`Water cure': Healthful or all wet
MOOSIC, Pa. - It's a humble appliance, the kitchen spigot. It fills drinking glasses and watering cans. It rinses dirty dishes. The only time people give it a second thought is when it's leaking.
Not Bob Butts. He looks at the spigot and sees something entirely different: the cure to most diseases.
The auto-parts dealer believes so fervently in the healing power of simple tap water that he has spent hundreds of thousands of his company's dollars to convince you to drink more of it.
Butts' six-year odyssey has come with a price: Business has suffered, and some of his relatives say he devotes too much energy and money to such a far-out notion. To the medical community, he's all wet.
Undeterred, Butts soldiers on. He is on a single-minded mission to cure his corner of the world, northeastern Pennsylvania, of what ails it. "If everybody in the valley was doing this today, undertakers would have to start having sales," he says.
Butts, 65, is a devotee of what proponents call the "water cure" - outlined in a 1992 book, "Your Body's Many Cries for Water." The author, Dr. Fereydoon Batmanghelidj, claims that degenerative diseases and other illnesses are simply the result of dehydration.
The remedy? Divide your body weight in half and drink that many ounces of water a day. Abstain from caffeine. Add a half-teaspoon of sea salt to the diet.
Doing that, Batmanghelidj says, can prevent and cure asthma, arthritis, back pain, migraines, high blood pressure, heartburn, depression, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy and a host of other illnesses.
Although doctors have long advised drinking eight glasses of water a day, they are doubtful. "These diseases are more complex than simple dehydration," says Dr. Michael Traub, vice president of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, whose members practice alternative medicine.
In Butts, however, Batmanghelidj has found his staunchest ally.
"He is one of the outstanding Americans I've come across," Batmanghelidj says from his headquarters in Falls Church, Va. "He's totally selfless."
Since 1994, Butts has turned Cee Kay's One Million Auto Parts, the store he owns in Moosic, into a promotion for the water cure.
The store lobby is plastered with posters touting its benefits. Employees urge sick-looking customers to drink more water. Upstairs, in a makeshift broadcast studio, Butts' associates extol water on a daily radio show called "Positive Press Live."
In the last six years, Butts has blanketed local media with more than 12,000 radio, TV and newspaper ads. There probably isn't a soul in Luzerne or Lackawanna counties who hasn't heard of the water cure.
In Butts' latest promotion, any customer who fails to notice health improvements after 30 days of the water cure will get $25 worth of auto parts. Butts has pledged up to $100,000.
"I'm totally addicted. I can't imagine getting a high like this from anything else," he says.
His store is filled with employees who claim to have been "cured."
Accounts-payable manager Karen Simone swears she no longer has asthma. Ed Dippre, who handles deliveries at Cee Kay's, claims it rid him of muscular dystrophy. "Doctors told me I'd be in a wheelchair in three years. That was six years ago," he says.
Simone says she drinks nearly three quarts of water a day, Dippre up to four. The boss? At least two.
Butts relishes the testimonials, but doctors are skeptical.
"I think his motivation is good," says Dr. Robert Czwalina, a family practitioner in nearby Wilkes-Barre. "But I don't understand the connection between him and this Iranian physician who is bordering on junk science."
That kind of talk dismays Butts. "Thinking is something that really isn't prevalent in medical doctors, because they're taught to memorize, memorize, memorize," he says.
Butts' zealotry is rooted in a financial setback that he suffered 13 years ago. A bad business deal cost him $800,000 and sent him into a depressed and angry funk that lasted three years.
He woke up one day in 1990 finally ready to move on with his life. "It was just a complete 180-degree reversal," Butts recalls. "I felt totally free."
Deciding that money would no longer drive him, Butts began looking for a worthy project that he "couldn't make a dime on." In 1994, he read about Batmanghelidj in a natural-health newsletter.
Butts was an instant fan: The water cure seemed like common sense. After consulting a local health-system executive, Butts decided to commit most of Cee Kay's advertising budget to promoting Batmanghelidj's theories.
His family wasn't happy. "They said people won't appreciate it, everybody's going to think you're nuts," Butts says.
Butts' daughters can only roll their eyes when he begins rhapsodizing about water, which happens frequently. Three of the five work with him at Cee Kay's.
"It's a little bit ridiculous," says Cindy, Cee Kay's sales manager. For the first few years, Butts also committed most of his time - about 50 or 60 hours a week - to the cause. Lately he logs only 35 hours a week and spends more time on Cee Kay's.
"We're not anywhere near as profitable as we were," Butts says. "My heart is in this, but I've got to run a business."
Divorced since his crusade began, Butts is now engaged to the host of "Positive Press Live." Genial but stubborn, he has no plans to stop doing what he loves.
"This is the biggest story in the last 100 years."
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On the Net
Bob Butts' site:
www.watercure2.com
Batmanghelidj's site:
www.watercure.com
American Medical Association site:
www.ama-assn.org/consumer.htm