Barbara O’Neill – Salt and Water
Water, the second most vital element needed for life. So, the number one vital element needed for life is oxygen. That’s not a surprise, is it? The second most vital element needed for life is water. You can go 3 minutes without oxygen. We can go a couple of weeks without water. I always thought it was three days without water until I read a book called The Long Walk about some people who were escaping a Siberian work camp, and they were in the desert, and they went nearly two weeks without water. What is the second most vital element needed for life? Where there’s no water, you don’t usually get people living, do you? I always say to people, “How much water do you drink?” And these are some of the answers I get: “I don’t like water.” “If I drink water, my feet swell.” “If I drink water, I’m going to the bathroom all day.” Those last two answers tell me that the water is not getting inside the cell.
So, how do we get the water inside the cell? We have to go to the third most vital element needed for life, and that is sodium. The fourth most vital element needed for life is potassium. So, let’s go back to sodium. In nature, we find the highest amount of sodium in sea water. And sea water contains 92 minerals. Of those 92 minerals, approximately 30% is sodium. And of those 92 minerals, approximately 50% is chloride. Now, because sodium chloride takes up the most amount, they are the first crystals formed when the water is evaporated. So, what man does is he scoops up the first crystals formed, he bleaches them white, puts an aluminum with it so that it runs freely, and there’s your table salt. Table salt is a dangerous salt because we now have two very harsh minerals that, if you were to inject both of those into the blood, you would die. There are two harsh minerals, and they need all the other 90 to soften them and balance them. The highest concentration of minerals inside the cell is potassium. The highest concentration outside the cell is sodium. In the bilayered membrane that surrounds every cell, there are sodium-potassium pumps. These sodium-potassium pumps work to maintain the balance between potassium and sodium. When someone’s not eating enough fruits and vegetables—and that’s where you get most of your potassium—and they’re putting table salt on everything far too much, what happens now is sodium levels rise and potassium levels drop. There is a small amount of sodium in the cell, but when this happens, you see osmosis and diffusion happen when the highest concentration merges into the lowest, so now sodium levels inside the cell are rising, which they should not, and the cell swells. What’s that called? High blood pressure. The doctor is right—table salt contributes to high blood pressure. There’s a French doctor named Doctor Lil Angry, and he’s written a whole book on salt. When people come with high blood pressure, I put them on Celtic salt, he said. Why does he put them on Celtic salt? Because Celtic salt contains 82 minerals; it’s a hand-harvested sea salt. So, the minerals are in the Celtic salt in their balanced form. What about Himalayan salt? In many places, Himalayan salt is a lot easier to get. There’s 70, about 75 minerals, so it’s pretty good. But I prefer the Celtic, and one reason is that the Celtic salt has three magnesiums that contain magnesium chloride and magnesium bromide and magnesium sulphate. Magnesium is a water-hungry molecule, and this explains why the Celtic salt is such a moist salt, especially when we’ve had a lot of rain, because those three magnesiums absorb the moisture, and because magnesium is a water-hungry molecule, it can be used to help the water get into the cell. So, when you take a crystal of Celtic salt, put it on your tongue—and some say, “How big the crystal?” Well, if you’ve got high blood pressure, start small, about the size of a sesame seed. I have high blood pressure, so I might have about three times a sesame seed, put it on your tongue. Your mucous membranes start absorbing the minerals, the magnesium is taken to the cell membrane, and you drink your water, and that magnesium pulls that water inside the cell. It’s the quickest way to hydrate a body. The only time excess water drinking can be dangerous is if people drink too much at once and don’t have the minerals that are in the Celtic salt to pull that water inside the cell. I’ve had people complain to me. They say, “I’m drinking more water now. Now I’m going to the bathroom all day.” So I say, “Are you, are you having a salt? Have a little crystal before every glass of water.” And ideally, we should be having approximately 8 glasses of water a day. And then I say to them, “And don’t drink a whole glass at once.” I think I mentioned earlier I drink half a glass as soon as I get up, I go to the bathroom, I drink another half glass. Then I get dressed and have another half glass. But when I start every glass, I have that little bit of salt.
