Is The Water You Drink Important For Your Health?
We Are NOT Getting Enough Water
Most of us have been taught or just intuitively know that drinking enough water is necessary in order to maintain good health. Despite that, medical professionals say that as many as 70% of Americans suffer from “chronic dehydration”
The Importance of Water
Water sustains all life. Next to oxygen it is the most important nutrient the body needs. In the total absence of water, dehydration and a breakdown of normal functioning occurs which in a matter of a few days leads to death. Fortunately most of us are getting some form of water from food and drinks on a daily basis
Last week saw an alarming spike in the number of patients admitted for dehydration, fatigue and heatstroke in hospitals across the Southwest, with several major cities recording temperatures exceeding 100 degrees. But did you know that when it comes to drinking enough water, most Americans consume far below the recommended daily minimum, regardless of season?
CBS reports that while most people know perfectly well that water is the way to go, up to 75 percent of the American population fall short of the amount prescribed by the Institute of Medicine – which, in medical terms, means that most people in the U.S are functioning in a chronic state of dehydration.
“60 percent of our bodies is composed of water, 75 percent in our muscles, 85 percent in our brains, it’s like oil to a machine,” explained Dr. Roberta Lee.
When we become dehydrated, our blood and bodies become more acidic, which negatively affects our immune systems, aging, and many more things. It can even cause heart failure.
So…. How much water should we be drinking? Many of us were taught, in school, that we should drink 8 eight ounce glasses of water per day. Others were told that should be 10 glasses. The problem is that there is no “one fits all” answer!
It depends on several factors, activity level and/or temperature (which effects how much water you lose through perspiration and your weight are among those factors. It is now accepted by physiologists that a good rule of thumb for determining how much water you need to drink every day for normal activity and temperature is “one ounce for every half pound of your body weight”. In other words, a woman weighing 120 pounds should drink a minimum of 60 ounces of water per day, for a man weighing 180 pounds that would be 90 ounces per day. Remember, this is the minimum recommended amount and needs to be adjusted for increased temperature and activity levels.
A word of caution: Beverages such as soda’s and coffee DO NOT count towards this number because these beverages are DEHYDRATING!
All Water is NOT Created Equal! The RIGHT Water is Important!
As important, as drinking enough water is drinking the RIGHT water. All water is not the same.
The first thing is that the tap water in most cities in the country is not the best water you can drink, and in many areas can be fairly UNHEALTHY. Many cities put a variety of chemicals in municipal water supplies to “Purify” the water, they add Fluoride which has been proven to be unhealthy and can even be a carcinogen. Some cities even put Lye in the water to cut down on the corrosion in their pipes (I guess they don’t much care about your body’s internal pipes!) Also, by the time the water has gone through pumping stations, and traveled along these sometimes decade old corroded water mains, it has degraded considerably and lost much of its natural energy and molecular structure. This water becomes highly oxidizing, which is aging, and bad for your immune system, your skin, and your cells. It is, in effect, “rusting” your body!
Then there is Bottled Water, so many people buy bottled water to avoid the issues above, that has become an over $100 Billion industry. That is sad, because there are SO MANY reasons you should NOT DRINK BOTTLED WATER!!!
First, it is Grossly Overpriced! For example, in California, Tap Water costs around one tenth of a cent per gallon while Bottled water (in multi-gallon bottles) is about 90¢ a gallon. That’s 560 times more expensive than tap water! A high percentage of Americans buy bottled water in small, 20 ounce bottles for convenience. These cost considerably more than 90¢ a gallon.
To make that fact even worse, a report by “Food and Water Watch” says that half of all bottled water is just tap water run through a filter. Big name players like Pepsi’s Aquafina and Nestle Pure Life were forced to change their labels a few years ago to admit that their water came from public water sources.
Worse yet…. While tap water is EPA regulated and is tested for e-coli, and is required to provide source and quality reports, bottled water don’t have to meet any of those standards. Additionally, the Food and Drug Administration regulates bottled water and its standards pale in comparison to the EPA’s for the tap. A few examples of this include: less frequent bacteria testing, no mandatory reports of violations to federal officials, and no filtration or disinfection requirements on the federal level (while many states have no meaningful programs of their own).
