You’ve heard about the importance of consuming water because you are mostly made up of water, but it’s always great to have a reminder to get us back on track to hydration and its benefits. Here is a thorough recap on why you should drink adequate amounts of water daily and its importance to the wellness of both human beings and the world.

So, it is 60%, that your body is made up of water. You brain alone is made up of 70% water, and your lungs 90%. Water is crucial to your body’s optimal functioning. First, you’ll notice that it cushions and lubricates joints for ease of use and minimal chance for injury. It protects and nourishes the brain, keeps the body temperature balanced, and aids you in waste removal through sweating, eliminating, and urination. Per day, 2.5 quartz is lost and needs replenishing through foods and liquids.

Human beings are said to have originated as single-cell organisms in the oceans millions of years ago, which would explain why we are made so much of water. If you lacked water consumption, you would probably last no longer than a week, they say. It’s more important to your health than food is, which you can go without for an entire month before it’s lethal. When your body is void of water it produces less blood, forcing your heart to pump harder to maintain its systems. As the state of dehydration becomes worse, you will become clumsy and tired without adequate oxygen to the brain and muscles. Your eyesight may become unpredictable, and in the final stages, you will feel nauseous and vomit. Complete dehydration will put you in a coma and you will die.

There is an instance you can also consume too much water. This condition is called Hyponatremia and it describes the occasion when too much water floods your cells and causes them to expand too much. Swollen brain cells can cause a wide range of symptoms, including headache, nausea, stomach pain, confusion, seizures, fatigue, come and death (just like dehydration). Who would do that though, you ask? Hyponatremia has killed a number of marathon runners.

Let’s address some myths about water now. Both the 8 glasses of 8 ounce water a day requirement and the only water, no caffeine or alcohol rule, are myths according to Dr. Heinz Valtin of Dartmouth College Medical School. His documented studies in the American Journal of Physiology showed no evidence of needing this requirement, and he did find evidence that beverages such as beer could contribute to your level of hydration.

Just Enough

Knowing your body is the best way to know how much water or fluid to intake per day and even then, the amount will differ based on your activity level and other factors. Try intaking fluids and food much slower and see if your body tells you when its had enough. Otherwise, British Broadcasting Corp. recommends you drink between 6-8 medium sized glasses of fluid daily, and this can include fruit juices. Looking at the color of your urine can also be an indication of a healthy or unhealthy level of hydration. Dark yellow urine is not good, but straw colored yellow urine or lighter is great.

Because our bodies are made up of between 55-75% water, it’s essential we care about the quality and amount of water we drink daily. You can test the quality of your water by inviting a local water treatment company to your home. After you receive the results, you’ll better know if you need to treat your water to be ingesting more pure water with the necessary mineral profile for optimal health. More importantly, the most common recommendation is to drink half your body weight in ounces of water per day. Here’s why.

  1. It Reduces Fatigue

If you’re feeling tired, there is a good chance you might be dehydrated. Feeling less energized is often the first sign of dehydration because the lack of water causes the heart to work harder and all the other systems of the body work less efficiently.

  1. It Improves Mood

Studies show that even a small amount of dehydration can affect your mood and your ability to think clearly. A good indicator that you are well hydrated is a light yellow or clear colored urine. If you are slightly or severely dehydrated you’ll have yellow to dark yellow colored urine.

  1. It Minimizes Headaches and Constipation

A huge contributor to headaches and migraines is lack of water consumption. Drinking water when you first feel a headache coming on should take effect immediately. When the body is dehydrated your body will pull moisture from your stools to make up for the lack of hydration and cause you to become constipated. Drinking your daily water intake will aid your digestion and prevent constipation and its associated discomfort.

  1. It Aids Healthy Weight Loss

For many reasons changing your water drinking habits is the very first step toward healthy weight loss. Often when we think our body is hungry, the fact is we’re often only thirsty. You’ll find that drinking 1-2 glasses of water before a meal can suppress that false hunger. Drinking water also promotes fat burning and elimination within the body.