So, you spread the water over the day. And many people have said to me, “Thank you so much, that has made a big difference.” Huge water in, it’s not long before huge water has to come out. It’s like watering a plant. And look how God sends the rain—little by little by little. And when there’s a tornado, when there’s a torrential downpour, that’s when the soil gets washed away and flooding can happen. So, remember that with your body. Take it little by little by little by little. It is the best way to take it. In the gastrointestinal tract are villi. And on the villi is the receptor site, and that receptor site is used to take the glucose through and into the blood.
So, on these villi, we’ve got blood capillaries that go all the way through. In that receptor site is a carrier. This carrier is designed to take the glucose through to the blood. But the carrier will not accept the glucose unless it comes with a molecule of sodium. I read this in my anatomy and physiology book. In the anatomy and physiology book, I memorized the sentence so I could give it to you from the horse’s mouth: “Sodium is the main transport system of glucose across the brush border wall and into the blood.” And yet, what are we told? “Don’t eat salt.” I agree with not taking the table salt because it causes this imbalance of minerals in and out of the cells. And did you know that sodium chloride is so strong it can kill the taste buds? Have you seen people that use table salt? They put it on everything, and they put it on before they even tasted it. Well, no wonder their taste buds are dying. Whereas Celtic salt, with all of its minerals, enhances the flavor of the food. Now, the red lentils we had this morning—a few people have said, “Sue made this at home, even served it at my house at breakfast,” and people have said, “Is there chicken in this?” And I know why they say that. It’s because it’s so flavorsome. Well, it has a little olive oil, some herbs—nice if you can get fresh—or Italian herbs, and some Celtic salt and a bit of turmeric, that’s it. I rinse it very well. It must be rinsed well first, and I do that just before it’s fully cooked. And yet, as you can see, it’s delicious. So, I’m not interested in cooking up onions and garlic and—much as I love that in my lentils, I’ll do that at lunchtime—but in the morning, I’ve got hills to run up and down, creeks to jump in. I’m not interested in being in the kitchen for a long time, and that’s a very quick dish to make. So, sodium not only is required to get the glucose into the blood, it’s also required to get the water into the cell. So, it’s sodium—it’s the third most vital element needed for life, and you can get that information on the four vitals in any anatomy and physiology book, chemistry book, biology book. I’m just giving you the facts here. So, I wish you could see water is very important. But so is the salt. And again, the potassium is found, you know, in your fresh fruits and vegetables.
Calcium cannot get into the cell by itself. It needs vitamin D. When vitamin D’s present, the calcium is pulled inside the cell, and remember, I showed you the other day that calcium is called the king because when it gets into the cell, all the other minerals piggyback on the back of calcium. Something else happens. I’d like to go back to this for a moment—when the magnesium is put on the tongue and you have the glass of water, or half a glass, a little bit later the other half glass, that magnesium pulls the water inside the cell, and in the bilayer membrane that surrounds every cell, there’s a little motor. And when the water is pulled through the membrane and into the cell, it causes that little motor to start spinning, and the spinning of that motor gives us a unit of energy. So, when you’re feeling a little tired or maybe a little bit peckish mid-morning, have the salt and have the water, and you’ll get a little bit of a pick-up. So, whenever one’s going outside to have their cigarette or the cup of coffee, you have your crystal of salt, your glass of water. Absolutely. If you’re working in an office, go outside and find a tree. Remember what the trees are giving us? Life-giving oxygen. Breathe deeply from your abdominal muscle. And that blast of oxygen—remember what the oxygen does at the cellular level? Oxygen will give you 18 times more energy. We have looked at the inside of the working of the cell a few times. And the way I explain it, it looks like there’s one energy cycle per cell, but it is not true. So, what I’ve done is drawn for you here is a whole lot of little energy cycles—in fact, in the muscle cell, you could have 100 energy cycles to a muscle cell. I could hardly get my mind around that. And that’s why the saying that you will receive more energy than you expend on your morning walk—because each one of those little energy cycles will give 18 times more energy if enough oxygen is going into your body.
