We believe in functional mental wellness, a holistic approach to mental health. We know that there's hope for those of us who have experienced trauma, even profound trauma and that's why we created the universe is your therapist podcast, we believe whether you call it God, the universe, source, unity or love that there is something much greater than us that conspires for our good, we envision a world of healing and connection, and we teach you simple but powerful practices that integrate your mind, body and spirit so that you can come home to your highest self and your truest identity. You are not broken, you are loved, and you can heal. My name is Amy Hoyt, and together with my sister, Lena, we will take you on a journey of healing and self discovery.
Hi, everybody. Welcome back. We're delighted that you're joining us for this podcast. Our topic today is making hydration a priority when you are grinding away at success or when you are experiencing toxic stress. And today, our guest is Wendy arrow. So Wendy and Amy and I actually all grew up together. And Wendy is a psychologist, which is somebody who studies cells. And I'm going to have you Wendy, tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself.
Okay, well, I have been working inside of pathology as a set of technologists for several years. I went to the Johns Hopkins Hospital cytotechnology and laboratory sciences program several years ago, and I have loved working in this field. I also have some interest in bio psychology and how this works. Before I went through that program at Johns Hopkins, I did. So I was a research fellow at the National Institute of Child Health working in bio psychology. And it got me really interested in how our biology is affected by our psychology and vice versa. And that's just a little bit about me.
So one of the things that I remember talking to you about was the idea that our cells are, are impacted by our environment. When you talk about how our biology is affected by other cells. You're also talking about how our biology is affected by our environment, right? Yes. Okay. Tell us a little bit about why hydration is so important when we're trying to recover from difficult things or from toxic stress. Okay,
I would love to talk about this. But in order to talk about it, first, I want to talk a little bit about what is water. So first, we just have some kind of introduction to water. And water is both a liquid and a solvent that is polar, pro TIG and amphoteric. So what does that mean? Okay, it means a solvent is something that's a liquid that has a serves as a medium for a reaction. Sometimes water dissolves a reactant and does not participate any further with that reactant. So this would be like when you pour salt into a glass of water. The result is the water breaks apart the sodium and chloride items in the salt, and nothing else further occurs, all you have is a glass of salty water. On the other hand, water can also play a participatory role as a solvent. And it can act as a medium for when acids, which are things that add protons or bases, which are things that remove protons, or nucleophiles, which are things that have electron chargers are used. So let's say you take this glass of salty water, and you drink it, and you put it into your body. So water carries charged particles to derive the energy you need for cell processes.
Okay, that's incredibly important, especially when we're talking to people who are so busy and so focused on being the best they can be. If they don't understand the importance of hydration, then they're missing out on a central piece of healing for themselves.
They are they truly are. So I would like to talk a little bit further about water. That's right, please. Yes. Okay. So water is also PROTEK. And what does that mean? It means that it can participate in hydrogen bonding. And hydrogen bonding is a powerful molecular force. hydrogen molecules can bond with just themselves, or they can bond with other particles outside of themselves externally. And what this does is it creates a layer of water around every particle and every cell, and it sort of is a fluid layer around it. And it can since it's amphoteric, it can also react with acids and bases in a safe manner, all in the same body of water. So how does Hi duration fit into this. What is this matter? Why does this matter? Hydration basically means that water is binding to something else without breaking it apart. Hydrolysis would be water breaks it apart. Hydration means it saturates it without breaking it apart. And an image of what hydration looks like would be like, well, they need we've all done that when a sponge gets wet. Right? You take a sponge just dry, you put water on it, the water molecules expand throughout the sponge. And they feel every nook and cranny, which gives it some structure and some buoyancy, right? That's something we all can do. But it doesn't break this sponge apart. Would you say? Right. So the role that it plays how this applies to cells, and the role that hydration plays in the cells is that each cell has a membrane, and that serves a couple different functions. It provides structural support for the cells, which helps protect it. And it also gives the cell parts the space they need to function inside that cell. So it gives a fluid area of space, right? So the cell membrane also helps the site the cell decide what it allows to come into the cell? And what are the sense out of the cell. So this cell membrane, yeah, is surrounded by water. And inside and outside is water. So that's how this is applying to the cells. Go ahead, Lena, what's
the question when I'm visualizing in my head is that when we are hydrated sufficiently, it cushions the cells, but it also hydrates the cells. And the hydration contributes to us having energy?
