Water makes up about 60% of an adult’s body weight. Water is important for many functions – maintenance of body temperature, medium for many physiological functions and metabolism and excretion of waste products. Our daily requirement is about 2.5 litres of which 1 litre is from food and 1.5 litres from drinking water. Malaysia has a hot climate and we need to drink more plain water at times of rapid fluid loss where there is excessive sweating, particularly during sports.
Ideally, take six to eight glasses of water a day. If you drink too little water, your urine will be dark. If you drink enough water, your urine will be clearer. This is a good guide to determine whether you drink enough water or not.
Unfortunately, not all water is pure and healthy. Water may be tainted with lead from old pipes or have high levels of chlorine and other toxins. Installing a home filter system is a good idea, but it must be maintained and checked periodically. The idea is to make the water as clean and pure as possible. If it is not purified externally, your own body will have to do it, and over the years it will take its toll.
Bottled water is very popular today. However, depending on processing techniques, not all bottled water is safe either. It is best to use water that has undergone distillation, reverse osmosis, or a combination of reverse osmosis and de-ionization. Buy known and reputable brands.
Super-oxygenated Water
These days there is also super-oxygenated water. There is very little oxygen in water in the first place and even if it is seven or ten times the oxygen content of normal water as has been claimed, this is negligible. Humans breathe in oxygen via the lungs, not via the gastrointestinal tract, for we do not have gills like fish. Oxygen is unlikely to bind with water, and even if it did, how can it reach the cells if taken via the gastrointestinal tract. Why didn’t the person who invented the technology of binding oxygen to water win any scientific awards if there was such a technology? And if the oxygen is compressed into the bottle, surely it will dissipate when you open the cap.
Moreover, super-oxygen water usually costs three times the price of normal bottled water. We humans were not designed to absorb oxygen via the stomach. That’s basic science. Some things that Mother Nature created can’t be changed. If anything is free, it is oxygen. Just take a few deeper breaths and there you instantly have more oxygen in your blood than drinking a bottle of super-oxygenated water.
It is the red blood cells that deliver oxygen to the cells and organs. Oxygen deprivation to the cells is due to many reasons such as atherosclerosis or lead poisoning whereby the red blood cells cannot bind oxygen well.