Glucose, it can’t get into the cell by itself. It has to have insulin. Insulin is the key that unlocks the door to let the glucose into the cell. And what happens with many people before diabetes develops? Insulin resistance develops. You’ve heard of insulin resistance, and when insulin resistance develops, the cell’s resisting insulin, so the glucose can’t get into the cell, so the glucose stays in the blood, and the brain says to the pancreas, “More insulin, more insulin.” But the problem is not more insulin; the problem is there’s insulin resistance at the cellular level. So, what causes the insulin resistance is the high-carbohydrate, high-sugar diet. It just gets to the point where the cell says, “We have got enough.” So, how to recover from insulin resistance is to get the glucose—those carbohydrates—right down, get the fiber up, good proteins, and the healthy fats. That’s the best way to recover from insulin resistance. But just imagine for a moment, and this is happening in America a lot today—people are not drinking enough water, they’re not having the whole salt, and they’re definitely not having many greens, which is where your magnesium is. So, the little bit of water they’re having is not getting inside the cell. They don’t go out in the sunshine because they’re scared of getting skin cancer, so they’re not getting their vitamin D, so the calcium can’t get in, and the minerals can’t get in. And they’re trying to lose weight. So, they’ve listened to a lot of the media hype that you’ve got to stop the fat because fat will make you fat. So, they run a high-carbohydrate diet. Remember what fat will do! It’ll give you satisfaction or satiation or fulfilling. But if you’re not having any fat, you just eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat—the whole packet of cookies goes, the whole chips go. There’s almost—there’s not a sign in your body that says, “Enough.” It’s the fiber, protein, and good fats that will give you that sign. So, they’re on a high-carbohydrate diet, thinking that if they go fat-free, they’ll lose weight. And can you see what’s happening? The water can’t get in, the minerals can’t get in, the glucose can’t get in. And the body says, “What are we going to do?” Because, remember this—this is the CD of the human body. “What are we going to do?” And the body says, “We’ve got one last thing up our sleeve—we’ll just force it into the cell—high blood pressure.”
So, high blood pressure can be a result of dehydration, it can be a result of mineral deficiency, magnesium deficiency, it can be a result of vitamin D deficiency, it can be a result of a high-carbohydrate, high-sugar diet, it can be a result of inactivity. So, there’s a whole lot of things that can come together to contribute to high blood pressure. That’s why the detective hat has to be put on to find out why these things are so. And in some cases, it’ll be a bit of this one, in some cases it’ll be a bit of that one, in some cases other things. And you saw from the first lecture—seems a long time ago, doesn’t it, back to Monday—we looked at how genetics loads the gun, but it’s lifestyle that pulls the trigger. So, the cell and understanding the workings of the cell is paramount to understanding how these things affect the body.
We have a book in our library, and I know we have it in the library here, inspired by an Iranian doctor called Dr. Fereydoon Batmanghelidj. It’s called One of the Body’s Many Cries for Water. The second title to his book is He’s Not Sick, He’s Thirsty. The third title to his book is Don’t Treat Thirst with Medications. His story is fascinating here. I think it was in about the ‘70s or ‘80s, he was a political prisoner, and because he was a doctor, everyone came to him when they had problems. And all they had was water. So, no matter what the problem was, he’d get them drinking a glass of water, he’d come and see them in 15 minutes, he’d give them another glass of water. So, usually in half an hour, they had three glasses of water. And he was just shocked at how the headaches were gone, the migraines eased, the stomach ulcer pain had relieved, the asthma attack relieved. He only gave them water because he had nothing else. He just wanted to make, I guess, a show that he was doing something, and because he was a doctor, they just drank their water. So, he began to document what he was finding because it surprised him. He did not realize, he did not expect the water to have that much of an effect. I can’t remember the period of time, but eventually the government was changed, and he was freed, and he said, “Look, do you mind if I stay a bit longer? I’m in the middle of this fascinating research,” and he has presented his findings at medical conferences. He’s presented his findings in medical journals, but it’s not a very popular subject because you can’t make much money out of water. Now you understand why the second title of his book is He’s Not Sick, He’s Thirsty and Don’t Treat Thirst with Medications. It was a fascinating book for me to read.
