The water-heat coupling
I have been fortunate enough to have been allergic to most fever reducers for about 30 years. So I prefer to lie down in a warm bed and let my body do the work. This is more expensive than a doctor and his medication because it usually takes a little longer and I don't earn anything during it. But it seems to me that this will make me healthy more sustainably and that I will be fitter again afterwards. Maybe that's why I survived one of the most threatening diseases, cancer. Medication doesn't help much. My body can help me better if I help it. But how?
When I was a child, my mom called the doctor when the fever reached 40 degrees and they brought the fever down. As a child, I had a very strong immune system and developed a fever of 42 degrees after the first vaccination against polio. Today, at over 60 years old, I have difficulty maintaining a temperature of 39 degrees when I have a severe infection. Yes, do it!
Through my job as a journalist, I learned how to manage fever, this most natural and simplest means of dealing with threats of illness. I interviewed Europe's most famous alternative practitioner, Uwe Karstaedt, about his views on drinking water, which I have been studying for many years. He introduced me to his book “37 Degrees – The Secret of the Right Body Temperature”, in which he describes the damage of a body temperature that is too low. And the need to protect yourself from getting cold not only when you are sick, but also when you are healthy. True to the Hippocratic phrase: “Give me the power to cause a fever, and I will cure all diseases.” For death is cold. In this chapter you will find out how best to keep warm.
Man as a hot water bottle
Calories are units of energy that we get from the food we eat. The term comes from the Latin word “calor,” which means “heat.” So we eat and drink to generate heat. It originally referred to the amount of heat energy required to heat 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. A kilocalorie is the amount of energy needed to heat 1 kg (liter) of water from 0 to 1 degree.
Let's take John Doe, the norm commonly used in science - Man: He is 170 cm tall and weighs 70 kg. Of this, 42 kg (42 liters) is water. If we now look at Mr. Smith as a kind of hot water bottle, its empty weight is 28 kg. To warm Mr. Smith's body water from 0 degrees to 37 degrees, we need 42 x 37 kilocalories. That's 1554 kcal. Quite a bit when you consider that the total average calorie requirement per day is between 2000 and 3000 kcal. Luckily, Max doesn't have to constantly heat his body water from 0 to 37 degrees. But the 28 kg of hot water bottle material also needs to be kept warm.
So it's not surprising that heating the hot water bottle is becoming more and more difficult when the strapping little Max has become an old, weak Grandpa Doe over the course of his life. And if you can't get to the right operating temperature all the time, if you can't even manage a fever of 39 degrees on your own, you'll get sick somehow at some point. This was exactly Uwe Karstaedt's experience with his patients. The vast majority had at least a slight low temperature. And anyone who visits a naturopath is usually sick and is not just looking for warm words, but for therapeutic actions.
Heat distribution with the Richway Amethyst BioMat
How do you boost the energy balance so that the engine of life can turn in the right temperature range again? How do you eliminate the lack of energy that manifests itself in modern illnesses like chronic fatigue syndrome?
There cannot be more calories through food. Better food is more likely to solve other problems than the loss of fever ability. And our body heat doesn't just come from the energy we absorb through food. Our hot water bottle also keeps the radiation from the sky, the warmth of the ground, a warm bath, the sauna, even the body heat of other people in the comfort zone.
But what if we can't walk barefoot through the sunlight on the beach in Gomera often enough, if we don't constantly jump into the thermal baths and if we don't have a cuddle partner in the must-see bed?
Chilling with heat?
Just don't miss anything. Just get well quickly. Sick days are killing my career. Get out of the warm springs! How often have untalented guardians equated illness with laziness, shirking, abseiling and weakness in word and deed. “People die in bed,” my grandma teased when she wanted to set off on a mountain hike at 6 a.m. on Sunday mornings. The bed of love, relaxation, dreams and creativity enjoys at most a secret affection in many circles. However, it is unavoidable even for career people. It is the suppressed gap in the otherwise busy schedule. And this means that the bed is the last chance for natural therapies that require time and at the same time a fixed place. The bed is not in any schedule, but it is a fixed appointment that rarely has to be canceled or postponed.
