Since Daniel beseeched Ashpenaz, the head of palace personnel, to “give us pulse to eat, and water to drink,” you can see why water is a pretty large component of your health and certainly a key contributor to the efficacy of the Daniel Diet.
When it comes to cleansing, water is the river that hydrates the cardiovascular system, keeps the engine of digestion running smoothly, and lowers body temperature in stifling heat. Water plays a significant role in good health because of the way it revs up your metabolism and irrigates cells so that they can more efficiently process what you eat and drink. When your body’s cells are well-hydrated, you accelerate the liver’s ability to remove waste and help your kidneys flush out toxins.
Daniel and his cohorts were likely not aware that water regulates body temperature, carries nutrients and oxygen to the cells, makes up 92 percent of their blood plasma, cushion joints, or protect organs and tissues, but they understood that water was necessary to maintain energy, strength, and endurance.
As with many things in life, there’s water and then there’s water. In my experience, the key characteristic of water is its structure. What does that mean?
Many people are unaware that water has a unique molecular structure. Japanese researcher Masaru Emoto, author of the fascinating book, The True Power of Water, studied the distinctive scientific properties of water by taking water samples from around the world, slowly freezing them, and then photographing them with a high-powered microscope. What he saw was that each water crystal was unique, just as no two snowflakes are alike. But something greater caught Emoto’s eye: clean, pristine water created beautifully formed geometrical crystals, while the crystals from dirty, polluted water were either distorted or randomly formed.
In other words, water has much more “structure” to it than anyone ever thought possible and responds to outside forces and agents. The small size of water molecules contradicts the complexity of its actions. When water is in its liquid crystalline form, the molecules move together, much like a school of fish swimming in unison.
Researcher Clayton M. Nolte, who’s made it his life mission to study the properties of water, said that structured water is water in its natural form. “If you take a gallon or ten gallons of water and pour it in a mountain stream at the top of the mountain and then collect it at the bottom, the water is structured. Structured water is free of negative energy. It has a balanced pH.”
Twenty-five years ago, French scientist Jacques Benveniste rocked the scientific world when he published a research paper in the highly respected journal Nature stating that pure water has “memory” of its origin as well as memory of what it’s gone through up to present time. In his research, Benveniste started with a substance that caused an allergic reaction. He kept diluting the substance until there was nothing left except for water. That pure water still managed to trigger an allergic reaction when added to living cells. This is very similar to the principles of homeopathic medicine.
Take a Sip of Terrain Tonic 10
Beyond Organic has produced a botanically and structured infused water beverage known as Terrain Tonic 10, which we offer as part of the Daniel Diet 10-Day Transformation Pack. Infused with ten organic fermented botanicals, Terrain Tonic 10 is the perfect beverage to consume during a cleanse or daily as a tonic beverage.
Visit www.LiveBeyondOrganic.com for more information.
Peer review of Benveniste’s claims could not be independently replicated in the lab, and it turned out that Benveniste was misled by flawed experiments. One thing scientists agree on, though, is that water can have a different structure under some circumstances because water molecules bond to each other in different ways, forming different geometrical structures—like the ones that Dr. Emoto viewed with microscopic photography.
Drink Plenty of Water
If you’re unable to drink structured water, you can find naturally structured water in the form of natural spring water. At the very minimum, any water you drink must be filtered.
Spring water occurs when water flows to the surface of the earth from underground without man’s intervention. When you consider all the water on earth, including the mighty oceans and seas that cover 71 percent of our planet, only 2.7 percent is fresh water, and just a fraction of that amount comes purified by the hydrogeologic formations under the earth. Called “living water” by many health experts, spring waters can range from those high in mineral content to those with lower amounts of solids.
Drinking municipal tap water just doesn’t cut it these days. Tap water is routinely treated with chemical agents such as chlorine, chloramines, and fluoride to “scrub” the water—which introduces environmental toxins and changes its structure. That’s double trouble for water.
The same goes for water marketed as “mineral water.” Sure, minerals are great, but the minerals you find in water are generally in a form unusable in the body because when water runs over rocks, the rock sheds minerals, which become part of the water. The liver has to work harder to deal with minerals and trace elements such as zinc, magnesium, and iron from water. These minerals are more bioavailable when they come from foods, so I don’t agree that water with a high amount of minerals or solids is the best source for drinking.
