Drink on Doctors orders

The key to good health is drink lots of water and a pinch of salt says Dr F Batmanghelidj, the modern application of an ancient Persian treatment.
The human being and the boiled pea are both made up of about 75% water, but as a shrivelled pea has little to commend it, so dehydration damages the body and eventually human life itself. Adults lose six pints of water every day, a pint in perspiration, two pints in breathing out and three pints in urine all of which needs to be replaced.
Dr Batmanghelidj, an Iranian doctor now living in America, believes that many of the most common serious ailments are caused by our reluctance to drink water.
Asthma, high blood pressure, stomach ulcers, angina, headaches, back pain, colitis, stress, arthritis, diabetes and obesity, he argues are all based on dehydration and its knock on effects. Thirsty cells do not work at their best and trigger all kinds of inappropriate bodily responses as a result. He also believes that we have forgotten how to read our thirst signals and often confuse them with hunger and instead of drinking a glass of water we eat a tasty snack.   
Dr Batmanghelidj’s research was carried out whilst he was in prison under sentence of death during the Iranian revolution where he acted as medical officer for the 3,000 inmates.
The authorities were so impressed with his findings that they spared his life.
Salt and water hold the body in balance he says and this basic human biology was recognised 2,000 years ago by the ancient Persians who treated pain and shock with a drink of water and salt on the tongue.
In modern medicine, a saline drip is one of the first lines of treatment for a shocked and injured patient.
Dr Batmanghelidj believes we should all drink at least six to eight cups of water a day and take half a teaspoon of sea salt. Sweating heavily, from activity or heat, will increase demand.
Dehydration can be determined by looking at the colour of urine. A well- hydrated person has urine, which is pale lemon in colour.
Tea, coffee and colas do not count in measuring fluid intake in fact they make things worse. They contain caffeine, which is a diuretic that reduces the body’s water content. For each cup of coffee you should drink a compensating cup of water, he says.
Fruit juices are no good either he claims, if you drank the equivalent amount in orange juice, you would take in too much potassium which would throw you off balance and if you drank the same quantity in alcohol, you would be permanently drunk.   
His work is based on the theory that it is the water content of the cells that regulates all our body functions and not the body chemicals that are dissolved in it. If the water content is insufficient, then the body chemicals cannot work properly.
Dr Batmanghelidj’s book The Bodies Many Cries for Water contains some astonishing testimonies from converted water drinkers.
Few doctors or dieticians would argue with the fact that we not drink enough water but the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries and the Department of Health have not yet seen fit to advise us how much to drink (apart from alcohol). But Miss Laura Ellis, a nutrition scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation, is not so certain that water itself is a cure-all. She says that one or two litres of fluid a day is what people should be aiming at, depending on how active they are.
The true powers of water may still be open to question, but Dr Batmanghelidj is convinced of its importance.