The Art of Hydration

I discussed hydration at length in this post. Since then, it's been on my mind, and I figured I should share a few more refinements.

As you may have read, several years ago a study came out which claimed that people who eat in response to hunger tend to have a lower body mass index (i.e. less fat) than those who eat according to a schedule. When you think about it, this makes sense. I mean, let's say I'm hungry at 5pm. I grab a salad, or worse, a donut. By 7pm, I'm no longer hungry, but after all, it's my scheduled dinner time. So, I eat. As you can see, if you add up this unnecessary excess for a few weeks, it will start to amount to visible pounds.

I conjecture that a similar principal relates to hydration. Namely, if we hydrate "because it's time to take my vitamin pill" or "because it's time for my morning shake" -- or worse, if we refuse to hydrate because "it's not lunch time yet" -- then we are just begging for electrolyte imbalances in our systems. It's never fun, or healthy, to have too little or too much of a critical nutrient floating around. And when we correct the balance, we may overshoot, leading to a dangerous oscillation in homeostasis.

So I'm starting to think that I should hydrate when I feel thirsty, and until I feel satisfied. Never more or less often. I might fudge a bit before a meal or a long hike, when I know that I'll soon need extra water in preparation for digestion or perspiration. But generally, I will try to drink -- and eat water-soluble supplements -- purely in response to hormonal queues. I think our bodies, having evolved over billions of years, are much better at determining when we need key infusions of electrolytes, than is the clock on the wall.

Yes, there is Dr. Scordo's admonition that thirst always comes late, i.e. we're already in debt by the time we feel thirsty. Still, I'd prefer to be slightly late, than to base my fluid intake on the time of day.

As a result, I've started to move my habitual morning half-vitamin-pill into the afternoon or evening. I try to eat an entire pill everyday, or slighlty more if I'm seriously dehydrated. (Watch out for iron poisoning.) But I'm making more of an effort to eat a nibble here, and a nibble there. I find consistently that I can hydrate myself all day long on a single pill if I do this. But if I swallow the whole thing with my veggie-rich breakfast, my body seems uninterested, and probably excretes most of it, leaving me with powerful thirst later in the day.

Since I'm not thrilled with the idea of drinking sugar in order to improve hydration (even though it does work quite well), I try to practice "dry hydration", in which I nibble a tiny piece of vitamin pill, and wash it down with sufficient distilled water. (The great thing about distilled water is that it's much safer than tap, or even bottled water. But if you drink too much of it without added trace minerals, you'll dehydrate.) The trick with dry hydration is that, in my case, it takes about 20 minutes to feel hydrated, after drinking. Whereas, with milk, the effect occurs within seconds.

Ironic, isn't it, that a dairy product which causes PVCs (albeit less than with cheese), would be such a fabulous and immediate source of hydration? It also contains the likely-carcinogenic protein, casein. But I must admit, when nothing else works, milk does. Just get the organic whole fat stuff (4%), as opposed to skim. This way, you'll get fewer pesticides, and, if you're male, the higher fat milk also lacks the prostate cancer risk recently associated with skim milk. Perhaps this lower risk applies to other cancers too, but it has yet to be demonstrated. That's right: less saturated fat, implying a higher cancer risk, in this particular case. However, this study from the American Journal of Epidemiology seems to suggest an only moderately elevated risk due to skim (23% higher, for aggressive prostate cancer, with at least 2 servings per day). This Harvard study talks more broadly about dairy, calcium, and vitamin D in general, and seems to point to a similar conclusion. Still, I'd rather slightly increase my cancer risk, but stay hydrated and avoid more serious and immediate hazards.

I hope to find a substitute, but so far, milk "just works". Soy milk causes me shortterm memory problems, likely due to the high manganese content. It also contains phytic acid, which upsets the stomach, and isoflavones, estrogen-like substances which could therefore be carcinogenic. Unsweetened almond milk works almost as well, and isn't quite as unhealthy, but it's hard on the bank account.

I should add that raw milk is probably the healthiest form of this substance, and might actually be beneficial to drink, all things considered. But it's not cheap, and comes with the risk (although remote) of bacterial infection.

Finally, while we're on the topic, please test your vitamin D level. This can be done through your doctor with a cheap blood test. As you may know, there is mounting evidence that it has a significant role in cancer suppression. Indeed, the anticancer benefits of resveratrol consumption may in part be due to its upregulation of vitamin D receptors. And please note the mention in the Harvard study linked above, which claims that frequent milk drinkers tend to have lower levels of the protective form of vitamin D, despite the fact that milk is a rich source of the vitamin (although this might simply imply that people who drink a lot of milk tend to stay out of the sun).

Now for some fun. Do you like sorbet, or sherbert, or whatever they call frozen sweet stuff? Here's a tasty way to hydrate, get some wonderful plant chemicals into your blood, and avoid the all-day-long elevated blood sugar levels associated with complex carbohydrate consumption.