Distilled water is a type of water that has its impurities removed through steam distillation, a process that involves boiling the water and condensing the steam into a clean container. This is meant to replicate the process in nature where water turns to steam and rises and condenses in clouds and then rains down to earth as essentially distilled water.
I keep coming back, though, to structured water as the healthiest way to go. Dr. Emoto is convinced that water changes its quality according to the “information” it takes in. In his research, Dr. Emoto exposed water to different types of music—classical Bach, Japanese folk music, and heavy metal riffs—to see what would happen to the composition. Distilled water exposed to classical music took the shape of delicate, symmetrical crystalline shapes. Water samples bombarded with heavy metal chords and a big drumbeat did not form crystals at all but displayed chaotic, fragmented structures.
Some of you are nodding your heads and saying, I could have told you that would happen. Based on this and other water research as well as my belief that various frequencies can have a major impact on the structure of water, we play worship music and healing Scriptures at the source of our water used in our beverages and in our dairy parlor where the cows are milked.
The best news of all is that I think our employees who milk the cows have more Bible verses memorized than just about anyone. I think our cows must know quite a few Scriptures by heart as well. Just don’t ask them to quote any.
Another researcher, Dr. Gerald Pollack, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington, studied water’s structure and discovered that much of the water in the human body is in a liquid crystalline/structured state. This allows the tissues of the body to work more cooperatively.
Proponents of structured water often stray into New Age terms, declaring that structured water has “life force energy” and a “vortex phenomenon.” Putting that aside, there are some scientific insights into structured water that can’t be overlooked or denied. Logic should tell us that we should never drink water that has been recycled, polluted at one time, or was former waste-water, if at all possible. Water changes properties when man starts messing with it or polluting it, and that’s something we can all agree on.
I’ve tested structured water both personally and put it to use on our Beyond Organic farms in southern Missouri. My goal was to create a healthy forage base by more effectively growing the desired plants. A key to the growth of healthy plants is properly hydrating the soil and the root system. One of the main benefits of structured water is that the water actually becomes “wetter.”
Scientifically, what is happening to the water is a lowering of surface tension, allowing the water to better penetrate the soil and even the root structure of the plants. We have installed multiple structured water units on our farms to be used in irrigation of our pastures and to provide drinking water for our cattle. While we can’t prove this scientifically, we, along with several other progressive farmers, can attest to improved pastures, healthier cows, and even an increase in milk production.
You can purchase structured water units that look very much like water filters that you place between the water line coming out of your wall and your kitchen sink, refrigerator, and shower or you can install whole house units.
When you join the Maker’s Diet Revolution, you may want to replace your beverage of choice with structured water or other cleansing beverages such as fresh juices or cultured whey beverages.
Drink Up
How much water should you drink?
Probably a lot more than you’re drinking now. Perhaps you noticed in the Daniel Diet plan outlined in Chapter 1 that I recommend drinking four 16-ounce bottles of purified water before consuming your first meal of the day at 2 P.M. Then the rest of the day, I recommend another three to four additional bottles.
I understand that is quite a bit of water during a ten-day cleanse. However, for the average person on the average day, I operate under the rule of thumb that you should drink one half-ounce of water for every pound of body weight.
Since I started the Daniel Diet, my weight has been hovering around 185 pounds, which means I should drink 92.5 ounces of water or other cleansing beverages per day, which amounts to almost six 16-ounce bottles. I know that’s a lot of water—considerably more than a half-gallon—but if you’re interested in transforming your health, hydration is a key piece of the puzzle. Exercising will increase your need for fluids, so monitor accordingly.
There’s one more reason why I recommend drinking so much water. Drinking water throughout the morning will take the edge off any hunger pangs before your first meal in the early afternoon.
So drink early and drink often.
I hope that you’ve kicked the habit of drinking sodas and diet soft drinks, which are terribly unhealthy to consume. Many are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup or non-nutritive chemical sweeteners, which can be devastating to your health and can even become addictive.
It may take some willpower to retrain your taste buds to accept the taste of water, raw veggie juice, fermented herbs, teas, and cultured whey beverages, but once you do, your body will begin to crave the fluid replacement it needs to fuel the trillions of cells that make up your healthy body.