Quench: Beat Fatigue, Drop Weight, and Heal Your Body Through the New Science of Optimum Hydration

231 Pages·2018·2.61 MB·English

by  Dana Cohen

Copyright
The recommendations in this book are not intended to replace or conflict with
the advice given to you by your physician or other health professionals. All
matters regarding your health should be discussed with your doctor. Consult
your physician before adopting the suggestions in this book. Following these
dietary suggestions may impact the effect of certain types of medication. Any
changes in your dosage should be made only in cooperation with your
prescribing physician. The authors and publisher disclaim any liability directly
or indirectly from the use of the material in this book by any person.
The names and identifying characteristics of certain individuals in this book
have been changed to respect their anonymity, and we have in some cases
presented real stories in composite form.
Copyright © 2018 by Dana Cohen M.D. and Gina Bria Illustrations by Alma
Vescovi
Cover design by Amanda Kain Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book
Group, Inc.
The Allergy Elimination Diet, excerpted from Nutritional Medicine by Dr. Alan
Gaby, M.D. (Fritz Perlberg; 2011) in the Appendix, is reprinted with permission.
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ISBN 978-0-316-51567-2
E3-20180421-JV-NF
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
INTRODUCTION: Hydration: How Can We Do It Better?
CHAPTER 1: The New Science of Water: The Hydration/Health Connection
CHAPTER 2: Eat Your Water: Food for Optimal Hydration
CHAPTER 3: Move That Water: Fascia and Hydration
CHAPTER 4: How Motion Keeps You Hydrated: The Science of Micromovements
CHAPTER 5: Fat and Hydration: Oil and Water Do Mix
CHAPTER 6: Who Needs Water the Most? Ideal Hydration for High-Need
Populations
CHAPTER 7: Antiaging, the Skin, and Beauty
CHAPTER 8: The Quench Plan
CHAPTER 9: The Cup Runneth Over: Recipes for a Lifetime
AFTERWORD: You Are a Body of Water
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Appendix: Allergy Elimination Diet
Resources
Notes
Newsletters
For our moms,
Bunny bunbuns,
and
Stephanie
Preface
Mni Wiconi.
—Lakota for “Water is life”
This book about hydration was inspired by two different authors from very
different traditions: anthropologist Gina Bria and physician Dana Cohen. Each
brought her own expertise and experience to this vitally important topic.
Gina was researching indigenous tribes from desert regions around the world
and trying to understand how they survived drought conditions. At the same
time, she was struggling to care for her elderly mother, who was in a nursing
home seven hundred miles away. Gina eventually recognized that her mother
was suffering from chronic dehydration, a health issue common to many
residents of nursing homes. Like so many of us, her mom was subject to the
dehydrating effects of indoor living in a sealed environment: artificial lighting,
long hours of immobility, processed foods, medications, with little fresh air and
sunlight, conditions almost drought-like in their drying effects.
Gina needed to figure out how to get her mom the hydration she so
desperately needed. And in fact, that answer came from the very desert dwellers
she was researching. They were experts in hydration. Instead of searching for
water in their arid environment, they found their water another way. They
practiced what so many of us today have forgotten—they used the water locked
in plants to hydrate. Gina started focusing on the water already inside fresh food,
such as apples, to help her mom get the hydration she needed, and the results
were dramatic. Her mom never had another dehydration incident. Gina was
amazed that no one was talking about this simple yet radically effective
approach to wellness, and she started sharing her story about the power of water
—particularly efficient plant water—in overall health.
Half a world away from these desert tribes, on the island of Manhattan, Dr.
Dana Cohen was busy at her Midtown medical practice. Dr. Cohen is an
integrative physician, one of a small but growing circle of New York City
doctors moving away from prescribing medication for every ailment. Her
holistic approach was tethered to the latest science in nutrition, which she
offered her patients as an innovative way to promote health. She was always
looking for new methods to help her patients, and she’d even been approached to
write a book on the topic. She didn’t want to write yet another generic health or
diet title that focused on one area of wellness or one small segment of her patient
population. She was looking for a far more universal message to accelerate
healing for all her patients. And she was starting to experiment with a new
protocol on some of them—treating them with not just nutrition, but also
hydration. Her results showed early promise, and she wanted to amplify them.
One day, Gina and Dana found themselves in the same small office after
several professional acquaintances had insisted that they meet. They soon
realized that they had both been observing the same clues. Indeed, almost no one
came into Dana’s office without talking about their inexplicable fatigue and low
energy. Could dehydration be behind so many pervasive complaints? Could
better hydration be the upstream solution, intercepting decline? Gina talked
passionately about her research. Desert dwellers were brilliant at harnessing
plants to keep themselves hydrated for a much longer amount of time compared
to city dwellers. It wasn’t volume they were exploiting but absorption and
retention. They ingested plants that were already well hydrated. She related her
own personal experience seeing the dramatic effect that absorbed hydration had
on her mother. Dana knew immediately that Gina was on to something.
“Think cactus,” Gina told Dana, and she went on to tell her how she solved
her mother’s dehydration. “I got her to drink her orange juice, with chia seeds
mixed in, to increase moisture retention by twofold.”
Dana, too, had her own personal experience: Her mom had faded away in a
nursing home fifteen years earlier from Alzheimer’s, leaving Dana frustrated and
hurt that as a young doctor she couldn’t help her own mother. She also saw her
patients coming into her office every day—frazzled, fatigued, unwell—and she
had witnessed firsthand how returning them to a proper level of hydration could
heal them. She just hadn’t thought about using food as a tool for hydration until
now.
Their conversation moved to the groundbreaking book written in 1992: Your
Body’s Many Cries for Water, by Fereydoon Batmanghelidj. Dr. Batman, as he
was affectionately called, showed from his own clinical experience that
dehydration can lead to many chronic conditions. To both Dana and Gina, this