the water
secret
THE CELLULAR BREAKTHROUGH
TO LOOK AND FEEL
10 YEARS YOUNGER, By Dr. Howard Murad, M.D.
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Contents
Introduction One Doctor’s Crusade to Find the Secret to Optimal Health, Page 1
1 How Well Are You, Really? 13
2 Three Kinds of Aging and a Three-Pronged Approach to Care 35
3 Eat Your Water, Don’t Drink It 57
4 Ten Simple Steps to Living by the Water Secret: Meal Plans and Recipes 87
5 It’s Not What You Eat, It’s What You Don’t Eat 131
6 What the Fittest People Know That You Don’t 159
7 Why Skin Care Is Health Care 179
8 Combat Cultural Stress 211
Epilogue Your Best Is Yet to Come 249
Acknowledgments 257
Index 261
Pop Quiz : Which car would you rather drive—a sedan with 200 horsepower or a roadster with 600 horsepower? The roadster, right? But what if it was missing two wheels and hadn’t had an oil change in two years?
The Phase Angle test would tell you to pick the sedan.
The New Science of Age Reversal.
When I first conceived of the Water Secret, I was looking for the most comprehensive approach to understanding health and aging. Theories about chronic inflammation and free - radical damage, among countless others, weren’t enough for me (the last time I checked, there were more than three hundred theories on aging). In 2009 the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was awarded to three Americans whose experiments were pivotal in our understanding of telomeres, the protective coverings on the ends of chromosomes that impact cell division. The amount of telomerase, the substance in the body that builds telomeres, ultimately influences cell death and, in the larger scheme of life, aging. But none of these theories paints the whole picture for me. Certainly these biological events and substances play a proven role, but I sense that they do so within a much larger and universal context. So with every idea that has emerged on aging, in the back of my mind I continued to hear the famous words of Nobel Laureate in Medicine Albert Szent - Gyorgi von Nagyrapolt:
“ Discovery is seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought. ”And even though I've led plenty of pioneering studies about the importance of quelling inflammatory pathways and loading up with antioxidants, I have always felt that something was missing. Like a house with a caved - in roof, it does no good to replace it if you don’t take care of what damaged it in the first place, such as termites that weakened the structure before the latest storm hit.
Now before your imagination starts seeing termites invading your body and poking holes in your cells (it ’ s not really like that), let me briefl y take you back to the events that led up to the Water Secret ’ s establishment. My discovery didn ’ t happen in the lab or in a midsummer night ’ s dream. As with many scientifi c breakthroughs, it evolved over time as I grew to understand my patients and gather evidence from them. It ’ s amazing what you can learn from patients when you delve into their habits and their personal “ secrets ”to staying young, especially when you witness tens of thousands pass through your offi ce from all walks of life. Some seem to defy their age as if by magic, while others show clear signs of having jumped too far ahead before their time. Genetics and luck aside ( “ luck ” means avoiding diseases of unknown origin and regardless of lifestyle factors), there were clear patterns among those who were aging exceptionally well and those who looked desperate for a reboot.
One patient has always stood out in my mind. When Alfred walked into my office more than a decade ago, he was in supreme health for a man of eighty - eight. He never got sick. He hiked every day, stayed active in community events and organizations, had a positive outlook on life even though he ’ d lost his wife a few years previously, and enjoyed a healthy diet that included eggs every other day. Alfred may have had good parents, but I knew that his chosen lifestyle more than anything else dictated how well he lived. He was just one of thousands who offered me insights into aging well, and I took his wisdom to heart. After all, I also was looking for the recipe to feeling and looking as vibrant as possible. Patients such as Alfred helped me to see where I could make improvements and then share that knowledge with others.
