F. Batmanghelidj, MD has written three books: Your Body’s Many Cries for
Water, which has been translated into six languages, How to Deal with
Back Pain & Rheumatoid Joint Pain and ABC of Asthma Allergies &
Lupus Eradicate Asthma – Now! He has also produced numerous special
reports and videotapes. Dr. Batmanghelidj dedicates his time to
promoting public awareness of the healing power of water. Sit back, get
a glass of water and enjoy.
Today, we have an MD with us, who
has written a ground-breaking book, The ABC’s of Asthma, Allergies and
Lupus: Eradicate Asthma – Now. That was the phrase that jumped out at
me personally. On occasion, I’m one of those who has a problem with an
asthma thing which I hope to get rid of now with the help of Dr.
Batmanghelidj Did I get your name right?
Close enough. My name is not important.
The information is what’s important.
Were you a medical doctor in the
respiratory area?
No, I was an internist. I was trained
at St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School of London University. When I
completed training, I was picked up as one of the house doctors in my
own hospital which was a great honor they bestowed upon me. I have the
privilege of having been one of the last students of Sir Alexander
Flemming, who discovered penicillin. So I’m an historic person.
Really. That’s pretty cool.
I’m telling you this to let you know
I’ve been brought up in a scientific environment. I trained at the
best medical school in the world and, now, as a result of my discovery
that water is the better pain medication, asthma medication and the best
anti-histamine medication there is, I have to abandon some of my past
learning and build a new landscape for the science of medicine in the
future. Chronic, unintentional dehydration is the origin of most pain
and degenerative diseases in the human body. The body manifests
dehydration in as many ways as we, in medicine, have invented diseases.
Dry mouth is not a sign of dehydration and waiting to get thirsty is
wrong. Thirst should be prevented. When the body doesn’t receive water
and you have pain, that is a sign of dehydration. The mouth is not dry.
Pain in the body is a crisis call of the body for water. If you have
heartburn, your body is telling you it’s short of water in your
gastrointestinal track. You’ve had a heavy meal, there wasn’t enough
water to liquefy and break down the food and get it absorbed and it
gives you pain. You didn’t have a dry mouth because you swallowed all
the food, but nonetheless, since you didn’t have enough water in the
body, it manifested dehydration by producing heartburn. Heartburn can be
cured with water. I use the word “cured” because it is a sign of
dehydration. When you cure dehydration, the disease will go.
Not only asthma, allergies and
lupus, but also heartburn which is a major problem in the United States.
Yes, yes. Actually, water will cure
heartburn much faster than any medication.
So if you’re having heartburn
after a spicy dinner, just drink a bunch of water?
The best thing is to drink water before
food. Drink water half an hour before food if you’re a heartburn
sufferer. That is the best time because that water will go into the
stomach and then into the intestines and get absorbed. Then that water
is re-secreted entirely in the stomach, simultaneously priming the mucus
membrane to receive food. And, water is in the stomach to be used for
liquefaction of food – to break it, to prepare the food into smaller
particles so they can be absorbed. That is what water does. If you
don’t drink water beforehand, the body doesn’t have enough water
that it can liberate for other activity. Any water that is in your body
is already engaged in an activity. You need fresh water for fresh
activity. If you’re introducing solid food, this is a fresh activity.
You need fresh water to dissolve it and break it down.
Basically, the major pains of the body,
such as, heartburn, rheumatoid joint pain, back pain, colitis pain,
migraine headaches, fibromyalgia pain, even angina pain are signs of
dehydration in the human body. Where you have pain, it’s showing that
that area is dehydrated. The mechanism is very simple. Toxic chemical
waste builds up when you don’t drink enough water. If there is not
enough water to wash away the chemical toxic waste from an area that is
still active metabolizing, then toxic waste builds up. It is just like
the garbage collector not collecting the garbage that you are still
creating and putting it in front of the house to be cleared away. When
that garbage doesn’t get cleared away, in time it will become stagnant
and it will produce stench in your environment. It is exactly the same
in the environment of the cells in the body. When there is activity,
there is a build-up of toxic waste. If that waste is not cleared up, the
environment becomes pungent. It will become acidic and this acidic toxic
environment is sensed by the nerve endings in the area. The signal is
sent to the brain and the brain registers it with our conscious mind in
the form of pain. Pain means build up of toxic waste where you have the
pain. All you need to do is to wash that toxic waste by drinking more
water, letting it circulate to the area, clean the area, wash the toxic
waste, bring it out into the circulation and then pass it out through
the kidneys or neutralize it in the liver or some of the gases could be
passed through the lungs. That’s what pain means. There are a 110
million Americans who have pain, not knowing that they didn’t drink
enough water to wash the toxic waste out of their body.
