One Thing that can make You Healthier?

                When somebody comes in my office and they are in a lot of pain I know right away that they are not drinking enough water. I tell 95% of the people coming into the office that they need to drink more water. Drinking more water is very important and it shouldn’t be taken lightly. Just 24ozs of water low is considered being dehydrated. I have had some people come in my office as much as 100ozs low in their fluid intake.

The serious problems of dehydration can include disc problems. The discs between each vertebra in your spine are mostly made of water, so if you’re dehydrated the disc shrinks just a little and that can put added pressure on one of your spinal nerves and cause pain. About 99% of the people that come in my office with sciatic pain are dehydrated. The disc shrinks and presses on the sciatic nerve and the person will have excruciating pain. If someone is chronically dehydrated it can lead to herniated discs and bulging discs because their spine is less stable than normal a person.

A person who is dehydrated can have headaches all the time because the blood does not circulate as well to the brain which also can lead to dizziness, heaviness in the head, blurred vision, and hearing loss. When a person feels weakness, fatigue, or energy loss usually they are dehydrated because the blood gets thicker making the heart have to work harder to circulate the blood around the body. That is a waste of energy which leads to energy loss and fatigue. When someone feels tired they are better off drinking a big glass of water than drinking a cup of coffee or some other energy drink. This also leads to a slow metabolism and stubborn weight gain. Most people, if they just make a conscious effort to drinking more water and only water, they will drop some weight off naturally without seemingly doing anything extra physically. Dehydration can cause asthma and sinus problems. If you are not drinking enough water your sinuses and the lining of your lungs become dry, making it hard for you to breathe.

Chronic pains such as back pain, neck pain, and hip pain can be caused by dehydration because the muscle, tendons, and ligaments tend to become tight. This causes lack of flexibility and joint stiffness. People will come in thinking they have arthritis, when they are only dehydrated. They will ask me why their medical doctor doesn’t tell them to drink more water.  I tell them it is because pills are much more profitable than drinking more water. I have had many yoga enthusiasts and instructors come in complaining of, all of a sudden, not being able to get into certain postures. I tell them to drink more and they can now get into postures that they were unable to get into.

Dehydration can actually cause water retention. You wouldn’t think that if you were dehydrated that you would have a problem with water retention. The body releases something called histamines when we are dehydrated. Histamines cause the body to hold on to water because our body is wondering when  the next time we are going to drink water and doesn’t want to release any  water that it already has. Histamines can also cause chronic inflammation of the body, skin to become plump, and can also cause fake allergic reactions. There are a lot of times when someone comes in my office thinking they are allergic to something when all they are is dehydrated.

When someone doesn’t drink enough water their digestion is compromised. If someone is dehydrated they can’t produce enough acid to breakdown the food that they just ate. Most times acid reflux is actually lack of water causing indigestion because food is not being properly digested.

Now, in order to rehydrate properly you should drink room temperature water or warm water because the body can absorb that type of water faster. If someone is severely dehydrated they should add a pinch of sea salt in their water to make it even easier to rehydrate. Avoid distilled water because distilled water has no minerals in it and just goes right through the body without any of it being absorbed. Avoid cold water or ice water because that just shocks the body and you just end up going to the bathroom with very little being absorbed. People that are severely dehydrated from being in the desert they are first given warm water because they know that is the easiest way to quickly rehydrate a person.

Jeanne Murphy and Colleen Kelly interviewed me on their show Talented People on Hunterdon County Chamber of Commerce Radio.

http://www.hunterdonchamberradio.com/Radio_Shows/Talented_People/Talented_People-2012-11-28_07.mp3

The February 18, 2005 issue of the Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research finds that patients under long-term chiropractic care have higher levels of the blood chemicals associated with effective DNA repair and overall wellness.

The test was a retrospective analysis of 46 patients, all over the age of 40 who had been under short- term chiropractic care for 8-52 weeks or long term wellness care for 52-312 weeks. Researchers assessed the levels of serum thiols, blood factors that have been found to help the body repair the damaging effects stress has on the structure of DNA. Serum thiols are measured in terms of nM cysteine.

The authors found that non-chiropractic treated patients in the control group had serum thiol levels of 124 nM cysteine. Patients with active disease processes going on generally had levels below 90 compared to patients under long-term chiropractic care who had values of 146.

In their conclusion, the authors say, “some final observations should be noted. The results clearly support the recommendations being made for wellness care by chiropractors. In addition, it should be stated that these results occurred under normal practice conditions and indicate what most chiropractors are likely achieving when performing long-term care. Also, it refutes earlier that five to seven years of care was necessary to optimize human health status, as indicated by serum thiol levels. Our sampling indicates that this can occur in a time frame approximately half that period. Finally, there is no doubt that chiropractic care was the dominant factor in being able to realize thiol values that in some cases have not been seen in nutriceutical testing, the only other intervention shown to improve thiol values.”

Long term chiropractic patients have higher blood levels of DNA repair chemicals.

(2005). In Touch, 9,1.