I’d like to take you inside and look at a few body functions and how they’re affected by dehydration. So, let’s begin at the mouth. Did you know that in a state of chronic dehydration, too much saliva is produced? Some people think a dry mouth is a sign of dehydration—it is. And too much saliva can be a sign of dehydration. You see, when not enough water is going into the body—and how much water should go in? That’s doing an assessment of that. So, our kidneys—to know how much water should go in, we need to look at how much is coming out. So, in our kidneys, we urinate out 1.5 liters’ loss—now a liter is the same as a quart. So, I’m probably best, because I’m speaking to an American audience, to say a quart loss—1.5-quart loss. And out of the skin, it can be 0.5 of a quart loss. Out of the colon, 0.3 of a quart loss. And out of the lungs, it’s about 0.2 of a quart loss. Say that that equals 2.5-quart loss every day. So, 2 quarts is 8 cups, so that’s 10 glasses—8 glasses of water a day is lost out of the body. And we have no reserve tank on the back, do we? The only water that’s going in is the water we take in. So, we should be drinking at least 2 quarts a day—at least, more if possible. Now, at the moment, because you’re having a steam sauna every day, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve got a 0.8 of a quart loss coming out of your skin because you perspire profusely. The other half can come in your fruits, in your vegetables, maybe your herb teas, vegetable juice through the day, so that’s how much water we need. Dr. Batmanghelidj, he showed that the first place that we feel that water loss—if we’re not replacing the water, the body goes into a form of drought management, and it releases a hormone to manage this drought management. It’s called histamine. And if someone has an allergic response to something, what are they given? Antihistamine—you know the best antihistamine is just water. So, the first place that water is taken from to try and maintain full blood volume in the veins and arteries is the lining of the stomach. We have a thick mucosal wall lining the stomach. And so now, we’ve got a very thin mucosal wall. Now, in that mucosal wall, there’s sodium bicarbonate. And the sodium bicarbonate is in the mucosal wall to neutralize any stomach acid that might try and get through and basically protect against our stomach causes. So, what is a stomach ulcer? It’s basically a breakdown of the tissues. So, let me give you a scenario here. It was probably about maybe 20 years ago—a couple of Australian doctors in Western Australia discovered that Helicobacter pylori caused stomach ulcers. You’ve heard of that theory? They even put Helicobacter pylori bacteria into some people’s stomachs and then got stomach ulcers. So, we had a man do our program from South Africa. And he and his wife came. He was not interested in beginning our trick, but his wife had painful amount. So, he came reluctantly.
And when I’m talking to him—he’s about 57—he did not want to answer my questions. He answered them abruptly and shortly. He wasn’t annoyed at me—I know he was annoyed at his wife that he was even there. I said to him, “Do you drink water?” “Yes, 2 liters a day.” So, I just moved on from that—I didn’t ask any more questions. I said, “You on any medication?” He said, “Yes, I’m on a different antibiotic every month to kill the Helicobacter pylori in my stomach because I’ve had stomach problems for 25 years. I’ve been all over the world.” So, the latest thing he was trying was antibiotics because they found he had Helicobacter in his stomach. I said, “Ah, how long have you been on this program?” He said, “Four months.” So, he’s had four doses of Helicobacter pylori. And guess what? It’s still there, and he’s still got the stomach pain. I said, “Do you interested in trying an alternative to a medication?” He said, “No, I’m very happy with my medication, thank you very much.” And I always give everyone respect—I respect everyone’s choices. Isn’t that our God-given right? Absolutely.
I just said, “Oh,” and I left it there. After the first lecture, where I talked about the body’s ability to heal itself—so that if we have a problem, we should be looking at how the body heals and work with it—his wife, and she was on the medication too, they came straight up to me. He said, “That makes more sense than anything I’ve ever heard. I’m willing to do what you suggest.” I said to him, “I have no authority over your medication.” But I said, “If it was me, I would cease it because it hasn’t worked so far, and I would try the herbs that I suggest.” He said, “I’m willing.”
So, what I did was give him a herb called slippery elm, which coats and soothes the lining of the gut. He did our basic program—2 days on juices. And we encourage people, of course, to drink water between every juice. At the end of the week, I had a very happy man in front of me. He was eager to tell me something. I said, “Yes,” he said. “I’ve had no stomach pain for two days—first time in 25 years.” I said, “That’s good news,” and he said, “No, I’ve worked out the problem.” To me, that was even better news. “Go to the doctor—where? Where?” I said, “What? What was the problem?” He said, “I was drinking nothing between meals, and I was drinking almost a whole liter of water with every meal.”
So, I want to show you what was happening in his gut. So, what was happening in his gut? He’s drinking nothing between meals, which means the lining to his gut is very thin, which means the hydrochloric acid is breaking down the tissues. And remember, the bacteria is an opportunist organism. Also, what happened is the body started to—its own microorganisms changed. Roland came to the cleanup team member, the garbage collectors, and they started to clean up the dead tissue, and their name was called Helicobacter pylori. See why I have to ask, “Why are they there?” No wonder they find Helicobacter pylori in every case of stomach ulcer—they’re there to clean up the mess.