This is such a simple answer. How
did you discover that water was the answer, the universal solution?
I discovered it in a peculiar
situation. One late night I was called to see someone who was doubled up
in agony of peptic ulcer disease. He had no medication and wanted some
from me. I didn’t have any so I just gave him two glasses of water and
within three minutes his pain diminished and within eight minutes it
disappeared completely.
Just from two glasses of water?
Yes. That’s all it takes, two or
three glasses of water will remove any severe pain.
Should it be warm water?
No, ordinary tap water will do. Any
water will do. What I gave him was a little more than one pint of water.
I virtually gave him two glasses of water.
You’re supposed to drink, what is
it, half your weight?
There is a formula, but basically you
need about two quarts of water as a minimum because you produce about a
quart and a half of urine a day under ideal circumstances when you’re
getting rid of your toxic waste. You’re losing about a quart of water
in breathing. Every time you breathe out you lose water. You know the
winter steam in front of your nose?
Yes.
That’s water that’s leaving your
body every time you breathe out. When you have wet clothing and you hang
them out to dry, if there is wind they dry very quickly. Now imagine the
lung tissue being confronted with the wind of breathing in and out. It
dries up very quickly unless there is water from the base to replace
that water. Under these circumstances, if you don’t drink enough
water, the lungs are going to become dry. The tiny membranes that
normally pick up oxygen and give up carbon dioxide, very delicate
membranes, would quickly become brittle unless water gets to them. The
only alternative is to shut down the breathing process so that the lung
tissue doesn’t dry up. This process of shutting down the breathing
process they call asthma.
Now, give an asthmatic water and let it
circulate and reach the lungs from its circulation and you can try to
dry it as much as you want, but it won’t get dry because you’re
constantly replacing the water. That is why water is the best asthma
medication there is.
We’ve heard people throughout the
years have all kinds of homeopathic cures, but no one ever said that
water was the answer.
I’m a research scientist. I’ve
researched dehydration at the molecular level for the past 20 years.
I’ve presented my findings at more conferences, international
conferences and published in major journals. When I discovered that the
solution to most of the pain and disease conditions of our society is
not a money-maker so no one is interested in it, then I decided to go
public and take my information to the public. That’s why I’ve
written my book.
This is amazing.
My first book is Your Body’s Many
Cries for Water which is now a best-seller. It’s sold over 300,000
copies so far, translated in many different languages, and the new book,
ABC’s of Asthma, Allergies and Lupus, is a focus on the drought
management programs of the body because allergy is a sign of
dehydration, when the body goes into conservation of its resources.
Histamine is a main neurotransmitter in
charge of water regulation in the body. Histamine is the element that
everyone takes antihistamine for, but histamine is a good guy. It is
regulating the available water in the body according to very strict
rules.
You don’t want to dry it up with
antihistamine.
No.
It’s harming your body.
Yes. What you want to do is provide the
water that histamine is seeking. Once you give the body water, it acts
as an antihistamine itself. In other words, histamine is no longer
concerned with dehydration.
Histamine has another role in the body
and that’s management of the immune system. In dehydration, histamine
suppresses its own activity on the immune system, otherwise dehydration
would constantly flare up the immune system.
