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THE BOOK

The Power of your Metabolism

DEHYDRATION

One of the factors that lower the metabolism the most is dehydration. In other words, lack of water.

Working with thousands of people to help them recover their metabolism, I have seen that a reduced consumption of water has a devastating effect on the metabolism.

The human body is composed mainly of water.  It is calculated that your body should be at least 65% water.  I have had the opportunity to weigh thousands of people using modern, electronic scales.  This type of electronic scale uses a technology that measures the exact amount of water and fat that your body has.  This information is much more valuable than just finding out your body weight.

When overweight people are weighed using one of these electronic scales it can be seen that, the more obese a person is, the less the amount of water can be detected in their body. In other words, being overweight really means having a lot of fat and very little water in the body. Thin people’s bodies are made up of up to 65% water and those who are obese have a body water content as low as 40%.  As  a person loses weight the electronic scale detects both an increase in water and a reduction in fat.

The reality is that if a person wants to lose weight, their first step must be to increase their intake of water.  Water significantly increases the metabolism.  It is logical that it would be that way because when we study the physics of the water molecule, H2O (two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom), we can see that the oxygen atom has a molecular mass 8 times larger than that of the two smaller hydrogen atoms. The water molecule, H2O, is of similar shape to the cartoon character “Mickey Mouse”® in which the two hydrogen atoms are Mickey’s ears.

Water, H2O, is composed of 89% oxygen and only 11% hydrogen when we figure in its molecular mass .  When we drink water we are mainly adding oxygen to our bodies.  Oxygen is the element that allows the combustion of fat and is what drives the metabolism.  Drinking a lot of water is a very effective way to increase your metabolism and to lose weight.

Now, it must be clarified that drinking water and drinking juices or soft drinks is not the same thing.  The way that the body functions, if water is just plain water without any flavor, the body sends it to the blood stream and that increases the hydration level and the oxygen availability at the cellular level. If the liquid that we consume has some sort of flavor (soft drinks, juices, coffee), the body assumes that it is food and it sends it through the digestive tract, which doesn’t remedy a state of dehydration as effectively nor does it necessarily increase the metabolism.  Our body knows how to distinguish between what is simply pure water and other liquids (soft drinks, juices, coffee, etc.), which it treats like food.

Drinking soft drinks (Coca-Cola®, 7UP®, etc.) is one of the best ways to dehydrate the body and decrease the metabolism.  Those drinks contain an acid called phosphoric acid which is what causes the tingling on your tongue when you drink them.  The purpose of this acid was to keep the sugar from settling in the bottom of the container and to provide the effervescent and tingling characteristic of soft drinks.  Acids, by definition, are substances that reduce oxygen.  When we drink a carbonated beverage, even if it is diet cola, the phosphoric acid that it contains reduces a good part of the oxygen that is available in the body and that, at the same time, causes a decrease in the metabolism. I have known obese people whose main action in losing weight was eliminating diet soft drinks from their diet and substituting them with a habit of drinking more water.

When we drink carbonated beverages, diet or not, the body becomes dehydrated.  The reason for this is that the human body has to maintain a low level of internal acidity in the blood to be able to survive.  Our blood is more alkaline (opposite of acid) than acid because if it weren’t, it would repel the oxygen that our cells need.  Acids repel oxygen. That is why our blood is more alkaline than acid, so that oxygen can be transported in it.  When we drink carbonated beverages with phosphoric acid, our body makes a supreme effort to reduce the level of acids through our urine and this makes the body use part of its water to push out the acids from the soft drinks outside of the body.  The more acidic colas or soft drinks we have, the more our body will have to urinate in order to reduce the level of accumulated acids. This worsens the cellular dehydration, as well as reduces the available oxygen to the cells as an effect of the water shortage that is created.

In chemistry you use a pH scale (pH stands for “hydrogen potential”) to measure the acidity or alkalinity of substances.  On this scale 7.0 is neutral, not acid nor alkaline.  Water, for instance, if it is not distilled, is 7.0 in pH on this scale.  In other words, it is neutral.

Examples on this scale would be the following:

Each time we consume one of those soft drinks we drastically reduce the oxygen in our bodies and force it into a state of internal acidity. Our metabolism suffers the consequences because, in lacking enough oxygen, it finds itself forced to slow down part of its functions.

