The Water Cure

Physicians rarely promote the curative properties of H2O, but Dr. Batmanghelidj, M.D. has studied water's effect on the human body and has found it to be one of the best pain relievers and preventative therapies in existence. I was one of the last people to interview the late Dr. Batmanghelidj, and I listened in awe as he shared his research and stories about "The Healing Power of Water."

In a fascinating one-hour phone conversation, Dr. B. shares:

• Which common ailments and "diseases" are actually caused by dehydration

• Why many doctors use water-regulating antihistamines to alleviate pain

• How Dr. Batmanghelidj unintentionally discovered water's healing properties

• Why most people are chronically dehydrated and suffer from symptoms of dehydration that are labeled "diseases"

• Which ingredients in soft drinks deplete the body's water reserves

• Why thirst is not a reliable indicator of dehydration

• Why the body produces cholesterol and how water keeps it in balance

• Why Dr. Batmanghelidj believes the public is being mislead about AIDS

• How dehydration impairs mental functioning

• Why some organizations want to withhold alternative health information from the public

• How lack of water causes depression

• Why popular beverages are no substitute for water

• How dehydration causes the vascular system to constrict, leading to hypertension

• How to recognize signs that your body is starting to dehydrate

• Why restaurants push you to drink disease-promoting soft drinks

• Why and how water effectively treats pain and inflammation

Discovery of the water cure

An interview with Dr. Batmanghelidj

Mike: Welcome everyone, this is Mike Adams with Truth Publishing, and today I’m very excited to be welcoming Dr. Batmanghelidj, author of Water For Health, For Healing, For Life. Welcome, Dr. Batmanghelidj.

Dr. B: Thank you very much for inviting me to be on the air with you and giving me the opportunity of sharing my thoughts on the future of medicine in this country.

Mike: I think there are many, many people who have read your books. People are intrigued by the idea that water can be a therapy, a healing substance for the human body. What is it about water? How did you first become aware of these healing properties of water?

Dr. B: Well, it’s very bizarre. As you know, I’m a regular doctor, an M.D. I had the honor and the privilege of being selected as one of the house doctors, and I had the extreme honor of being one of the last students of Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin. I mention his name so that you know I was immersed in medical school and research. And some years later, I had to give two glasses of water to a person who was doubled up in abdominal pain from his disease, because I had no other medication to give him at that moment. And he was in excruciating pain, and water performed miraculous relief for him. It gave him relief -- within three minutes his pain diminished, and within eight minutes it disappeared completely, whereas he was doubled up eight minutes before and he couldn’t even walk, he completely recovered from that situation. And he started beaming from ear to ear, very happy, asked me what happens if the pain comes back? I said, “Well, drink more water.” Then I decided to instruct him to drink two glasses of water every three hours. Which he did, and that was the end of his ulcer pains for the rest of the duration that he was with me.

Mike: And from that episode then, what happened next?

Dr. B: That woke me up, because in medical school I’d never heard that water could cure pain, that kind of pain, in fact. And so I had the occasion to test water as a medication in subsequently over 3,000 similar cases. And water proved every time to be an effective medication. I came away from that experience with the understanding that these people were all thirsty, and that thirst in the body can manifest itself in the form of abdominal pain to the level that the person can even become semi-conscious, because that’s the experience I had. And water picks them up every time.

So when I came to America in 1982, I went to the University of Pennsylvania, where I was invited to continue my research, and did research in the pain-relieving properties of water. I asked myself, why does the pharmaceutical industry insist on using antihistamines for this kind of pain medication? So I started researching the role of histamine in the body, and the answer was there -- histamine is a neurotransmitter in charge of water regulation and the drought management programs of the body. When it manifests pain, in fact, it is indicating dehydration.

So, the body does manifest dehydration in the form of pain. Now, depending on where dehydration is settled, you feel pain there. Very simple, and I presented this concept at the international conference as the guest lecturer of a conference on cancer, explaining that the human body manifests dehydration by producing pain, and pain is a sign of water shortage in the body, and water shortage is actually the background to most of the health problems in our society.

