S4 Ep 44: Water— The Ultimate Essential Ingredient— 100th Episode Celebration!! with Gina Bria
“You’re a water being— All your tissues, all your organs, all your skin is a form of water that we weren’t watching for. And therefore, hydration is one of the most extreme essential ingredients that we can possibly think of.” — Gina Bria
E P I S O D E 1 0 0 ! ! !
We have reached another major milestone in our journey! When we started this podcast, we wanted to provide a platform to help people see that they have a choice and that they don't have to settle for anything less than what their health and well-being deserve.
This vision has become a reality with your help, our dear listeners. We are so grateful for your loving support and encouragement. We look forward to continuing this journey with you with more amazing episodes and guests coming soon. Again, we thank you so, so much for being a part of the Essential Ingredients mission!
And what better way to kick off this special episode that to talk about one of the essential ingredients for life — water. No other substance on Earth can support life as we know it like water can. Not only does water make up the majority of our bodies, but it’s also necessary for just about every function our bodies perform.
Think about it – we need water to digest food, transport nutrients and oxygen to our cells, lubricate our joints, regulate our body temperature… the list goes on and on. But water isn’t just essential for our bodies – it’s also vital for the planet. Every living thing needs water to survive, and our planet is no different. Water is a key part of the Earth’s natural systems and cycles. Without water, life, including ours, would be impossible.
Since our body is made up of mostly water, it’s therefore important to keep it hydrated. But this doesn’t mean that drinking water is the best way to do it. In fact, there are other ways that are more effective.
This special episode will help us to see water in a way that most of us usually don’t think of. Our very first guest, Gina Bria, the founder of Hydration Foundation, joins us again to share how we can take in water in a more hydrating way!
Tune in as Justine and Gina share how getting hydrated from plain water differs from getting hydrated from plants. They discuss factors that affect our level of hydration: nutrition, sun exposure, and mobility (talk about how doing a little wiggly dance can dramatically change your day)! Gina also leaves us with a way to activate the electric properties of water to make it more hydrating.
Connect with Gina:
Named Real World Scholar, Gina researches, consults, and speaks on hydration strategies for health and agriculture. She founded Hydration Foundation.org to promote optimal hydration for people, plants, and soils. The Hydration Foundation generates direct public activism in food quality and security by collecting funds to donate water-saving/soil decontaminating irrigation funnels directly to farmers. Her work advances the findings of Dr. Gerald Pollack, renowned for his identification of the fourth phase of water. Her initiatives through the Hydration Foundation have accelerated research and health and soil regeneration practices. The Hydration Foundation has become known for pilot projects which quickly turn into standard best practices.
Episode Highlights:
04:39 Water— the Ultimate Essential Ingredient
10:52 How to Activate Our Physiological Water System
14:29 What Hydrates More Than Water
21:13 How a Little Wiggle Dance Can Change Your Day
24:10 What is Structured Water?
Resources:
Podcast
Tweets:
What is the ultimate essential ingredient for life?— Water. Join the 100th episode celebration of @_NextGenChef as @jreichman and @trustedcouncil Gina Bria teaches how we can activate our body’s water system and get better hydrated with less water. #podcast #entrepreneurship #socialgood #inspiration #impactmatters #NextGenChef #EssentialIngredients #100thEpisode #water #waterbeings #watersystemactivate #hydration #spinningwater #structuredwater
Inspirational Quotes:
07:23 “Our human bodies are far more water than we thought. There are phases of water in between liquid and ice that are turned out to be highly important phases where water does different kinds of work than just being wet.” -Gina Bria
08:19 “You’re a water being— All your tissues, all your organs, all your skin is a form of water that we weren't watching for. And therefore, hydration is one of the most extreme essential ingredients that we can possibly think of.” -Gina Bria
10:59 “Your fluid dynamic water system needs exposure to light. So getting sun in the appropriate level for you turns out to be extremely important. And the fact that we as a culture live indoors, most of the time or commute in our cars, is costing us hydration.” -Gina Bria
16:39 “Those emotions show up in part because they're trying to help us see we need hydration. The natural buoyancy, the cognitive power, the emotional resilience— All of these have to do with our hydration. How extraordinary! We've just never put them together.” -Gina Bria
18:46 “We can wake up with more energy, we can be more alert on our calls— and all we did was change our lifestyle just a little bit to be more thoughtful about how to integrate some hydrating fruits and vegetables into our life.” -Justine Reichman
21:17 “When you wake up in the morning and start to wiggle and stretch, you are starting your dynamic flow system. It will help you get out of bed and look at the day differently.— Water needs to move in order to deliver its electricity.” -Gina Bria
25:17 “Imagine the elevation of health practices, given that you might be doing movement practices which are spreading that hydration through your system while drinking water that has an electrical charge. You're going to come out healthier than you were before you went in. So my goal is to leave the movement to recover water and get its spin back.” -Gina Bria
Transcriptions:
Justine Reichman: Welcome to Essential Ingredients. This is our 100th episode. My name is Justine Reichman, and I'm your host. Today with me is Gina Bria, our guest. She was on our original episode, our very first episode, and I'm so pleased to have her here. She is the founder of the Hydration Foundation, and just my 1st and 100th episode.
