Water: For Health, For Healing, For Life Read Online Free PDF Page A

exposes the tragic limitations of knowledge of the human physiology that is available to a prestigious medical school in America.
    In his recently published and widely reported assertions, Dr. Valtin does not take into consideration the fact that water is a nutrient. Its vital “hydrolytic” role would be lost to all the physiological functions that would be affected by its shortage in its osmotically “free state.” Another oversight is the fact that it is the interior of the cells of the body that would become drastically dehydrated. In dehydration, 66 percent of the water loss is from the interior of the cells, 26 percent of the loss is from extracellular fluid volume, and only 8 percent of the loss is borne by the blood tissue in the vascular system, which constricts within its network of capillaries and maintains the integrity of the circulation system.
    Philippa M. Wiggin has shown that the mechanism that controls or brings about the effective function of the cation pumps utilizes the energy-transforming property of water, the solvent: “The source of energy for cation transport or ATP synthesis lies in increases in chemical potentials with increasing hydration of small cations and polyphosphate anions in the highly structured interfacial aqueous phase of the two phosphorylated intermediates.” Waiting to get thirsty, when the body fluids become concentrated before thirst is induced, one loses the energy-generating properties of water in the dehydrated cells of the body. This is a major reason why we should prevent dehydration, rather than wait to correct it. This new understanding of the role of water in cation exchange is enough justification to let the body engage in prudent surplus-water management rather than forcing it into drought and deficit-water management, which is what Dr. Valtin is recommending people do.
    In his research on the “conformational change in biological macromolecules,” Ephraim Katchalski-Katzir of the Weizmann Institute of Science has shown that the “proteins and enzymes of the body function more efficiently in solutions of lower viscosity.” Thus, water loss from the interior of the cells would adversely affect their efficiency of function. This finding alone negates Dr. Valtin's view that we should let dehydration get established before drinking water. Since it is desirable that all cells of the body should function efficiently within their physiological roles, it would be more prudent to optimally hydrate the body rather than wait for the drought-management programs of the body to induce thirst. Furthermore, it is much easier for the body to deal with a slight surplus of water than to suffer from its shortfall and have to ration and allocate water to vital organs at the expense of less vital functions of the body. The outcome of constantly circulating concentrated blood in the vascular system is truly an invitation to catastrophe.
    The tragedy of waiting to get thirsty hits home when it is realized that the sharpness of thirst perception is gradually lost as we get older. Phillips and associates have shown that after twenty-four hours of water deprivation, the elderly still do not recognize they are thirsty: “The important finding is that despite their obvious physiologic need, the elderly subjects were not markedly thirsty.” Bruce and associates have shown that between the ages of twenty and seventy, the ratio of water inside the cells to the amount of water outside the cells drastically changes from 1.1 to 0.8. Undoubtedly this marked change in the intracellular water balance would not take place if the osmotic push and pull of life could favor water diffusion through the cell membranes everywhere in the body—at the rate of 10 -3 centimeters per second. Only by relying on the reverse osmotic process of expanding the extracellular water content of the body, so as to filter and inject “load-free” water into vital cells by the actions of vasopressin and the