WHERE DID MODERN MEDICINE GO WRONG? The greatest tragedy in medical history in my opinion is the assumption that dry mouth is the only sign of the body's water needs. Based on this mistaken assumption, modern medicine has made three other confounding mistakes that have cost society dearly. Let us look at these four mistaken assumptions. 1. The whole structure of modern medicine is built on the pitifully flawed premise that dry mouth is the only sign of dehydration . This false premise is responsible for the lack of understanding about various painful health problems that result in premature death to many millions of people. They suffer because they do not know they are seriously thirsty. Modern "science-based" medicine is structured upon the simple dry mouth mistake that became established many years ago. In 1764, Albrecht von Haller, a German, first claimed dry mouth as a sign of thirst. In 1918, Walter Bradford Cannon, an English doctor, supported Haller's views; since he was an influential person, his views became fashionable and are reflected in accepted scientific literature to this day. Frenchman Moritz Schiff, however, had claimed in 1867 that thirst is a general sensation: "It is no more a local sensation than hunger." We now know that Haller and Cannon were wrong-but since theirs were the views that took root in the infrastructure of medicine, the same mistake has been passed on from one generation of medical students to another until the present day. This traditional flaw in the scientific understanding of the human body's water regulation altered the path of medicine. Schiff understood the human body better. Actually, dry mouth is not a sign to rely on. The human body uses a different logic: To be able to chew and swallow food, and to facilitate and lubricate this function, ample saliva is produced, even if the rest of the body is short of water. In any case, water is too important to the body to signal its shortage only through the experience of a dry mouth. The human body has many other sophisticated signals to indicate when it is short of water. The body can suffer from deep dehydration without showing a dry mouth. Dehydration produces severe symptoms, even to the point of causing life-threatening crises. Modern medicine has confused these symptoms of internal, localized droughts and has identified them as different diseases. As a result, toxic medications are prescribed to treat "diseases" rather than the dehydration. Dry mouth is one of the very last indicators of dehydration of the body. By the time dry mouth becomes an indicator of water shortage, many delicate functions of the body have been shut down and prepared for deletion. This is exactly how the aging process is established-through a loss of enzyme functions. A dehydrated body loses sophistication and versatility. One example is juvenile diabetes, in which the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas are sacrificed as a result of persistent dehydration. 2. The second major mistake in the basic science of medicine is the thinking that water is a simple substance that only dissolves and circulates different things . Water is not a simple inert substance. It has two primary properties in the body. The first one is its life-sustaining properties. The other, more important, role of water is its life-giving functions. Modern medicine recognizes only the life-sustaining properties of water. That is why chronic unintentional dehydration is ultimately an unrecognized life-threatening process. You need to recognize and understand the process to save your health and your life-naturally. 3. The third serious error in medicine is the premise that the human body can regulate efficiently its water intake throughout the life span of the person . As we grow older, we lose our perception of thirst and fail to drink adequately, until the plumlike cells in vital organs become prunelike and can no longer sustain life. We need to recognize the onset of dehydration and its manifestations to prevent the irreversible stages of the process. 4. The fourth nail in the coffin of present-day medicine is the thought that any fluid can replace the water needs of the body . This is a major problem at present. Some of the manufactured beverages in common use do not function in the body like natural water. If you begin to understand the natural reason some plants manufacture caffeine, or even cocaine, you will then recognize the problem. The information in this book is about one of the greatest of all health discoveries in the world, because it exposes an important tragedy in medical history-the erroneous assumption that the dry mouth state is the only sign of the body's water needs. Simply put, the new scientific understanding is that chronic unintentional dehydration in the human body can manifest itself in as many ways as we in medicine have invented diseases . We have created an opportunity for the drug industry to thrive, and have given birth to the current "sick-care" health system, at the expense of people's precious lives and resources. The sick-care system survives and thrives when people are continuously sick. This is exactly what is going on now. Tragically, the medical breakthrough about dehydration as the origin of most health problems is not reaching the public through the commerce-directed health-maintenance systems in this country. If it did, it would mean the rapid extinction of these systems. Yet there is no sane reason why tens of millions in our society should be medicated when all they suffer from is dehydration. The statements in this introductory chapter are not meant to reflect badly on the dedicated staff employed within the sick-care system, who daily render compassionate service to the unfortunate sick. They are not to be blamed for the fundamental mistakes in standard treatment protocols in medicine. The blame is directed at the medical professionals in powerful positions and the national health institutes that have the power to correct the problem, but have shown reluctance to do so. Mainstream medicine and its fund-raising sidekicks will not of their own accord abandon pharmaceutical medicine. Why? They do not want to allow natural solutions to the health problems of society to get clearance and reach the public. This book is designed to upset this self-serving trend, which benefits only the commercial health-care systems in our advanced society, to the detriment of the people. It is now crystal clear that the human body has many different ways of showing its general or local water needs. These manifestations of drought in the body have been assumed to be indicators of this or that disease condition. Based on this ignorance, and protected and coddled by the pharmaceutical industry, mainstream medicine has labeled the different complications of dehydration as various "diseases." On the basis of this erroneous assumption, the trusting American public has to pay ever-increasing health-care costs with their health and hard-earned money. We must understand that persistent dehydration brings about a continuously changing new chemical state in the body. When a new dehydration-produced chemical state becomes fully established, it causes many structural changes, even to the genetic blueprints of the body. This is why prevention of dehydration is crucial. This is also why