Welcome Gina.
Gina Bria: I can't believe we're at Episode 100 Justine, but I'm not surprised because you're such an extraordinary hub person. You know how to draw all these people in around topics like, how we're going to care about our food and our bodies together. So 100th episode now to launch our post isolation life and become more of a community together. It's great to be with you.
Justine Reichman: Thank you. Yeah, I remember just bringing you on for the first time and we had just moved from having Zooms to have a podcast, and I had never done a podcast before. It was just such an exciting time, and it was a little bit of a, it was a guess. I wasn't sure where the podcasts were gonna go, but I'm so excited that we're here today because I wasn't sure where it was headed. But you kind of had an idea when I spoke to you. The first time, you were excited about it, you thought it was going places.
Gina Bria: Well, I knew that intuitively or instinctually because of the gifts that you have, Justine. You are such a hub person and your ability to synthesize information and help people get it out to be that party that parlays information to people what they need to know, what are our new thoughts about getting assisted. Thought leader physician is just wonderful for you. And because we're working with such nutrient dense thoughts, bringing that together in an interview format, a way that people can easily listen to it and access it through podcast, it just made perfect sense. And I've listened to many, many episodes every time. It was someone I didn't know even though I'm in these circles, it was an idea I'd never heard of before, it was a solutionist approach. I mean, the goal I think of what your podcast has been able to produce is in delivering optimism, really delivering the energy, the inspiration, people need to go on to the next step, whatever that may be in their life because we all need to be contributing to our new world.
Justine Reichman: Well, thank you for that. That was unsolicited, really very grateful.
Gina Bria: The truth hurts.
Justine Reichman: I'm very appreciative. I do know that when I first launched this, the one thing I really wanted to do is bring people access to information in a digestible way so that they can make more informed choices. And we kicked it off with you because I thought that it would. Water is something that we need, something that we often take for granted and we don't really know how valuable it is to us. And there are so many different ways that it helps us, but we don't really know how to access the best nutrients from it. And having that conversation with you and understanding the ways that we can get the best nutrients from it really made me more informed and changed the way that I thought about water and how I ate water.
Gina Bria: Yeah, let's do it again. Let's talk about water again. There's never enough time to give to water.
Justine Reichman: I agree. I would love to talk about water. So I love to give the listeners and the viewers some great takeaways, and I'd love to hear also, since we spoke last, some of the new innovative ways that you've taken water to the next level.
Gina Bria: Great. So we'll break this into two parts. I'll answer the first part of this whole thing about water as the ultimate essential ingredient.
Justine Reichman: Oh, I love that. That our listeners and our viewers can take away, because last time we talked about chia, we gave them a recipe. For those people that weren't part of that last conversation, or maybe our new listeners or viewers, we can give them something to take away and understand how invaluable this is in different ways that they can include water in their diet. And for those that are not familiar with the Hydration Foundation and who you are, maybe give a short intro.
