Hydrotherapy: halting the freshman fifteen

Few students who have arrived on campus have not heard of the dreaded "freshman fifteen," the campus legend of added weight gain promoted by the college lifestyle.

Frequent jokes on the subject aside, there is at least a degree of merit to the oft-whispered rumors. Cornell University nutritional sciences and psychology Professor David A. Levitsky, Ph.D., has recently noted that significant weight gain during the first semester of college is a real phenomenon. EMU students who have felt they are immune to this phenomenon may become unpleasantly surprised before the semester’s end. The Cornell study noted that on average, freshmen gained over four pounds apiece. While this may not seem like much, it is an average, meaning that students with certain metabolic types may gain more, and further, the trend does not always slow with each passing semester unless living and dietary patterns change.

Since the semester and its "all you can eat" dining facilities have just begun, it may be relevantly helpful to review some simple suggestions that can take the edge off of the impending increase of pounds without becoming overly annoying in the hectic pace of the average college schedule.

One of the most efficient and simple answers to weight gain is quite simply, water. Having even wider health ramifications than dieting, and a broader application in the dieting realm than the "freshman fifteen," there is a simple routine that can be implemented to insure that the body metabolizes food, using the nutritional portions and excreting the rest, instead of storing it in the form of fat cells.

It is no secret that the stomach uses hydrochloric acid to digest food. Any freshman chemistry student could attest to the potency of hydrochloric acid. In fact, the stomach is forced to create a new lining every three days in order to compensate for being the storehouse for this acid, and to keep it from being eaten away.

After the stomach completes the digestion of food, it travels to the intestines. The intestines, since they do not grow a new lining on a regular basis the way the stomach does, are also not equipped to handle the virulent acid.

Fortunately, the pancreas produces buffers that break down the hydrochloric acid into a form that the intestines can accept. The problem is that the stimulus for the pancreas to produce these buffers is water. Specifically, the ideal formula is 12 to 16 ounces of water 30 minutes prior to each meal. Otherwise, the pancreas inefficiently produces buffers, the hydrochloric acid is inefficiently broken down, and the intestines buckle up, refusing to accept the food in an efficient manner because the hydrochloric acid is still too potent for it to handle. The food is then stored in the body in the form of fat cells instead of the nutrients being absorbed into the intestines with waste material being efficiently expelled from the body.

It should be stressed that drinking one or two small glasses of water should be done 30 minutes prior to eating. If this gap is not allowed, the stomach will feel bloated and since the stomach uses enzymes, which are liquids, to digest foods, the water will dilute these enzymes, causing digestion to once again become an inefficient process.

Other liquids are not substitutes for water, as related by Dr. Fereydoon Batmanghelidg. "In advanced societies, thinking that tea, coffee, alcohol, and manufactured beverages are desirable substitutes for the purely natural water needs of the daily "stressed" body is an elementary but catastrophic mistake," he said. "It is true that these beverages contain water, but what else they contain are dehydrating agents. They get rid of the water they are dissolved in, plus more water from the reserves of your body."

The best thing that college students can do to keep off unwanted pounds, possibly shed existing ones, and perhaps even lessen the chance of the ulcers that sometimes accompany the rigors of school (since the hydrochloric acid will sit in the stomach for a shorter period of time), is to imbibe a cup or two of water a half hour before mealtimes. After several weeks, the body becomes accustomed to the stimulus of water, and the appetite will begin to increase upon drinking it a half hour before meals, a potential plus according to the old adage, "Hunger is the best seasoning." So drink up, EMU!