  1. It Flushes Toxins

Having adequate supply of water within the body let’s the body sweat and release toxins through urine. Water supports proper liver and kidney function, essential filtering organs. If you are predisposed to kidney stones, water dilutes the salts and minerals that form kidney stones. If it’s safe to say water promotes your health, it’s probably safe to say it prevents illness as well. On top of preventing kidney stones and constipation, other illnesses that can be prevented by getting adequate water are bladder infection, asthma, colds, yeast infections, sleep disturbance, skin issues, high blood pressure, heart disease and more.

Okay, you’ve tested your water or know it can be better and you’re considering purchasing a water filter. You’ve seen water filters attached to faucets in other’s homes, but did not realize how many different kinds of filters there are and how differently they can be installed! This quick read article can hopefully assist you in sorting your thoughts and narrow your choices. They are listed from simplest technology to most complicated and basically in order of value as well. If any hesitation regarding the right choice for your home and family, consider calling your local water treatment professionals.

What If I Just Purchase Bottled Water?

What if you’d rather not deal with the fuss getting a water filter that does or doesn’t do the job and just purchase bottled water? After some research you’ll find that bottled water is one of the least cost effective, environmental and healthy options available for clean water. The cheap plastic, often containing BPA and other unhealthy elements, can easily leach into the water itself and the water is not much cleaner than tap water when you consider all its pitfalls.

Pitcher Filters

Water pitchers that contain a water filtration system within the lid can be easy traveling or quick options, but over time the charcoal filters can get very expensive quickly. It does not remove all toxins or the worst kinds from the water and requires constant filling to keep up with your family. Faucet attachments that contain the same filtration (charcoal) are just as ineffective and costly. There are better options on the market.

Reverse Osmosis Filtration

This technology is also a charcoal filter that needs replacement parts over time, but runs the water through more than the previous options. It removes major contaminants, including arsenic, chlorine, heavy metals, and other bacteria. It usually attaches below the sink and has a holding tank. It can be more time efficient than the previous options, but still takes an hour to make one gallon of drinking water. It’s got the same cost con associated with the replacement filters and is worst socially because it wastes a ton of water that it rejects during its process.

Water Distilling At Home

Water distillers are very effective at removing chlorine, heavy metals, bacteria and other toxins from your drinking water. Unfortunately they are large and expensive. They use a lot of electricity which only adds to its cost. Due to a loss of mineral deficiency from using certain filters, you can experience negative side effects. This is something to consider when going with this or any of the previous filtration options.

Solid Block Carbon Filters

This technology is the answer to previous issues with other filters. The pitcher filters and faucet filters use the same kind of technology except the charcoal in theirs is not solid and that’s where they remove less toxins. Solid block carbon filtration systems are units that take up some counter space, but remove the most toxins with the least amount of replacement. The unit itself can be costly, but the filters cost less than previous options do over time. The best thing about this option is that it does not require electricity or running water and will make any water safe, including rain water, pond water, and even salt water. It even removes food coloring from water and comes out clear!

People may store water for various reasons: in the case of emergency, to avoid shopping more frequently, to use in their garden or to save money spent on store-bought water to name a few. You may have thought that any container will act as enough of a barrier from toxins and bacteria, that if you store it in a cool, dry place and drink it within an allotted time frame the water will always be safe. Here are things you want to know before beginning to store your own water at home.

Water is Best Stored in Certain Plastics

Water bottle companies and rain barrel makers have the right idea when choosing specific plastics to store water safely. The types of plastics are numbered and the safest for water is #1, #2 and #4. To find out if your containers are one of these three plastics, look for the recycling symbol on the bottom and the number inside it that indicates its plastic type. These plastics are polyethylene based and make the best plastics because they are UV-resistant and food grade. Added benefits of some containers can be non-translucent blue, a color that resists the growth of bacteria and light exposure and indicates by color that it’s safe for human consumption.

Furthermore, drinking water is best from glass containers because they contain none of the chemicals or potentially dangerous materials that plastics contain and can be 100% recycled until the end of time. More importantly to some, the container will not contain any flavors from its previous contents.

