We all know the feeling of thirst and instinctively understand how fundamental water is to our life and wellbeing (Please check with your doctor if you don’t think this applies to you). About 70% of our planet is covered with water most of which is ocean and our body consists of water in similar proportions. Interestingly, our blood has a similar level of salinity as the oceans. Despite this interesting ‘cosmic’ correlation, drinking directly from the ocean remains a bad idea!
While water has a multitude of functions in the body, it’s main purpose is to maintain a stable environment inside and around every cell and allowing every cell to receive optimal nutrients and eliminate metabolic waste. There are billions of cells and chemical processes taking place in your body every second and all of them require water.
Photo: Airolo, Ticino, Switzerland
There are billions of cells and chemical processes taking place in your body every second and all of them require water. Every time water is scarce, the body has to prioritise and some physiological processes simply can not occur…so the answer is ‘yes’, your body will squeeze water from your stool if needed, glad you asked. If you are even 1% dehydrated, your muscle performance will drop down up to 20% in order to conserve water for more vital physiological functions.
Since our speeding civilisation has managed to pollute most of our drinking water, the seemingly simple act of quenching ones thirst has become unnecessarily complicated and challenging. Our environmental protection agencies identified over 700 pollutants but somehow we actually test for only about 90 organic and inorganic chemicals which will vary slightly depending on which country, region or city you live in. Our oceans, rivers and lakes are full of medical drug metabolites, hormones and pesticides among many other industrialised world chemical byproducts. Quite recently scientists has been finding increasing quantities of active forms of certain medications present in the waterways. Nice one! Unfortunately this is all “relatively” new and the government agencies do not require testing for such chemicals. Our outdated filtering system is therefore not designed to pick them up and the net result is that we are all drinking it.
Luckily, there are still easy ways to get clean, high quality and health supporting water. The highest quality water comes form deep artisan wells, you are looking for water with high mineral content and total dissolved solids of 300 or greater as recommended by Dr M.Fox in his book: Healthy Water. Adding a pinch of quality, unprocessed salt to your water will make it more nutritious to the body and easier to absorb. Ideally you want to buy water (or any drink really) in glass bottles as plastic bottles leach harmful chemicals while being an environmental disaster in its own terms. You might have noticed water in plastic simply left baking in the sun during transit or storage. What you get in the supermarket fridge is a plastic water cocktail, cheers! A great solution is installing your own whole house flirtation system, that is when you own a house. We absorb a significant portion of what’s in the water touching our skin, so ‘if you’re bathing in it you’re drinking it’. In case big filtration system is not possible, there are many water filters available on the market. It is wise to test your tap water and look for a filter that will best remove problematic chemicals. The minimalist solution is a basic counter-top water filter or a pitcher that will remove chlorine and heavy metals from your drinking or cooking water. We are all aware chlorine is widely used to disinfect our municipal water all around the globe but we often forget that it is also very effective in annihilating your own friendly bacteria in our gut. This compromises our digestion and immune system largely contributing to many unnecessary health problems. The ‘take-away’ is that any filter is better then no filter, there is really no reason to drink poison!
Resources:
Healthy Water for a Longer Life by M.Fox Ph.D.
https://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/diseases-risks/risks/info_sheet_pharmaceuticals/en/
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/pharmaceuticals-in-the-water/