Water Retention Causes & Kitchen Remedies For Water Retention
Water retention is a condition where your body tissues retain water, giving a bloated, puffy look and feel. You also look like you are overweight, even though you may not be. It is not due to drinking too much water, but rather to how your body handles the water you consume. The most common reason for weight gain caused by water retention is food allergy. We already know that food allergies are the body’s immune system response to an ‘invader’. To deal with this, the body produces a substance called histamine (the same one that makes you sneeze if it gets in your nose) that causes the walls of the capillaries to become more permeable. This allows the immune system’s army of white blood cells to move into the battlefield, to destroy the offending substance. But this also allows more fluid to pass into the tissues. If this happens several times a day because of the foods you are eating, your tissues become waterlogged, below this article we will be giving you tips on kitchen remedies for water retention.
Symptoms of retaining water are:
- A puffy face, especially around the eyes
- Abdomen waterlogged and bloated when you press it
- Puffy arms
- Ankles and fingers that swell up
- Dry skin or dandruff
- Sudden weight fluctuations
- Proneness to allergies
- Breast tenderness
The solution to water retention is not to drink less water (drinking lots of water does not lead to weight gain on its own!), but to eliminate those foods to which you are allergic. The fact that our bodies are over 80% water gives a clue as to how important water is for us. Water helps to eliminate toxins released from fatty tissue as you burn it up. It helps to dilute the bloodstream to prevent an over-concentration of sugar or protein. Most people notice great improvements in their health and weight control, just by drinking more water.
EFA deficiency
The second cause of water retention is essential fatty acid deficiency. If you’ve ever wondered how the body could be over 80% water, the answer is – fat! The cells of the body are encased in a membrane that is made up mainly of essential fats that keeps the water in. If you lack them in your diet, you lose the ability to maintain the right water balance. Your skin dries up and you may be sweaty and have dandruff. At the same time, your tissues become waterlogged; you have a puffy appearance and gain weight.
Too much sugar
The third cause of water retention is too much sugar in your diet and weight loss program. Every molecule of sugar in your body holds water. So, if you eat too much sugar, you will retain water. By balancing your blood sugar, you will help to prevent excess weight being stored as water.
Too much sugar also leads to salt retention. Your body needs a certain amount of sodium (far less than we consume!) and the kidneys get rid of the excess. When your blood sugar gets out of control, the kidneys don’t filter out enough salt, so the body’s sodium levels rise. Salt attracts water, so your body gradually becomes waterlogged.
The kidneys filter the blood and decide how much water to keep and how much to excrete. A way of giving your kidneys a break, and help reduce excess water retention, is to consume more potassium and magnesium, and less sodium. Meat and processed foods are high in sodium. Raw fruits and vegetables are high in potassium and magnesium. The more sodium you eat, the more potassium you need. Potassium works with sodium to help regulate water balance and proper nerve and muscle impulses. Sodium accumulation is caused by a potassium deficiency and not always excessive salt intake. Severe potassium deficiency manifests as fatigue, weakness, confusion and constipation. So the danger is not in eating too much sodium (within reason), but in not getting enough potassium.
Kitchen Remedies For Water Retention Salt Lovers
If you like eating salt, with this particular kitchen remedy for water retention you will have to increase your potassium intake by adding an equal amount of potassium chloride and cream of tartar to your table salt (half salt, a quarter potassium, a quarter cream of tartar). Or add teaspoon cream of tartar to a liter of your daily drinking water.
Insulin and the liver
The more your body experiences allergic reactions, the more resistant you become to insulin. One of the substances your body releases to deal with the allergy, cytokines, makes you less responsive to insulin. As we have seen, this is really bad in terms of keeping weight off.
Repeated allergic reactions cause more toxins to land up in your bloodstream as your immune system fights off the invaders. All this toxic waste has to be cleaned up by the liver, the body’s detoxifying organ. Eventually, the liver’s detox capacity can reach overload. When this happens, your body dumps the toxins in the least harmful place – your fat cells. The more full of toxins your fat cells become, the more weight you gain and the harder it becomes to shift those extra pounds. This is why people with allergies find it increasingly more difficult to lose weight. In addition, a continual process of over-toxification can turn a mild allergy into something more severe. There's good fat & bad fat, which is good for your health?
Bingeing
Ironically, very often the foods to which a person is allergic are the foods that person really craves. In fact the link appears to be so strong that if you are craving and eating something frequently, as though you are mildly addicted, chances are you are allergic to that food. Or if you crave a particular food when you are in an emotionally stressful situation or period in your life, chances are you are allergic to it – our so-called ‘comfort food’. While the reasons for this are not entirely understood, it most probably relates to blood sugar levels. Much the same as when caffeine, sugar and refined carbohydrates give you a spike in blood sugar levels, with the accompanying good feeling and then later increase in appetite, so an allergic reaction can cause the same effect. So it seems that an allergic reaction to a food can cause bingeing.