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Los Angeles, CA 90053   

NO CAUTION ABOUT SLOSHIN’

In the wrenching 1997 book, Into Thin Air, mountain climber Jon Krakauer describes his feelings the day he finally stood on the top of the world: 29,028 feet up on the summit of Everest.

“I hadn’t slept in 57 hours,” he writes. “The only food I’d been able to force down over the preceding three days was a bowl of ramen soup and a handful of peanut M&Ms.”

One of the hardest things to do up there in the Death Zone above 26,000 feet was to get enough water. Especially because a climber experienced such dehydration through heavy breathing, sucking at the oxygen-starved air, you really needed to drink something like a gallon of water a day.

We’ve been reading another tremendous book all week long, entitled Live 10 Healthy Years Longer. Here in Chapter Five, the topic is water, with this title: “Drink As Much As You Want.” Interestingly, these two authors, Jan Kuzma and Cecil Murphey, themselves turn to an Everest story — the granddaddy of them all.

“One major reason for the success of Sir Edmund Hillary’s 1953 expedition in scaling Mount Everest,” they write, “was the forced drinking of water among his party. His men took along battery-operated ice-melters and each member of the climbing team drank 5 to 7 pints of water a day.”

They contrast Hillary’s successful climb with that of an earlier Swiss team, which, that same year, had really not focused on the water issue. (Maybe they were thinking more about oxygen, which is also kind of nice to have up at Camp Four.) In any case, the Swiss climbers only had about a pint a day . . . and they didn’t get anywhere near the roof of the world.

Well, friend, you and I are down at sea level, where water is quite a bit easier to come by. You turn on the tap and the water comes out. It’s virtually free, and there’s plenty of it. So what is there for us to think about here?

I’ll tell you what we need to think about. Approximately eight times a day, we need to think about a glass of water. That’s right. The average person needs to drink eight or more 8-ounce glasses — not of juice, soda, beer, or coffee, but just plain old H20. Actually, if you’re up for a little bit of radio math here, try this: take your weight and divide by two. If you’re a two-hundred-pounder, that would then be one hundred. Divide again by eight — which in this example would be 12½. All right. That person really ought to have 12½ glasses of water a day.

Now, how come? First of all, your whole body is 70% water anyway. And you lose about two glasses a day through exhaling, two through evaporation through your skin, or perspiration, and another six glasses just by going down the hall, second door on your left. Right there, that’s ten glasses of water daily that need to be replenished.

Authors Jan Kuzma and Cecil Murphey give us some of the ways water helps us maintain our health. First of all, it’s a lubricant: “saliva lubricates food; fluid bathes our eyes, lungs, and air passages.” Water moistens air on its way to your lungs. Water helps your circulation, as blood draws water from the surrounding cells. Water aids in the digestion process, helping your stomach enzymes. It’s part of your body’s filtration system, helping take some of the load off your kidneys. Water is part of your temperature control system; your two million sweat glands moistening your skin and keeping you at a good internal 98.6º. And here’s an interesting P.S. Water is an effective shock absorber; fluid in your joints actually can cushion your bones.

I think the point these two writers make most clearly is that you and I need to make it a habit to drink those eight glasses of water a day — REGARDLESS OF HOW WE FEEL. Most of us don’t have a habit for eight glasses, or a desire for eight glasses. The average American only drinks about 3.3 glasses daily, so that proves the point.

“Thirst isn’t a reliable guide to your body’s needs,” they write. “You usually need water long before your brain alerts you, so drink more than what you think you need to satisfy your thirst.”

So you have to make a conscious decision to pour ‘em down: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Cecil Murphey, one of these two writers, suffered for years with a skin dryness problem. He tried creams and lotions to get rid of the scaling and itching, but nothing worked. Then one day a friend told him, “Hey, Cec, you need more water, man. If you’re lubricated on the inside, your skin will get the moisture it needs.” “No way,” Murphey responded, but then he stopped and realized that, living in an African country as he once had, and having to boil the water from a local river, he’d stopped enjoying it. “I hated the taste,” he admitted. But now, noticing he was H2O-deficient, he began to drink more than his appetite would have suggested.
And you know, within just a few weeks, his skin cleared up.

Here in this book, the writers tell about the famed ultra-marathoner, Stan Cottrell, who was taking a group of doctors on a 50-mile run. Before they started, he laid down the law: two glasses of water per runner. And one physician shook his head. “I’m not thirsty.” “Tough,” Stan told him. “You drink anyway. By the time you feel thirsty, it’ll be too late.” And all day long, as the doctors ran, he made sure they kept on drinking. Bottom line: every participant made it to the finish line.

Well, if we’ve been drying out at 3.3, and we need to get up to eight-plus, how can we accomplish that? Won’t we slosh when we walk? And won’t we actually be jogging most of the time, down the hall, second door on the left? Well, no, you won’t slosh. And going down the hall won’t really hurt you; a little exercise is a good trade-off stacked up against those extra 13 years you’re going to enjoy. These two writers, Jan and Cecil, tell us that it really isn’t possible to drink too much water; unless you have kidney failure, your body can rid itself of any excess just fine. Although it is good to keep track and not go way overboard — flooding the system can disturb the balance of your electrolyte system.

Is there a time to drink, and a time to refrain from drinking — paraphrasing from Ecclesiastes three? Most health experts suggest you attack the Big Eight this way. Have one or two glasses first thing in the morning. That helps your body immediately replenish what you lost all night just exhaling, through your skin pores, and through kidney activity. Between breakfast and lunch, have a glass. Between lunch and dinner, another. And between dinner and bedtime, a final glass. Plus — all day long in your cubicle or wherever, keep a two-quart jar or container there, and sip through the day. Every time you pass a drinking fountain, stop for a drink. Water breaks, not coffee breaks. Add it all up, and you get up to eight the easy way. Of course, if you’re in an exercise program, you should add an extra glass both before and after any strenuous workout.

Some people complain: “I just don’t like the taste of water.” Your choices there are to pay the extra for bottled water, or to add just a bit of lemon, orange, or mint flavoring to it.

By the way, there’s one time you don’t want to be drinking water, say these two writers — and virtually every health expert agrees. And that’s right at mealtime. A half hour before — fine. An hour afterwards — also fine. But if you can, try to plan your intake so that you aren’t drinking right with your meal. That runs contrary to habit, and especially so at restaurants, where the waiter brings you water right up front, and refills on your diet Coke all through dinner. But water with your meal dilutes both the digestive juices in your saliva and the enzymes in your stomach. Also, ice-cold or piping hot beverages — either one — can really knock your digestive process off kilter if you drink them right with your meal. Cecil and Jan also remind us — and it’s true if you stop and think about it — that if we drink right with our meal, we certainly tend to just “wash down” food instead of thoroughly chewing it. Something to keep in mind.

By the way, speaking of a drink one hour before, a person who “feels hungry” can sometimes beat the cravings by simply having a big glass of water instead. We sometimes confuse thirst signals for hunger ones.

Well, you know, I remember an old children’s magazine that ended a health article about the eight glasses of water with this: “All right, kids. You know the score. Now ‘water’ you going to do about it?” We won’t finish that way, but please picture, as you drink abundantly, an ancient well in a village named Sychar, in the country of Samaria. A man named Jesus stopped for a cool drink, and He told the lonely, confused woman sitting there: “Lady, if you take the gift I have for you — meaning a relationship, a friendship with Me — that’s living water. That’s water that lasts forever. And you’ll never be thirsty again.” Don’t forget, friend, as you drink, to stop by that well pretty regularly too.