- Hydration
- Electrolytes & Minerals
- EMdrops as Water Enhancer
- EMdrops as Mineral Supplement
- General Topics
- Ordering
Many people take great care about what they eat, but somehow they don’t consider hydration to be as important. Many people drink water only when thirsty, or as an afterthought. This is like putting the cart before the horse. Any type of balanced nutritional plan, and more importantly, our health depends on regular and healthy hydration.
And yes, there is much more to hydration than simply drinking more water! Please see this blog post for some important hydration tips.
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The short answer is No. There are several issues with waiting to get thirsty (see below). For most people, it makes sense to have regular meals. Similarly it is best to develop a regular habit for hydration.
1) If you consistently allow yourself to get thirsty before you drink water, you are consistently exposing yourself to some level of dehydration, which is not good for your physical, mental and emotional health. In fact, we are likely to neglect or forget about thirst when under stress, until the thirst becomes so powerful that it truly gets our attention. By that time, we start getting dehydrated, which reduces our performance in dealing with whatever stress we are facing.
2) Many beverages (particularly caffeinated soda & cola drinks, energy drinks, alcoholic drinks, and to a lesser extent, coffee and tea) have dehydrating and/or diuretic (increased urine formation) effects on the body. When you consume such beverages, you need to drink extra water for proper hydration.
3) Scientific research shows that during the aging process, our thirst response progressively decreases, which leads to increasing incidence of dehydration and subsequent problems among the elderly. Thus relying on thirst alone is not a good strategy for staying hydrated, particularly as we get older.
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Although drinking 8 cups of water per day is a good starting point for most adults, one size (or 8 cups) does not fit all!
In fact, staying well hydrated depends on several factors. First of all the quality of water is at least as important (if not more) as the quantity of water we drink. Please do not take water quality for granted, and that includes both bottled water and tap water, whether filtered or not.
There are many other factors, such as the type of beverages you drink, the water content of the foods you eat, intake of diuretic herbs, alcohol, medicines, your body weight, your activity level, and also the weather! For example, hot weather increases water loss from your body due to sweating or perspiration, and your water intake needs to increase accordingly, particularly for outdoor activities in hot weather.
Hydration is so important that it is worth your time to dig deeper into this “8 cups of water” topic. Please see this blog post for more details.
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First of all, good quality drinking water should be pure and should not have any significant level of toxic biological or chemical contaminants. A good level of purification can be achieved by reverse-osmosis (RO) filter systems, or by distillation of tap water.
Further, good drinking water should have a significant level of healthy minerals, particularly calcium and magnesium. Unfortunately, it is not possible to be sure about the quality of drinking water simply by tasting it, looking at it, or even by filtering it. Some testing and/or information gathering is typically required. Please see response to next FAQ question for more info.
It is also important to note that mineral cartridges or remineralizing filter systems typically do not provide proper levels of balanced minerals. Always ask the filter supplier for details and written specifications! For example, ask exactly what minerals are being added into the water, and at what levels? Further, is the cartridge certified by any reputable agency such as NSF?
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We agree that there is tremendous confusion about drinking water. There is a dizzying array of bottled water products available in stores, including purified water, vapor-distilled water, spring water, mineral water, electrolyte-enhanced water, alkaline water, alkaline-mineralized water, ionic water, infused water, vitamin water and so on. At the other end of the spectrum is plain old tap water. And then there are several options for purifying water at home, such as refrigerator filters, faucet filters, counter-top pitcher filters, distillation systems, water softening systems, reverse-osmosis filter systems; whole house filtration systems etc. So what do we recommend? Here are the main considerations that are useful to navigate through the confusion:
- It is a fact that municipal tap water and private well water can have many contaminants. As per reports from United States EPA, there are hundreds of known potential contaminants in water, and it is not possible to test for every new contaminant that is discovered. The majority of potential contaminants are not regulated, and are therefore not tested by authorities! It is also a fact that municipally treated water always has dissolved chlorine, chloramines, and/or other disinfection by-products, that react with other contaminants and often form carcinogenic derivatives at varying levels. The quality of tap water depends not only on the water source, but also the quality of water treatment, and the quality of pipes that bring the water into your home — it is not possible to constantly monitor all the variables. Therefore, it is best to use a NSF-certified filter to remove the most common contaminants from tap water or well water. However, please be aware that the vast majority of household filters are not capable of removing contaminants such as fluoride, nitrates and nitrites. Most municipal districts in the United States add fluoride chemicals to tap water, which is a very controversial practice and there is much evidence in recent scientific studies that water fluoridation does more harm than good (many countries have already banned fluoridation of water). Nitrates and nitrites are also common water contaminants due to extensive use of fertilizers in agriculture. These contaminants find their way into streams, rivers and the water table via agricultural run-off and seepage into the ground. If you want to remove fluoride, nitrates and nitrites, the most common options are to use a reverse-osmosis filter system, or a water distillation system combined with a carbon filter.
- It is also a fact that regular use of bottled water (including all types of mineral, spring, electrolyte-enhanced, alkaline, distilled, or purified bottled waters) is a very expensive choice, both for your wallet and for the environment. Further, the quality of bottled water can vary greatly, depending on the brand, the source water, the bottling operation, the quality of the plastic bottles, and the conditions under which the bottles are stored. If you use bottled water regularly, be sure to obtain and inspect the manufacturer’s water quality report. Please be aware however that most bottlers will conduct the minimum number of required water tests. They will typically not test for any unregulated contaminants, because they are not required to. In particular, we don’t know of any bottled water company which certifies or guarantees their bottled water to be free of plasticizers or other contaminants leaching from the bottles.
- If you use a relatively advanced water purification system at home (i.e. water softening system, distillation system, or a reverse-osmosis filter systems), in most cases you will get purified water of a consistent quality, but unfortunately such waters are always deficient in healthy minerals (these purification systems remove the good minerals along with the bad pollutants). If drinking pure water without agricultural or industrial pollutants is important to you, then using purified waters is usually the most cost-effective and probably the best choice for most people, provided that you add healthy mineral electrolytes back into the water. As far as we know, EMdrops is the first and only liquid product for adding essential mineral electrolytes (including calcium and magnesium) to drinking water, without any preservatives or chemical additives.
- The very best drinking waters have a good level of healthy dissolved minerals such as calcium and magnesium that are required by living organisms, while being free of disease-causing germs, toxic elements, disinfection by-products, agricultural and industrial pollutants etc. These healthy waters come from unpolluted natural sources such as high altitude mountain springs and deep underground aquifers. Unfortunately, such sources are rare in populated areas. Due to widespread pollution, the vast majority of people no longer have access to high quality pure drinking water, as defined above. This is the key reason why we at Watermins have pledged support to the ‘Environmental Working Group’ and ‘Fluoride Action Network’, since these organizations are passionate about keeping the environment clean, and are advocates of clean, safe, unpolluted drinking water.
