Nature's Internal Bath :: Holistic Healing :: Hydrotherapy (Water Therapy)

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Nature's Internal Bath
by author Kimberly Easterbrook

No bird, fish, insect, cactus or blade of grass can sustain life without water. Dry out a living cell and it will die of its own waste products. It must have liquid! Water is the carrier of nutrients and energy into every cell. It’s also the carrier of toxicity and waste products out of cells.

In the human body, water is essentially the most crucial factor in maintaining health and vitality. At birth our body is 90 percent water, decreasing to 75 percent hydration by the age of three. As we grow older, water levels can dip as low as 65 percent. Dr Paul C. Bragg, health pioneer as a life extension specialist and author of The Miracles of Fasting, states that to lose a tenth of our body’s water supply is dangerous–to lose a fifth can be fatal! Losing water disturbs body functions and impairs the chemical and physical processes necessary to good health.

Keep in mind that the body is roughly 75 percent water and 25 percent matter. Two thirds of the water is inside the body’s cells and one third is outside the cells, either in the blood stream (as plasma), in body cavities or between the cells (as tissue fluid). The brain tissue is said to consist of 85 to 90 percent water and the blood 90 percent water. Even our bones consist of 30 to 40 percent water!

Think about it. Some of us take two showers a day, treat ourselves to ozone therapy to sweat out grime and toxins, go to spas and take aromatherapy baths to relax our tired muscles and soothe our withered spirits from the stress of life. We wash our clothes, cars, dishes and animals on the outside and yet we forget to wash the inside of our bodies. You may be tired of hearing "drink at least six to eight glasses of water per day," but it’s true. We were never taught why we should and need to understand the importance of an internal bath with pure water.

How Your Body Uses Water

Let’s start with the ingestion of food in the mouth. Between seven and 11 quarts of water are needed just for proper digestion. When we break this down, it measures out to three pints of saliva and two quarts of gastric juices, plus an equivalent amount as bile and other glandular and intestinal secretions.

It’s impossible for food to be digested without water! A chemical process called hydrolysis goes on in your body. It involves changing proteins, starches and fats into foods that certain cells require to work properly.

When food enters the mouth, water stimulates the saliva to start the digestion of carbohydrates. The gastric juices in the stomach, which are 90 percent water, help facilitate the absorption of solids, bringing the food into a liquid state. (The mucus that lines your stomach, protecting it from the hydrochloric acid, is 98 percent water. When you have too little water, this mucus barrier sloughs off and the stomach acid eats away at the stomach cells.) Food is then passed to the upper section of the small intestine where enzymes, liver secretions and the pancreas, which is 90 percent water, finish the digestion process.

Food is absorbed into the small and large intestinal walls in a watery state. The largest part of absorption itself occurs in the colon. If water is not absorbed, especially in infants who only carry a small water supply, it’s passed as waste. Diarrhea, dehydration, bad digestion and even death can occur.

When the food is absorbed, water’s first job is to transfer the newly digested food to cells through the blood stream. There are about 10 pounds of blood in your body. When the cells are fed, the wastes have to be washed away.

Elimination’s the Name of the Game

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Kimberly Easterbrook is a natural health products consultant and longevity research writer.

Source: alive #221, March 2001

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