In allergies, because the body is short
of water and histamine is acting in drought management, the immune
system is shut down and antibodies are not produced. Antibodies are
soldiers that defend the frontiers of the body. Lung tissue is a
frontier with an external environment – the nose and the eyes. If
offending pollen, which is a protein, hits these tissues, it must enter
into the system. It could cause damage. Normally, antibody soldiers
would be there to neutralize these offending pollens, but in dehydration
antibody soldiers are not active. They are not there. The only
alternative is to wash these particles away. That’s why when you get
an allergic reaction, your eyes begin to water and it washes the pollen
out of your eyes. Your nose will begin to water, it washes the pollen
out of your nose and will not allow it to go to the lung tissue. If you
hydrate the body well, antibody soldiers will be made and you will not
be allergic.
The old thing we’ve been hearing
for years... that you’ve got to drink eight to ten glasses of water a
day is really very accurate.
It’s a grandmother’s discovery and
all grandmothers are wiser than we are, but you never to listen to them.
And then salt is really important
too. In your book you mention that the salt works on your brain cells
and prevents Alzheimer’s Disease.
Yes. The brain is 85 percent water and
it lives in a salty lake. It is encased in a salty lake. Cerebral spinal
fluid is a very salty environment and in order to make it salty, salt is
pumped into this environment constantly. Salt is responsible for taking
acid out of the brain cells. There are nine trillion brain and nerve
cells that constantly chatter to one another. They use up energy and
there is toxic waste. There is acidity involved in the toxic waste. Salt
goes into the cell and pushes the acid out. And then this acid is taken
out of the system by a mechanism of pumping systems and taken to the
kidneys and flushed out. If we are short of salt and the toxic waste
builds up in the cell environment of the brain, then hydrogen iron
acidity, which lowers the pH making it more acidic, will eat away into
the brain cell mechanism.
We’re told not to have salt
because of the high blood pressure.
This is where medical science has gone
wrong because the human body retains salt in order to keep a body of
water outside of the cells of the body. From this body of water, which
is called edema fluid, water is filtered and injected into the vital
cells. There is a reverse osmosis program that the body operates. The
drier the body becomes the higher the injection pressure has to be for
the operation of the reverse osmosis. This injection pressure is
measurable and we call it hypertension. This injection pressure force is
needed in order to force water into the vital cells. You take water and
some salt and expand the volume of water outside of the cells and allow
water to get into the cells and this need for reverse osmosis that
operates across the board in the body is taken away and so the blood
pressure drops. So water and salt are better medications for lowering
blood pressure.
I’m surprised when you presented
this to your professional colleagues that they didn’t jump for joy and
become so excited to share it.
A lot of them have jumped for joy, but
commercial medicine is not interested in this. A sick-care system that
survives and thrives on people being sick will not survive on people
being healthy. The sick-care system is not interested, but a good
doctor, and there are lots of good doctors, have bought into the
information and they are sharing it with their patients all the time as
a way of guiding them.
Drink more water, take more salt.
Salt is one of the most important
elements to the human body.
Just regular iodized salt?
Table salt is not good because it’s
refined and the good elements have been taken out. Sea salt is a better
version. I’ve given information about salt in The ABC’s of
Asthma, Allergies and Lupus. Actually, quite a lot of elderly people
who have a problem with bladder control, and you know this is a major
problem, are salt sufficient. If they increase their salt intake, that
bladder will retain its control.
No more incontinence.
They won’t get that.
Those are the two keys to health –
water and salt which are provided for us by God and by the Universe –
are the universal healers that we’ve not been aware of. If you had a
chronic condition with asthma or allergies, this can reverse that
situation totally and cure it?
Yes. Yes. The information on
dehydration is ground-breaking, but the explanations I’ve been able to
put together will educate people about dehydration. And basically it
will turn everyone into a healer of their own bodies. And they in turn
become healers for others around them. This is how information is spread
and how the information is spreading so far. I’m crusading to
eradicate asthma from the list of human diseases within five years by
going around the country as I am here now and explaining that asthma is
a state of dehydration in the body. It is not a disease. Any time you
begin to adjust your water and salt intake, asthma will go away. And if
you stop taking water and salt, it will come back because that is your
body’s blueprint of drought management. It shuts down the lung tissue.
That is so interesting. Now, does
this have any affect on diabetes?
Diabetes is another sign of
dehydration. The brain needs water, 85 percent water and it needs salt.