For those of us who are environmentally conscious, there is even more bad news:
The production of water bottles uses 17 million barrels of oil a year, and it takes three times the water to make the bottle as it does to fill it
For a product that claims to be environmentally responsible, the bottled water industry does more than its fair share of planet trashing. The amount of oil used to make a year’s worth of bottles could fill one million cars for a year, and more water is used in making the bottle than filling it.
Of the 30 billion plastic water bottles sold in the United States in 2005, only 12 percent were recycled.
According to Doug James, a professor of computer science and computer graphics at Cornell University and a recycling advocate, that left 25 billion bottles “landfilled, littered or incinerated.” Worse yet, many of these bottles end up in our waterways.
And recycled bottle plastic can only be re-used in non-food products.
Essentially, there is no way for bottled water to be as environmentally responsible as tap water.
So What Water SHOULD I Be Drinking?
Our bodies, need to maintain a pH which is slightly alkaline – 7.30 to 7.45. Our Western diets are highly acidic, which makes it hard to do this.
One of the best ways is to be drinking Ionized, Alkaline water. This helps our body to regulate the acid balance in our blood more efficiently and accurately.
During digestion, our digestive system manufactures hydrochloric acid which is necessary to digest food. This acid is good in the stomach and digestive tract but not so much for the bloodstream. A bi-product of creating hydrochloric acid is sodium bicarbonate. This is used to buffer the acid and goes into the blood stream. This is called an “alkaline tide” and is necessary to prevent acidosis. Alkaline water adds to the efficiency of the alkaline tide and serves to reduce or prevent acidosis by maintaining an ideal 7.365 blood pH.
In addition, ionized alkaline water is highly antioxidant. Your body needs antioxidants to neutralize free radicals which damage cells, and the immune system. Free radicals also accelerate the aging process, causing all sorts of damage. Remember, tap and bottled water is highly oxidizing (causing free radicals)
One of the best things about Ionized Alkaline water is that it is restructured during the ionization process.
Tap or bottled water consists of clusters of 10-13 water molecules. These large clusters do not easily pass through cell walls, which makes hydration at the cellular level hard to accomplish.
The ionization process restructures the water into “micro-clusters” of only 4-6 molecules which pass easily through the cell walls resulting in cellular level hydration.
Proper hydration keeps you healthy, and younger looking while allowing your body to function as it was designed to do. Remember we are, on average 57% – 65% water, young children around 75%.
Our brains and heart are around 73% water and our lungs about 83%, so you can see how important proper hydration really is. Without it, we risk heart attacks and brain and lung issues.
Conclusion
As you can see, drinking the RIGHT water is critically important to your health. Ionized, Alkaline, Micro-Clustered water IS the right water.
While you can buy bottles of alkaline water in some grocery and specialty stores, I don’t recommend that. There are two major things wrong with that:
First, it comes in those plastic, non-recyclable bottles, which not only harm our eco-system, but contain a variety of chemicals some of which are known to be carcinogens. These chemicals leach into the water as the bottles sit in hot warehouses, then hot truck trailers, again store warehouses and shelve before finally being purchased and sit in your home for who knows how long before the beverage is consumed.
Second, the Oxidation Reduction Potential (ORP), which makes it anti-oxidant, has a short shelf life (about 72 hours) before it starts to lose its’ value.
The best way to have and drink ionized alkaline water is to make it fresh on-demand, with your own ionizer.
There are a variety of ionizers on the market, ranging in price from about $1600 to over $4000. The majority of them, whether low or high priced, utilize an old, outdated platinum plate technology to ionize the water. Most of them will make water in the pH 7.0 to 9.0 range with moderate to good anti-oxidant capability.
There is one unit, however, that uses a newer, patented direct disk technology which is environmentally more friendly and cost effective to manufacture, produces both acidic and alkaline water from a pH ranging from highly acidic (2.0 range) up to strongly alkaline with a pH of 11.0. This amazing unit is value priced at less than $2300
In addition, this unit can make strong Hypochlorous Acid water which is used by hospitals and medical professions in wound treatment and healing. There are certain pathogens and illnesses that affect the safety of our food. Without going into much detail, E. coli, Salmonella, Listeria, campylobacter and mold are the most prevalent. This strong acid water is also a very good cleaning agent and is a strong anti-microbial which is up to 80 times more effective as an anti-microbial than bleach
This ionizer is the Living Water Ionizer which is available from Green Health Technologies. To learn more visit their website and see how this remarkable device can help you feel better, help your immune system, and help your general health.
You owe it to yourself and your family. DO IT TODAY!