Gina Bria: Okay, great. So simple. I am an anthropologist of all the crazy things to be. My mother did not approve, I just want to tell you that right away. She thought I should be, I don't know, kindergarten teacher, but it turns out that all those skills are necessary to bring vital new ways of looking, and I ended up as an anthropologist looking at desert communities around the globe. So I studied each in depth, the Gobi desert, we looked at it all. And the discovery that came out of that was so shocking that they were not using liquid to hydrate with liquid water, they were using water already stored inside foods, like cactus, and aloe, and tubers buried under the ground. It turns out that there's water all over. But because we're used to looking for liquid, or open lakes, or rivers, or streams bubbling up, we don't recognise where water is stored on the planet in all the multiplicity of biological ways. So it got very exciting very quickly because we realized that we had our hands on an entire tradition, lineage and strategy around the world getting water out of plants. And it turns out the water in plants is not exactly liquid.
“Our human bodies are far more water than we thought. There are phases of water in between liquid and ice that are turned out to be highly important phases where water does different kinds of work than just being wet.” -Gina Bria
So like when you bite into that pair and that juice dribbles out, that isn't exactly liquid water. It's a phase of water that's been affected by sunlight and minerals up from the roots of the plant that is changed that water just enough, it's only 10% more viscous than liquid. But now, it can begin sharing electrical charge. So this kind of water inside of plants turns out to be more hydrating, because it accesses our cells much more easily. So you get better hydrated with less water. And why that turns out to be so exciting and important is that we, our human bodies, are far more water than we thought once you get out of the liquid only idea, or vapor only, or ice. Of course, ice doesn't go in our bodies. But there are phases of water in between liquid and ice that are turned out to be highly important phases where water does different kinds of work than just being wet. So the water inside our cells inside of us is also matches the kind of water inside a pair. It's slightly more viscous. It's what our cells are filled with. It's what our tissues are made out of. And when we look for water in that form, it turns out to be that there was far more water than we thought. All our cells are water. So this is really interesting and important news.
“You’re a water being— All your tissues, all your organs, all your skin is a form of water that we weren't watching for. And therefore, hydration is one of the most extreme essential ingredients that we can possibly think of.” -Gina Bria
I founded the Hydration Foundation, which is an educational nonprofit, to share how vital it is. Your water being that you're made up of water that's not quite liquid, but it's more in a gel form or more jelly like form. And then all your tissues, all your organs, all your skin is a form of water that we weren't watching for. And therefore, hydration is one of the most extreme essential ingredients that we can possibly think of. It's our partner we are in, we're in relationship with it. And that eating a high plant diet doesn't have to be only a plant diet but a high plant diet. It's going to get you better hydrated than going to the store and buying bottles of water off the shelf or drinking from your cap. So that's like a beginning story for me, Justine.
Justine Reichman: I love that, it doesn't get old. It's always new. And this time, I think you told it a little bit different because, I remember the other story was a little bit different, which I liked because we may have some of the same viewers. But the information nonetheless--
Gina Bria: There's repeating. It bears repeating because how many people are telling you that your watermelon, your apple is more hydrating than a bottle of water. And this is scientifically shown now. We know that those foods, that water pack inside of food is nature's natural water bottle for us that it's coming in with the flesh of that plant that allows the water to be slowly time released. It's like a sponge release. So that whole quality of water being slowly time released instead of going through our system with high volume water, we really have to get out of that idea. Or if you're in that idea how to cooperate with it to make your system work better. And also, by the way, raise your nutrition. At every point, you're bringing in water which dissolves nutrition, which would dissolve the nutritional molecules just at the time those molecules need to be released. So there's a system we're working within, and we are a body system ourselves. So part of the new thing that's been growing for me, Justine, since we did our first interview is helping people get that their entire system is a water system. It's a tissue system made of cells, made up of little balloons of water, and that there are strategies for supporting that that go beyond just eight glasses of water.
Justine Reichman: So let's talk about that for a minute. Because I think everybody always wants to know, how do I interpret that for myself? What does that mean?
