Safe, clean water is critical for your good health and this podcast is going to article focuses on the importance of water in the digestive system and discusses some of the digestive ailments that can arise with chronic dehydration.

The cornerstone for functioning of the entire body is the digestive system, and water plays an important part in correct digestion.  Digestion supplies the energy for your body. Without enough energy the organs throughout the body don’t function correctly, you may feel fatigued, you may be in a brain fog and you could experience memory loss, just to mention a few of the more minor problems.

One of the most important factors in digestion is the acidity of the food you are digesting. In general, the stomach requires a certain amount of acidity in order to get the digestive process going. The small intestine requires alkalinity in order to allow the friendly bacteria and digestive enzymes to work, and the large intestine requires acidity to stimulate the bowels to eliminate the waste food products.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these three functions…

The stomach needs water in two important ways that are related to hydrochloric acid. First, water in the body is required to produce hydrochloric acid itself at the proper ph. This may seem a little counter intuitive, but keep in mind that in this case the water is not actually in the stomach at the same time as the hydrochloric acid. It’s in the body when the hydrochloric acid is created.  The ph of the acid in the stomach must be in the neighborhood of 3 for digestion to start, but that’s too acidic for the tissue of the stomach… and that brings us to the second important function of water… producing the mucous stomach lining.

Without this mucous lining, the hydrochloric acid comes into direct contact with the stomach tissue resulting in stomach ulcers… and if you’ve ever had an ulcer you know that’s not a pleasant thing.

Dehydration results in a stomach acid that is insufficiently acidic. When the contents of the stomach are not acidic enough a little valve called the pylorus does not open and the contents of the stomach don’t pass from the stomach into the duodenum. The stomach really wants to get rid of its contents so it tries moving it in the other direction… namely up into the esophagus. Even though the stomach contents are not acidic enough, they are still acidic and that acid burns the esophagus producing heartburn. Think of all the pharmaceutical drugs for heartburn and indigestion that could be eliminated just by drinking enough water.

The pylorus eventually does let the stomach contents pass, even though they are not acidic enough. But, since the contents are not sufficiently acidic, they will not properly trigger the release of pancreatic enzymes and bile. Without those two substances the contents stay acidic as they pass through the small intestine instead of being converted into an alkaline state. Unfortunately, the good digestive bacteria that like an alkaline state and don’t function in the acidic environment so, in essence, the food does not properly digest. That means you don’t get the nutrients that you need and, of course, without proper nutrition the body suffers.

Normally, in the process of doing their job, the friendly digestive bacteria in the small intestine convert the digested food back into an acidic state for the large intestine. Without enough stomach acidity, the small intestine’s bacteria don’t completely digest the food. Instead, it passes to the large intestine with undigested particles… but something else that’s very bad also happens.

In an effort to conserve water, the body extracts water from the partially digested food. That leaves half-digested, dry stool of the wrong ph in the large intestine and causes constipation. In fact, if you regularly have hard dry stool in your bowel movements, you can bet you aren’t drinking enough pure water.

To sum it up, lack of water in the digestive system can result in ulcers, indigestion, heartburn, fatigue, brain fog, memory loss, improper function of any of the organs, partial digestion, and constipation.

You’ve got to drink plenty of safe, clean water every day and it’s doubtful you are getting that kind of water from your city, your well, or bottled water.