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Types of Water — The Differences and Benefits Part 2 Water Series

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Water seems straightforward. But at the molecular level, differing water from differing sources contains differing chemical and energetic content. This content creates a variety of responses as it interacts with our cells, and the behavior of the molecules will affect the way our bodies integrate nutrients and catalyze reactions. Let’s take a look at the attributes and upsides of our primary water types.

If you want watch the highlights video version and read the rest later, click here for the video!  And here’s a link to the EPA document on how to protect the waterways that I reference in the video.

Tap Water

This is your literal run-of the-mill municipal water. Toilets, showers, dishwashers, kitchen sinks, laundry machines, sprinkler systems — the functional water we employ throughout the day. It’s considered drinkable in most regions of the United States, but also prone to a variety of additives and toxins such as chlorine, chloramines, fluoride, solvents, drug residues and heavy metals. This makes tap water a suboptimal source for ideal hydration and cell function, and it will often exacerbate issues related to fatigue and indigestion. 

In worst case scenarios, tap water can be outright dangerous. Despite legislative measures, contaminants and pathogens do make their way into the local water supply (Think: Flint, Michigan), and these substances may include anything from trace amounts of aluminum, gasoline additive MTBE, pesticides and lead — to life-threatening levels of waterborne legionella bacteria (remember the 2014 Legionnaires Outbreak?) 

Well Water 

Though sometimes a reliable source of drinking water, well water these days should always be purified. Since it comes out of the ground, you may not be ingesting the added chemicals present in other processed water but, on the other hand, because it’s unfiltered, you’ll want to test it for bacteria, nitrates and chemicals and run it through a proper filtration system. So many pollutants unfortunately leech their way into groundwater and contaminate what would otherwise be a more useful method of water retrieval. 

Well water often harbors a number of bacteria as well as parasites and, though the water status varies by site and location, its risks frequently supersede its benefits.   

Mineral Water

Mineral water is spring water with extra minerals added to it. This type of water is crowded with extra material — but the good kind! Magnesium, calcium, sodium and potassium are trace substances in mineral water, but often want in higher supply. Mineral water is alkaline water and provides these natural components via the mineral spring it’s taken from, and tastes mildly saltier than other forms of water. 

As a downside, mineral water is minimally filtered so there’s also an occasional risk of undesirable substances like mercury or arsenic finding its way in, and people with certain health conditions such as heart or neurological disease may actually be better off with a purer source of drinking water.

Distilled water

The exact opposite of mineral water, distilled water contains nothing extra. It’s been boiled and condensed back into its liquid state removing ANY additional substances. The good news is, there’s nothing in there to harm your health. It’s 100% H2O, so a good choice for purified clean water, but it’s also devoid of minerals to alkalize cells and improve hydration power.

While distilled water can be a good choice for diluting concentrated liquids as well as for hydrating infants and toddlers with pristine pure water, keep in mind that it does attract charged metals easily so you’ll want to monitor how you store it and what material it comes in contact with. 

Avoid storing distilled water, or any liquids for that matter, in metal including stainless steel, brass, copper or aluminum containers, as well as plastic water bottles. The best types of water containers are glass bottles and jugs. 

With no solutes, distilled water is extremely clean but involves a boiling and re-condensing process which takes a lot of time and electrical or gas power, so it tends to be impractical to carry out in your own home — and the expense of buying it bottled can add up fast! Distilled water only comes in plastic bottles, another good reason to find a better source of purified drinking water to reduce plastic exposure and minimize environmental impact.

Filtered vs. Purified Water

Water can be filtered through two different methods to remove chemicals and contaminants.

Filtered water means water has been filtered through a carbon filtration process. A carbon filter system costs less than a reverse osmosis or distillation unit and uses a filter that contains layers of charcoal and other adsorbents that can remove most impurities including dirt, fungi, bacteria, and other microbes. 

However, the majority of carbon filtration systems only filter out particles up to 50 microns, and the most efficient only achieve .2 microns. This means it doesn’t take out heavy metals that are much smaller in size. They also tend to leave in fluoride, radioactive materials such as uranium, and the residues of medications, pesticides and solvents. 

Reverse Osmosis (RO) Purification System employs a partially permeable membrane to separate water ions and harmful substances removing up to 99.9% of undesirable contaminants including toxic metals and fluoride by filtering particles as small as .00010 micron. 

To give you an idea how small one micron is, it’s 1/1000 of a millimeter. An average strand of hair is 100 to 150 microns, pollen is 10 microns, bacteria can be as small as 1 micron, and viruses down to .001 micron.

The average size of heavy metals is .00015 microns, so small that it will absorb straight through the human cellular barrier– into your skin, eyes, nose, lungs and gut. This is why all humans have some level of toxic metals in our body, even newborns. 

Therefore, RO purification system is the most effective process to make the cleanest of water with minimal energy consumption. This system is what I use in my own home and RV. Keep in mind that once tap water goes through the RO process, it does ten to drop the pH due to the removal of minerals, but there is a remedy for the acidity which I’ll share later in the series!

Glacier and Natural Spring Water

In the hierarchy of water, true spring or glacier water is the ultimate for its ideal molecular composition. When this water is actually glass bottled from the best natural springs and glaciers, it contains the minerals we need, and exhibits a proper electric charge, with undetectable levels of chemicals or heavy metals. 

However, people who prioritize health and optimal hydration often grow frustrated that many springs tend to vary in their purity, and some of those name brand bottles can’t always be trusted. Additionally, buying your water supply in the form of bottled spring water is usually never financially feasible or environmentally appropriate.

Water experts have long looked for a way to take purified water and replace the hexagonal molecular structure interrupted by the reverse osmosis process. In the comforts of your own home, with a touch of a button, you can create delicious tasting, alkaline, structured water similar to unadulterated spring or glacier water for an affordable price.

