Water. The miracle cure?

I mentioned in my post on "going green" that we have replaced most beverages in our diet with water and have made an impact by reducing waste and saving a lot of cash. But are we actually saving our lives or at least dramatically improving our health (yet more savings financially) in the process?

This interview with the late Dr. Batmanghelidj may just change your perception of the value of water. In it he discusses how many of our "illnesses" are actually just results of varying levels of dehydration and why some groups would rather encourage us to overlook the health benefits of simply drinking more water.

If you like the article and are the kind of person who wants to hear it from the horses mouth so to speak, visit WaterCure.com and read more about the late doctors research.

I can tell you first hand the difference drinking more water has had on me. Growing up, from the age of about 13 or 14 I was getting headaches pretty much every day. After several visits to the doctors and a couple prescriptions of "reading glasses" I pretty much resigned myself to living with headaches as a way of life. This meant years of a variety of over the counter pain medications to help limit but not eliminate the pain.

It wasn't until I was 26 and in Culinary School that I read about the effects of caffeine and dehydration that I finally found true relief. At that point I cut out probably 50% of my soda and coffee intake and replaced it with plain old water. After a few days of caffeine withdrawals, my almost daily headaches became a thing of the past.

What I find interesting all these years later is the doctors approach to resolving the problem. There was no focus on finding dietary causes of my headaches and instead attempts to treat the symptoms via medications and prescription glasses. Had we focussed on finding the cause, rather then treating the symptoms, I could have saved myself years of headaches and a whole lot of money.

Please, by all means seek the advice of a medical professional if you need to. Just make sure you are doing what you can to eliminate any causes to your health issues rather then simply treating the symptoms.

Photography by Mike Munchel