Ever hear that you need to drink 8 cups of water a day (64oz)? Of course you have! Working in the alternative medicine field I run into this alot. People and practitioners alike think they should be drinking gallons of water a day. This is an age old myth that got obscured from some factual information. This blog isn’t the first post written to clear this information up, but I would like to see these facts more widespread.

I urge you to search the Internet about water intake and look at all the information available to you. You will get all kinds of information, but most of all you will be told you need to drink lots and lots of water.

In the 1950’s a famous nutritionist wrote an article about water intake to the body. This write-up was scientifically backed with tests and studies and was a wide spread breakthrough research report. This report stated that you need to take in 8 cups of water a day or 64oz. This statement is well used throughout the world and Internet. I see practitioners tell their patients to drink lots of water, people being told they don’t drink enough water, and even people walking around with jugs of water! Well, before I talk about what the rest of the report says, I would just like to analyse this statement of why this really doesn’t make sense.

Drinking 8 cups of water a day from a Chinese Medicine has a few problems right off the bat. First and foremost to say that Jane and Joe both needs to drink 64 ounces a day is absurd. If Joe is 6′3″ tall and 230 pounds why should his water consumption be the same as 5′4″ 120 pound Jane? This is contradictory to every holistic medicine as this is not holistic. Common practice seems to be during the patient intake and history, regardless of the ailment, ask them how much water they drink. A common response is “probably not enough” or “I could drink more”. Why would you accept this answer? This is based on a person thinking they need to drink, more than likely, way to much water. A common pet peeve of mine is even hearing a practitioner say “are you drinking enough water?”. WHY on earth would you say this to your patient? How are they supposed to know that?
Now lets examine some other possible problems with this statement. As far as Chinese Medicine is concerned we have issues of taking in a bunch of water and over working our kidneys. This will lead to weak knees, lower back pain, fatigue, coldness, and much more. Your kidneys do enough work without you asking them to constantly need to drain a bunch of water from you body all the time. Biomedically we face issues of losing electrolytes, causing edema, bursting red blood cells, and not being able to be away from a bathroom for more than 30 minutes.

By far the biggest spread of bad information is telling people they need to drink a bunch of water to lose weight. Are you joking? Are people supposed to pee the fat away? Lets examine this abomination of advice. If you have ever gone on a diet you can relate to the first week diet miracle. You start doing a little more exercise and start eating better you lose 10 pounds or so. Your so excited that you just keep going only to find out that you didn’t lose a single pound your second week. This is the power of water weight. When you took control of your exercise and diet you balanced your body water. I spoke about this and weight loss in a previous post here:
http://blogofherbs.com/recepies/diet-and-weight-loss-tips-tricks-and-help-part-1

Think about this logically for a second. A cup of water is 8 ounces of water, which is 8 ounces of weight. 2 cups of water or an entire 16oz water bottle is a POUND of weight. Want to gain a pound? Just drink 2 cups of water and get on the scale.

So what happened in this report? What part of the report didn’t get out with the rest of the information? The report said that we all need to take in about 64 ounces of water a day. And went on to say that this includes foods, soda, drinks, anything you put in your body. If you ate a bowl of soup you have taken in quite a bit of water. I don’t care what someone says, a can of soda contains water and counts as water intake. If you want to be specific you can 1/2 your carbonated water. a 12 oz can of soda has about 6oz of water in it. Your daily coffee or tea is part of this figure.

“Does the amount go in, come out in urine?”, I hope no one has ever asked you that. You should NOT urinate the same amount of water daily that you take in. Water is lost through your bowel, breathe and sweat as well. There isn’t scientific proof that drinking a gallon of water a day is good for you. This also stands true for Chinese Medicine.

“There isn’t scientific proof that drinking a gallon of water a day is good for you“

Is there a reason this myth perhaps got out of hand? I don’t know, look around and see how many people are making money off of water. Bottling Companies (incl. Coke and Pepsi), Water filtration systems, ionizing systems, and more. Not that I don’t drink purified water, but you wont see me walking around with the gallon jug!

Guess what people, your body tells you when your thirsty! Unless your out hiking in the sun, your thirst center is going to be pretty accurate.  Take this information and digest it. If your running 5 miles a day, you probably need more water than if you have and inactive life and an office job. Your size is going to come into play. I would also like to suggest that if you exchanged your sodas intake with water, you would be making a healthy change, so don’t get me wrong here. Every BODY is different, and that’s the point.

Im still searching for the original New York Times article, but found this on the way
http://style.uk.msn.com/fashionandbeauty/bebeautiful/article.aspx?cp-documentid=6775927

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As you know the internet is a big place! Search engines have gotten really, really big but WHY? Because the internet is too big to search yourself, it is too big to look at directories, it is too big to rely on many things! Because there are so many new sites and scammers out there, the search engines will sometimes not show you the best results, just the best results to their algorithm and that’s okay! No matter how bad the world gets, word of mouth with always reign big!

On that note, this is what we are talking about. Where do you buy your herbal supplements? I have recommended  Dimmak Herbs in the past for a variety of needs. Dimmak Herbs doesn’t make something for everything, but they do make alot of herbal remedies for first aid, training, sports medicine, and ailments. Dimmak Herbs has now launched their long awaited new site!

