Water: Is it Good or Bad?

I think it’s the nature of the human psyche to be somewhat lazy. By lazy I mean wanting to cling onto simple black and white concepts, declare “case closed,” and systematically file everything into good and bad categories.

In the world of nutrition this laziness abounds. It seems everyone wants to create “good guys” and “bad guys” out of different foods, different substances, different therapies, different medications. But you really can’t do that. And when you do file things into categories that are either “always good” or “always bad” you commit intellectual suicide to a certain degree.

I have been thoroughly punished by this type of mindset just like anyone else. Many years ago I thought water “had” to be good for you. Pure, crystal clear water. The genesis of life on earth. It was the essence of purity and wholesomeness – the more the better.

Later, I came across some opposing views on water, and noticed that I was having ill effects from drinking it, such as indigestion. I went so far as to write an article pointing out this error (Oops, I Did it Again), and jumped on the other side of the water debate. First, water was always good. And now, water was not preferable to other fluids that contained electrolytes and carbohydrates – like milk and fresh juices.

But then I improved my health by ending an overly-restricted diet that got me into trouble (one could call it a “Weston A. Price version of a low-carb diet”), and no longer had any issues with water at all. I began drinking tons of it again. I thrived on it. Water was back on the “water is good for you list.” I’m not the only one to flip flop back and forth on water. Mercola has done the same recently.

The problem was trying to put water into a category as good and bad. You can’t do that – not even with something as simple as water. Maybe you could do that with cyanide or DDT or movies that were not made in the 1980’s, or Room 304 at the McClure Hotel in Wheeling, West Virginia, but not all common foods.

Anyway, on to what I mean, and why water can be extremely good or extremely bad depending on the circumstance.

Water, quite simply, is a solvent. Salt and sugar dissolve in water. When you drink water, you urinate or sweat it out later and it is contains a lot more sugar, minerals, and electrolytes than it did when it went in. Water washes all that out.

As Ray Peat has written, those with a low metabolic rate have trouble storing adequate amounts of glycogen and often have a tendency towards hypoglycemia. Likewise, they have a hell of a hard time retaining electrolytes and other minerals like magnesium. Both hyponatremia (low electrolytes) and hypoglycemia (low sugar) can induce things like migraines, seizures, headaches, anxiety attacks, anger and aggression, frequent urination (polyuria), vomiting, nighttime urination and bedwetting in children (nocturia), night terrors and nightmares, and a long list of other complaints – all of which are serious stressors. In fact, as I pointed out in an argument I had with a completely uninformed person earlier this year who was encouraging someone with low blood sugar seizures to drink lots of water – giving large quantities of water to an infant can induce a seizure on the spot.

Reading all this, you would think water was, generally-speaking, a negative. Quite the contrary. The fact that it can wash excess salt and sugar out of the system is wonderful for those who have TOO MUCH SALT AND SUGAR in their systems. As I’m finding with my investigation of Challen Waychoff, who tracks these things with a conductivity meter (which measures electrolytes basically) and refractometer (that measures all dissolved particles in the urine), most people have very high levels of sugar and salt and get the most benefit from lowering these levels, not raising them.

Of the waters, distilled water – completely devoid of minerals and thus much more potent for stripping salts and sugars out of the body, is so powerful that Challen named his company “Heavenly Water.” But even someone who calls water “heavenly” knows the power of water used in the wrong context. That wrong context is of course, when given to someone with a tendency towards hypoglycemia and hyponatremia (and I’ve noticed that many who do, have a natural aversion to drinking water, but often drink tons of it anyway due to bad advice given from the mainstream - the mainstream obsession with water runs deeper than freakin' Lake Baikal).

But hey, even most practitioners of the RBTI don’t get this at all. Poor 180 follower Sheila, who has one of the most obvious cases of chronic hypoglycemia I can think of (cold hands and feet between meals, brain fog, waking up in the wee hours of the morning, nocturia so bad that she can’t go to bed until after midnight after she’s finally quit peeing every 5 minutes), was told by someone practicing RBTI in Europe to drink 5 LITERS of water every day. This, of course, made all of her problems exponentially worse. 5 ounces of water is probably plenty for someone with severe hypoglycemia – until of course they overcome that condition – at which point they need to drink more and take advantage of water’s purifying effects.

This is why the refractometer I wrote about recently is such a powerful tool. When the reading drops below 1.5, it is an indication that the solutes in the urine have dropped too low. In plain English, the body is lacking adequate salt and sugar to perform basic functions. This is one of the greatest stressors the body can experience. The worst thing you could do in this situation is drink a big glass of water (or other drinks that lack sugar, like diet soda or tea). It would be much healthier to rush to the nearest fast food establishment and drink a Mountain Dew. Drinking antifreeze would probably be healthier than drinking water in that circumstance.

Once you realize that whether or not something is healthy is circumstantial, it opens things up to a whole new world of possibilities.

Anyway, this is why I KNOW what Challen Waychoff is doing up in Wheeling is, at the very least, a huge step in the right direction in the medical use of nutrition. Instead of giving blanket recommendations to all of society based on the likelihood of more than 50% of people benefitting from it (while a portion of the population is decimated by the same advice), he looks at a person’s specific body chemistry and comes up with a very precise program for rebalancing that body chemistry. It is Ayurveda on steroids. And I believe that time and experience will prove to me that this works as well as or better than any non-specific nutrition guidance currently being given anywhere on earth - even with its Frankenfood-o-philia. 

