Drinking water and your immune system

Drinking water is critical for a strong immune system and many health benefits.  Adequate hydration has a huge impact on your immune system. Water helps all of your body's systems function at optimum levels.
Research at Tufts University found that dehydration is associated with negative mood and impaired attention.

Link of immune system and drinking water:
Since a healthy immune system allows your body to fight off diseases, you need plenty of fresh, pure water to function properly. Water is everywhere in your body, sort of like a river flowing through your arteries, veins, and capillaries carrying vital, life sustaining nutrients to your cells and transporting waste out of the body. Water basically fills every space in your body and helps build a healthy immune system.

In the book 'Your Bodies Many Cries For Water', Dr F Batmanghelidj postulates that almost all diseases are caused by the simple fact that we don't drink enough water.
Dr Theodore Baroody, author of "Alkalize or Die"  says that we are dehydrated because we are acidic, and we are acidic because of the food we eat and the liquids we drink. He believes, like Dr Batmanghelidj, that we could protect ourselves from almost all major diseases by adequate intake or not just water but alkaline water.

Drinking plenty of water helps keep you healthy in the long term. A surprising number of illnesses can be treated or prevented simply by drinking eight to ten glasses of water a day.

Related studies:
* The Amazing Health Benefit of Drinking Water * 5 Immune System Benefits of Drinking Water

How to know the water we are using is safe and healthy for us?

In our daily lives we not only use water for drinking purposes but we bathe, brush our teeth, wash our clothes with it. Farming, ranching, food processing and a multitude of manufacturing processes use a great deal water, as well. The water we use for regular daily needs is treated on a huge level to make it safe for us. This post helps you learn how the water is purified to make it safer for humans.

We all know that water is an essential part of our life. Just a few lines to remember that

Importance of Water:

- Regulates body temperature

- Serves as a solvent for minerals, vitamins, amino acids, glucose and other small

molecules, aiding their assimilation into the body carries oxygen to all parts of

the body

- Lubricates the areas around our joints (especially important for athletes, people

with arthritis and those with chronic challenges, like back pain.

- Is necessary for chemical reactions in the body

- Acts as a shock absorber inside the eyes and spinal cord removes the waste products of our metabolic processes

Do you know the water we are consuming for drinking or cooking is safe and healthy for us?

The only way to know what is in your water is to have it tested. Water water treatment professionals can perform on-site tests for; hardness, iron (rust), pH, total dissolved solids, nitrates, chlorine and temperature.

If a city, water utility or other regulated system supplies your water they can provide you with the results from government mandated tests they’ve completed for a variety of contaminants. Keep in mind that they are not required to test for all contaminants.

While bad odors, unusual colors or metallic tastes usually indicate a drinking water contaminant, some contaminants are not so easily undetected. Lead is tasteless, odorless, and colorless and can find its way into your water via soldered pipe connections. Lead-based solder was used in homes built as recently as the late 1980s. How old is your home? What type of plumbing pipes do you have?

Even though cities generally use chlorine to disinfect water to prevent illness and disease, chlorinating is not a “foolproof” method. Unexpected outbreaks of microorganisms can still occur. And although it has been treated, city water may pick up contaminants as it travels through miles of distribution lines before it reaches your home.

The ways to make water safe for humans are:

Carbon Filters: Activated carbon can reduce chlorine, VOCs, tastes, odors, and in some cases, lead. Carbon filters are available in a wide variety of sizes and styles, from mini-filters that can be attached to the end of a faucet to in-line systems connected to a home's plumbing. Filter cartridges must be changed regularly to ensure optimum contaminant reduction. Note: Faucet mounted mini-filters may be less than effective. Mini-filters are one area where price may well indicate quality and level of protection.

Distillation Systems: Distillation systems boil water to reduce contaminants, then condense the steam that results and collect the water in a storage tank or pot. Since certain substances (including many contaminants but not all) don't vaporize they don't rise with the steam and are left behind in the boiling chamber. Note: While most distillers do not remove volatile organics, adding a carbon filter can provide a more effective system. Distillers use a great deal of energy, radiate a great deal of heat and must be cleaned regularly.

Note: When water is “soft” or “softened” prior to distillation the need to clean the distiller is greatly reduced.

