Unveiling Hydration's Role in Optimal Health with Dorcia Hart

Hi everyone. My name is Wendy Manganero and I am the host of the Wellness and Wealth podcast. I'm so happy to have you find us and if you could take a moment and hit that subscribe button, I'd really appreciate it. This is the podcast where we believe when you show up better for yourself as a woman business owner, you show up better for your business. So sit back, relax and learn from the practical to the woo-woo. How did best take care of you? Have a great day, stay blessed and leave a review when you're done listening to the show. Thanks so much. Hi everyone. Today our topic is understanding hydration, and I am here with Dorsha Hart. I'm going to read her bio and then we'll get right into it. Dorsha is a pharmacist with a nutritional interest and she wants to share her knowledge on health and what she discovered about hydration and losing weight. She believes in good hydrating water, good nutrition and when you add a little movement, you have a healthy star. She does her own gardening, loves outdoor activities and helping people improve their health through better choices. She wants to bring awareness that your body can heal itself if you put the right things inside your body and remove the bad things. Welcome, Dorsha, thanks for coming on the show today.

Thank you.

I would love to know from you what hydration means to you.

There are three things your body lives for, and that's oxygen, water and nutrition. If you don't have all three, you can actually die. Of course, oxygen you only have minutes to get oxygen in there. Water you might have about three days before you kill over, and then food you have weeks. It depends on what you're putting in your body. Hydration means to me, and why water is so important is because our bodies are 70% water. We live in an environment that is 70% water the oceans and the earth so it's 70% water. Other organisms that live on the earth they're up to 90% water. Why wouldn't water be important to us? Because we're 70% water. We eat more than what we drink. We should really be drinking 70% and eating less, maybe 30%, but we hardly put any water in our body at all. When you think about the water in our body, what is the water doing for us? For the water, it brings the nutrients to life, to every cell in our body, and we're building cells every single day. We need water to do those processes in our body. It also regulates our internal temperature by sweating and perspiration. It cools us off. I remember I was a little girl. I never used to sweat, because girls, oh, we don't sweat, we perspire. Sweating is important. Really, I didn't realize as a young woman I was dehydrated, I didn't sweat. I thought that was a normal thing. So you don't really know you're dehydrated until you find out later in life as you let it go on. Other things water is good for is that it brings your sugars, your carbohydrates and proteins to your body. It's a food source. But your whole body, all the way from your head to your toes, you need nutrition, and it's brought by water that's in your bloodstream. So if you don't have enough water in your bloodstream, it can't supply all the nutrients and water that your cells need. It also assists in flushing waste by urination. So if you're not drinking enough water, it can't flush out the toxins. It acts as a natural shock absorbent in your brain and your spinal cord. Your brain is actually sitting in water, so as you move, your brain is hitting your skull and so it's a protective measure. So if you don't have enough water, your brain will actually hit the insides of your skull and that will damage your brain. It also forms a saliva out of your mouth. So if you have dry mouth, you may be dehydrated or you might have dry lips and that might be a form of dehydration. It also lubricates your joints. So if your joints don't have any liquid in them, then they rub and then people have joint pains. So a lot of it is based on what you put in your body to help regulate, to help manage, to help balance your body, basically.

So I have a follow-up question as you're talking about that, because there's always that theory that you should drink half your body weight, or, and so what is the right amount of water to drink? Because I don't know if is that correct, that a whole idea of drinking half your body weight, or is it another formula?

Basically the general rule. For an average person weighing about 140 pounds, they recommend eight glasses a day of eight ounces of glasses a day, so that's eight glasses. You can look at it like half your body weight in ounces. So if you calculate that, you will find that it is roughly about seven or eight glasses. The reason why they say half your body weight because if you're overweight you won't want to drink that much water. So you would want to look at a formula that looks at your lean body weight and then that you can calculate it more correctly of how much water you need.

Yeah, and that makes sense, because that is an awful lot of water if you're overweight. So for you. How did they, how did you start on this journey? Or why is it so important for you to make sure people understand hydration?