The infrared mat that can be permanently placed in bed, which Uwe Karstaedt chose as the best form of therapy, shows his strategic brilliance.
There are also infrared sauna cabins that are based on a similar operating principle at comparable prices. But who sits in such a cubicle for an hour every day? I've owned one for 3 years. It even used to be in my home office so I could go in quicker. You don't do it regularly if you have to do it specifically!
On the infrared mat in bed, however, I can sleep, dream, read a book, play a game on the tablet, watch TV, make phone calls, have very personal conversations, and I can even type this test on it. Because the infrared mat does not require any activity from me after it has been set up and switched on. Similar to a meditation or yoga exercise, it switches me passively into the parasympathetic state of relaxation, releases happiness hormones and, at higher levels, even awakens the immune system.
All with just one requirement: lie comfortably on it. The new Biomats that Karstaedt uses even have an extra soft pad called “Quantum Energy Comforter”. By lying around without pressure, you can relax away the pressure that weighs on your muscles as tension or on your soul as fear. Yes, even “chill”, although this youth word has the opposite meaning. Up to 78% fewer stress hormones is pretty cool. Unfortunately, young people today sometimes also have low temperatures, especially when fat pads with poor blood circulation are in the temperature balance of Max Mustermann jr. stand in the way. Traditionally, the bed is associated with the idea of warmth. However, all the heat that is stored in the down must first be produced by the body. The mat also helps. And the restful sleep deepens.
Drink warm or cold
With so much discussion about heat, I see myself as a bogeyman at Ayurveda conferences. This medical treatment that comes from India recommends that sick people drink water that is as warm to hot as possible. This may make sense given Indian hygiene conditions. On the other hand, based on the statements in this book, I support drinking water below room temperature because it can then be better treated with hydrogen. Finally, for the reasons already presented in several chapters, I recommend drinking electroactivated water, which should be rich in hydrogen and also slightly alkaline - up to pH 9,5. In warm or even hot water, 100% of the important antioxidant hydrogen evaporates. The water only remains alkaline. Therefore I advise against it.
At the same time, I advocate infrared mats, which are a mainstay of contemporary pharmaceutical-free therapies. How does that fit together?
- John Doe's 42 kg (liters) of body water doesn't really care whether you drink a glass (0,25 l) of cold tap water at 17 degrees C or a glass at 57 degrees C, which is 20 degrees below or above your ideal body temperature.
- Even if you mix pure water in this ratio, the temperature change is less than 1/10 of a degree. But these are only the conditions when cold and warm are mixed directly. However, these suppress our body's regulatory mechanisms.
- Take your (rectal temperature) before drinking and 10 minutes after. You will see for yourself. For example, if I have cold feet because I've been sitting at the computer for too long, my body temperature will rise by up to 10 degrees 1 minutes after drinking 0,3 liter of cold water from the tap.
- Of course, you can also measure with a smaller amount of water to test your body's ability to regulate. I grew up next to a Munich beer garden where water was only served in beer mugs and I'm used to drinking such quantities.
- Even with hot water - everyone has their upper “pain limit” - you will see that it sometimes produces seemingly paradoxical temperature effects.
Karl Heinz Asenbaum
In his latest water book, the internationally sought-after expert for electro-activated water highlights an aspect of particular health importance: the content of dissolved hydrogen gas, which until recently was underestimated. Hydrogen gas was previously considered a physiologically ineffective gas. This dogma was developed in 2007 by the working group of Prof. Dr. Shigeo Ohta tipped for the first time. Since then, research into hydrogen as a therapeutic gas has exploded.
The focus is on absorbing hydrogen-rich water through drinking. An industry has developed almost suddenly to develop devices for producing such water. Almost every week, the author's parcel post contains new devices that are said to be better than others.
In this book, Karl Heinz Asenbaum explains the different techniques and critically evaluates them.
He also illustrates his ever-new ideas about the “hydrogen revolution,” which not only wants to change drinking but also eating.
