It has become crystal clear to me during my years of researching water that there is a direct relationship between drinking water and good health. The better the water, the greater the likelihood that you will be healthy. The best water for your health is water that is as close to nature as possible. That means water that is clean and full of minerals so that it becomes alkaline.

No respect for water

There are literally thousands of blogs on the internet about the importance of diet and exercise. That would lead one to believe that they are the only 2 key factors in achieving and maintaining good health. There is virtually nothing to be found about the importance of water in the health equation. It blows my mind that the public is so completely unaware of the importance of water. Our bodies are made up of 70% water and the functions performed by the water in our body are extensive and life sustaining.

I assume the ambivalence in America is due to the fact that our public drinking water is readily available and inexpensive and therefore is not worth thinking about. The public seems to believe that water is just some boring drink that satisfies your thirst when you can’t get your hands on something that tastes better. Even if people do drink water, they assume that any old water will do as long as it doesn’t taste bad.

Hydration is important

Without water, a human will die in a few days. When people get dehydrated by as little as 2%, their mental capacity drops by 10% to 25% and yet people allow themselves to get dehydrated all the time. When it comes to health, only the air you breathe is as important as the water that you drink.

Water is much more than just hydration

The cells in your body are full of water. The cells themselves live in a sea of water. Think of this as balloons full of water submerged in a bathtub. Water inside…water outside…with a membrane that contains proteins called aquasporins. Think of aquasporins as water channels that allow water to pass rapidly into cells one water molecule at a time. The process requires an electrical gradient, which is where the acidic/alkaline balance comes into play.

Water is responsible for transportation in your body….bringing nutrients, oxygen, and hydrogen to cells and taking away the acidic byproducts created in the cells. Water is also responsible for communication. Basically, nothing happens in your body without water.

Drinking clean, mineral rich water helps maximize the health and performance of your body

What would be your idea of perfect water? A good guess would be a fast moving glacial stream on a mountain top. If you break down the components of the ideal water, you would find clean water that is full of minerals and is “lively” or ionized.

We have already covered the importance of hydration. Intuitively, you know that your water should be clean. There are 60,000 known contaminants in our world of which several hundred make it into our day to day water supply. To make matters worse, our municipalities add nasty chemicals to our water to make it safe to drink….or should I say safe enough so that you won’t die right away. The chemicals diminish our health over time unless we remove them.

Understanding the other benefits of good drinking water are not so obvious. However, a little education will help you understand the critical importance of minerals in your water. Water can play a key roll in maintaining a healthy acid/alkaline balance in our bodies. Alkaline water is created when alkali minerals such as Sodium, Calcium, Potassium, and Magnesium are present in the water. Hey, aren’t those minerals available in our tap water? Yes they are, until your municipality annihilates the water when it cleanses it for safe drinking purposes.

Our bodies need to maintain a delicate acid/alkaline balance because our blood needs to remain in a slightly alkaline state in the 7.3 to 7.4 pH range. If the pH of our blood strays outside that narrow range, serious health issues and even death can occur.

The diets of most people in our society, with the exception of vegetarians, are very acidic. On top of that, stress creates an acidic environement in our bodies.

While the focus of everyone’s attention is on what we eat, everyone should be equally concerned about what we drink. Sodas, juices, coffee, and alcohol are very acidic and the consumption levels of those beverages is very high for many people. If you are a vegetarian, or careful about what you eat, think about drinking the above liquids as eating an acidic steak. On the other hand, think about drinking alkaline water as eating a healthy plate of veggies or a salad.

People should be drinking water…but not just any water. Tap water is full of harmful chemicals no matter what your government tells you. Your body already knows you shouldn’t be drinking tap water and that is why so few of us do.

That brings us to filtered bottle water or reverse osmosis water. The water produced by reverse osmosis is very acidic as it typically has a pH range of 5.5 to 6.0. The bottled water created by Pepsico (Aquafina) has also has a pH of about 5.6 and the bottled water made by Coca Cola (Dasani) also has an acidic pH of about 6.4.

People should not be drinking acidic bottled water regardless of their views of what the plastic bottles do to our environment. People should be drinking alkaline water. You can buy alkaline water (Fiji for example), but it is very expensive and terrible for the environment. There are other more effective ways to drink alkaline water.

Finally, our bodies need minerals. Most of us don’t get enough in our diets. If you drink alkaline water created by natural means, and by that I mean mineral rich water, the water will contrinbute to your daily mineral requirements. The reverse osmosis people have been telling us for years that your body can’t utilize inorganic minerals, but the evidence to the contrary, as supported by the US government and others is overwhelming.