“Your fluid dynamic water system needs exposure to light. So getting sun in the appropriate level for you turns out to be extremely important. And the fact that we as a culture live indoors, most of the time or commute in our cars, is costing us hydration.” -Gina Bria
Gina Bria: So biologically now speaking as an anthropologist, your water system, your fluid dynamic water system needs exposure to light. So getting sun in the appropriate level for you turns out to be extremely important. And the fact that we as a culture live indoors most of the time or commute in our cars is costing us hydration, that's not a thought people normally think of.
Justine Reichman: Not at all.
Gina Bria: Immobility is another huge issue. Because if you are a liquid flow system run by personal motion, if you're not moving, and I'm not talking marathons, I'm talking about gentle movements throughout the day, getting up from your computer, or doing twists in your chairs, or laying in bed and wiggling before you get out of bed first thing in the morning, having meetings that are walking meetings, being aware that the motion is actually your liquid fluid system that is moving the flow dynamics through you to get to your tissues to get to your cognition to your brain, to your vascular system, to your lungs, to the tissue around your breast for so many breast cancer issues. Those are water movement systems that were not activating enough and the water is getting stale inside of us, and we really feel it. So motion is another incredibly important strategy. And then the conversation around water as an electrical conductor. Water conducts our entire electrical system, that's how we're alive.
When your charger, you lose your charger, you're frantic. We are not understanding that we need to charge ourselves up every day. So sunlight does that, but also walking in the grass. All the things you hear are health practices, all I'm doing Justine is connecting them to you as a hydrating being. So you have a fuller understanding of why eating food beautifully, so juicy food, soups and salads, and salad is 96% water. It's a huge amount that we don't value in that way. And thinking of yourself also as kind of like a fish moving through your day, you know that you're going to have to have stops where you need to replenish your hydration. And you think about yourself that way because you're now understanding it runs your electrical system. It runs every system in your body, whether it's lymph, blood, eyesight, just pick. Pick a body organ that doesn't run on water. It doesn't need water.
Justine Reichman: A question for you. So it's similar to your iPhone charger. When it doesn't have juice, when it does, the battery dies. I don't want to say that when you don't have your salad and you die. But what can I mean? What is one expected to feel when they don't have enough hydration when they're not eating properly, or the right plants don't have the proper hydration? What's the difference in being hydrated by fruits and vegetables versus a glass of water? And how does that differentiate? Because you need a lot more water versus the plants and fruits because you get so much more from those plants and fruits. Correct?
Gina Bria: Yeah. And it's helping people get out of the idea that it's only water that hydrates them. This is really, really news. And it's so exciting because we're in such a mess by just trying to hydrate with water.
Justine Reichman: Glasses we were told as a kid we need to have.
“Those emotions show up in part because they're trying to help us see we need hydration. The natural buoyancy, the cognitive power, the emotional resilience— All of these have to do with our hydration. How extraordinary! We've just never put them together.” -Gina Bria
Gina Bria: Your body resist because for the vast amount of people were drinking bad water. On top of it not being an efficient hydrator, now it comes with the new problems we've increased in our culture. So this is why switching to fruits and vegetables has, I'm saying adding, that those begin to take over as part of a whole drip irrigation system on nutrition system and advanced nutrition system, and it is able to get into our tissues much more gently, and powerfully, and sustain with the quality of water. Because when fruits and vegetables begin their journey with transforming water through their root system, through sunlight, they are also decontaminating that water. So you're getting a more purified form. These are all long range, we're going to have a lot of management around this. Do I wash that vegetable? All the things that we asked. But just to start the conversation around, yes, let's go forward understanding how much was made of water, and how matching that up with biological water on the planet including things like soaks in beautiful baths. I think you can absorb up to a liter of water with a beautiful epsom salt. In other words, it starts to show up as care for your whole system all over the place once you realize, oh, I'm a land walking water being. So how will I manage that? How will I flourish?
Let's get back to your question of what it feels to be dehydrated. Maybe the first thing that shows up is fatigue because you're out of electrical energy. So if you hit that 3:00 o'clock killer moment, but it shows up as fatigue as in, I wake up, I open my eyes in the morning and I'm just exhausted at the thought of my day. I don't have the energy to get out of bed. Well, we classify those as solely emotional issues. But those emotions show up in part because they're trying to help us see, we need hydration. This buoyancy, the natural buoyancy that comes when you are fully hydrated being and the cognitive power that comes, the emotional resilience. All of this has to do with our hydration. How extraordinary? We've just never put them together.
