President Richard Nixon said, “No,” when asked if he was a crook. President Carter did all he could to say, “No,” to extremely high gas prices and out of control inflation. Reagan stood firm with his, “No,” pressuring the Russian’s to tear down the Berlin Wall. Wife Nancy took her own stand, “Say no to drugs.” Moviegoers said, “No,” to Jurassic Park Two. The Baseball Hall of Fame said, “No,” to Pete Rose while Pearl Jam rose up and said, “No,” to Ticketmaster and most of us are still trying to figure out how to say, “No.” to high cable and cell phone bills.
What about, “Say no to drinking water?”
“Put down the wet stuff!” The stern warning came from the man in the white jacket with an ice cold stethoscope wrapped around the neck most would like to choke.
I love the stuff! Some crave whacky wild beers from around the world, fancy coffee with whipped cream and a bottomless pool of sun fried southern sweet tea…I tend to drown my kidneys in water, literally according to the doctor….something so pure, so incredibly fresh and in his words, it’s destroying my body.
“Hello my name is Arroe and I’m a water-a-holic.”
The very second you step within this chilled radio station studio, the first thing that grabs your attention isn’t my rainbow colored hair and fingers rat-a-tap-tapping on a computer keyboard but rather a giant, out of this world, monster blue 64 ounce cup that screams, “They call me the rain barrel.”
Water is my chocolate. Mom and dad tried to get me addicted to spinach and I chose a water sport…guzzling over 120 to 150 ounces a day. That’s nearly two times more than what the body requires. No twenty four hour period passes without my kidneys looking and feeling like the most recent floods in North and South Dakota. According to the doctor, “Kidney’s weren’t created to transfer just water…they’re fully geared to keeping the inner body free of things that could easily take you down.”
Interestingly enough, when you flush, the natural salt levels in your body depletes inviting tremendous damage to your organs including the brain. Cells expand creating unnecessary pressure on the thinker. One medical book calls my water drinking problem a complex disease vividly warning: Do not self diagnose or locate a cure without seeking medical help first.
As whacked out as it seems, too much water too fast, puts a tremendous strain on the body and organs such as:
1. Your kidneys are asked to put in overtime without pay. When too much water pushes through your system, stolen are valuable minerals in your blood, it becomes diluted resulting in "Hyponatremia"
2. Downing too much of the clear stuff can increase your total blood volume putting an unnecessary burden on your heart & blood vessels
Are you guilty of this Arroe crime? Are you getting really bizarre headaches?
* Too much water causes cells to swell in the brain…guess what? Your skull can’t expand, this is the extreme and can cause death! This could possibly happen in a water drinking contest or a marathon race or in my case in the hours before and after martial arts.
Nice…I spend nearly forty seven years staying away from drugs, cigarettes and alcohol and the one thing assumed safe would get me kicked out of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. No wonder fish in the ocean call me a freak, “This dude doesn’t have enough natural salt in him to properly season a good life and style!”
Symptoms of water overload include: Drowsiness, weakness and confusion.
What’s the most natural thing to do when that junk sets in? Start pouring the legal uppers, heaping cups of coffee, power drinks, the new Butterfinger with energy and the ever popular 5 Hour quick shots, which invites even more problems to the system because now your heart and lungs are working overtime. Can you say stress?
“I can give you a pill for that.” He said to me.
“Wow this is great! We spend billions of dollars annually on research trying to make radio better and you can solve our problems with a pill.”
This doctor didn’t laugh. Please God never send me to a doctor’s convention in Omaha. I’ll do anything! Just don’t land my weird way of walking on their platform of performance.
“I’m concerned,” his well trained, completely engineered by a book thoughts gently interrupted my natural way of trying to laugh bad news off. “The seriousness of this issue has earned you a trip back to my office in thirty days.” And this is the reason why you’ll never hear the 5:00 news talk about the medical field going out of business during a depressed recession. Next week! The garden inch worm has teeth…you may have already been bitten. Consult help immediately.
So what happens when you don’t drink water? Last night was full contact beat the heck out of each other fight night in Tae Kwon Do. I was involved in nine matches. Every muscle in my body was a 12.7 earthquake. In most cases, after a hard tearing of the lining and all other things that invite inner damage, you go home and ice up while sipping on the pure stuff…to replenish the body of the liquids lost during each fight. Not last night…I didn’t touch the stuff, so today I can barely walk or move my arms. They want water and want it now.
I stop writing…my left arm reaches over to the 64 ounces of warm liquid and like a six year old told he’s grounded, I lap that stuff up like a dog begging for treats. Holy cow that tasted great! Oh my goodness that so much better than an ice cream sundae or fresh off the grill BBQ ribs. Wow! Please give me some more of that stuff!
Electrolytes are a valuable piece to keeping your rhythm going. Without them, it’s like asking Motown to rerecord their music without Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye. While you’re at it, let’s dump Diana Ross and the theme song to Herbie the Love Bug.
Drinking too much water shreds your supply of electrolytes to nothingness. I have a new journey…to locate newer ways to communicate to a body that’s just been told, “Wait until your father comes home.”
Don’t steal my art…
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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