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Chronic Dehydration |
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The amount of water we drink is extremely important factors to health. How dehydration impacts the disease process is demonstrated by Dr. F. Batmanghelidj in his excellent book “Your Body’s Many Cries for Water”.
Why do people become dehydrated? There are several reasons that have been identified.
- First, people mistakenly believe that drinking beer, soda pop and caffeinated beverages can make up for water intake because they contain water. In fact, these substances are all diuretics, and actually contribute to the dehydration process.
- Second, the body instinctively does not like the chlorinated, municipally treated beverage that we commonly must consume as tap water. Over time, the body “learns” to “turn-off” the thirst response, as it attempts to avoid consuming water contaminated with chlorine.
- Third, the water supply for many people can taste “dead” or have an unappealing quality either due to taste or color in the glass.
For example, bottled and distilled waters are low in dissolved oxygen. This causes them to taste “flat”. Reverse-osmosis and distillation remove healthy minerals thereby making water taste “dead”. In some places, water from the tap is cloudy because of turbidity, or tastes like blood due to excess iron, or smells like rotten-eggs due to excess hydrogen sulfide. Sometimes water that comes from the tap in large cities has passed through miles of pipe and has either absorbed metals from the pipes, or lost its content of dissolved oxygen. It is easy for this kind of water to develop “off-tastes” and unappealing odors.
Key Point: For this reason, one of the most important jobs of a water treatment device is to make water palatable and appealing by removing off-tastes and odors including those caused by chlorine and its by-products so that people enjoy drinking water as well as beverages made with water.
Once I know my water is clean, clear, and palatable, and free of disease-causing microbes, the next issue is to have a water device that is capable of removing even very small amounts of substances that are toxic while preserving even small amounts of substances that are important nutrients.
From this perspective, I would add to my list of the most important things to want in a drinking water treatment device the following:
- Renders water that is aesthetically pleasing meaning that it is crystal clear and has a fresh, alive taste;
- Preserves the healthy alkaline minerals of calcium, phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium;
- Preserves the healthy trace minerals of zinc, copper, selenium, silver, molybdenum;
- Has a pH that is neutral to slightly alkaline;
- Has negative redox potential so that it can remain bacteriostatic and act like a mild liquid antioxidant for the body.
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