Even though I'm a pharmacist and I went to school and you learned about the body and everything, I had some health challenges myself and working in the pharmacy behind a computer, sitting at a desk typing, I developed a carpal tunnel in my arm. I got a pinched nerve in my neck where my whole hand went blue, and went to the emergency room. I didn't know what was going on. I also had a frozen shoulder where I couldn't lift my arm more than just straight off. I couldn't lift it over my head. But, doctor, you know how they look at your symptoms and they treat your symptoms. So they give you pain medication, so them pain medication, and that didn't work. And so then they started giving me steroid shots to decrease the inflammation, because a lot of it, when you're dehydrated, your body reacts to a situation and then they send all their little helper cells to fight and help you out. But it gets inflammation in there. So acute inflammation is fine if you have an injury, but long-term inflammation can do damage to your body. So my body was on overload, so it was trying to help everything by putting inflammation in there and that was causing a problem. So things that the doctor was giving me didn't really help. So they were thinking about doing surgery, and so I didn't want to really do surgery and so I just happened to run into this water. It's a special water. It's not something that you would buy in the store, but when I started drinking it, it got rid of the inflammation, and that took two weeks after I started drinking it and I got rid of the inflammation, and I think that's all most of the diseases are is due to inflammation. It causes diseases when you're dehydrated or you get inflammation in those areas that are things that you really need the water to be in drinking. The water got rid of it, and so at that point I was able to get rid of my health challenges, along with 19 other health challenges, and so I thought, wow, this is really helpful, maybe I can help someone else, and so that's when I began to give water out so people can try and see if it helps them with their problem, and and it did help people with their diabetes. If you look at it, your blood is very concentrated if you're dehydrated, and when you go to the lab and they take a sample of your blood the concentration they look at the concentration and then they determine whether you have a high sugar level or any other labs that they take. If it has higher potassium or higher or anything that's abnormal, they look at it based on the concentration and the water concentration in your blood. So when you're dehydrated, of course all that stuff looks high and they think that you have these problems. So when I started drinking this water, all my values, all my labs, became normal. I was pre-diabetic also, and my doctor threatened to put me on medication and I said oh no, I'm going to look at my diet and try to figure that out and do something. Eat right, drink right or do exercise. So those are the three things that I found that really do help with your body. You can change your health around by eating right, drinking and getting a little movement. You don't have to overdo it with exercise. You just need to move it, because you have a fluid, another fluid in your body besides your blood is pumped by your heart and the lymphatic fluid, which is your clear fluid in your body. It helps remove the waste from your bloodstream and out, and if you don't move, that fluid won't be able to do its functions. So a little movement is good so that you can get some of that waste out of your body.

That's interesting. I was watching something and they were talking about. As kids, we all used to go to the water fountain. It was like the big deal to get water from and it was fun and you expected to do that because we all wanted to go, stand in the water fountain line for six hours and not be in class. But that changes as adults and that people go away from drinking water and we I've done mission work in other countries and the other thing that I want to say is that water is more expensive in in lavish countries. The amount of soda that they drink in a lavish country is incredible because it's cheaper and cleaner than the water sources, and I think we do a disservice when we don't talk about those things, saying water really needs to be a resource for everybody, but B that it really does. It's like we put all of re-ingest, all of this other stuff, and it's not healthy for us at all.