That's part of it, that's part of it, there's a little more to the story. But yes, okay, you have cells, you have hydration, you have water outside, you're gonna need water outside yourself, and you need water inside yourself. So there's a balance, right, so that's fully hydrated on the inside is imbalanced as still a cell that's dehydrated on the inside wrinkles up a little and just forms and can't function as well. So what happens here is that the water that surrounds the cell, or the organelles inside the cell, the water that surrounds it connects with other cells, water that surrounds that cell. So you have one cell surrounded by water, you have another cell surrounded by water, those two connect at the space of the water, the hydrogen bonds connect to each other. And in that space, is where they communicate with each other in the space of water.
That is so fascinating. Fascinating, most of us are pretty aware that hydration is really essential, but I don't know that very many of us understand exactly why. And when you talked about how when the cell is dehydrated it it miss forms. What I was thinking of is your job as a psychologist and all you do all day long is look for so abnormalities. So if we're dehydrated, and our cells are collapsing, or they're collapsing probably isn't the right word, but if they're not formed correctly, that's really bad for us. It doesn't mean we're gonna have cancer, but it's, it's not we want ourselves to be in the right shape and functionally functioning optimally.
Right? So let's talk about what some of the things that the cells do have to do. What do they do? Like? How what do they need to communicate with each other? Why do we need them to communicate? Why did they bond by this water? Well, a singular organism and this is going back to what you discussed before about the environment, a singular organism is limited in its capacity by its spatially, right. So one single organism in my foot is not spatially aware of anything happening in my hand or my shoulder and my stomach, right? It just can't.
And when you say organism, you're talking about cell, I mean a cell organism,
okay? Once, so that's what I mean. That's all right. So one cell in my foot is not going to spatially be aware of what's going on in my hand, or my shoulder or my back, or my stomach, or my neck or my head, right in my brain. But when because it's surrounded by water, I if I touch something that's hot, my with my hand, my my feet need to know that I need to back away from that. And they know this because the cells from my hand are able to send a signal that travels through the water system, all the way down to my brain up to my brain and down to my foot that says move away from something that's hot, you are in danger. And so we need water as that channel to allow ourselves to communicate to keep ourselves safe.
Try That was awesome. So we talk a lot in the podcast and in our program about our autonomic nervous system and fight flight freeze. And in order for our autonomic nervous system to work well, probably in any arena, it needs, we need to have proper hydration so the cells can communicate.
Right. So I would say water is needed for cells to interact in a way that makes them whole body aware, or at least aware of the things that they need to know.
I love that that's really interesting. It they need to know environmental
signals. So signals travel through water in the body, the signals come in forms of particles from outside the cell that needs to know, they can be positively or negatively charged, and associated with them. Those charges help help create movement, their power, they Power Movement, those charges, and water has the unique ability to maintain both positive and negative charge. And, of course, a negative charge would push away and a positive charge would propel forward. And water is important because it acts as the medium that keeps everything moving. So it moves the right signals and the right proteins and the right nutrients and the right particles to the right cells. So basically, the gist is this. Hydration is important. Water is the river that carries signals between cells. When we don't drink enough water, that river slows down and becomes a slow flowing stream in our intercellular interactions are negatively impacted by this. When we are not hydrated, our cellular processing slows down. And what do you think happens when your cell processing slows down?
I think we don't heal very well. And we're not we don't have good cellular communication.
Yeah, exactly. And slow process. So slow cellular processing hinders your body's ability to function, or to react. And I would imagine in your field, you need to be able to function you adopt, say all the reasons you need to and you need to be able to react to something right when when our everything slowed down, and we don't react or function properly or optimally. It leads to imbalances. These could be physical imbalances, like too much inflammation that leads to like an autoimmune disease. Or they could be mental imbalances, like too much unprocessed norepinephrine, which leads to feelings of anxiety. And they also, of course, have those same functions for things that work inside the cell that required for the communication is the medium by which the cells communicate with each other inside the cell as well. So because all the things inside the cell, the organelles, the proteins, the nucleus is all surrounded by water as well. And what water does is it because it contrary those charges, it increases our ionic homeostasis and increases the electrical balance in the body. So it helps us be more balanced. What does this mean? Why do I care about this? This means that water provides a safe place for protons and electrons to interact with each other in a way that's safe for the cell and safe for our bodies. One thing ourselves do is take nutrients and turn them into energy. So it gives us energy, and that fosters and feeds cell regeneration. And some of the cells that our body regenerates our neurons and glial cells that are in the brain. So the water helps us because it balances everything. We're not exactly sure what all the glial cells do. There's a lot of them. And people are still studying. They used to think they were nothing but now they're studying how do they help us with neuroplasticity and other things?
