Water and Your Health: Clean Water Is Vital to Your Health

By Beatrice Trum Hunter

What is in the water you drink every day? Do you know if you have been swallowing arsenic, hormone disrupters, radon, Giardia lamblia, and cryptosporidium bacteria? Learn how to get your water tested. There are many ways to improve the quality of water coming from your tap. There are water filters, water softeners, bottled water, and sometimes reclaimed water. All the questions and answers about water are here.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
• Release date: Jan 1, 2003
• ISBN: 9781591206149

Beatrice Trum Hunter

Beatrice Trum Hunter has written more than 30 books on food issues, including whole foods, food adulteration, and aditives. Her most recent books include The Whole Foods Primer, Probiotic Foods for Good Health, and Infectious Connections.

Book preview

WATER AND YOUR HEALTH

W

ater is an essential nutrient for every human being. The body is two-thirds water; the Earth’s surface is three-fourths water. Water cleanses our bodies; water cleanses the Earth. Water transports nutrients to the cells and removes waste products from the body; water is used in the products we make. Yet increasingly the wastes from these products, and often the products themselves, are spewed into rivers, lakes, and oceans. Are we drinking water that we ourselves have polluted, but that we need to be clean and fresh in order for us to thrive?

Most contaminants in our water supply are invisible to the naked eye. The allowable parts per billion (ppb) seem so minuscule that we may not think anything is wrong with our drinking water. We may not think the quality of water in another country, on another continent, affects ours. Yet it does. Water contaminants, such as heavy metals, carcinogens, and pharmaceutical and agricultural runoffs, are accumulating in our bodies and wearing down our defenses.

How to prevent contamination, so that the clean water we use is recycled as quality water, is a formidable task. Water and Your Health presents the problem concisely and offers practical information about how we can solve the problem. The more enlightened we are about our water uses in homes, in industries, and in nature, the better we will be equipped to prevent water contamination and to have access to clean water.

THE NATURAL RESOURCE

YOU CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT

T

he Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regards water as a nutrient, and rightly so. Water is a vital nutrient that sustains the body. The body can survive without food for a longer time than without water.

Repeatedly, we are told that the average adult should drink at least eight glasses of water daily. Yet many people ignore this advice, drinking only when they feel thirsty. Thirst, however, is not a reliable indicator. By the time the body signals thirst, dehydration has already begun. Inadequate water intake is all too common, and chronic dehydration carries many health risks.

For people living in warm climates, adequate water replenishment is especially important. The Israeli nutritional graphic of a chalice, equivalent to our nutritional graphic of a pyramid, displays the nutritional foods basic to health. Water is placed at the very top of the chalice, emphasizing its utmost importance. In a recently devised American nutritional pyramid for people age seventy years and older, eight glasses of water are at the base of the pyramid. Thus, new emphasis is given to old advice.

Adequate water is essential throughout the body. Tissues need water. About 60 percent of the water in the body appears inside the cells of every type of body tissue: blood, bone, muscle, and fat. The remainder is in the cells of the gastrointestinal tract, eyes, spinal column, and joints (such as knees and elbows).

The body uses water in many ways. Water dissolves many chemical compounds so that the body can utilize them. Water serves as a medium in which chemical reactions constantly occur. The fluid in blood transports glucose to working muscles, and carries away byproducts. Fluid in the urine helps eliminate metabolic wastes from the body.

In aging, the thirst mechanism—as well as other senses—may decline. If water intake is inadequate, the blood thickens and reduces circulation, which makes the brain more susceptible to senility.

A study of active elderly men, sixty-seven to seventy-five years of age, deprived of water for twenty-four hours, found that they were less thirsty and drank less water than younger, active adult men. For this reason, it is especially important for the elderly to develop a habit of drinking water frequently, even if their bodies are not signaling thirst. Because of the problem of incontinence, many elderly people purposely avoid fluid intake before social activities or prior to bedtime. Such avoidance may lessen inconvenience, but can contribute to chronic dehydration and health problems.

As noted, by the time a person experiences a thirst signal, the body already has become partially dehydrated, and as much as 3 percent of the body’s weight may have been lost in water. The elderly and children are groups at highest risk of dehydration. Both groups are apt to be somewhat insensitive to thirst signals.

With inadequate water intake, the body slows down. This happens in the dead of winter as well as during the sweltering hot summertime. Signs of inadequate water intake may include a general sense of malaise, fatigue, lassitude, dizziness, and irritability. Signs of extreme dehydration may include heartburn, stomachache, non-infectious recurring or chronic pain, headache, depression, and water retention. The last outward sign of dehydration may be thirst.

Chronic dehydration is thought to play a role in some health problems, including asthma, arthritis, high blood pressure, and premature aging. With asthma, for example, the body increases histamine production. Histamine helps regulate water metabolism and distribution. Also, it constricts the bronchial muscles in an effort to conserve the water lost during breathing. Frequently, the lung tissues of asthmatics contain high histamine levels.

Adequate fluid intake may reduce the risks of certain types of cancer. Increased water intake is thought to be an important factor in reducing colon cancer risk, by decreasing both fecal bowel transit time and the concentration of carcinogenic compounds through dilution. High fluid intake also may lower the risk of bladder cancer, the fourth leading type of cancer among American men. The American Cancer Society reports that the risk of bladder cancer decreased by 7 percent for every 1-cup increment of fluid intake daily. Men with the highest amount of fluid intake (more than ten 8-ounce glasses daily) were found to have only about half the risk of bladder cancer development as men who drank less than five glasses of fluid daily.

Of all fluids, water is the best thirst quencher. Fortunately, water is contained in many other beverages and foods, which contribute to the total daily intake. Milk is about 87 percent water, and fruit juices are high in it. Most fruits and vegetables are composed of 85 to 95 percent water. Very juicy vegetables include cucumbers and tomatoes; and very juicy fruits, watermelons and grapes. Even starch vegetables, such as potatoes, are about 75 to 80 percent water.

Not all beverages are good hydrators. The caffeine in regular coffee, tea, and cola drinks is diuretic, and dehydrates by increasing urine excretion. The greater the amount of caffeine consumed, the greater is the need for more non–caffeine-containing fluid intake. Nor do alcoholic beverages count as hydrators. Beer on a hot summer day dehydrates rather than hydrates the body, even though it appears to quench the thirst.

Sodium is an essential nutrient. However, highly salted processed foods, such as ham, bacon, smoked salmon, and pickles, as well as foods naturally high in sodium, such as many ocean fish and fish eggs (caviar), result in dehydrating the body. Adequate water replenishment is important. Also, because a high sodium intake depletes the body of another essential nutrient, potassium, it is important to replenish this nutrient, too. Fruits and berries are good sources of potassium.

During long air flights, passengers may suffer from mild dehydration due to insufficient fluid intake, consumption of diuretic beverages (alcohol, coffee, and tea), and low humidity in the cabin air. Choose fruit juices whenever they are offered, and request them without ice. The ice will displace much of the juice. Besides, there is a possibility of the ice being contaminated, either by the water from which it is made, or inadvertently by