As God would have it, when we smell food and we start to chew food, hydrochloric acid is released. And hydrochloric acid connects with pepsinogen to release pepsin, which breaks down protein. But hydrochloric acid does something else—it’s antifungal, antibacterial. And so, it has the ability to wipe out these guys. And just as hydrochloric acid is considering going down and wiping these guys out, he has a big glass of water. What does this do to hydrochloric acid? It just dilutes it. So, Helicobacter pylori’s chomping away at the dead tissue, and it goes, “That was close—chomp, chomp.” What this man discovered is that he was drinking water at the wrong time. Remember, I said to you earlier, I said, “How much water do you drink a day?” He said, “2 liters,” and because he was a little bit abrasive with all these answers, I decided not to push it anymore.
So, now he drank early in the morning. He stopped drinking half an hour before his meal. That half an hour before the meal immediately thickened that mucosal wall. The water he had the day before fed the hydrochloric acid that’s made in the liver. So, let’s have a look at what’s happening now. Now, being at the health retreat, he’s drinking water at the right time—between meals. His mucosal wall is getting thick. And when he eats his meal, hydrochloric acid, which is not being watered down anymore, comes down and wipes out Helicobacter pylori. What a wonderful process. Who healed him? His body healed itself when given the right conditions. When someone comes to me with Helicobacter pylori, one of the first things I do is increase their hydrochloric acid because, if you increase the hydrochloric acid, remember what one of its roles is—antibacterial, antifungal. So, I’m not criticizing the doctors that discovered that Helicobacter pylori causes stomach ulcers—it is there, it does play a role. But why is it there?
And unfortunately, on the board that awards Nobel Prizes, they run representatives from the pharmaceutical companies. We won’t go any further there, and I certainly am not saying people that get Nobel Prizes don’t deserve it—absolutely, they do, because of their great work. But I’m just presenting you the facts—I’m just giving you the basic anatomy and physiology. So, this man who had stomach pain for 25 years found relief by just drinking water at the right time, which allowed his body to heal itself.
Dr. Batmanghelidj—he found the first place that we lose water is the lining of the gastrointestinal tract. He also found that if you go down the gastrointestinal tract, you come to the pancreas. And the pancreas releases 2 hormones into the blood to help balance blood sugar levels—that’s your insulin and your glucagon. But if you’re dehydrated, those hormones aren’t being made as they should be. So, people today are dehydrated—that can be a contributing factor to diabetes.
He also discovered that there are hormones released from the pancreas to finalize digestion. So, there’s pancreatic lipase to finalize fat digestion, there’s pancreatic amylase that—what—finalizes starch digestion, there’s trypsin and chymotrypsin that finalize protein digestion. Now, they’re all made out of water. If you don’t have enough water, your digestion will be compromised. At every stage, water is needed for every body function. So, no wonder Dr. Batmanghelidj entitled his book—when a person has a symptom of disease, he says it must be one of the body’s many cries for water. That’s the title of his book.
Our brain cells shrink when they don’t have enough water. Headaches are common when we don’t have enough water. Negative thought patterns can develop when our brain cells don’t have enough water. I can get my hand to go in and out like that without pain because around every joint, there’s fluid. And that fluid is synovial fluid, and it is 99% water. In a state of dehydration, the body can take some water from there to maintain full blood volume in the major arteries and veins. So, if I have pain in there, maybe it’s called arthritis, but actually, maybe it’s just a state of dehydration.
Our elbow moves around in water, so we need water at every single step. Also, our lungs. Now, at the bottom of our lungs—I’ll draw you a small picture of our lungs so that you’ll understand this. So, here are our lungs here—that’s one lung. So, your trachea splits and comes down, and then it splits again into little bronchioles. It’s quite a process. And then, at the end of every bronchiole, this looks like a little bunch of grapes, but they’re alveoli, see—at the end of the bronchioles, you’ve got the alveoli.