They have had 40k hits on the video that launched to celebrate their new site! All of these products are made from scratch, strait from a dried herb. Many of the products are also hand made!

For a limited time save 10% on your order there!  Through the month of Octobersave 10% by using the coupon “blogofherbs”.

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Hana asks “I’ve problems with arthritis in my hands. What can help me because it is painful and I must do everything because I’ve take care of my husband that passed 3 strokes and hardly can walk. I’ll be very obliged if You can suggest some herbs or something else.”

Arthritis can manifest in 2 ways, either with or without inflammation.
In Chinese Medicine this is an obstruction syndrome called Bi Syndrome. This is characterized as, usually, wind/cold/damp invasion of the joints. More often than not you need to dispel the cold/damp from the area by warming and dispeling.

There are a few herbs that are quite specific for the job here. Yu Jin / Turmeric Rhizome, Du Huo / Angelica Dahurica, Qiang Huo / Notopterygium, and Fang Feng / Siler are some of the main herbs for this condition. Normally these herbs are pretty easy to source, but you may not necessarily be able to get all or some of these.

Take these herbs and some fresh ginger and make a strong decoction in equal amounts. I would say about 10 grams of each into 4 cups of water and reduce into 2 cups.  Take half of the decoction and apply to your hands using some flannel cloth and keep reapplying and keeping warm. Take the rest of the decoction and drink warm in two parts that day.

If you don’t know how or can’t source some or any of these herbs then put 8oz of fresh ginger in 2 cups of apple cider vinegar. Shake that up for 3-10 days and apply that to your hands 3 times a day.

The best solutions to a complicated problem like arthritis is the application of Liniments. Liniments are very potent extractions of herbs in alcohol. The liniments are applied directly to the area and allow for quick penetration of the herbs. The herbs listed above can make a good liniment, but good liniments take some time to make. Some very specific top of the line liniments made are Dimmak Herbs Liniments. For arthritis the Joint Renew Arthritis Liniment would be appropriate and it includes about 15-20 herbs and essential oils including Tea Tree Oil. If your going to pick up some products there for arthritis you should also take Blood Purifier, as this has herbs that would be called upon for fighting arthritis internally!

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The summer always brings lots of bugs and brings them in your house. This year fleas where out of control in numbers much higher than usual. Whats worse is fleas in particular reproduce in a lightning fast fashion. Lets look into some herbal pest control.

For a few days I was getting some bites on me, which isn’t all that unusual with keeping windows and such open in the summer time and the bugs etc….. I was starting to get a few more than what I would consider normal and I got the bug spray out and sprayed my perimeter to keep the bugs from entering the house and keeping them outside where they should be. Sitting next to my dog on the couch watching Discovery Channel I’m sure, a little bug jumped on me. This repeated itself and then I put 2 and 2 together and figured out my dog, Chester, has fleas!

Herbally, we can deal this. Lets start with your pet and the fleas. Cedar should be no secret to most people. Its used to keep moths out and boxes to keep bugs out in general. However, it kinda is a secret and I don’t know why. Cedar is great and you can buy Cedar Oil. Cedar Oil is great because it kills almost every bug and it is safe. You can coat your dog in it and your entire house.

Fleas feed on blood like mosquitoes and ticks, but they need to live in the environment like your dogs coat. Adult fleas will live on your dog, but many will venture off here and there to hang out on you and bite you, or they jump onto carpet thinking its another dog and hang out there until your dog comes by and they jump back on. Flea eggs don’t stay in your dog’s coat and fall out. This creates a large amount of flea infestations anywhere your dog goes. This means that not only does your dog need to be cleansed of the Adult fleas, you have to kill the fleas all over your house so they don’t just hop back on your dog after you cleaned him. This is what happens to many people who simply clean their dog with a flea shampoo and then their dog just gets re-infested.

I took Chester into the bathroom and cleaned him up really good in the shower. I left him in the bathroom to dry off and hang out. My infestation wasn’t really bad and I knew the bad spots were the bedroom and front room. I took the cedar oil and covered the carpet in the those areas really well and also the couch in the front room. I then removed the sheets and blankets and put them directly into the wash machine. Now that a good bit of Cedar oil has neutralized all my bugs in the house including the fleas, its time to finish with the dog. I have a clean dog so now its time to coat him with the cedar oil too. If your house was stinky before it smells awesome now! Now about me.

When I get bug bites I use Dimmak Herbs Echinacea Blend. Echinacea plus the Chapparal and Hong Hua in the bottle as a tincture do an excellent job in drawing the poison out and astringing the bite which makes it itch free as well. This time around the tincture wasn’t working. I was applying it over and over and over daily with only brief relief. After the time I realized that the problem was flea related and the Echinacea Blend tincture wasn’t working it came to me that I was having a REACTION to the bites. So I changed up products. I started taking DM Assist internally and switched between Itch/Rash Salve (for anti-histamine) and Aloe Salve (for spreading rashes and skin irritations) all from Dimmak Herbs. I was able to settle my reactions and the fleas went away. Another Natural Victory!

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