If your body is short of water and is low in salt, the body has to
resort to make the blood a little more sweet or sugar it for asthmatic
purposes and also to shut down secretion of insulin. Once insulin is
secreted, it opens up the gates into all the cells and sugar will rush
in, other elements will rush in and water will rush in. Insulin is the
key to the gates for intake of elements into the cells of the body.
In dehydration, this key has to be
inhibited because otherwise it will embarrass the circulation. But the
brain will receive both the water and the sugar that the other cells are
not receiving. In dehydration, the hydroelectric energy that water will
generate in the brain is diminished so it needs more sugar to convert
into energy elements.
So there is a logic behind old age
diabetes. Insulin dependent diabetes is one of the autoimmune diseases
which again is produced by dehydration.
Isn’t that amazing. So if you’re
diabetic you can reverse it?
Old age diabetes can be reversed
completely and healed. It’s another drought management program for the
brain. People who are on insulin will benefit by water and their need
for insulin will diminish.
Lymphoma is another complication of
dehydration and so is cancer.
So tumors cannot exist if you are
well hydrated inside the body. If it’s that simple to reverse all
these negative processes that are going on in the body that are harmful
to us, then would this have an effect on our aging? Can we reverse the
aging process?
Aging is a complication of dehydration
because when you age, you gradually lose water from the surface of your
skin. The circulation to the surface will diminish and gradually as the
skin loses water, there isn’t anything coming back in its place. So
you get the creases and the furrows and so on. Also in dehydration, you
lose a lot of the elements in the body.
I’ve got a website – www.watercure.com
– where there is a lot of information. People can go to it and learn
why there is no such thing as bad cholesterol. Actually that bad
cholesterol is a life-saving element.
I’m curious if you have had any
negative feedback from the pharmaceutical companies and drug companies.
I was actually threatened by emails.
Someone sent me an email that said my claim that angina is produced by
dehydration is under scrutiny by the American College of Cardiology and
FDA. I am delighted that at last they have opened up to this thing. They
will be very pleasantly surprised.
You see, medicine has based its
understanding that it’s a solid matter in the body that regulates all
functions of the body. I have explained scientifically at the molecular
level that it is water that regulates all functions of the body
including functions of the solid matter. Without water, this solid
matter is absolutely useless. It is water that energizes and activates
the solid matter.
That makes sense because our bodies
are composed mostly of water.
Yes, 75 percent optimally. The brain is
85 percent water. Now, if the solid matter is not active without water,
therefore water is more important than solid matter. And if you don’t
take enough of it, then some function of the body will begin to suffer.
This is the paradigm change that I have introduced at the molecular
scientific level.
I was invited to make a presentation at
the 13th Science World Conference on Inflammation that histamine is a
neurotransmitter in charge of water regulation in the body. That is its
primary function and if it produces pain in the body, whatever pain it
produces is an indication of thirst. And that they should consider pain
as a sign of dehydration.
So at a scientific level, I understand
my field. This information is now made available to the public on my
many years of research that has been presented at the scientific level
so people can take it as bona fide. It is also built on my clinical
observations. First, I treated over 3,000 people with peptic ulcer
disease with only water and I came away with the understanding that
these people were thirsty. We have mislabeled human thirst signal as a
disease condition.
This is published as the main editorial
in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology in June of 1983. In 1987, I
presented Pain, A Need For Paradigm Change where I explained that pain
indicates dehydration and dehydration produces damage in the tissues of
the body and that can also cause cancer. I presented this as a guest
lecturer of an international cancer conference in Greece. I had shocked
the entire scientific community. They came back to me afterwards and
said, “Now we understand we are talking about a system disturbance. We
were looking at the particles.”
They were only looking at particles in
the body. I was saying that dehydration produces a multi-system
upheaval. I explained all of that to them.
How does this help with things that
are hormonal, like PMS and menopause?
All of them will adjust to a normal
setting. A lot of these symptoms that you have of dehydration shows the
body to be in an abnormal setting.
So even osteoporosis, which is
brittle bones, would be helped as well?
