Sweet sweat

I've been feeling a little tired lately. A friend recommended a naturopath/herbalist to me and I decided to give her a try.

I may have told you that I have a morbid fear of the medical profession, so don't keep any kind of an eye on my health, for me that's the best way to stay healthy - just ignore any imagined ailment to see whether it goes away of its own accord and so far I've been lucky.

What I got for my money was an hour and a half of her time which included a detailed history-taking - including such things as my exposure to chemicals, use of antibiotics, allergies, what I normally ate for each meal and lots of medical, semi-medical and lifestyle questions. This was followed by an iridology assessment, a 10 minute deep breathing and meditation exercise and a neck massage. I was told what vitamins and minerals I was most probably lacking, how to modify my diet in a fairly minimal way to give me more energy, given a herbal tonic and most importantly, some information on hydration.

Now I always knew most people don't drink enough water. You hear about it all the time and most of us pretty much ignore it, but this time I was given an information sheet that astounded me. Even if half of it is medically proven, it's enough to prove to me that I should make a real effort to drink lots more water.

John Toomey is apparently one of Australia's leading health educationalists and you can read his article on hydration and health here. It may be the best 10 minutes you ever spent

Here are some highlights: You lose 1.5 litres of water a day via normal circulation -without exercising. Excess water is stored in the bowel, if there's none there, water volume in the blood drops. Your body lacks oxygen, you yawn and crave sweet foods, the pituitary gland releases a hormone called anti diuretic hormone - this causes the body to store fluid.

The pamphlet quite convincingly links the following diseases to dehydration: heartburn, arthritis, back pain, angina, migraines, colitis, asthma, high blood pressure, adult-onset diabetes, high blood cholesterol, depression, loss of libido, chronic fatigue syndrome, lupus, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy.

Apparently a 2% drop in body water can trigger fuzzy short-term memory and difficulty focussing on the printed page or computer screen. Drinking 5 glasses of water daily decreases the risk of colon cancer by 45% and breast cancer by 79% and halves the risk of bladder cancer.

Sending you this information in such an abbreviated form does not pack the punch of the actual article -I just wanted to sound the warning for you - I'm sure you can all do your own research but for instance, here's what it had to say about

Colitis: colitis pain is a signal of water shortgage in the large gut. It is associated with constipation because the large intestine constricts to squeeze too much water from the excrements- thus the lack of water lubrication. Not recognizing colitis pain as a sign of dehydrtion will cause persistent constipation, which can result in fecal impacting, verticulitis, hemorrhoids, polyps and increase the possibility of developing cancers of the colon and rectum.

Weight loss: some female patients lost 5 kilos in the first week by increasing their water intake.

The recommendation is to drink a litre of water per 25 kilograms of bodyweight per day -more if exercising- and to be patient: it will take up to six weeks for a chronically dehydrated body to re-hydrate and during this time you have to put up with frequent urination which will settle down once optimum hydration has been achieved. One suggestion is to try drinking 50% of the daily water requirement for the first week, then raise it by 10% per week over five weeks.

I'm convinced it's worth a try. Today I've drunk 2.7 litres (my recommended dose) and it hasn't been that difficult - more a matter of always having a glass of water near at hand.

Oh, I found a new idea for exercise too. An article in the paper said that recent research has found that 30 seconds of hard exercise (pedalling an exercise bike flat out), repeated 4 times with a 4 minute rest between each time, 3 days a week gives equal health benefits to 6 hours of moderate exercise a week. Well, I'm not sure about this one but I'm going to add it to my gentle exercise schedule and see how I feel after a few weeks.

Must be my week for new beginnings!