Tap water used to be the best water you could drink. We drank it out of the hose. We're running and playing outside, but now the factories, they're dumping stuff in the groundwater and now our tap water is contaminated and you know the water company. They try to clean it up. They put chemicals in it, so now it has chlorine in it and other stuff, lye and everything. So it's like you can't even drink the tap water anymore, let alone bath in it. You know, because your skin is the biggest organ in your body and it'll absorb everything that's in the tap water. So our tap water is bad. That's why people went to bottled water. They didn't even think about the bottle water. They didn't even think how did they make the bottled water? So when you look at the factories I looked at these factories and it shows videos and how they make it and the bottle is coming down the thing and it heats it up with these hot water and so that water is pulling out the plastic into the bottle. So now you're drinking plastics and then okay, so then when they filtering the water, they're using reverse osmosis. So now you're getting water that doesn't have any minerals. Your tap water was better than the bottled water, but because it has the chemicals it's not. So then the alternative is to drink water that is not sitting in bottles all day. Drink water that is clean better clean for you, so we don't have to have all those chemicals in it and it's just natural, clean water. No chemicals are added. So this is the water that I drink. It's electrified and it makes the water, of course, antioxidant and alkaline, and so, as water is naturally alkaline, it's getting back to nature, basically.

I agree with that. I had gone out to Arizona. I had a coach mentor and she had actually had breast cancer. She had just moved to Arizona and found out that we went out to help her with the treatment and actually it was one of the rare times I've ever drank water from a spring. In Sedona. Many of the people know where this one spring is and it's the only place you can bring a jug that it's still pure, but it's still that it comes from the spring. And actually my son was so cute because I got to take him out of school to go help her for two weeks. He was only eight. Then he had to come back and give a report on his trip and he brought back the water and he's drank this, this water cure. It was like the cutest thing. But everybody from that area knew, because most people didn't drink water. They actually would go to the spring because it's so hard to find water that's alkaline water that's not contaminated or bottled or and they would bring their own jugs and get it. So there are resources in the US. It's just very hard and scarce to find. So, as we're talking about this, what are some of the warning signs for a female entrepreneur, that they're not hydrated enough, because, as we get business as female entrepreneurs, we get to take care of ourselves during the day. Water goes out the window. So what are some of those signs that they may be feeling? So you may?

not feel the thirstiness, but you might see some signs on your skin and you might see signs like dry skin, dry lips that might be the first thing or dry patches on your skin or on your backside. You might say, oh, what's that little patch there? Or you might notice that your urine is dark. It's darker. It should be like a pale yellow, and if it's not that color and it could be some other colors because you're taking vitamins and then you're just pouring them out in your urine. So you need to eat more natural foods that will absorb better. So there's a lot of things about vitamins. That's a whole other topic. But if you eat naturally, you can absorb the minerals naturally and you're not peeing it all out. So your urine and your skin, your breath your breath might have bad breath your hair if your hair is brittle, and there's a lot of the things like that can tell you that something's going wrong and I was actually going to ask you and I don't know if you know the answer or not is frequent bladder infections from not drinking? enough water. That can be. It's also due to what you wear too. So if you're not getting enough air down there, things can happen like vaginal infections and also urinary tract infections. You got to have a lot of air. You got to have water to flush out the toxins. And drinking too much sugar is a source for bacteria to live. So if you're drinking a lot of sodas and it's peeing out in the year, that's just an environment for bacteria to grow. Cut out the soda. It's just not that good. Besides the carbonation, besides the sugar, when it does have water in it. But your body has to convert that to water. Just because it has water in it does not mean that it's going to be good. The sugar in the thing is high and the carbonation is another problem. It makes the water acid, so your body has to convert it and make it alkaline. Your whole body is slightly alkaline and so everything that you put in it, it has to neutralize it in order for your body to accept it. So if you eat acid foods, acid drinks, your body is releasing your natural minerals that are in your body. It takes it from your bones and your muscles to neutralize that water. So now you're losing some of the minerals in the water that they're providing for you. In those bottles they don't have any minerals at all, so you're losing minerals. So if you drink natural water or water from the system that I'm promoting, it leaves the minerals in the water. It's naturally alkaline, it's nothing padded into it and you get balanced body. So I try to help people balance their body and that's what people need right now to understand. Water is something that will balance your body, can heal from it. Your body is a magnificent machine. It will do anything to preserve the brain and your torso. If you go out into the snow, you'll lose your hands and your feet before. It'll let your body and your brain suffer. You can't trick your brain, but it will do whatever it can to survive, and so water is one thing that it really needs to survive.