childhood asthma is a major health issue with me, as is noninfectious earache in infants. Dehydration, to the point of causing asthma in children, can ultimately cause genetic damage, autoimmune diseases, and even cancer in their later years. Understanding chronic dehydration will clear the way for the development of an infinitely more people-friendly health-care system. It will be possible in my estimation to have a decidedly healthier and productive nation at 30 percent of the present healthcare costs. As you see, I am not promoting a moneymaking product. I am only sharing a unique medical insight and the outcome of my many years of research that will help medical professionals and the public understand the basic cause of so many conditions of ill health. We are in the twenty-first century, yet even at this stage of our development, the outward manifestations of regional dehydration have not been understood by us in medicine. We have always looked for a drug solution to throw at a health concern. We have not succeeded at limiting these health concerns; rather, we have constantly expanded the list and thrown more drugs at them. We have truly caused a costly chaos in the name of modern medicine, with no end in sight. We now have significant problems that beg urgent solutions. As Albert Einstein observed: "The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them." We obviously need a new approach to medical science to solve our health problems. The solution to the present human-made and drug-industry-protected health problems of society can only be physiology-based. Understanding the molecular physiology of dehydration will restructure the future practice of clinical medicine. It will cause a fundamental paradigm change in the science of medicine. By showing the way to enhance the natural healing powers of the body within the discipline of physiology, the pharmaceutical approach to our present health problems will be completely replaced. The primary focus in medicine will become disease prevention rather than its protracted, cost-intensive, and invasive treatment protocols. THE NEW LEVEL OF THINKING IN MEDICINE What is a paradigm, and how can it be changed in clinical medicine? A paradigm is the basic infrastructural information, assumption, or understanding on which knowledge within a discipline of thought develops. As an example, based on the fundamental understanding that planet Earth is a sphere, all geographic maps and models reflect the roundness of Earth. This understanding is the basic paradigm to the design of all geographic maps. The dramatic changes produced by the realization that Earth is not flat, as originally perceived, revolutionized the knowledge we now possess about the structure of the universe. When a paradigm leads a discipline of thought toward a dead end (as in the case of a flat Earth), for those who can stand back and impartially reassess the infrastructure of knowledge, often a new paradigm emerges. All it takes is a thought-triggering association or observation. When a valid paradigm that is basic to a major discipline of thought emerges, it illuminates the path to a vast new domain of knowledge, like a flash of lightning that reveals all in the darkness of night. A new paradigm removes restrictions and barriers and makes future progress within a discipline of thought possible. A new paradigm is more easily born when there is a specific need and a purpose to find a solution. A solution does not establish significance unless a definite need to the emerging solution is also recognized. The following story may help explain this thought. Sir Alexander Fleming was the Nobel laureate recognized to have discovered penicillin. He was a Scottish scientist who worked at the Wright-Fleming Institute of St. Mary's Hospital Medical School of London University when I was a medical student there in the 1950s. Many medical students have an emotional urge to become discoverers. I was no exception. Since childhood, I had been driven to study medicine and become someone who could positively affect the lives of people who fell sick. In the introductory bacteriology course, students were divided into small groups and assigned to different tutors. Luck placed me in the tutorial group assigned to Sir Alexander. He was a refined and humble man. At the end of the tutorial, I gathered enough courage to ask him a question, the answer to which has deeply influenced me ever since. I asked him, "Sir Alexander, is there a special way to become a discoverer in medicine?" He looked at me and pondered my naive question. After a pause, in a very refined Scottish brogue he replied, "Need and purpose." He explained that with the increasing introduction of different surgical treatment procedures into medical practice, there was an ever-increasing rate of fatal bacterial complications. To find an agent that would stop bacterial infections in the human body became a most urgent need that established a purpose and resolve for those in bacterial research. "Need" was the mother of penicillin's discovery, and "purpose" the impetus of its development for human application. THE BIRTH OF A NEW SCIENTIFIC TRUTH IN MEDICINE History tells us that every so often, through basic discoveries of the applied techniques of nature, important leaps of progress have become possible. Humankind, because of these fortuitous happen-stances and flashes of insight, has unraveled many of the secrets employed in its creation. One such happenstance seems to have revealed itself in 1979. I had become a political prisoner of Islamic revolutionaries and was being held in the Iranian prison of Evin. While facing the possibility of execution, I discovered one late night that two glasses of water could relieve even the severest abdominal pain associated with peptic ulcer disease. A prisoner needed medication for his excruciating ulcer pain which had him doubled up and unable to walk by himself. Two friends were supporting him. The guards had not responded to his repeated pleas to be taken to the prison hospital. It was after eleven at night when he was brought to me. I was a prisoner myself and had no medication to give the man, who was truly in agony. I explained to him that I had no medicine to give him. His face showed even more pain than before. Instead of medication, I gave him two glasses of water. Within minutes, his ulcer pain became less severe. In eight minutes, it disappeared completely. This confirmed for me the abdominal-pain-relieving effect of water in a "disease" condition (I had relieved my own abdominal pain with water during a period of solitary confinement when I refused food for several days). I encouraged one after another of the inmates who had this same classic pain to take water in place of medications that were sometimes available. During the ensuing two and a half years of my imprisonment, I successfully treated well over three thousand stress-induced peptic ulcer disease cases with tap water only. It became obvious to me that these people were really and only thirsty. They were presenting their dehydration in the form of a painful crisis situation that we in the medical profession had labeled a "disease" condition. Continues... Excerpted from Water by F. Batmanghelidj Copyright © 2003 by Fereydoon Batmanghelidj, M.D. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