This is where the gaseous exchange takes place. Over every alveoli, there’s a little blood capillary network, and it is in that blood capillary network where the oxygen is picked up from the alveoli, and the blood drops the carbon dioxide, and we breathe out. In Sunderland, every alveoli, there’s a minuscule droplet of water, and because of the surface tension of water, when you breathe out, that little alveoli collapses, which allows all the carbon dioxide—the majority of it—to be breathed out, so that now when you breathe in, you can breathe in more oxygen. In a state of dehydration, that little droplet of water is not as it should be, which means that it doesn’t totally collapse when you breathe out, which means you can’t get your full quota of oxygen. But what also happens—the body, to prevent the water loss, it can start constricting the little bronchioles so that we don’t lose water, and so one of the signs of dehydration can be constricted, constricted breathing. The blood gets very thick in dehydration. Our blood needs to be nice and thin so that the heart can pump it easily, so that the little filtering units in our kidneys can filter it with ease. So, water is needed for every single body function.
I’m going to give you a story of a man that came to our retreat who had three main problems. He had chronic headaches, which he took a lot of painkillers for, he had a very congested chest, and also had terrible lower back pain. Did you know that 75% of weight held in your lower back is held by water? The other percentage, of course, is taken with your ligaments, your muscles. So, a state of dehydration—lower back pain is quite common. So, that’s what this man had. And when I was consulting with him, I said to him, “How much water do you drink a day?” He said, “I, I don’t drink water.” I said, “You don’t drink water?” I said, “What do you drink?” He said, “All Coca-Cola, coffee,” ‘cause he has a lot of painkillers. He was only 44. He was a well-built man, but at 44, his quality of life had gone. So, we encouraged him to start drinking more water. By the end of the week, the headache had gone, by the end of the week, the lower back pain had certainly eased, and his lungs were a little clearer. I said, five weeks later, he jumped out of the car with a big smile on his face and had a two-liter—you say two-quart—bottle of water. He said, “I’m drinking four liters a day.” He said, “In five weeks, I’ve had no headaches, no lower back pain,” and he said, “My chest is almost clear.” What was his problem? It was dehydration. That’s as simple as it gets—not always that simple, but when it is that simple, it’s striking.
So, Dr. Batmanghelidj’s book, One of the Body’s Many Cries for Water, is an important book because he goes into every body function and shows how important it is for us to be drinking adequate water. One lady said to me, “I drink quite a little, quite a lot of water in my cups of tea.” Sorry, because tea contains dehydrating agents—caffeine and tannin are both quite strong dehydrating agents, and if she puts a little teaspoon of sugar in that, there’s another dehydrating agent in there. Where the pathologist who did our program, he said, “We’ve done studies on caffeine, and we found that you need five cups of water to make up for the dehydrating agents in one cup of coffee.” Now, that was a cup of coffee that also had sugar in it as well. So, not only are people not drinking enough water, but they are also causing dehydration because of the drinks that they’re having. Again, we need to drink little by little by little—how much depends on your activity through the day. If you’re working out in the garden and perspiring a lot, or if you’re having steam baths a lot, then definitely you need to drink more water. One of the signs that you’re drinking adequate water is that your urine is clear. So, when your urine is clear, that’s a fairly good sign that you’re drinking enough water. Now, at the moment here at the retreat, you’re having B vitamins, and B vitamins have an effect on your body to cause your urine to be fluorescent yellow. So, don’t be surprised if this week your urine is fluorescent yellow—you just gotta find out how to get it clear.
And many people in aged care facilities—elderly people—they do not drink enough water, and it certainly is a contributing factor to the mental illness and the deterioration in brains we’re seeing. In Australia, there are 1,700 cases of Alzheimer’s being diagnosed every week. Now, that’s a bit scary. Did you know that God never meant our brain to deteriorate? And tomorrow, we’re gonna go to the brain, and tomorrow, I’m gonna show you how you can get brighter and smarter and wiser with age. The brain should not be deteriorating. Have you read of Alzheimer’s or dementia in the Bible? I certainly haven’t. And before the flood, you know, people were living to over 700 and 800 years old. We’re getting people today who are showing signs of dementia and Alzheimer’s in their 40s and in their 50s, and this should not be. It’s not just one point—often it’s several points—but one is certainly dehydration.