One fact I consistently observed was that my healthiest patients shared an ability to hold water without the classic “ water retention ”in the wrong areas. In other words, they were well hydrated (and looked healthy), yet they were not bloated — and they did not lug around bottles of water all day (which, by the way, was not a hip thing to do until recently; some European countries that boast incredibly low mortality rates wonder why Americans seem to have to have drink cups in their cars). My own experience as an avid hiker who continually felt dehydrated on strenuous climbs inspired me to think in this new way and experiment with ways to encourage my cells to hold more water. I theorized that the water - conserving strength of the cell ’ s membrane — its ability to keep water inside the cell (hence the term cellular water) — was the fundamental marker of health and youthful vitality. The diets of my healthiest patients, including Alfred, were rife with the very nutrients that make up cellular membranes, the outer yet permeable boundary of a cell that envelopes its interior and allows certain molecules to enter or exit the cell.
Eager to translate this theory into practice, I used my background as a pharmacist and a physician to attack the problem of cellular water loss. Of course, I naturally became my first case study as I experimented by taking various nutrients in the hopes of creating an ideal environment for maintaining the building blocks of healthy cells. This included supplementing my diet with antioxidant minerals, vitamins, and plant - based compounds; adding anti - inflammatory agents to the mix to prevent free radicals from forming in the first place; and finally, including some omega fats to draw more water to the cells. (And, like Alfred, I started to eat eggs every other day.) My weekly hikes afforded me the perfect testing grounds.
Flash forward several years; by the mid - 1990s I was sufficiently convinced that my theory had been validated by my own experience that I was eager to share it with a few hundred patients whose health needed a boost. Not to my surprise, I found that those who took advantage of my internal care program felt better, slept better, and experienced a remarkable reduction in the severity of common skin disorders such as dryness, acne, and cellulite formation. I also found that their skin had an apparent increase in structural strength and resilience that made it appear firmer, plumper, and brighter — more like young skin. And I knew, as every dermatologist does, that outer appearances reflect what is going on inside. With the help of Phase Angle (PA) technology, which was emerging to measure both cellular integrity and the ratio of water outside the body ’ s cells to water inside its cells, I further validated my theory. All living things, animal or plant, have a PA. The test that determines a PA involves passing a painless electrical current through your body to ascertain its composition, and from there to make certain calculations. Efficient, healthy cells are the building blocks of a healthy body. The higher your PA, the higher your cells are functioning and the more likely that your cells ’membranes are intact (a good thing); lower PAs are associated with cell death or compromised cellular membranes (a bad thing). So when the PA goes up, you ’ re healthy; when it goes down, you ’ re ill. The PA also goes up when you ’ re calm and down when you ’ re stressed. When you exercise more and increase your lean muscle mass, your PA goes up.
PAs have given us a remarkable window into how the body responds to changes in health — for better or worse. This explains why people with illnesses such as HIV or cancer, or those who are nutritionally deficient, routinely exhibit low PAs. As expected, PAs also decrease with age as your body loses its capacity to repair and turn over new cells as quickly as it did in its youth. The true age of a human being can be determined by the changes in the Phase Angle. In as few as four weeks, I’ve watched patients turn back their physical clocks by following my program. An eighty - five - year - old can have a PA age of someone of fifty; a fifty - five - year - old can have a PA age of someone of thirty - five; and a thirty - year - old can have a Phase Angle age of someone of twenty.
By 2000, I ’ d hired a research staff and put my theory through more rigorous testing, both in the lab and in a clinical setting. The addition of external and emotional care to my test subjects enhanced their results, and my three - part program based on the Water Secret was born. In the past eight years, we’ve treated more than two thousand patients and witnessed incredible transformations. Mary, thirty - eight, developed early - stage diabetes as an adult and came to me with a persistent case of acne. A month after following the Water Secret alongside a specific treatment for her acne, Mary ’ s blood sugar stabilized and her acne cleared. Jon, fifty - five, suffered from cysts and depression because he was besieged with the pain of rheumatoid arthritis. Three months after he adopted the strategies aligned with the Water Secret, his arthritis pain was considerably reduced and his depression was lifting. And there was Susan, sixty - six, who, like many postmenopausal women, complained of general aging and skin problems. After ten weeks on the program, her PA placed her at fifty - five years old — more than ten years younger than her chronological age. Each week took back a year of her life, which was clearly visible in a measurable reduction of wrinkles, UV damage, and body fat.
