Benefits of drinking water

Most people think it's obvious to drink water; why then are most of us dehydrated?

You’d think that most Americans would know to drink plenty of water throughout the day. But some estimates reveal that three-quarters of all Americans are dehydrated. In case you’re one of them, here are the benefits of drinking water.

 

Staying hydrated offers many benefits:

 

1. It detoxifies the body. Water helps flush toxins out of organs, carries nutrients to cells and provides a moist environment for the ear, nose and throat, according to the Mayo Clinic. The kidneys and liver do a miraculous job of flushing out toxins, even if you’re dehydrated, but the Mayo Clinic also says that these two vital organs have a much easier job cleansing our systems if we are properly hydrated.
2. It lubricates joints. According to the National Institutes of Health, cartilage, the slippery coating at the end of each bone, is comprised of 65 to 80 percent water. Synovial fluid keeps cartilage healthy, slick and smooth, properly cushioning joints if properly hydrated. The University of Maryland Medical Center recommends drinking 6-8 glasses of water per day to possibly stave off osteoarthritis, the most common form of the joint disease known as arthritis.
3. It can curb appetite. Could it be that of all the hundreds of diets and thousands of weight-loss books to hit the market, water is one of the most efficient appetite suppressants? At a meeting last year of the American Chemical Society, the results of a clinical trial was announced, confirming a long-standing belief—but surprisingly, never-before supported by research—that drinking two 8-ounce glasses of water before meals consumed 75-90 fewer calories per meal. That’s almost 300 fewer calories per day and 8,400 fewer calories per month. There are 3,500 calories in a pound of body fat. You do the math. Water can help with calorie control.
4. It can help with mental well-being. One study, conducted by Tufts Universityresearchers on college athletes, concluded that subjects who engaged in high-intensity aerobic exercise for at least an hour and did not properly hydrate, were more prone to feeling angry and depressed. The study’s lesson: our mood is sensitive to fluid balance.
5. It can possibly prevent and heal headaches. Very little research exists to support the claim that staying hydrated can prevent headaches, as well as being able to reverse the effects of headache if a subject is dehydrated. But one small pilot studyconcluded that intensity and duration of headaches was reduced after increased water intake.
6. It can prevent constipation. As reported in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, low fluid intake was a prime cause of constipation. The colon, the study mentions, is not only a storage house for waste matter, it also plays a major role in fluid and electrolyte absorption. Simply put, if you don’t drink enough water, your colon won’t absorb enough water to effectively pass your waste.

 

How much water should I drink?
Guidelines for the amount of water you should consume daily are inconclusive and controversial. The old standby ‘8x8’, or eight, eight-oz. glasses of water per day, is still a popular recommendation. But another school of thought suggests that most food we eat is comprised of water, so we don’t really need to drink at least eight glasses a day.

 

Considering that many Americans are going through life dehydrated, it would make sense to follow the ‘8x8’ rule, and then some. Individual traits, such as gender, weight, basal metabolic rate and activity level, all have a role in determining how much water one should drink.

Not all Water is Created Equal, Find Out What You Should Drink

The municipal tap water in Encinitas, California, where I live, has 15 pollutants, including two unregulated contaminants. What's in your home town's tap water? Check out EWG.org to find out.

Now that I have found out officially that my tap water might have some impurities, to say the least, should I rush out and purchase some bottled water? Or maybe I should get a home water delivery service? Or perhaps a Brita filter?

None of these choices represents the healthiest drinking water as you'll learn reading on.

If I buy bottled water, I will contribute to a mutli-100-billion-dollar-a-year industry that is wreaking havoc on our environment.

I visited the bottled water association's website and while they do an admirable job promoting recycling, plastic bottled water is terrible for the environment.

According to LighterFootStep.com, bottled water produces up to 1.5 million tons of plastic waste per year. And FoodAndWaterWatch.com states that plastic requires up to 47 million gallons of oil per year to produce. While the plastic used to bottle beverages is of high quality and in demand by recyclers, over 80 percent of plastic bottles are simply thrown away.

That assumes empty bottles actually make it to a garbage can. Plastic waste is now at such a volume that massive, Texas-size islands of trash now spin endlessly in the world's major oceans. These micro plastic particles never completely break down. This represents a great risk to marine life, killing birds and fish which mistake our garbage for food.

So next time you reach for that bottled water, remind yourself of something: All the plastic that has been produced on earth, ever since plastics were invented, every single piece of it, is still here. True, some of it has been recycled, which is good, but it's still here in one form or another and will be for centuries to come. Our landfills can only hold so much.

Ask yourself if you really want to contribute to the world's growing environmental crisis? Or are you going to do your part for the environment by not drinking bottled water?

Even home water delivery, although better for the environment, still takes a toll on the environment. Fossil-fuel burning trucks deliver the water, which often times are exposed to direct sunlight for hours. This may cause the bottle to leach cancer-causing petro chemicals into the water you're drinking (This is more so with small, single-use plastic drinking bottles than reusable polycarbonate containers).

Direct exposure to heat causes the water to reduce in ph value, which brings us to another health topic and to the million dollar health question: What is the healthiest water I should drink?

Most chronic illnesses and diseases are caused by too much acidity in the blood. What causes acidity? Stress, bad food, bad water, to name a few. All bottled water, even the ones that advertise themselves as the healthiest drinking water are all acidic. Perhaps when they are bottled at the source they are, at best, neutral ph (7.0). However, bottled water, and this is worth repeating, turns acidic because the bottles sit for hours, exposed to sunlight and leaching chemicals.

Even reverse osmosis or distilled water is at best neutral and purified water from a filter lacks bone-building minerals like calcium. Alkaline water is found naturally but only in a select few places around the world. In Japan and Korea, alkaline water is used as medicine to treat all kinds of illnesses.

Thanks to some high-tech companies, alkaline water is now available in the U.S. Some companies manufacture ionized water machines for home use. Although some consider the $2000 price tag expensive, considering that bottled water is more expensive per ounce than gasoline, paying $2000 for water that can balance your system, give you more mental clarity and even mitigate health problems is a small fee, especially if you have good credit. Some water companies will finance your alkaline water machine so you can pay a modest monthly fee for drinking healthy water.

Alkaline water has a higher concentration of oxygen meaning that you will rehydrate your system more efficiently. Alkaline water also has millions of antioxidant compounds to neutralize the effects of oxidation. Think of your cells like a bike that's left outdoors. Left exposed to the hostile elements, your cells, just like the bike, will rust and oxidize.

For those looking for mainstream medical analysis on alkaline water, you won't find much. But there is a lot of information on the Internet about alkaline water. It takes a while for the U.S. to accept Oriental Medicine theories. It's only been in the last five or ten years that acupuncture has been accepted in the mainstream medical community.

Expect alkaline water to become more popular exponentially every year. Environmental awareness is on the forefront of the mass consciousness. Alkaline water is not only healthy for the majority of people (in some rare cases, someone might have excess alkalinity) but also smart for the environment.

For more information or to purchase an alkaline water home machine, visit: IonWays.com/miracleh2o.