Water and Nutrition
The foundation of good health is good nutrition. The four essential nutrients are water, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, and they also include vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients.
Water is fundamental to life and is second to air for sustaining life. It is an essential life need and a life force. Without water, life would end in 3 to 5 days. Our adult body is at least 60% of water, the main component of all our body fluids; Blood (81%), Urine (95%), sweat (99%), lymph, digestive juices, and tears. All our body functions depend on it, e.g., absorption, digestion, elimination, and circulation. It carries electrolytes and mineral salts that have electrical currents in the body. These salts are calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, and chloride. Water also helps transport nutrients and waste products in and out of cells and maintains proper body temperature.
An individual’s water intake depends on where one lives, daily activity, and diet. At 32 weeks of gestation, the fetus is more than 80% water and surrounded by amniotic fluid. The fetus swallows the fluid continuously for nourishment, approximately 250 milliliters for every kilogram of weight. It nourishes the fetus and helps in the digestive system. For an average person,12 cups of water are necessary to stay hydrated, which includes the 4 cups of water from our daily food, and the breakdown of this food provides 1 cup of water. So we need 7 cups to drink daily. Drinking coffee upsets our water balance and excretes more water from our bodies. When we consume drinks concentrated with sugar, it enters the digestive system. It steals water from our body to dilute it and hence upsets the water balance and causes hyperosmotic load.
Knowing the origin, processing, and contents we intake into our bodies is important as water is vital to life. Water is found abundantly on the earth and contains minerals and different substances. It also contains toxic substances which originate from various sources and are different in areas depending on the manufacturing pollution-related activities. e.g., MTBE (Methyl tertiary butyl ether), VOCs (volatile organic compounds), chlorinated by-products like THMS (trihalomethane), heavy metals like cadmium, pesticides, and plastics like styrene. There is a daily toxic input along the shoreline from industries, e.g., dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls.
Hence for optimum health, it is essential to have safe drinking water.
Technology offers various sources of water treatment methods. City water is heavily chlorinated to kill germs and fluorinated to prevent tooth decay. Solid carbon block and reverse osmosis provide a reliable means of obtaining clean water. Solid carbon can clear most chlorine, bacteria, and pollutants that are chemical. It leaves the trace minerals that our bodies need. Reverse osmosis removes fluoride and nitrate levels that are high. According to the Centres for disease control and prevention (CDC), almost 1,000,000 people in the U.S. get sick from contaminated water, and 900 die from waterborne diseases.