Osteoporosis is another complication of
dehydration. Now let me explain. Water is the main source of energy for
all physiological functions. As we grow older, we lose our perception of
thirst and we under-hydrate our body and we constantly are waiting for
our mouth to tell us that we are thirsty, which is wrong. When water is
not available and when the urge for intake of water builds in us, we
confuse it with hunger. Instead of drinking water, we go and eat. So, we
overeat. We eat when the body wants water. When we hydrate the body,
energy is formed in the brain and water is the best pick-me-up there is.
And the excess of it is thrown out. Excess water is thrown out. When we
have to eat to energize brain function, only 20 percent of that food
reaches the brain. The other 80 percent, unless we are athletes, will
build up in the body in the form of fat. Right?
Now, at a certain level, calcium in the
bones and calcium stored in the body is a source of energy. Each atom of
calcium sticks to another atom of calcium to make up a molecule of
calcium which builds up until it becomes bone... each atom also stores
one unit of energy. The body has learned in low energy levels to tap
into that energy. The body has learned to break up this calcium bondage
and take away the energy. Loose calcium is built and is thrown out of
the body. Gradually, as we tap into the energy stored in the bone
tissue, we discard the calcium itself and that’s how osteoporosis
begins. If you don’t want osteoporosis, drink water, take salt, take
some minerals. The body will retain calcium from the food you are
taking. But without water, no supplement will work. If you are taking
calcium, make sure that you drink water because when you drink water you
will create energy, high heat of activation at the cell membrane. And
calcium has got the property of bonding to another calcium when there is
heat. Calcium is a means of converting heat into usable energy.
This is so amazing. It makes me feel
like all of us are just walking around, just drying up. Get more water!
Absolutely, we are all drying up. You
see a lot of these people with spider veins and varicose veins. They are
salt-deficient.
How much salt do you put in water?
You need basically 1/4 teaspoon of sea
salt per quart of water. Sea salt contains the other sea minerals, 84
different minerals in trace quantities which are vital. A quarter
teaspoon is 1-1/2 grams. One teaspoon is six grams. The body needs
basically three to four grams of salt a day. That is when you are taking
10 glasses of water. If you are not taking the 10 glasses of water, a
build up of salt intake will gradually make you swell. You need to
constantly measure yourself. If you suddenly have gone up two or three
pounds in two days, you have retained too much salt. Just drink water,
don’t take salt for one day and then continue the next day.
Any pain you have in your body, assume
initially it is due to dehydration. Pain in the body is a sign of
dehydration in 99 cases out of 100.
Is the salt best added to the water,
not just on your food?
You can take it any way that you want.
This is a liberal method. You need to drink water before your food, to
have it available for the act of chewing, swallowing, breaking down
food, absorbing and metabolizing the particles. You need water if you
are exercising, before the exercise, because the exercise will expand
your vascular bed and you will sweat more and you become very quickly
dehydrated. So it is best to take water beforehand. You need water
before you sleep because for eight hours you are going to be drying up
gradually. In the hot bed, you perspire. Your vascular system expands.
You breathe out a lot of water. You manufacture urine even though you
don’t evacuate it until the morning. So you are dehydrated by first
thing in the morning. The first thing in the morning, drink two glasses
of water. It’s the best laxative there is. Within a half hour, two to
three glasses of water will produce a better result if you are fully
hydrated.
Now, to the quality of water. How
important is it that we get water that doesn’t have anything in it?
Seventy-five percent of bottled water
is tap water. It’s just been processed. Tap water is chlorinated,
which is a blessing because without chlorine you will get so many
waterborne diseases. Chlorine is a blessing of God to mankind. Chlorine
is at the same time a gas. If you leave water stand for 1/2 hour, it
will evaporate. So it will not stay in the water when it’s in an open
glass.
So, basically, the water in this
country is very good.
Your current book mentions asthma,
allergies and lupus.
Lupus is an autoimmune disease. I use
it as a model to explain why lupus is a dehydration-produced problem.
This is a new concept for autoimmune diseases that I’m presenting.
Because I believe in the paradigm shift and this can explain a whole lot
of disease conditions in the human body. I exercise that understanding
of autoimmune diseases explains how they arise as a result of
dehydration.
