Hydration is one of the most important factors in a life of thrival!

The human body is some 70% water, and it serves many purposes:  

• regulates body temperature
• transports nutrients
• encourages glowing skin
• flushes waste products through sweat and urine
• moistens tissues and lubricates joints
• fundamental to digestion and metabolism

Given water's vital role in the human body, water quality is a topic worth a closer look. 

Some water is full of many important elements such as trace minerals and potentially living organisms which contribute to true hydration on a cellular level, and other water is lacking these elements. -- @quinneaker

Consider this: would you rather have a drink from a banana leaf in the rainforest or from the city water in Flint, Michigan? Obviously all water is not created equal, so in this post we will address some factors that determine water quality and affect proper hydration.

Cleanliness

Water contamination comes in many forms; there are obviously many places on Earth that have pollution floating in fresh water sources, but even unblemished springs high in pristine mountains may contain tiny organisms that wreak havoc on the human system. Or as in Flint and many municipalities, harmful chemicals like lead can turn tap water into poison...and some bottled water is even worse than tap water!

In a survival situation or in travel, iodine, colloidal silver, and hydrogen peroxide are all valid water purification techniques for killing harmful microbes in questionable water. 

In a more residential setting, filtration makes a lot of sense for removing harmful microbes as well as toxins. However, methods like distillation and reverse osmosis are still not optimized for proper hydration, because they remove healthful ions (like the minerals calcium and magnesium) that enhance water's absorbability right along with detrimental contaminants.

Absorbability

Water molecules are polar; they have a slightly negative and a slightly positive end. This feature gives water properties that enable it to support all life on Earth as we know it. Surface tension, for example, happens because a slightly positive hydrogen in one water molecule is attracted to the slightly negative oxygen of another.

image source

Surface tension is a factor that can be somewhat manipulated to make water "wetter", or more absorbable by the cells. This can be done by adding food grade hydrogen peroxide to water, or using a water ionizer, which is a device that uses electrolysis to separate water into 2 streams, one acidic and one alkaline. 

Alkalinity

There is no known disease that can survive in an alkaline state.-- Dr. Axe

We're hearing more and more about acidosis, an excessively acidic state of the body's fluids and tissues caused by a number of factors, including the standard American diet and a heavily polluted environment.

Can drinking alkaline water counteract this condition? The human bloodstream is optimized within a narrow pH range around 7.4 (7 is neutral; lower is acidic, and higher is alkaline = basic). While we know that too acidic leads to disease conditions, it is also possible to be too alkaline as well. Our hypothesis is that drinking some alkaline water can raise an acidic body's pH to the optimal level, but one must be responsible to stay within the optimal range and not consume too much alkaline water.

We were recently gifted a water ionizer that produces alkaline water, and we're super curious about it's claims for improving health! In upcoming posts, we will share our observations, experience, and further research into using it. 

References 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - Full Spectrum Health by @quinneaker

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