Right? I think this is so interesting. One thing that brought to mind when you're talking about positive and negative charges, there's a really big trend right now towards is it called ionic water. Is that what it's called? It's like a pH specific water. Can you talk to us a little bit about how that might impact us and whether that's something we should be pursuing?
Well, honestly, Lina, I don't know a lot about the ionic water brand, okay. But what I can tell you is that ions are positive charges. And maybe if they're trying to help you have balance there. So you need you need balance. It's important to have hydration because it allows our brain to generate new cells and operate in a more electrically balanced way. So this helps our whole body but it really helps our brain as well. And the takeaway is, I would say, drink water, stay hydrated. And because it's the easiest and most important way to improve your physical mental health, you know you need your body to come indicate you need it to work, you need it to function, you want every part of your body to communicate what it needs to, to tell your body, what I need, or what I can give. And it just, if you have water and you're hydrated, that will happen for you optimally, if you're dehydrated, it slows everything down and disrupts the process and you just work at a slower pace. You know how it is an engine on a low battery just doesn't work as well. Mm hmm.
Yeah. So I'm very fortunate that I love water. I'm really fortunate. And I really love it. I drink probably 120 ounces plus a day. But there are other ways that we can be hydrated. One of the things that Gina talked about in our whole health lab module around hydration, is she talked about how we get so much of our hydration through some of our foods. So if we're eating fruit and vegetables, we are getting hydration from those foods, probably not so much. I don't know toast or candy bars. But that we can get a lot of hydration from our foods. And then she also mentioned that there was a recent study that indicated that a glass of milk could be as beneficial, if not slightly more than an electrolyte drink. Yeah, after stressful situations, whether that's a physical stress or an emotional mental stress. She also talked about how on caffeinated tea, she did mention coffee, but she also put a caveat in there that coffee is a diuretic. And so what it does, it irritates your bladder. And so then you have more impulse to urinate and you're emptying your cells of water when that happens. And so she encouraged people to be conscious of their caffeine intake while they were working on their hydration.
Yes, I love all those things to go back to what you said about the, the electrolyte drinks, they're fine. And some people's, you know, are proponents of them. But I personally think I don't want to bring something like that into my body, I would rather just drink straight water, the water that you drink, you can drink distilled water, which doesn't have any charges in it. But if you drink tap water, you're gonna get some electrolytes in charge, and they're just naturally most of the water that you drink. And I do think it's beneficial. If you're really dehydrated, or if you've been fasting, you need some electrolytes. But in general, I would say that could disrupt the balance you normally have if you're living a healthy lifestyle. I'm not a fan of electrolyte filled water, or drinks unless it's used for some kind of recovery.
So for a specific purpose,
right, so but I love that you drink so much water every day. That's amazing.
I really do recognize I'm lucky. I mean, I talk to people all the time about hydration, and there are a lot of them will say I hate water. And then this is what I think and I don't know what your thoughts will be on this. But you know my saying some thing is better than none thing, like Yes, something towards health. And so I encourage my clients to add some kind of flavoring to their water. It will allow them to increase their water intake to a healthy level. And so my clients will do mint and and melon, any kind of melon or mint, they'll infuse the water. Some of my clients will do cucumber and mint. And when we drink low sugar juices, that's a lot of hydration as well, especially if they're pure juice without a lot of like high fructose corn syrup and added ingredients. So there's a lot of ways to get hydrated. And always remember that some increase in hydration. However you get it is better than none increase in hydration.
Yes, I agree. That's wonderful. Awesome.
Thank you so much for joining us today. We hope you found this helpful. If you would like more information on the work that we do with mending trauma, you can go to mending trauma.com And the whole health web that we mentioned today is our program for people who are interested in healing from toxic stress and from trauma. Thanks again.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you want to go deeper on this subject or any other subjects we've covered in the podcast. We are so excited to be launching our signature membership program at mending trauma.com This is a trauma informed mental health membership where we combine clinically effective practices courses and mentoring while putting you in the driver's seat. We teach you how to heal your trauma with the latest research combining mind, body and spirit we want to walk you through a healing journey while also empowering you. If you have felt this episode is helpful, we would absolutely love if you would go to Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your pods and give us a review. We'd also love it if you would share it with someone you think it might help tag us on social media at mending trauma.com Or at Amy Hoyt, PhD, we would love to reshare and also if there's anything we can do to help we would love to hear from you email info at mending trauma.com Give us your suggestions or topics you want to hear about. We would absolutely love to be of more service to you. We're so excited because we have so many good episodes coming up in season two, and we can't wait to go on this journey with you