You’ll read more success stories in depth throughout this book. There is no reason why you can’t become one of them.
Contents
Introduction One Doctor’s Crusade to Find the Secret to Optimal Health, Page 1
1 How Well Are You, Really? 13
2 Three Kinds of Aging and a Three-Pronged Approach to Care 35
3 Eat Your Water, Don’t Drink It 57
4 Ten Simple Steps to Living by the Water Secret: Meal Plans and Recipes 87
5 It’s Not What You Eat, It’s What You Don’t Eat 131
6 What the Fittest People Know That You Don’t 159
7 Why Skin Care Is Health Care 179
8 Combat Cultural Stress 211
Epilogue Your Best Is Yet to Come 249
Acknowledgments 257
Index 261
Pop Quiz : Which car would you rather drive—a sedan with 200 horsepower or a roadster with 600 horsepower? The roadster, right? But what if it was missing two wheels and hadn’t had an oil change in two years?
The Phase Angle test would tell you to pick the sedan.
The New Science of Age Reversal.
When I first conceived of the Water Secret, I was looking for the most comprehensive approach to understanding health and aging. Theories about chronic inflammation and free - radical damage, among countless others, weren’t enough for me (the last time I checked, there were more than three hundred theories on aging). In 2009 the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was awarded to three Americans whose experiments were pivotal in our understanding of telomeres, the protective coverings on the ends of chromosomes that impact cell division. The amount of telomerase, the substance in the body that builds telomeres, ultimately influences cell death and, in the larger scheme of life, aging. But none of these theories paints the whole picture for me. Certainly these biological events and substances play a proven role, but I sense that they do so within a much larger and universal context. So with every idea that has emerged on aging, in the back of my mind I continued to hear the famous words of Nobel Laureate in Medicine Albert Szent - Gyorgi von Nagyrapolt:
“ Discovery is seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought. ”And even though I've led plenty of pioneering studies about the importance of quelling inflammatory pathways and loading up with antioxidants, I have always felt that something was missing. Like a house with a caved - in roof, it does no good to replace it if you don’t take care of what damaged it in the first place, such as termites that weakened the structure before the latest storm hit.
Now before your imagination starts seeing termites invading your body and poking holes in your cells (it ’ s not really like that), let me briefl y take you back to the events that led up to the Water Secret ’ s establishment. My discovery didn ’ t happen in the lab or in a midsummer night ’ s dream. As with many scientifi c breakthroughs, it evolved over time as I grew to understand my patients and gather evidence from them. It ’ s amazing what you can learn from patients when you delve into their habits and their personal “ secrets ”to staying young, especially when you witness tens of thousands pass through your offi ce from all walks of life. Some seem to defy their age as if by magic, while others show clear signs of having jumped too far ahead before their time. Genetics and luck aside ( “ luck ” means avoiding diseases of unknown origin and regardless of lifestyle factors), there were clear patterns among those who were aging exceptionally well and those who looked desperate for a reboot.
One patient has always stood out in my mind. When Alfred walked into my office more than a decade ago, he was in supreme health for a man of eighty - eight. He never got sick. He hiked every day, stayed active in community events and organizations, had a positive outlook on life even though he ’ d lost his wife a few years previously, and enjoyed a healthy diet that included eggs every other day. Alfred may have had good parents, but I knew that his chosen lifestyle more than anything else dictated how well he lived. He was just one of thousands who offered me insights into aging well, and I took his wisdom to heart. After all, I also was looking for the recipe to feeling and looking as vibrant as possible. Patients such as Alfred helped me to see where I could make improvements and then share that knowledge with others.
One fact I consistently observed was that my healthiest patients shared an ability to hold water without the classic “ water retention ”in the wrong areas. In other words, they were well hydrated (and looked healthy), yet they were not bloated — and they did not lug around bottles of water all day (which, by the way, was not a hip thing to do until recently; some European countries that boast incredibly low mortality rates wonder why Americans seem to have to have drink cups in their cars). My own experience as an avid hiker who continually felt dehydrated on strenuous climbs inspired me to think in this new way and experiment with ways to encourage my cells to hold more water. I theorized that the water - conserving strength of the cell ’ s membrane — its ability to keep water inside the cell (hence the term cellular water) — was the fundamental marker of health and youthful vitality. The diets of my healthiest patients, including Alfred, were rife with the very nutrients that make up cellular membranes, the outer yet permeable boundary of a cell that envelopes its interior and allows certain molecules to enter or exit the cell.