So, I’ll give you a story to illustrate. We had a lady who came into our program a few years ago now—it’s probably about six years ago now. She was 45, and she brought her mother who had dementia. So, we always say if someone has Alzheimer’s or dementia, they will need to have a carer with them ‘cause when at the hospital—we just teach you how to give your body the conditions for healing. When the mother first arrived—so the mother was probably early 70s—I went into the bedroom, and she was just standing there looking out the window, and she looked at me. She didn’t seem to even know who I was or acknowledge me. So, I talked to the mother, and well, I couldn’t say much to the mother, so I talked to the daughter, and I found out she hadn’t drunk any water for two days. And because she had dementia, her daughter would ask her, and she’d say, “Oh yes, I’ve drunk lots of water,” but she actually wasn’t drinking any. And she hasn’t been to the bathroom for three days—I’m talking about her bowels. So, there are two things that we can fix pretty good. So, we gave her herbs to get the bowels moving, and we gave her—we just got her to drink little bits of water. See, a lot of elderly people are put off water because they don’t want to have an accident. But if you can explain to them, just have a mouthful at a time—that’s reachable—just have a mouthful at a time. If you have a mouthful of water every couple of minutes, you’ll be surprised how much water you can get into the body in a day. So, just have lots of little, little bits. Within 24 hours, this lady had no dementia—she was lucid, she was talking to people, sitting indoors. I looked at her, and she hadn’t seen her mother like this for a long time.
You see, I understand what it’s like in an aged care facility ‘cause she had her mother in an aged care facility ‘cause it was just so difficult to look after. She really couldn’t—couldn’t leave her. But the nurses are so busy, they don’t have the time to make sure everyone drinks enough water. And something else happens—when they get them to drink more water, more of the elderly people are having accidents, and then there’s a lot more work for the nurses. I understand that, I understand it. I think it’s our role to give our bodies the conditions so we never get there. Is that right? So that when we’re getting into our latter years, our kids will want us to live in the little granny flat because we’re gonna mind the children, we’re gonna put the washing on the line—or that’s right, you put them in there anyway—close button, they do the ironing, they chop up the vegetables. You know, I say there, there, there—Queen Mother activities, you know, slow down a little bit. But how helpful is that for most busy families to have the mother or the mother-in-law there who’s got a clear mind and can be of help? I understand why so many are put in aged care facilities because they can’t be looked after. One lady said, “Oh nothing, it’s up at 3:00 in the morning, she goes to the people next door, she puts the clothes on off their clothesline. Oh, and my mother was found down the middle of the road naked.” You know that—that’s very hard. And I feel so much for the person because, you know, that’s—that’s very debilitating for the mind to deteriorate like that.
And so, here we had this lady who got her—got her faculties back within 24 hours because we got her bowels working and she started to drink more water. She really liked the salt, and if you give salt to someone, you know what’s the next thing they do? They reach for the water. So, this—her daughter’s name was Isabel—she decided to book in for the next week, so she stayed for two weeks. She hadn’t seen her mother like this for 10 years. Halfway through the second week, she rang up the aged care facility, she canceled her room, and she brought her back home. And she lived with her for another 10 years. She eventually, I think, had a heart attack in her early 80s and passed. But what a lovely thing that that could happen. So, the scary thing about that story is how many people losing their minds are in aged care facilities that, if they just had someone who could work with them and get these body functions working well, would be OK? But, as I said, the person we can work on is ourselves. And when our friends and relatives see the effect of what these lifestyle changes are doing, then they’ll be inspired to make the changes too, we hope, and we gather.
So, I want to give you a few Bible verses that illustrate the body. So, we’ve got Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2. The Bible says, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies living sacrifices.” What’s a living sacrifice? It works well—that we present our bodies living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. You know why it’s so reasonable? ‘Cause we’re living in the body, and it’s nice living in a body that works. But notice verse two, it says, “Be not conformed to this world.” Now, we all know what that means—just go to the fast food shops. Isn’t that the way the majority of people live? “Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” When you’re transformed by the renewing of your mind, you get a clear mind, and I think you’ll agree with me—are you finding now, what are we now? Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday—you’re on your sixth day of being at the retreat—do you find your mind is clearer? And when your mind is clearer, you can make the decision to surrender—to surrender yourself to God. So, that’s why it means, “Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed.” That’s what God wants to do in each one of us—not just transform our bodies, but transform our minds. “Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” and part of renewing your mind is doing what you’ve just done for six days—you’ve got a clearer mind. “So be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good, acceptable, and perfect will of God.” Who do we prove it to? When you’re going to be proving it—when you leave the property, you’ll be proving it to everyone you meet, to your family when you go home. And remember, the most powerful testimony you can give is just you—you’re happier, you’re easier deliverance, you’re actually looking good.