Important: Distilled water most often has a low pH value (acid). My doctor does not recommend drinking low pH (acid) water. She tells me that most disease processes can not live in an alkaline body environment. She recommends drinking water with an alkaline pH, except. . . she does recommend drinking distilled water for people who are “stone” formers.

Ultraviolet Systems (UV): UV systems destroy microorganism’s ability to reproduce by exposing them to intense ultraviolet light… as a result, they die. Since they “disinfect” water rather than remove contaminants, UV systems should be installed with other filters; a sediment pre-filters and carbon post filter are common. UV bulbs must be changed regularly (generally once each year, depending on conditions) for the system to function properly.

Reverse Osmosis (RO) Systems:

RO systems are recommended by the US Department of Health & Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as one of the most effective ways of protecting residential drinking water. The best systems utilize a combination of carbon filtration and a semi-permeable membrane to reduce contaminants. Water is first filtered, then forced against a dense membrane, a portion of it passes through, while contaminants are left behind to be carried away by the effluent. These membranes are very similar to those used in kidney dialysis. Think “fresh squeezed” water when you think of reverse osmosis.

Reverse osmosis effectively removes dissolved salts (naturally occurring, as well as, from water softeners), suspended solids, dissolved chemicals and a wide variety of other contaminants that cannot be seen by the naked eye. When choosing an RO system, look for a unit with a high recovery rate (recovery rate = amount of water produced divided by amount of water used). Generally, a rate of 25% is considered efficient. R O filters should be changed, generally, every six (6) months and the membrane every two years, depending on what is in your water and the amount of water used.

Source of information: 'Natural Health Techniques'

Drinking enough water can boost your brain powers

Water is involved  in all bodily functions: digestion, assimilation, elimination, respiration, maintaining temperature (homeostasis) integrity and the strength of all bodily structures. Your body, being primarily water, requires sufficient daily water replacement in order to function efficiently. 

Important factor is the amount of water necessary for our body to function at its peak performance. Bearing in mind again that your body is about 75 percent water it is easy to understand that water must be your body's most essential daily ingredient. Your body looses each day about 2-3 litters of water through elimination, urination, perspiration and respiration. However, this may increase during illness, high performance, exercise, pregnancy and nursing. The beverages most people choose to consume are often counter-productive in promoting hydration. Coffee, tea, alcohol, soft and sugary drinks are all diuretics and will cause not only the loss of water the are dissolved in, but they will also draw water the bodies reserves. In normal conditions your body needs to replace the fluids it has lost throughout the day. Most of fluids should be replaced by drinking pure water. The rest you should get from fruit, vegetables and their juices. 

Attention must be given that the elderly and children are meeting their daily requirements. Dry mouth is not the only indication of dehydration, in fact it is the last sign. You need to acquire the habit to drink water even when you think you don't need it and eventually your true thirst mechanisms will be reawaken. Signs to look for that identify with dehydration are constipation, headaches, indigestion, weight gain, fluid retention, dark and pungent urine, and their associated pathologies colitis, kidney stones, bladder and urinary track infections to name only a few.

Loma Linda University researchers found that drinking five or more 8-ounce glasses of water a day could help lower your risk of heart disease by up to 60 percent - exactly the same drop you get from stopping smoking, lowering your LDL (bad) cholesterol numbers, exercising, or losing a little weight.

How drinking water can boost your brain powers?

A glass of water can boost your creativity as well. If you’re properly hydrated you’ll have more energy, you’ll feel healthier, you will become more alert and aware of your surroundings. If your brain is functioning on a full reservoir it will function at full capacity and you’ll think better and faster. A glass of water is a great boost to your creativity. You’ll find ideas are easier to come up with and they’re likely to be more unique. Your mind will work easier and it won’t seem like such a strain. All that and it’s one of the simplest changes you can make in your life.

Bring Instant Increase in Brain Power:

1. First thing in the morning have a glass of water. Go ahead and have your coffee or whatever afterward, as I said we’re not making this hard core.

2. Around lunch, have another glass of water along with whatever you planned for lunch.

3. Then grab a glass around 3:00 or somewhere in there, especially if you’re starting to feel like you’re slowing down.

4. One glass of water with supper.

More related articles:

* 10 Reasons to Drink More Water

* I Drink, Therefore I Am: Water - the Elixir of Life

* Need to Increase Your Brain Power?