“We can wake up with more energy, we can be more alert on our calls— and all we did was change our lifestyle just a little bit to be more thoughtful about how to integrate some hydrating fruits and vegetables into our life.” -Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: So if we start to provide a more nutritious life, eating more fruits and vegetables, including some day lights and being more mindful about it. Because often, especially through COVID, we stay at home, there's no commuting where we really don't leave our houses as often as we used to so we lack sunlight. Often, we're just working, working, working. And maybe if we're more thoughtful about what we eat, what we drink, and we're taking those baths. Although in California, we want to be mindful of the baths that we take from the lack of, although I'm from New York and I just take a bath just to warm up. We can wake up with more energy, we can be more alert on our calls and all from just eating a bit more thoughtfully, taking a few walks outside in the middle of the day, in between Zoom calls. And really, all we did was change our lifestyle just a little bit to be more thoughtful about how to integrate some hydrating fruits, vegetables and light into our life.
Gina Bria: Yeah. And identifying the fact, Justine, computers are electrical items. They deeply drink, they take electricity out of us. Our cell phones and our screens take electricity. Once you say that you go, of course, I just need to go get some more electricity. I just need to plug in to nature. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. It's like, okay, I'm out. I'm out of juice people, I got to go do something. We just help people get that idea about hydration. And it's a whole different game now because now you're,, and the idea is, oh, I'm replenishing myself. I'm going to get charged. And that makes health tasks a very different kind of experience. Nope, just going to get some charge you people, as opposed to yet another exhausting item on my list that I must do to survive. And I don't even want to get out of bed. Speaking about that, can I speak about that?
Justine Reichman: I want to hear about that, but I also want to hear about, there's so much to what you're doing within the Hydration Foundation and water, and you also work with businesses. I want to be able to pack that into what we're talking about today because I think that what you're doing with some of these businesses can be integral to what other businesses are building. And since we're a resource platform for you to share what you're doing by your message, I also think it's a resource for businesses and consumers to make more informed choices. So I'd love to give you this platform to share what you've done. Because personally, and it's a little selfish, I want to hear more about what you've done because it's so exciting. So first, talk about that.
“When you wake up in the morning and start to wiggle and stretch, you are starting your dynamic flow system. It will help you get out of bed and look at the day differently.— Water needs to move in order to deliver its electricity.” -Gina Bria
Gina Bria: Okay, so what I want to share about bed is really simple. When you wake up in the morning, if you could just start to wiggle and stretch, okay, you are starting your dynamic flow system, it will help you get out of it. You will look at the day differently if you start with a little fun wiggle and a little dance right in your bed. It just starts the day differently than I'm slogging my hair. I love it. Sharing this new information that water isn't just liquid that it has states, and DaVinci was the first to identify this with his water drawings. And what he noticed along with a whole lineage of really brilliant observers is that water needs to move in order to deliver its electricity. It best moves and makes the most electricity. Water will make energy, water makes electricity if it spins in a spiral.
So I have been working with companies who are very adept at creating these vortexes for home residences, and especially for agriculture. Because once we get electricity back in the soil, we revive the soils. All the living things in the soil are dehydrated too. Those microbes in the mycelium need the hydration just like we do, and they're not getting it just because water is wet, which is how we're irrigating. The water needs electrical charge and only this spun spinning state delivers electricity. That is amazing. That is amazing information. So if we, for example, put simple funnels that spin water on our sources of water, for example, if Starbucks started using, they're attached to all your plumbing or simple screw in device that spins water by the time it comes out, it's got electrical charge, our coffee would be more hydrating. We'd be looking at the taste and the smells were different. So companies that make products that use water, we would love to partner with you and help you get to these companies who are making these devices which make water have more power. And actually, it is a natural state. All we're doing is recovering what nature is missing.
Justine Reichman: Gina, is this some of the work you've been doing out east on the island?