Eager to translate this theory into practice, I used my background as a pharmacist and a physician to attack the problem of cellular water loss. Of course, I naturally became my first case study as I experimented by taking various nutrients in the hopes of creating an ideal environment for maintaining the building blocks of healthy cells. This included supplementing my diet with antioxidant minerals, vitamins, and plant - based compounds; adding anti - inflammatory agents to the mix to prevent free radicals from forming in the first place; and finally, including some omega fats to draw more water to the cells. (And, like Alfred, I started to eat eggs every other day.) My weekly hikes afforded me the perfect testing grounds.
Flash forward several years; by the mid - 1990s I was sufficiently convinced that my theory had been validated by my own experience that I was eager to share it with a few hundred patients whose health needed a boost. Not to my surprise, I found that those who took advantage of my internal care program felt better, slept better, and experienced a remarkable reduction in the severity of common skin disorders such as dryness, acne, and cellulite formation. I also found that their skin had an apparent increase in structural strength and resilience that made it appear firmer, plumper, and brighter — more like young skin. And I knew, as every dermatologist does, that outer appearances reflect what is going on inside. With the help of Phase Angle (PA) technology, which was emerging to measure both cellular integrity and the ratio of water outside the body ’ s cells to water inside its cells, I further validated my theory. All living things, animal or plant, have a PA. The test that determines a PA involves passing a painless electrical current through your body to ascertain its composition, and from there to make certain calculations. Efficient, healthy cells are the building blocks of a healthy body. The higher your PA, the higher your cells are functioning and the more likely that your cells ’membranes are intact (a good thing); lower PAs are associated with cell death or compromised cellular membranes (a bad thing). So when the PA goes up, you ’ re healthy; when it goes down, you ’ re ill. The PA also goes up when you ’ re calm and down when you ’ re stressed. When you exercise more and increase your lean muscle mass, your PA goes up.
PAs have given us a remarkable window into how the body responds to changes in health — for better or worse. This explains why people with illnesses such as HIV or cancer, or those who are nutritionally deficient, routinely exhibit low PAs. As expected, PAs also decrease with age as your body loses its capacity to repair and turn over new cells as quickly as it did in its youth. The true age of a human being can be determined by the changes in the Phase Angle. In as few as four weeks, I’ve watched patients turn back their physical clocks by following my program. An eighty - five - year - old can have a PA age of someone of fifty; a fifty - five - year - old can have a PA age of someone of thirty - five; and a thirty - year - old can have a Phase Angle age of someone of twenty.
By 2000, I ’ d hired a research staff and put my theory through more rigorous testing, both in the lab and in a clinical setting. The addition of external and emotional care to my test subjects enhanced their results, and my three - part program based on the Water Secret was born. In the past eight years, we’ve treated more than two thousand patients and witnessed incredible transformations. Mary, thirty - eight, developed early - stage diabetes as an adult and came to me with a persistent case of acne. A month after following the Water Secret alongside a specific treatment for her acne, Mary ’ s blood sugar stabilized and her acne cleared. Jon, fifty - five, suffered from cysts and depression because he was besieged with the pain of rheumatoid arthritis. Three months after he adopted the strategies aligned with the Water Secret, his arthritis pain was considerably reduced and his depression was lifting. And there was Susan, sixty - six, who, like many postmenopausal women, complained of general aging and skin problems. After ten weeks on the program, her PA placed her at fifty - five years old — more than ten years younger than her chronological age. Each week took back a year of her life, which was clearly visible in a measurable reduction of wrinkles, UV damage, and body fat.
You’ll read more success stories in depth throughout this book. There is no reason why you can’t become one of them.
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