Essential Water
Without water, your brain can’t send messages to your cells, your stomach can’t break down your food, and your body can’t metabolize your fat reserves or detoxify properly. Water is essential to life. Headaches, fatigue, dizziness, poor concentration, and bloating are all symptoms of dehydration.
Water is also essential for anti-aging; it keeps your skin supple, and it helps maintain your circulation.
Water and Vitality
You are between 60 and 70 percent water. If it had to, your body could function on very minimal amounts of food, and even no food at all, for several weeks. However, deprive it of water and things could go wrong very quickly. This is because:
• Water is crucial for digestion. If you don’t’ drink enough water between meals and snacks, the flow of your saliva slows down, making digestion less efficient. When this happens, your body is unable to absorb nutrients properly.
• Every day, your body excretes up to 2 quarts of water through your skin, urine, lungs, and gut in order to eliminate toxins – the less water you drink, the more toxins will accumulate in your body.
• Without enough water in your body, your blood volume decreases, which starves your cells of vital oxygen and nutrients, and it also means your cells can’t create new tissue to repair any damage. Altogether, these effects can leave you feeling weak and tired and put you at an increased risk of illness.
It is recommended that you drink around six glasses of water a day. Coffee and tea and alcohol don’t count towards these six glasses, as these drinks are actually dehydrating and increase your body’s overall water requirements. Unhealthy drinks, such as cordials and carbonated drinks, also don’t count. Only drinks that come in the form of pure water, herbal teas or diluted fruit juice can count towards your six-a-day. You can start your day with a cup of warm water with a slice of lemon.
What is pure water?
We’re very lucky to have water on tap. However, the water supply piped to your home may not be as pure as you think. All the water that comes through your tags has traveled through the ground, collecting pesticides and other chemicals, and through piping that may deposit heavy metals such as lead and arsenic.
Although people often think that bottled mineral water is the healthiest option. I’m more in favor of water that’s filtered from your tap. You can use either a pitcher filter or one plumbed into your sink.
Bottled mineral water that comes in a glass bottle is the next-best choice. However, take the time to read the labels on the water you buy – some contains high levels of sodium (salt), which you should avoid. Don’t buy water that comes packaged in a plastic bottle. Estrogen-like chemicals in the plastic can leach in and contaminate it. Drinking this water can create a hormone imbalance in your body.