I live in a tropical region, where we have lots of fabulous fruit. Last week, I bought some wonderful dragon fruit. But in my haste, I accidentally threw it into the freezer instead of the fridge. The next morning, I was dismayed to find that I'd ruined one of my favorite fruits! But I so love the taste, that I decided to eat it anyway after a 30-second thaw in the microwave. It was still frozen, but more like a thick sorbet or sherbert at this point, than a block of ice.

To my delight, it turned out to be highly refreshing, especially given the hot days we've had lately. It also takes much longer to enjoy, given its firm consistency. I discovered that I enjoy it more when it's impossible to gobble it down. Every bite is sort of like cold candy. But there's so much fiber (not to mention frozen water) in it that, for 15 minutes of eating, I only get about 80 calories! Directly afterward, I hit the gym, and burn it all off, leaving nothing left to elevate my blood sugar. (By contrast, when I have oats in the morning, I get very hot a few hours later, and its lasts for many more. No doubt, this is my body temperature rising as the result of excessive glucose metabolism.)

On the plus side, I get a few good plant chemicals to keep in shape. I won't sell dragon fruit as a superfruit (although the Malaysian variety, which is deep red on the inside, might be). But it does help me to hydrate, and tastes very refreshing.

Notice that the fruit is cut in half. I strongly recommend doing so before freezing, as it's impossible afterward. Since this fortuitous accident, I now make a habit of slicing fruit in half, and dumping into a freezer-safe container before going to bed. By breakfast time, it's ready to eat.

I've since tried the same with papaya, although it's less rich in fiber, and therefore hits me too hard with sugar. If you aren't blessed with a cheap source of dragon fruit, then I recommend trying this with your favorite fiber-rich, thick-rinded fruit, for example, water melon. And if you feel the need, you can always nibble a piece of vitamin pill after consumption, in order to jam micronutrients into your cells when they open in response to insulin. Better still, dust your fruit in 1 gram of cinnamon, which will help prevent a dangerous insulin surge, and jam more energy into your cells sooner. (Just hit the gym within 20 minutes, or you'll overheat.) Bon appetit, and don't forget to floss!

Magnesium Glycinate vs. PVCs

As is customary, I eat one junk food meal every month, in order to keep me from getting too bored with healthy food. Yesterday was my junk day, and I took full advantage: 3 small veggie burritos (including cheddar cheese on one of them) and a 100g bar of white chocolate. The latter was not just for gastronomic delight; it was intended to verify my theory that cacao -- and not the fat and sugar in a chocolate bar -- is what causes the symptoms of excessive iron consumption (a tingling sensation all over the skin, if I'm right) and indeed panic attacks.

Rewind. In a previous experiment, I took concentrated cacao polyphenols on an empty stomach -- essentially the opposite of my white chocolate experiment. However, the point of the experiment was not to induce a panic attack or the sensation of iron poisoning; it was to see if I would get indigestion if I consumed this otherwise-very-healthy powder along with my morning elixer of grape skin extract plus 500mg of resveratrol. As I had routinely ingested 100g or more of dark chocolate in a day, I was hardly concerned about the MVPS-related effects of eating this small cacao pill. (NOTE: I have since moved the grape skin extract to mealtime, as my nutritionist friend has convinced me that it's best used to counteract the ill effects of caloric intake, as the French appear to have discovered of red wine; I eat it for the polyphenols, not the incidental 25mg of resveratrol. The 500mg of resveratrol, on the other hand, is better consumed in isolation, in my case, half an hour before breakfast.)

As usual, I removed all the pill caps and dumped the contents into a few ounces of water, and imbibed. To my surprise, a few minutes after drinking my cacao-augmented elixer, the unmistakable surge of panic attack symptoms filled my brain. Fortunately, my years of self-analysis and biofeedback training allowed me to take a back seat, watching myself, as it were, on the edge of a panic attack. (It's hard to explain popping out of yourself in order to remain focussed during such explosive neural activity. But by some miracle of brain function, it's possible.) As I sat in this cognitive "back seat", watching the panic attack attempt to unfold, I was thrilled by the observation that I had chemically induced this occurrence by the introduction of powdered cacao to an empty stomach. (Had I been testing for this effect, then I would not have believed the panic symtoms to have been genuine, as they might have been placebo effect.) After a few minutes, the attack subsided, never having evolved into the full-fledged emotional dysfunction of my early days with MVPS.

Back to white chocolate.

After eating maybe 10g with my 3 burritos earlier in the day, I ate perhaps another 25g just before bed, on an otherwise empty stomach. (I generally make my "junk food meal" just a single meal, in order to prevent bad dietary habits from leaking into the rest of my month. But in this case, I was sloppy.) I was so exhausted that even the high sugar content of the stuff didn't threaten to keep me awake. I settled down to bed, happily satisfied with a full stomach. (I usually eat a single meal in the morning, and stay hungry for the rest of the day. In this case, as I said, I was sloppy, junk food day notwithstanding!)