There will always be general information. And as a writer, that will probably always be my specialty. But there are certainly circumstances that demand much more precision, careful monitoring, and fine-tuned manipulation. If only mainstream medicine could have open-mindedness to such as concept, targeting the diet and lifestyle root causes and effects of abnormalities in diagnostic tests as opposed to going first to medications to strong-arm the numbers back into “healthy” ranges... Sniffle, sniffle.

Instead we are all told…

Don’t eat red meat

Nuts and whole grains are good for you

Milk does a body good

Saturated fat is bad (Keep in mind there are over 30 types of saturated fat and each is unique, but I digress)

And dozens of other things. Including, none other than…

“Drink 8, 8-ounce glasses of water daily.”

I'm not saying drinking water is bad.  I'm not saying drinking water is good.  I'm saying that telling everyone to drink water without having any knowledge about their health, body chemistry, and metabolism is stupid. 

Intuitive Eating

Intuitive eating – which is best described as eating what you want, when you want, because you feel like eating it (with or without a “damnit!”) – is a great concept. Sure, it has limitations. One is that superstimuli such as artificial sweeteners, flavor enhancers, and pornographically-delightful foods like chocolate, cupcakes, Mountain Dew, and potato chips often induce us to eat, not for hunger’s sake, but out of an empty pleasure-seeking compulsion (sort of that “just one more” feeling you get when flipping through channels at the end of an unsatisfying day, or hopping around from site to site on the internet with that subtle whisper for gratification in the back of your mind).

But it’s worth recognizing how much more intelligent our bodies are than our minds when it comes to our physiological needs. A very simple example of this occurred the other day and really made me think. I hadn’t thought about it much before because it is so truly automatic, intuitive, and instinctual.

That simple example is how thirsty you get when you eat salty food. At first glance this seems like nothing. Like no big deal. But truly, the vast system of regulatory mechanisms in our body involved in this simple impulse is humbling.

The human body has a very tight range when it comes to the ratio of fluid to sodium. It wants to maintain that level for optimum health. If you consume salty food, you need more water. If you consume food without salt, you need less water to dilute the small amount of natural sodium found in the food. But our thirst really does a fantastic job of regulating this for us. Thirst is a manifestation of dozens of biochemical communications that result in a little lightbulb going off in our brains that says, “Damn an ice cold glass of “x” would really hit the spot right now.”

But even something so simple as sodium regulation is highly dependent on you being attuned to the cues your body gives you to drink. The danger arises when we have an external idea about whether water is good or bad for us, or salt is good or bad for us, or whether or not we should drink water with meals, or being told that we could die from dehydration if we don’t drink 6 quarts of water a day while working out in the hot sun (A safety handbook given to Forest Service employees, for example, suggests that one quart of water needs to be consumed every hour when engaged in hard physical labor. My supervisor just about died from doing this once, from inducing severe hyponatremia – dangerously low sodium levels, out in the middle of frickin’ nowhere).

All of this junk is mental interference that clogs up an otherwise well-oiled and sophisticated system. But even the smallest idea can do it, such as thinking that sugar will cause "insidious weight gain" and drinking water instead of Gatorade during intense physical labor/exercise.

It’s also a great example of how something simple and pure, like water, can save your life or be deadly depending on the context. Context is everything, and even water has a long list of “contraindications” depending on the circumstance. Our bodies are always in flux with changing demands, situations, and a constantly-transforming physiology dependent on something as simple as the time of day. A study mentioned in a book Rob A. sent to me actually showed that the prime determinant in whether a person developed side effects from chemotherapy (such as hair loss) was the time of day that the chemotherapy was given!

As it pertains to water, many people could benefit from drinking more water I’m sure, but give too much water to an infant and it can trigger seizures from low sodium levels, as this study shows.

That study is actually what got me so intrigued by this simple salt and thirst regulation system, as supposedly it is very difficult for those with a low metabolism to retain salt, and low sodium levels can induce seizures. The person I know who has problems with seizures hates water and loves salty food – and thinks it would be healthier to drink more water and avoid foods with a high sodium content. I think her body probably knows best on this one, and it is no accident that these are her preferences.

Speaking of which, I have made mention several times already of allowing this person’s daughter to eat absolutely everything she wanted starting two months ago. Back then she had severe sleep problems and was wetting the bed 3-4 nights per week. She has not had these problems at all in about six consecutive weeks since she was allowed to turn up her nose at dinner when it didn’t look good and eat massive gobs of ice cream instead. No longer is she forced to clean her plate or eat her vegetables, or meat, or starch, or whatever. And her tastes and cravings have become very well-rounded – with no more tension and anxiety and battle over eating time either. Intuitive eating can be a great thing.

And you never really know what your body might need to rebalance itself. I just received an email yesterday about many health benefits a person experienced after ditching coconut oil and eating a bunch of mayonnaise instead.

Think about all the mental interference you put up between your body and its natural cravings, impulses, and preferences. Many people notice health improvements when they just step out of the way. And this goes not just for eating, but for everything in life – certainly the type, duration, and time of day you get some exercise and movement, or the time you wake up, or whether or not you lay down and take a nap in the afternoon.

Stay tuned for a follow-up post to this, as intuitive “living” is only one tool in the toolbox. As you know, information can help, and investigation (of how you respond to certain foods, drinks, exercises, bedtimes, supplements, etc.) can help even more. Each by itself is limited in its usefulness, but taken together could be a pretty sophisticated way for figuring out how to get and keep your body in a harmonious balance.