Water

Water is often talked about as essential for life but our understanding of water and how it functions is often very sketchy.
So let me start by talking about simple physiology. Water is the main component of every system in the body and makes up 80% of the blood system and even a reduction of 5% in the water content of the body can lead to pain, stroke, high blood pressure and even heart attack.

Given that water is so vital why don’t we give more importance to it.
In the western world we have relatively well developed water infrastructures with both fresh supply and dirty (sewage) water removal. It wasn’t so long ago (just over 100 years) that the Victorian’s started to realise that the biggest cause of health issues was related to
dirty water and an inadequate (often contaminated) fresh water supply. The Victorian solution was to put in sewage drainage and pipe it into rivers and the sea. The results were dramatic and life expectancy increased more in the ensuing years due to this measure more than any other factor.

Sadly this contaminated rivers and the sea and often the food supply. The sea/oceans are daily getting more contaminated and that is a process that was started by the Victorians.
Today we tend to assume the water that comes out of our  taps looks clean and clear but if you undertake a chemical analysis you very quickly pick up trace amounts of hundreds of chemicals. These levels may well be individually below the regulatory limits but according the in the plethora of reports being published today that the additive and bioaccumulative effects are far from insignificant.

So based on the premise that we need water and the unavoidable contamination of our current supply the smart people are paying great attention to their own water supply. There are several ways people use to improve the quality of their water and these are summarised below:

• reverse osmosis – to run a reverse osmosis system requires energy and cleaning (OFTEN NEEDING CHEMICALS) and results in de-mineralisation and water that is acidic – both not good for health

• distillation – very expensive in terms of energy and also results in demineralization but produces the best quality water in terms of purity
• Multi stage filtration – every water filtration system of any note has active carbon filtration to reduce chemical contaminants and many add silver ion filtration media to improve results.
• Enhanced water – many attempts have been made to enhance water or give it some special beneficial properties.
  • Alkaline water (Kangen water) – works on the premise that alkaline water has health benefits. Alkalinity varies from pH 7 up to 13. The benefits of very alkaline water are both emotive and profound and tend to offset the acidity of our modern lifestyles.
  • WELLNESS water – this water is derived from some long standing research into the lifestyle of the Hunsa tribe in Northern Pakistan. The water is mildly more alkaline than tap water, free of most chlorine and has some interesting properties imparted by passing water through mineral and magnetic media.
  • microclustered water – Penta water – dubious science and hugely expensive to buy

So what would I recommend:

1. The bottom line is that reverse osmosis is not a particularly healthy option due to demineralisation and acidity of produced water.
2. Alkaline water can be very helpful but it is very expensive to purchase a pre built system – often several thousand pounds.
3. micro clustered water is often sold in bottles (1 Lt can cost over £1) which makes it very expensive to use in any quantity.
4. the best cost/benefit option in my opinion is the wellness water systems which include both passive and portable systems and more active whole house systems