On the subject of hydration helping spinal discs and drinking 8 glasses of water per day, I say poppycock!  Anyone who has spent much time on the web should be able to quickly recognize that the Watercure site referenced above is pure pap and hyperbole.  Be careful not to believe everything you read.  Just because someone puts up a website doesn't mean they know what they are talking about.

In point of fact, too many people and websites simply spit out what they have read/heard somewhere else, without any real research or checking.  For this subject, they commonly parrot the "absolute" need for 8 (or more) glasses of water daily.  One, there are no scientific studies that have been done to establish this number for the average person and two, they rarely take into consideration all the liquids we get from drinking coffee, juices or milk, eating fruit or foods that contain water. 

Everyone's needs for water are different.  In my case, I drink an 8 oz glass of juice for breakfast along with 8 oz of 2% milk.  For dinner I drink 8 oz of apple juice.  Outside of this intake, I rarely drink more than another 8 oz of water daily unless I am doing heavy exercise.  Basically, if I feel thirsty, I drink something.  If I don't, then I don't {shrug}. 

Post Edited By Moderator (DDye) : 7/27/2004 6:00:02 PM GMT

Post Edited By Moderator (DDye) : 12/16/2004 4:40:04 PM GMT

Puh-leeze...  If watercure.com isn't the epitome of pseudo-science and web hype, then I don't know what is.  Using adjectives like "breathtaking", awesome", "ground-breaking", etc. should give any thinking person a clue.  You can no more "hydrate" a specific part of your body than you can lose fat around your waist through doing only sit-ups or wearing a rubber girdle. 

Yes, surgery should be a last resort.  BUT surgery is not something to fear.  If you're in pain despite having tried non-surgical solutions, then you should consider surgery.  One should not live with constant pain.  My purpose here isn't to try and convince you or anybody else to go under the knife.  I only hope to help some people not fear the surgical option so much.  Yes, a few people who get surgery wind up worse and few even die.  But the vast majority usually come out better - IF they have a good doctor.  But it's up to the patient to find the good doctors.  Forums like LEF can help in this.

As to your flattened discs, the FDA has recently approved an artificial disc.  Artificial disc's have been used in other countries for some years now and seem to work.  Hip replacements are not a particularly difficult operation these days.

However, I'm glad your "water cure" worked for you.  Good luck.

Julie Cervinka, a 23-year-old legal secretary, had been eager for doctors at the Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan to implant an artificial disk called the Charite in her spine ever since the Food and Drug Administration approved the device Oct. 26. Last week, Cervinka got her wish.

[...] 

Some of the anecdotal evidence for the Charite is impressive. The first European recipient of a Charite disk is still playing tennis 20 years later, according to Bitan. And Jeffrey Lee Gibson, a 46-year-old stuntman who received a disk two years ago as part of the U.S. Charite trial, said he left the hospital the day of the surgery and was able to perform a four-story stomach-first fall for the television show "Third Watch" 12 weeks later.

But many insurers here remain unconvinced by experiences cited in Europe, where more than 6,000 patients have received disks over the years. Many doctors helping American insurance companies assess new technology say that the European studies do not rigorously track results in enough patients to know how long the disks last. Nor, they say, are there comprehensive data that clearly predict what happens when they fail.

Despite limited insurance coverage so far, DePuy says that demand for the Charite has outstripped the availability of the doctors trained to insert it. About 200 of the nation's 6,000 spine surgeons have made the trip to Blue Ash, Ohio, the Cincinnati suburb where the company runs its three-day training sessions. But 2,000 have signed up to go.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/12/24/MNGLGAGRUS1.DTL