Dehydration Can Make You Stronger!

Water. Hydration. Dehydration. Short-term stress. Adaptation.

Adaptation is one of the most important and underappreciated facets of health. Intentionally using stress to train our adaptive responses just makes sense. How do we tweak our relationship to water for our advantage? Is less, more? Sometimes, when used correctly, a short-term water fast can produce great results. Crazy, I know.

I, and probably you too, have always had a bias towards hydration. Granted we live in a time and place where water is abundant and we bathe, drink, swim and cook with it all we want. But this has not always been so and because of this great technological advance, we have become weaker and less adaptive, in some respects: View this article Dry-Fasting

Hear me out.

Here are the facts:

Fact #1 – “Water is essential for life”; you’ve heard this statement your whole life but think about it; no water equals no life.

Fact #2 – Our bodies are made of about 70% water.

Fact #3 – We have lost the ability to do with less water.

Fact #4 – We can use short-term water restriction (stress) for our advantage.

Unbelievably, the Russians have a long history of this. Apparently there is only one 400 page book written on the subject, a subject I didn’t really know existed until this week. No matter, the book has been translated, poorly, into English and I found one review. Here is how the thinking goes: When humans are deprived of water for short periods of time, less than 72 hours, our cells ignite and burn up all manner of cellular debris. This is of inestimable value to the health of our cells. Crazy? But apparently true. The kidneys and liver can also purge during this time.

In the case of more intense disease processes a more rigid protocol can be employed to the long-term health of the patient. I can’t believe it, but it sort of makes sense. If we ask the body to focus its healing event, and we don’t interrupt the healing with water or food, the body can really go to work.

So it appears the answer to my question is “yes”; short-term water restriction can have a strengthening, vitality producing effect and can move you to the right on our spectrum.

Chronic Stress <—> Acute Stress

How does one begin such a practice?

Slowly… very slowly. I would recommend getting really comfortable with a 24 food fast first. This will give your body a chance to adapt to water only (our next blog will cover this). Once this can be done effortlessly, a dry-fast approach may be employed. And from what I have read, the benefits of such a fast, a 24 hour long one, equals the benefits of a 3 day water only fast. That is really a life hack. A multitude of health benefits may be gained from this practice. Once again, proceed with caution. If you start, start slowly, very slowly. Thirst is a powerful impetus. Learning to work with it can indeed make you stronger.

I HAVE NEVER EMPLOYED THIS HEALTH STRATEGY.

But I am going to.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Cheers,

ks