Because if you look at what the pharmaceutical industry is doing, they’re producing so many different antihistamines as medication. Antidepressant drugs are antihistamines, pain medication are antihistamines, other medications are directly and indirectly antihistamines. So, that is when my work was published, the scientific secretariat of the 3rd Interscience Board Conference of Inflammation invited me to make this presentation on histamine at their conference in 1989, in Monte Carlo. And I did that, and so it became a regular understanding that histamine is a water regulator in the body. But unfortunately, this information is not reaching the public through the medical community because it’s not a money-maker.

So that’s when I began to consider writing for the public, so that the public could become aware of the problem directly without the interference of a doctor, and that’s how I have generated all my medical information for the public. Of course, I have published extensively for the scientific community, but no one is picking up. In fact, the NIH, the Office of Alternative Medicine, had its first conference when the office was created, and I was asked to make my presentation, but when the proceedings of the conference came out, my presentation was censored after the proceedings. So there is a movement afoot within the NIH group of people to keep a closed lid on my information so that it doesn’t get out, because obviously they are more in favor of the drug industry, because it is now obvious that they are getting paid by them.

Mike: I think it is, first of all, that is an amazing account of what has been happening, and I think it is fair to say, too, that the pharmaceutical industry and organized medicine in general, really doesn’t want to promote anything that is free or near-free to the average patient. Sunlight is available at no charge, water is available at nearly no charge -- would you agree that their thinking is if people can cure their diseases, and achieve a high state of health on their own with these free substances, then that diminishes their profits and their importance?

Dr. B: Absolutely. That’s why I’ve created an organization now called National Association for Honesty in Medicine. Because I think it’s totally dishonest, in fact, criminal, to treat a person who is just thirsty, and give them toxic medication so that he gets sick and dies earlier than normal.

Mike: Can you give out the web address to that organization, by the way?

Dr. B: My website is http://www.watercure.com -- it gives you the option of going to one site or the other -- either Water Cure.com, or you can go the National Association for Honesty in Medicine. Or you can go to the information side of my website, http://www.watercure.com, because I have posted all of my scientific articles on dehydration on the website, and lots of other free information that people can have.

No substitute for water

Mike: I have a question for you on water -- a lot of people think that they are hydrating themselves when they consume soft drinks or milk or Gatorade or all these other liquid beverages…

Dr. B: Gatorade is possibly okay, but Gatorade has sugar in it, and it's not particularly good for people who might even get hypoglycemic, or might induce insulin secretion, and that insulin secretion will produce more hunger and they overeat. But as a temporary sport drink, it's okay when you're in the middle of a golf game to drink a Gatorade. It immediately gives you a bit of the minerals that you probably will have lost sweating.

But nothing substitutes for water -- not a thing. No drink -- no coffee, no tea, no alcoholic beverages. Not even fruit juices. Each one of them has its own agenda. Your body is used to a fluid that has no agenda, because the body depends on the freedom of that fluid, water, because there are two kinds of water in the body. There is already occupied and engaged water, which is no good for new function. The body needs new water, or free water, to perform new functions. Now, when you give them sugar containing beverages, or caffeine containing beverages, both sugar and caffeine have their own chemical agenda in the body. They defeat the purpose of the need for water.

Mike: You're also talking about soft drinks here…

Dr. B: I'm talking about soft drinks, I'm talking about sodas, I'm talking about caffeine containing coffee or tea. I'm also talking about alcohol, because alcohol actually stops the emergency water supply systems to the important cells, such as the brain cells. In the reverse osmosis process your body filters and injects water into the cells, and this is what I call reverse osmosis. And it has to raise the blood pressure for that in order to overcome the osmotic pull of water out of the cells, and reinject water into the cells. That's why we develop high-blood pressure in dehydration. And this process of reverse osmosis is stopped by alcohol. It stops the filter system.

Chronic Disease Caused by Lack of Water

Mike: Let me start this next section by asking you about the correlation between water consumption and chronic disease. There are many diseases you mention in your books that are related to dehydration. I wonder if you can give our readers a brief of what the major diseases are and why they are aggravated or promoted by chronic dehydration.