In our next blog, The Possibilities of Structured Water, we’ll look closer at this form of structured, hexagonal water and its potential advantages in enhancing our lives by optimizing our physical systems and processes, beginning at the cellular level.

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Why Is Water so Important to the Human Body? Part 1 Water Series

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Every organism on the planet needs water to regulate its every function — especially human beings. Keep in mind that every breath, thought, sensation, and muscle twitch relies on millions of tiny processes happening at a microscopic level. Let’s look at the major ways water works within our own bodies. 

Heat Regulation

Critical to every biological process is heat regulation. Energy expenditure puts out heat, and our bodies need a cooling mechanism to keep that heat in check. Because water requires a very particular level of heat to raise its temperature, it’s able to absorb a significant amount of excess heat that would otherwise cause enzymes to burn out and cease to properly function.

Your body cools itself by sweating. So of course the water that leaves your body when you sweat needs to be replaced. Drinking water throughout the day revives the body by allowing it to maintain its natural cooling process and by preventing dehydration — particularly important during the summer time when people are more prone to heat exhaustion and stroke.

Universal Solvent

Water is made out of two hydrogen atoms, and one oxygen atom. This chemical bond draws both positive and negative ions, so when water mixes with other substances, positive ions move toward the water’s oxygen atom, while negative ions move toward the hydrogen atoms. This setup allows water to break down a variety of compounds. Within our bodies, water dissolves many of the chemical material we need to survive — like the glucose in the food we eat. That content can then be moved throughout the body via our bloodstream and catalyzes all the crucial reactions our body executes to stay alive.

Metabolism 

Take all the chemical reactions that go on inside of an organism — we refer to that summation as metabolism. Water is the chemical that contributes to these reactions and fuels ALL the processes that keep plants and animals alive from moment to moment.

In plants, water facilitates photosynthesis, the process plants use to turn sunlight into food. In animals, water facilitates respiration. Respiration brings oxygen into our cells which is then used to make ATP. ATP gets divided into ADP and phosphoric acid. This division releases the cellular energy that powers every reaction, and removes waste molecules from the body after the respiration cycle has finished.

This metabolic cycle is part of the process that naturally removes the build-up of toxins within our bodies — toxins that typically come in the form of cellular waste.

Detoxification 

The pile-up of cellular waste throughout the body de-optimizes the lifecycle of our cells. Cells rely on water to turn over regularly and efficiently, and to provide for the healing, growth, and recovery we need to live our best lives.

We can’t build muscle, lose fat, gain flexibility, or improve our skin if cellular waste weighs down our metabolism and slows the process. This is why many sports physiologists actually suggest drinking plain water rather than sports drinks that tout an abundance of electrolytes. Because electrolytes comprise much of our typical diet anyway, and we ingest these salt ions via vegetables and other nutrient-dense foods, it makes more sense to workout with pure water that can dilute and flush out the cellular waste our bodies need to remove.

The process of anaerobic respiration breaks down sugars and results in waste like:

  • Carbon dioxide 
  • Nitrite
  • Succinate
  • Sulfide
  • Methane
  • Acetate

Water helps to eliminate all of this.

Inner Environment

Through our bloodstream, water also acts as the insulation and conduit that delivers energy to all regions of our body, and keeps every organ system in operation. The unique ecology of our gut bacteria requires a continual supply of adequate water to break down and synthesize the nutrients we consume. And all of it must be sorted and allotted for use in energy, growth, maintenance, and healing.

Picture the complicated job of our digestive, urinary, and circulatory systems. These systems are tasked with breaking down every substance that enters our body, using it as energy, delivering it where it’s needed, and then expelling it as waste. How could our bodies achieve this without water as a processing agent? 

Water makes way for every bodily operation by clearing space for new cells and diluting the debris that needs to be flushed out in sweat or urine. Traces of heavy metals, for example, sometimes get stored in fat and must be cleared out to improve our functioning. This process of diluting and flushing works toward the health of every system — including the lymphatic system. Metabolic waste molecules impair our immunity when they build up to clog the lymphatic system and create a honey-like consistency that needs to be more fluid.

Weight Loss 

If you’re attempting to lose a few pounds, water intake is crucial. Water helps you suppress your appetite and metabolizes the fat you want to be breathed out and excreted a little at a time. If your kidneys aren’t operating with the correct amount of water, the liver steps up to do the job of eliminating toxins. The downside of this? If the liver is needed to fulfill the role of the kidneys, it’s not converting your fat into energy. Instead, your fat stays in place and continues to store itself.

Any aerobic or weight training program designed to shed body fat must be accompanied by plentiful water intake to maximize your success. When your system is working harder than its use to, you have to give it every advantage.

Disease Prevention

Because of water’s role in these many crucial processes, every doctor advocates property hydration as a defense against:

  • Chronic joint diseases
  • Rheumatoid arthritis
  • Inflammation
  • Poor cartilage health
  • The visible signs of aging
  • Constipation
  • Diabetes 
  • Hypoglycemia 
  • Obesity 
  • Arthritis 
  • Kidney stones
  • Dry skin 
  • Wrinkles 
  • Cataracts
  • Glaucoma

You can see why water is such a critical component of our makeup, as it leads all of the biological interplay that allows us to exist. Just as the earth is an ecosystem reliant on water for its many cycles and dynamics, the human body is also its own complete ecosystem, and the right choices keep it healthy! 

In upcoming blogs, we will discuss the different kinds of drinking water on the market, and which provide the most benefit for our daily functioning and extended longevity. Stay tuned! I’ve got more valuable tips and techniques right around the corner!

Click here to watch a short intro video to kick off the water series!

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