Gina Bria: Yes. I've also been working with a spa. I had a wonderful project come across my plate, the opportunity to help a spa open and be the first hydrotherapy of structured water. This kind of water is sometimes called ordered water, structured water, liquid crystalline. But it's in this phase, this fourth phase. So not just vapor, liquid and ice.
Justine Reichman: But wait, wait. Before you go on, just for our listeners, because I'm not sure that everyone's got the same vocabulary. Can you just explain what structured water is?
“Imagine the elevation of health practices, given that you might be doing movement practices which are spreading that hydration through your system while drinking water that has an electrical charge. You're going to come out healthier than you were before you went in. So my goal is to leave the movement to recover water and get its spin back.” -Gina Bria
Gina Bria: So I think it's a horrible term. I wish I didn't have to use it, but it's water that is beyond just liquid. It moved into this electric charge state. That's all it is. It's water that got spun or vortex in some way. The way a waterfall would. Or even a raindrop falling out of the sky is structured because it spins. So let's get rid of the word structured and use the word water that has the spin or spiral back in it. It loves that and it begins to share electrons and it makes electricity. So when I had this opportunity to work with this spa that was opening, Shou Sugi Ban House. It's in the Hamptons water mill. It's right next to the Parrish Art Museum there. We put water spin devices. Very simply, screw them right onto any plumbing system throughout their entire spa. So their plunge pools, their water pools, their showers, their faucets, their kitchen, all their gardens are all hydrated with spun water that you feel the tangle when you walk onto the property. And you can imagine the elevation of health practices given that you might be doing movement practices, which of course are hydrating you. They're spreading that hydration through your system while drinking water that has electrical charge and you're going to come out of that healed or healthy, healthier than you were before you went in.
Justine Reichman: I think I need those on my property.
Gina Bria: Everyone needs them. We need to recover water. So my goal is to leave the movement to recover water and get its spin back. How sexy is that? Just straight up.
Justine Reichman: And love that. So Gina, what's new and what's next for you?
Gina Bria: Well, what's new is besides finding and putting forward companies that do authentic work, actually, we've developed and we're in process of funding a traveling water Museum which shares all of this extraordinary information in an experiential exhibit that helps you realize how much you are water. And then what are the beauties around what is really water. And we do it all through the arts. So it's singing, all of this is vibrating your water cells which creates electricity.
Justine Reichman: I can visualize like an airstream and people coming out of it like this pop up Museum in different cities.
Gina Bria: We're gonna go all over. We've already released some of our content, Justine, at the Flint Water Festival, at Art Basel Miami, we've had a huge exhibition in Dubai with our water meditations and water education. It just can't get better than this. This is my dream job is getting water museum out and moving around the world.
Justine Reichman: Wow. Well, you have to let us, keep us posted on all your different locations so that we can share them with our viewers and with our listeners. And equally, I'd love to know so when you're in the Bay Area, I can go.
Gina Bria: Great, of course.
Justine Reichman: Everywhere the California area or somewhere I can get to. Gina, thank you so much for joining me on my 100th episode.
Gina Bria: Wow.
Justine Reichman: I felt like it was, you kicked it off with me, you're here with me at this great milestone and I couldn't be more pleased to have you here and hear what you're up to, and what you're doing just as it keeps evolving and growing. And I love to follow and hear what you've done. It's so amazing.
Gina Bria: Well, Justine, 100 episodes, congratulations. You're spreading beautiful information in the world flow and juiciness you're getting it all out there as a water being. So rich blessings on this podcast and your work.
Justine Reichman: Well, thank you so much. And for those folks that want to follow Gina and keep up to date on what she's up to, Gina, what's the best way to be in touch or follow along with what you're up to?
Gina Bria: Well, I have a website called hydrationfoundation.org. hydrationfoundation.org. It's a nonprofit. And you can always write to me at gina@hydrationfoundation.org. G-I-N-A, because I do see all my emails and I am about educating people, so that's what we get to do.
Justine Reichman: Great. So for those of you watching or listening to us, don't forget, if you like what you hear, rate, review. We'd love to hear from our viewers and listeners. Thanks again.
