Where Did Modern Medicine Go Wrong?

Water: For Health, for Healing, for Life: You're Not Sick, You're Thirsty!
by F. Batmanghelidj, M.D.

CHAPTER 1

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.

About the Author

Dr. F. Batmanghelidj, was born in Tehran, Iran, and now lives in Falls Church, Virginia.