For water — unlike for other things that you put into your body — “healthy” might refer more to what’s not in it as opposed to what is.
Indeed, the CDC’s page on “Healthy Water” focuses on issues like preventing waterborne disease, proper handwashing and even issues you may not have considered with your water, like Shigella contamination and the danger of harmful growths in large bodies of water.
But let’s strip it back to the basics: What about the water in your house? Let’s talk about tap water. What makes tap water good? What is healthy water?
You Are a Filter: Why It’s So Important to Drink Clean, Healthy, Filtered Water
If the water you’re drinking isn’t fully free of contaminants and pollutants, you have the opportunity to filter or treat it before drinking. If you don’t filter or treat it, or don’t remove enough pollutants when doing so, then you’re counting on your body to do that work for you.
That makes you a giant filter.
With that frame of mind, it becomes even more important to safeguard yourself by keeping your water as free of pollutants as humanly possible.
There are amazing benefits of drinking filtered water for your health. In that article, we also covered how astonishingly easy it is to start getting clean, filtered, healthy water. You only have to follow these three simple steps:
- Find out what contaminants are in the water in your area on the EWG website.
- Invest in an NSF-certified water filter that will remove those contaminants.
- Drink half your weight in ounces of filtered water every day.
By doing those three simple things, you can achieve:
- Weight loss
- Better hair, skin and nails
- Improved digestion and excretion
- Enhanced cognition
- Brain and spinal cord protection
- Better blood flow and blood oxygenation
- Greater kidney function
- Enhanced workouts
- Better mood
- Less stress
- And so much more
What Is Healthy Water? Here’s What You Need to Know
Even without filtering your drinking water, you can accomplish great things just by upping the volume of water you drink.
But when you filter or treat the water, you can maximize the benefits.
Healthy Water is Free of Harmful Contaminants
As we’ve covered in other blogs, water contamination is a big deal in the U.S. Just because the government says your water is “safe,” unfortunately doesn’t necessarily mean that’s true.
Environmental Working Group (EWG) and other non-government entities offer great resources to check the contaminant and pollutant levels of your water. For starters, many public water systems have dangerously high (yet still legal!) amounts of lead, chromium 6, chlorine, radium and other harmful contaminants. Ingesting any quantity of these toxins can trigger numerous health problems, injuries and potentially even death.
Thus: Healthy water is water that’s free of harmful contaminants. If the water that comes out of your tap contains these toxins to begin with, you can pick up an NSF-certified filter to keep contaminants out of your home.
Healthy Water Helps the Environment
The healthy water question isn’t just a personal one: It’s also an issue that affects our entire planet.
In the course of reading up on what makes water clean and healthy, it’s understandable if you start to feel frustrated, overwhelmed, concerned. You might think you don’t have the time, energy or resources to invest in proper water treatment and filtration.
“Every store sells bottled water,” you might think. You might be tempted just to pick up a pallet of water from the grocery store or wholesale club in order to ensure that the water your drink is clean, healthy and delicious.
Unfortunately, each single-use bottle generates a considerable amount of plastic waste, to say nothing of the energy required to produce water bottles, bring them to store, transport them to their place of use, recycle them again, etc.
Filtering your own water in home is therefore a better solution for the world at large.
Healthy Water Saves Money
In addition to the pollutant problems that come with buying water rather than treating it yourself, there is a cost issue. It’s not economical to purchase all the water you need from stores, or even to use fill-up systems while providing your own container.
There’s a hidden savings opportunity that comes from healthy water, too: When you filter out dangerous toxins from your own water — including the water you cook with, brush your teeth with, etc. — you take an important step toward making yourself healthier. This will help you save money in the long run on medical bills and other health-related expenses.