Water Containers Should Be Stored Away From Chemicals and Off Concrete

Water should be stored in a cool, dry place, but not any cool, dry place will do. The first thought for many is to store their water in the garage where you have an abundance of space for it. This idea is swell, as long as you place your containers atop some wooden planks to keep it off the ground or concrete. The truth about storing your water in plastics, even the safest plastics is that the porous material can leach in any surrounding substances, inside or outside the bottle. The container can absorb oil, gasoline and even components of your concrete. It can also absorb any flavors, scents or components of anything that was ONCE inside the bottle, so putting your water inside an old soda bottle will taint the water with remnants of soda even if you’ve thoroughly cleaned it.

Water Doesn’t Expire

Fortunately for mankind, water does not “go bad” like food does. For peace of mind you can rotate the water or replace it every 6 months or a year, but it is not necessary. As long as you have picked appropriate containers, sealed them properly and kept them from anything that could leach inside through a plastic you will be just fine. In the case of an emergency, there are ways to purify the water again by boiling it or using bleach. Please do your research before consuming any water you might think has been contaminated in the slightest.

Water is an essential to human life and the first thing you might consider when preparing for an emergency or just making daily life run more smoothly for you and your family. The recommendation for emergency water storage is optimally 2 weeks worth and 1 gallon per day kept for each person. For a couple, 1 gallon kept x 2 for 14 days would be 28 gallons of water. The minimum recommendation is three days worth if that seems more plausible for you and your space!

 

 

Many of us belong to the world’s growing bottled bottle consumers group which is a growing billion dollar industry. Actually, bottled water sales are much more than even milk products, juices or coffee sales. As contributors to this industry we have not only resolved to have filtered water in portable small bottles but also increased the gigantic volume of plastic needed to be recycled globally.

In fact, bottled water is having hazardous impact on our environment, health and surroundings. How many of the bottled water is actually natural spring water’ from the Alps or wherever it is claimed to be from? It is more likely to be bottled in a factory that treats water by adding chemicals to sort of clean the water of harmful impurities to make it safe for drinking. Yes, that is the reality. Add more chemicals and bottle that water so that it is drinkable and market it with the picture of natural spring water sources. Let us look at some of the reasons why you need to break your water bottle habit today.

Is Bottled water what it claims to be?

Mostly the tap water and bottled water may have very less variation in terms of its minerals; chemical composition etc. may be lesser chlorine content. Who knows? If not anything else, for a fact the water in that bottle is absorbing the plastic by just being stored in it and that does not sound healthy either. There is no solid evidence to prove the fact that bottled water is healthier or cleaner than tap water in terms of where is sourced from or how it is actually packaged for consumption.

Tap water is way cheaper than bottled water

When you are not even sure about what is actually different in your bottled water when compared to tap water, why would you want to pay for that? So, what is the business strategy of these bottled water companies? They obviously don’t go to natural spring sources and get that water to the plant for treatment with chemicals. Rather, they just use the readily available tap water and bottle that after treating with more chemicals. Yes, it is a profitable idea.

Recycling issues with plastic water bottles

Globally recycling plastic is being considered serious but despite various measures are being taken but, it is not followed consistently. We are all contributing to this plastic waste and pollution by using that bottled water and not bothering about recycling.

Oil is cheaper than bottled water

When considering big branded bottled water, it way more expensive than even oil. So, though convenient it is not a cheaper option to buy bottled water. When considering crude oil prices globally, bottled water comes out as more expensive. Also, noteworthy is the fact that much oil resources are wasted trying to transport bottled water from one location to another.

Bottled water can be hazardous to health

Water stored in the plastic bottles can have hazardous chemicals leeching in to it that then is consumed by buyers not knowing that they are paying for an unsafe product. Many water treatment plants packaging bottled water may not be strictly adhering to safety regulations. Gradually, consumption of bottled water over time can lead to harmful chemicals ingestion and affect our health. On the other hand tap water does not have leeching of harmful chemicals from plastic and is treated to reduce chemical contaminants. BPA or bisphenol A is a chemical in plastic water bottles that can cause serious health concerns over time.

All the above reasons mentioned above should convince you to add an item to your wish list before next Christmas. Install a water filter system in your home and office. Get rid of your plastic bottled water habit for better health and overall benefit of the environment. Your family will have safer and cleaner water at all times and you will do your health a big favor. Get the economical choice of installing an under the sink water filter in your kitchen to begin with or a whole house water filter system on a larger level for better quality of life. Do your part; for your family and the environment as a whole.