Drinking plain water

[Lilja]

Hi,

I just read in an FB group for people who have been sick for a long time and therefore have switched diet to a «traditional diet», that we should avoid drinking plain water. Instead we should always put a little pinch of unrefined sea salt and/or some sugar in the form of berry juice into the water. The reason is that when the plain water leaves our bodies, it also takes /drains valuable minerals from the body on the way out. Minerals that we want to keep in our bodies.


To me, this seems logical, but I wonder what you guys think?


PS: For those who wonder what we mean by traditional diet: Fermented food, fermented unpasteurized milk, sea salt, meat (but not meat from pigs) as raw as possible, ghee and unpasteurized butter, cheese from unpasteurized milk, lots of bone broth, gelatine, raw egg yolks, bread from fermented corn, fish, fermented herring. Each meal should consist of 70-80% animal proteins and 30-20% of fermented vegetables or rice/potatoes cooked/heated in bone broth.

Lilja

[Erica P-G]

You know Lilja I've wondered that myself...as I can only tolerate water myself, but I do it and not always a lot of it.

I must have more Norwegian in me than I think because protein and starch are my most favorite food combos (I love potato and corn mixed together and I only like a protein with it nothing else). My parents thought I would never grow because I had such a limited diet growing up...lol. I also am doing so much better with Lots of bone broth too!

[Gabes-Apg]

maybe that is why Dr Dean recommends adding salt to the water for the ReMag

[Vanessa]

I definitely noticed a difference in energy levels and reduced fatigue when I started sea salting my water. It helps the adrenals. I don't think I would go with fruit or sugar in my water.

[tex]

I just read in an FB group for people who have been sick for a long time and therefore have switched diet to a «traditional diet», that we should avoid drinking plain water. Instead we should always put a little pinch of unrefined sea salt and/or some sugar in the form of berry juice into the water. The reason is that when the plain water leaves our bodies, it also takes /drains valuable minerals from the body on the way out. Minerals that we want to keep in our bodies.

Yes, it sounds logical, so that's why theories such as this are so popular. But in reality it's a very simplistic approach to a very complex process. Look at what the theory says — pure water goes in one end, so pure water should go out the other end. That seems logical, but it totally ignores everything in between. The body is not a water filtration system. From an engineering viewpoint the body is a heat engine that takes in energy and converts it into useful work. It's an incredibly complex heat engine, far more sophisticated than anything human engineers are currently capable of creating, but nevertheless, it's basically a heat engine that converts calories into physical work. Unlike other heat engines, it has the remarkable capacity to actually increase it's ability to produce work, and the even more incredible ability to repair itself.

But like all engines, it's not 100 % efficient, so it wastes a certain percentage of energy and it produces exhaust (waste) byproducts. One of the byproducts happens to be urine. But urine is actually comprised of many chemical byproducts that result from the normal operation of various body systems. True, urine also contains certain minerals that are vital for normal functioning. Typically, these minerals are there because they were temporarily present in excess amounts in the bloodstream following a meal or taking supplements. Excess levels of electrolytes in the blood can lead to life-threatening imbalances, so those electrolyte levels are carefully regulated within a relatively narrow range (considered to be the "normal" range). What happens to the excess amounts that are removed from the blood? They end up in urine or feces. So basically, urine is merely a solvent (water) used to exhaust byproducts of various chemical processes, excess electrolytes and vitamins, and toxins that need to be removed from the body.

Therefore, from an engineering (and medical) viewpoint, claiming that the water we drink needs to contain the elements found in urine is actually not logical at all. We certainly wouldn't want to add the chemical byproducts and toxins found in urine into our drinking water. So why would we want to add the the various vitamins and minerals that have been rejected either because they were present in excess amounts in the blood, or because they were used as chemical regents for removing toxins? The fact of the matter is that our paleo ancestors drank pure water (which may or may not have contained various minerals, depending on its location), and plain, pure water still works just fine for us.

Yes, we definitely need to ingest at least minimum amounts of certain vitamins and minerals. But that's easily done through diet or supplementation. Thinking that it has to be done through water is an overly simplistic view of a very complex process. Those sick people on FB should either eat a better diet, or take supplements, or both. Worrying about the lack of minerals in the water they drink amounts to grasping at straws. Sure, it's not going to hurt anything to add minerals to water, and if one enjoys the taste of mineralized water, or simply enjoys the ritual of adding stuff to their water, it's a cheap form of entertainment/gratification. But it's certainly not essential because when that water gets down to the small intestine, all those additives are going to be striped from the water anyway, and the body will convert it into pure water (whether we like it or not). So how we ingest those vitamins and minerals is pretty much irrelevant, as long as they are in adequate amounts, and in a useable form.

There's a lot of BS in circulation on the Internet concerning water and how the body utilizes water. I've seen many articles (by both physicians and non-medical professionals) on the Internet claiming that the body only recognizes pure water as "water". Those "experts" claim that any other water-based liquids, such as soft drinks, tea, coffee, etc., are not recognized by the body as water. Really? That's pure hogwash. That's another example of a simplistic approach that fails to recognize that during the digestive process all foods (and liquids) are separated into their respective individual nutrients.

Many years ago (back in the stone age before Al Gore created the Internet ), I used to take long hunting trips where the local water was not drinkable. I never took any water with me. Instead I took enough cases of Coca-Cola to last for the duration of the trip. This was so far back in history that bottled water was still unknown (at least it was unknown back in the boondocks where I lived), so using canned soft drinks was a matter of convenience. Trust me, if my body didn't recognize the water in those Cokes as "water", I would have been mighty thirsty after a couple of weeks. But that never happened. I'm not advocating switching from water to soft drinks, I'm just pointing out that the body will recognize and accept water in any form it can get it. And those who claim otherwise are guilty of propagating ignorance.

At least that's how I see it.

Tex

[Vanessa]

Tex,

What your saying sounds logical too! I figure my body must require more salt because I don't eat any processesed foods and or I'm missing some mineral found in pink salt.....I crave it, I'm a weird cat I suppose its one of those experiments you do on yourself to see if it helps. My blood work always showed low sodium levels, but I don't if that has anything to do with what we're talking about here...and having D is bound to decrease sodium

[tex]

One advantage to adding it to your water is that the more water you lose, the more water you will drink, so it's easy to micromanage doses.

Tex