Basically, we have the new knowledge
that is going to be here, scientific knowledge, that is going to be here
from now to eternity and all we have to do is to build up on it. They
spent 100 years of money and time researching the solid matter. If they
spent a quarter as much time and one-tenth as much money on
investigating dehydration, we will become a much healthier nation. We
will reduce our healthcare costs by at least 50-60 percent.
And age will become 120 years
naturally.
Deepak Chopra says we’re only half
way through when we’re 60 or 70, so why not?
This is new information based on
science. It’s simple information, very simple. The origin, design, of
the human body is made on simple events. Integrating these simple events
has produced an integrated body but the foundation of it is simplicity
based on water. Water is what it needs. The elements, minerals are what
it needs. We have given it until now all the elements of food, this
diet, that diet, but we’ve never focused on water. Use water as a
primary nutrient. They say that oxygen is the most important element of
the human body. Water is more important. If water wasn’t around,
oxygen would dissolve in what? And how would it act? It’s only water
that allows it to dissolve and carries it to its destination.
So water is the most important thing
on this planet!
Yes. Water is the most important thing
on this planet. For life, it is more important than anything you can
imagine. The unfortunate thing is that sodas, colas and
caffeine-containing beverages don’t replace the water needs of the
body. Caffeine is a dehydrating substance.
Dry cells are just like sponges. It
takes time for the water to get into them. Caffeine does not allow the
water to stay in the body long enough. Within an hour you will urinate
more than the cup of beverage that you drank.
This is so amazing! You’ve given
us the key to everything... health and longevity.
I didn’t give it to you. God gave it
to me to give it to you.
Well, you’re the crusader for it
and we certainly do appreciate you being on your white horse out there!
I truly am a missionary. And I have no
commercial interest in selling water. And I don’t even tell you to go
buy designer water. So I have no ulterior motive other than truth.
What’s the most dramatic case that
you’ve seen turned around due to following just salt and water?
One late night at 11 pm, I followed a
howl, a shrieking, a groan, an agony in the corridor. I went to the
source. And I found a young man in fetal position on the floor, doubled
up and just groaning. I asked him, “What’s the problem?” He said,
“My ulcer is killing me.” And he was right. It was killing him. And
I said, “What have you done for it?” He said, “I’ve taken three
Tagamets and a whole bottle of antacid and it hasn’t done any good.”
I said, “When did it start?” He said, “At one o’clock in the
afternoon.”
For 10 hours he was in that position
and no one could help him. I examined his abdomen to see whether he had
perforated. Fortunately, he had not. And I gave him two glasses of water
and sat next to him and observed him for 10 minutes. He held it down. I
went back and came back in another seven minutes. He was not groaning
anymore. He was far more alert. I gave him another glass of water and
then another. He opened his eyes, sat up and was once again pain-free.
Three glasses of water removed his pain in 20 minutes whereas the best,
strongest medication that man had to offer couldn’t do anything.
So you see water does have
pain-relieving qualities. The medications weren’t effective because
they affect the local site. He was sensing his dehydration inside his
brain, at the brain level. Only water could produce the desired effect
to the brain.
There are two levels of pain. One is
peripheral understanding, which pain killers could remove. Then there is
the central nervous system level of pain which no medication cures. And
that’s why a lot of elderly people are suffering despite all the
medication they’re receiving. If these people begin to drink water and
regulate their salt intake they will be completely pain-free.
This is why I’ve seen the miracle of
water. I see light at the end of this tunnel. And yet I was trained at
the best of medical schools and at no time do they tell you that water
is a medication. Water is a healer.
So when I use the word “cure,”
I’m referring to curing dehydration. They call it this disease or
that. To me, they are states of dehydration. So, I cure dehydration with
water.
Well, you know, Dr. B. we are so
happy you wrote this book. Both of us have been in awe of you and the
mission you are doing. We will help you spread this word.
I wish you would, not for me, but for
the sake of 14 million children who can’t breathe who are constantly
in fear of suffocation.
We wish you much joy along the path
as you go out there and spread the word
Thank you.