.

An average can of soda contains ten teaspoons of sugar. One teaspoon of sugar has been shown to suppress your immune system for as long as four hours.

Diet sodas are sweetened with toxins masquerading as FDA approved healthy sweeteners. Aspartame is absorbed into your bloodstream as its breakdown product methanol (wood alcohol). There are several more 'breakdowns' before aspartame becomes formaldehyde, which your body has the potential to store before it is ultimately converted into the end waste product formate. Excess formate is responsible for the production of excessive acidity in the blood or methanol poisoning. This can result in fatal kidney damage, blindness, multiple organ system failure, and death. Splenda is the trade name of an artificial sweetener that is in over 4,500 products in supermarkets, restaurants, Starbucks, Jamba Juice and the low-carb foods and drinks made popular by the Atkins and South Beach diets. Splenda is the brand name for sucralose, a chlorinated artificial sugar derivative up to 600 times sweeter than sugar. This compound was discovered by accident in a chemistry lab of Queen Elizabeth College in London. The lab was trying to create a new insecticide. Honest.

Processed juices are no different than processed milk. Natural enzymes, sensitive to temperatures above 108 degrees F are killed during pasteurization. These are the same enzymes that aid us in digesting that particular food and in making the nutrients in the food available to your body as a fuel source. Cooking the juice, necessary for shelf-life in commercial food production, damages most of the vitamins and other sources of micronutrients that are found in fresh fruits, vegetables and freshly squeezed juices. Once all the good stuff is destroyed, you are basically left with sugar water enriched with synthetic vitamins.

Tap water is convenient and laced with chlorine, which is added to kill bacteria. Chlorine kills all bacteria, the kind you don't want and the kind your gut needs to stay healthy, break food down and defend against unhealthy bacteria.

Pure bottled waters are a healthier choice, some contain more mineral content that others, but preference is usually based upon how the water tastes to the consumer.

In order to be well-hydrated, a person should drink half their body weight in ounces of water each day, a fourth of that upon rising since the body has used all the available stores of fluid during the night for rest and cellular repair work.

Water does the following things: it is the building material for the 2,000,000 red blood cells yours body makes every second...it's a remedy for eating too many carbs as part of the fine-tuning work on your Metabolic Typing Food Plan... water is the building block for replacing cells in the body...it is the means to regular bowel movements...it helps restore pelvic floor and abdominal wall dysfunction...and it affects the quality of sleep since dehydration produces stress hormones which disrupt sleep.

The choice is yours. Do you want the use fresh, clean water to help your body to its work or do you want to be 'made up of' an addictive stimulant, toxic chemicals or sugar. You are what you eat and what you drink.

So, bottoms up!


Resource Material: How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy by Paul Chek
www.chekinstitute.com

Sweet Deception by Dr. Joseph Mercola and Dr. Kendra Degen Pearsall