Dr. B: Certainly, Mike. I have written a book called Water Cures and Drugs Kill. It's a book that explains why dehydration is the cause of pain and disease, and how the pharmaceutical industry has camouflaged this information or covered it up and instead of letting people drink water, it advertises the use of their products, which actually do kill. Because recent figures have shown that prescription medications, when used according to the instruction of doctors, nonetheless kill over 106,000 people, and make 2 million people sicker than before taking the medication. And then there is another group who die from faulty prescriptions, incorrect prescriptions.

So between them, about 250,000 people die from drug-related problems, medication-related problems. This makes the drugs the use of drugs the number three killer processes in the country -- protected and licensed killer process. After heart disease, which kills about seven or eight hundred thousand, cancer which kills about 500,000, drugs kill 250,000 people.

Mike: So it's fair to say that pharmaceuticals, as packaged by modern medicine, are the third leading cause of death in this country.

Dr. B: Absolutely, and they are useless, because most of the medication they are using is to cover up symptoms and signs and complications of dehydration in the human body. The human body manifests dehydration by a series of symptoms and signs, perceptive symptoms of dehydration -- in other words, brain senses dehydration, or tiredness when you haven't done a good day's work, or first thing in the morning when you want to get up out of bed and you're tired, you can't get up -- that is a sign of dehydration. Then anger, quick reaction, depression, these are all signs of dehydration, when the brain has very little energy from hydroelectricity to cope with the information or take action. These are some of the perceptive signs of dehydration. Then the body has its drought management program, which are allergies, hypertension, diabetes, and also immune diseases.

The link between dehydration and asthma

Mike: I'd like you to elaborate a little more on asthma, and the idea that the body is managing its water supply deliberately in a way that produces symptoms that are called asthma.

Dr. B: Yes, well you see, drought management means that you have to clog the holes where water is lost from the body. Water is the most precious commodity in the interior of your body, and when not enough is coming in and more is being lost, this is a no-no situation for your body. The intelligence behind the design of the body has it such that a drought management program will kick in, and then allergies are a sign of dehydration because the system that regulates water balance of the body suppresses the immune system, because it's an energy-consuming situation. Then you get asthma.

You see, we lose about a quart of water through breathing every day. It is actually the surface tension in the alveoli of the lungs that produces contraction of these tiny membranes, and air is pushed out. And in the process, that water will leave with the air that is leaving. So you lose about a quart of water in breathing. We need to replenish that. When we don't replenish it, the body tightens up the bronchials and plugs up the holes and we call this reduced air flow in the lungs because of dehydration, we've labeled it as asthma.

Mike: Right. I've always been amazed that the willingness of modern medicine or western medicine to come up with these complicated sounding labels or names for diseases that should really have simpler names.

Dr. B: Jargon peddling is the way of commercial medicine. Sick-care system survives and thrives on pushing these jargons into the minds of the people, because people don't understand what these jargons, they hear them and they don't associate with anything in the body, but associate them with those jargons of fear that are drummed in the minds of people.

Now, children, there are 17 million children in America, probably more because the numbers rise every year, who have asthma, and the reason is, at the same time, children have been consuming more and more sodas. Three year olds to five year olds have been consuming three times as much soda in the last ten years than in the ten years before that. So these people are getting dehydrated, they are consuming more sodas, which doesn't function in the same way as water, and that is why they get asthma. Now, give these children water, and their asthma will disappear very quickly, in a matter of a few hours, completely the breathing becomes normal. The need for these inhalers will disappear.

And when I contacted the NIH and explained all of this, the gentleman who was in charge of this said I was so ignorant on what was going on, and yet he wanted to protect his freedom, and so he ignored the information even though I had gone to Clinton, President Clinton to ask him to intervene, and give breath back to these children. But the NIH was adamant to use medication. He wrote me, actually, and said we are satisfied with the way asthma is being treated. So, this is the situation. Now 17 million children is America can recover in a matter of a few days if everyone in the country started talking to asthmatic people and saying water is what you should take. Can you imagine a solution so simple?

Mike: Yes. Yes I can, and there are many such solutions available to treat a great number of chronic diseases, just like you've been describing here. Of course, the pharmaceutical industry I think would be horrified to have that information become widespread.

Dr. B: Yeah, well, because what I'm saying is totally anti-business, and we are not talking about a few hundred thousand dollars, we are talking about a few billion dollars a year.