Maybe an hour later, I started having premature ventricular contractions (PVCs). Serious PVCs, like I've never had since the pizza night from hell in April, 2007. I was experiencing the usual resultant mental resets every minute or so. I started to think back on my day, wondering what I had eaten to deserve such a pounding. The cheddar cheese in the burrito didn't help, but it wasn't enough to cause more than a few weak PVCs. I'd also had some UHT milk (yes, I'm still a minor milk addict, even though my nutritionist friend tells me that its main protein, casein, appears to be carcinogenic). But even then, I didn't have enough dairy food to warrant this level of PVC activity.

Yes, I had the white chocolate bar. But chocolate bar fat never seems to cause me PVCs. (This may be related to the observation that dark chocolate does not appear to raise LDL cholesterol, and perhaps some other blood lipid parameters.) Anyway, I've eaten 200g of 70% dark chocolate in a single day, which causes severe symptoms of the sort descibed above, but not a single PVC. If I ate that much cheddar cheese, I'd be in PVC hell.)

So I couldn't figure out the cause of the PVCs. Nonetheless, they were so severe that I reasoned that my chances of atrial fibrillation, however remote, were materially elevated, and that therefore I must take emergency action. I pried my self out of bed, and headed for the magnesium glycinate bottle.

As I mentioned previously, magnesium glycinate is an excellent palpitation killer. (I do, however, recommend safer means of reducing palpitations, such as regular cardiovascular exercise and avoidance of dairy foods (get your vitamin D, calcium, and magnesium elsewhere), after a consultation with your cardiologist. But for me, it works on those rare nights that I have pronounced palpitations.) But this night was different. I wasn't experiencing mildly annoying palpitations; I was being hammered by PVCs.

I must admit that I didn't really know what to do, apart from the fact that I had to do something. Since I live in a part of the world effectively devoid of competent medical care, I needed to rely on my dietary knowledge. So, as I said, I turned to magnesium glycinate and hoped for the best.

Fortunately, my stomach was almost empty at this point. I chewed 100mg (half a tablet), and swallowed it with ample water. Within minutes, my PVCs stopped. When I returned to bed, they did not return, despite the fact that they are usually aggravated by a supine position. I slept normally for the rest of the night.

I would imagine that the magnesium glycinate went straight into my blood -- perhaps even through buccal absorption, short-cutting the digestive tract. Arriving at the heart, it penetrated the neural timing apparatus therein, and worked its magic. Yes, that's an extremely course and potentially inaccurate model of this supplement's method of action, but it's all I can hypothesize from my observations. Somehow, this stuff really works!

Back to the mysterious PVCs. When I got up in the morning, I had a second look at the chocolate wrapper. When you drop from 70% or 85% cacao to almost none at all, you need to replace the lost volume with filler. In this case, the filler turned out to be "milk powder" and "cream milk powder". Combined with the milk I drank and the cheddar that I ate, these concentrated sources of PVC and palpitation fuel could certainly have accounted for this awful attack. And I thought white chocolate was just lethicthin and sugar!

After all this trouble, my white chocolate experiment did at least produce results consistent with my cacao theory of panic attacks: I experienced no such symptoms, other than the brief justifiable nervousness derived from excessive PVCs. So the good news, it would appear, is if you have MVPS, you can safely eat white chocolate. But then, if you have MVPS, you probably also have MVP, in which case you can't, because it will induce PVCs. Sorry folks, I think the antichocolate advice has to stick. A small portion of 85% dark chocolate per day is probably safe, but if you're like me, you'll end up eating ever-increasing portions until you get so jacked by MVPS symptoms that you quit cold-turkey. It's a shame, as cacao is excellent for circulatory and brain health. Oh well. Stick to grape skin extract and mercury-free fish oil.

One other thing about dark chocolate: in high doses (over 50g per day, in my case), it appears to reduce my tolerance for toxins. Around here, I encounter massive amounts of pollution on a daily basis -- diesel exhaust, metal polish, insecticide, etc. I have consistently noticed that my tolerance for such abhorrent chemicals is much less when I have eaten large amounts of chocolate. This is counterintuitive, as in theory, the high epicatechin content therein should protect me from these poisons. My theory is that is that cacao somehow temporarily overwhelms the liver (perhaps due to the high caffeine, theobromine, and iron content). As a result, we feel unusually sick in response to low-level environmental toxicity; this is the liver's way of telling us that it's unable to metabolise poisons as fast as they're entering the bloodstream. I would suggest, therefore, that the longterm cardioprotective benefits of dark chocolate are best obtained in an unpolluted environment, in order to avoid the negative effects of shortterm liver overload. In my experience, this "liver overload nausea" starts about 5 hours after eating, and lasts for up to 10 more. It's also possible that the liver overload symptoms relate to the high saturated fat content in a chocolate bar, and not to the cacao; however, I seem to recall the same effect with chocolate powder.