My other question for you and I don't know only because I've heard this in the past what is your feeling for drinking water room temperature versus cold? I've heard that it's really bad for you to drink water cold, or any drinks cold, and I've heard that it doesn't matter, so I'd love to know your input on that.

So drinking your water cold is like a shock to your system and so your body, like cringes, it draws up, and so when you put that in your intestines your bowels won't move as well. Because then that's why if you drink hot drinks you have a better flow of it. But when you drink cold your body is not used to that cold coldness is. It wants it to be like 98.6 degrees. So if you drink room temperature, it's a naturally more to your body temperature and everything will flow out better than drinking just cold drinks. It'll actually stop, your muscles will contract rather than being nice and smooth and opening the intestines and letting things out nicely.

I've heard of that before and actually so, and it's so funny because I don't drink anything that's really cold. Usually it has to be horrendously hot for me to drink something cold, but Usually I don't, and part of late because I've heard of that before, in part because I just don't like it. Because I do, I feel like it's like eating ice cream once in a while and where you're like, oh my gosh, I got the brain freeze. I can get that from drinks to if it's too cold.

Yeah, I used to drink cold water and I was trying to figure out why am I constipated? That was just one of the items why it was constipated, and drinking hot liquids makes you unconstipated.

That's good for women to know too, because I don't think a lot of people realize that. I have one last question. So for somebody who prefers to drink anything but water because there are some people who are like that they may drink tea, they may drink seltzer, but they just don't like water Do you have any tips on how to get past that or how to start adding in water to your life? Or is it okay to be like if I drink warm water with lemon in it, is that okay? Or should we just be drinking straight water?

Drinking the lemon in it. That's acid. So that's like changing your water from either neutral to acidic water, so that's not good. You can put something else in the water and I know a lot of people have a problem with the taste and that's only because you're used to the sugary drinks. But if you just get rid of the sugary drinks, water will begin to taste better for you. But you can put other things like other fruits in there strawberries, cucumbers, you know that might work for you. Herbal teas is fine too, but when you start putting a whole bunch of sugar in there, your body has to process it. So you're again waiting for your body to process it. You're not getting that immediate hydration from the water, and it's a learning process. You have to be able to manage how much water you're drinking, because your body is losing water just as you're speaking and you just need to measure it. I drink like three glasses of water in the morning, just as I get up and before breakfast, and I drink three before lunch and three before dinner, and so I get nine glasses in a day and you'll notice such a difference. Your skin will be different, your hair will be different, your bowels will be different. It's just your body works better with water and what's important to people. Try to understand. That's why I'm go through what your body does with the water to understand. It's so important to get the water in so that your whole body will work. Think of it as my medicine. You got to get it in for your body.

I know that you have an offer for our audience. I'd love for you to share about that, and I'll have the link in the show notes.

So my offer is the body balance is an ebook, so it goes into all the things that I've talked about, but you can actually have an ebook. I have some other offers. I do a body balance webinar, which we can. I talk about it and give you more examples, and then I also have a body balance one on one. So if you want me to come to your home and we'll go through your cabinet and get rid of all the bad stuff and look at what you're drinking, look at your lifestyle, we're going to go to shopping, bring in better stuff. So it's the whole the three step process. So it's not just water, it's water, nutrition and exercising. So I do all those three things. So if you want a little bit more, I do offer that to wonderful, wonderful.

Thank you so much for coming on the show today. This is actually our first conversation on hydration. I think it's a really important one to have so as part of our self care. We talk about lots of other different ways to self care, so thank you so much for coming and sharing with us today.

Oh, you're welcome, and if anyone has questions, they can just shoot me an email or shoot me a text and I'll get back to you.

Great, and I'll have all of that in the show notes. So if you love what you heard today, please subscribe for more self care tips as the weeks go forward and in the meantime, also if you love what dorsal shared, please make sure you leave a review in the meantime. Have an abundant week, thank you.