The human body could be compared to a combustion motor that uses a carbon rich fuel (glucose, a carbohydrate made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen) and oxygen to generate energy.  Like all motors, when the oxygen supply is cut off it reduces its combustion capacity. The combustion capacity of the body is in essence what we call the “metabolism”.

People that already have a slow metabolism are always dehydrated.  Besides the special electronic scale, like the one that Natural Slim™ uses on its members to measure the water in the body, there are various classic indicators of dehydration:  dry skin, heartburn, the person practically doesn’t sweat, their urine is of a very strong yellow color and with a strong odor of ammonia and they are rarely or never thirsty.

It’s an odd but certain fact that the more dehydrated a person is, the more their body will reject water.  People that are very dehydrated can’t stand drinking water and when they try to drink it they feel like vomiting.  In his book Your Body’s Many Cries for Water, Doctor F. Batmanghelid makes this phenomenon of adaptation of the human body rather clear.  When a person is dehydrated the body enters a state of “rationing”, which is why their body barely sweats at all.  Another thing that a dehydrated body does is that it turns off the sensation of being thirsty as a way to adapt itself to the lack of water.  In other words, when you are very dehydrated you simply will not feel thirsty.  It has been found that the body takes 3 to 4 days of continuous high water consumption before reviving the sensation of thirst again.  Once this sensation of thirst is turned on again by the body, the person simply can’t stop drinking water, because the thirst sensation that the body produces when it is dehydrated is quite strong.

People that want to increase their metabolism should know that drinking water works.  They should also understand that alcohol (wine, beer, liquor) and coffee dehydrate the body.  If you go to a bar some time, watch how often the people drinking alcohol have to go to the bathroom. Alcohol dehydrates and acidifies the body, which decreases the metabolism.  If you want to lose weight and restore your metabolism, you will have to hydrate your body with a good amount of water while keeping your intake of alcohol and coffee to a minimum.

HOW MUCH WATER DO I NEED TO DRINK?

The amount of water that you should drink each day is relative to the size of your body.  The general recommendation that we are used to hearing is that we should drink at least 8-8 ounce glasses of water every day.  This is a good recommendation for all of those people who aren’t used to drinking enough water, but it isn’t exact.

The formula that we have used in Natural Slim™ to calculate the recommended daily consumption of water is more exact due to the fact that it takes into consideration the size of the person’s body.  Logic tells us that a smaller body will need less water than a larger body.  A larger body has more capillaries and surface area to hydrate and needs a larger quantity of water.  We could say that it is like the difference between the water that you need to clean a small apartment versus the amount needed to clean a house with several rooms.

We calculate the daily water consumption recommended for each person by dividing the weight of the person by the number 16.  The result is calculated in 8 ounce glasses of water.  For example: if a person weighs 160 pounds and we divide this weight by the number 16 then their daily consumption of water should be 10-8 ounce glasses (160lbs. ÷ 16 = 10 glasses).  If a person weighs 240 pounds their recommended water consumption would be 15 glasses a day (240lbs. ÷ 16 = 15 glasses).  As you lose weight, you should also reduce your daily intake of water.

For people who find it hard to imagine drinking “8 ounce glasses of water”, you should know that you can measure it by bottles of water.  Most of the water bottles available everywhere are sold in 16 ounce bottles.  This means that each 16 ounce bottle of water is equal to 2-8 ounce glasses of water.  So, if a person needs to drink 12-8 ounce glasses of water each day, it would be the same if they were to drink 6 bottles of water every day.

There are different theories as to whether or not you should drink cold water or room temperature water.  I don’t think it makes any difference.  What is important is that each day you drink enough water in order to successfully increase your metabolism.

Drinking enough water is vital in recovering your metabolism.  In fact, increasing your consumption of water improves the elimination of toxins from your body and in many cases resolves constipation problems.  Water also improves erections for men and the vaginal lubrication of women.  So, water can even help improve a couple’s sex life and can eliminate the unnecessary use of medications for erectile dysfunction, like Viagra®.  What happens with people who suffer from asthma is that the majority of them are dehydrated and their asthma attacks disappear when they decide to hydrate their bodies.  It should also be known that a great majority of people that suffer from heartburn and acid reflux have this problem because they are dehydrated.  When these people decide to drink sufficient amounts of water and stop drinking soft drinks, generally the heartburn and acid reflux disappear.  Drinking enough water really can do wonders. Within the subject of metabolism, water is our greatest ally.