Safe, clean water is critical for your good health.

Water is vitally important to the human body. Not only is seventy percent of the body water, but water is the medium in which the biochemical reactions in the body take place. Put simply, if you don’t have water in your body you’re dead. The heart literally stops without enough water.

Water gets into your body primarily when you drink it, and it’s really important that the water you drink be free of contaminants that might foul up the incredibly intricate biochemistry that’s going on inside of  you all the time.

There are many types of contaminants including bacteria, viruses, little bugs, dangerous heavy metals, pharmaceutical drugs, and a variety of chemicals… and I talk about all of those in other podcasts. But for now, let me expand the idea of contaminants to include other things that we normally consume. The fact of the matter is that drinking a quart of coffee or soda is not the same as drinking a quart of pure water. Generally speaking, beverages that contain sugar and caffeine actually interfere with the water based processes in the body. In fact, many cause you to actually lose water and become dehydrated. So start with the idea that consuming coffee, soda, and other similar beverages is not the way to get water. Just because something is wet doesn’t mean it’s good for you.

When it comes to drinking water, there are really two things to consider. First, you’ve got to drink enough water, and second, the water you drink must be safe and clean. For now, let’s focus on the getting enough water.

The key to health is that you must maintain the right amount of water in your body in order for it to function properly. As I mentioned, water comes into your body through eating and drinking. On the other hand, water leaves the body through urination, defecation, perspiration, and respiration. This last one comes as a surprise to many people, but the fact is that the simple act of breathing makes you lose a lot of water.

There is a classic formula for figuring out how much water you should drink each day. Divide your weight in pounds by two. That’s the number of ounces you should drink every day. For example, if you weigh 150 pounds you should drink 75 ounces of water every day. That seems like a whole lot of water to drink, but if you cut out the things like coffee and soda it is actually a reasonable amount.

The important point to understand is that if enough safe, clean water is not coming into your body, then your body will make adjustments to the way that its major systems work in an attempt to conserve the water that you do have. That often leads to severe ailments… and as you will see in other podcasts, those ailments are very very common in our culture because we are a culture that routinely fails to drink just water. Instead, we drink coffee, sodas, juicy drinks, beer, and other contaminant filled beverages.

To keep good health, you’ve got to understand the importance of clean, safe water and you’ve got to know how you can get water that actually is clean and safe because it’s highly unlikely that you are getting safe water from your local city, from your well, or even from bottled water.