We all know the rule, eight glasses a day keeps the doctor away. Water is essential for optimum overall health, it maintains the balance of bodily fluids — all of which make up 60 percent of the human body — while delivering a deluge of additional benefits. Its appearance-improving qualities are well known; water helps aid weight loss and contributes to clearer skin, but its internal effects are vastly beneficial too, topping up on aqua can defeat fatigue, cure headaches, cleanse the body, improve the immune system and aid digestion.
Our need for sustained water intake is fundamental and widely understood, figuring out what type of H20 we should be drinking, however, can lead to treading murky waters. Ionized, alkaline, acidity and PH — the jargon minefield and sheer diversity of choice is enough to send any non-expert into a headspin. Should we all be drinking alkaline water, or is it a health fad? Is tap water safe? And what really is reverse osmosis, anyway? Here we’ve listed some of the main types of water and why you should be drinking them, all of which are easy to make at home or are readily available from organic grocer Huckleberry.
Drink Hydrogen water when you’re feeling tired
Before you reach for the neon Gatorade or begin brewing up another caffeine laden coffee, it pays to revamp your H20 instead. Hydrogen water is — much like it sounds — water that contains hydrogen gas, which, upon ingestion, acts as an anti-inflammatory agent and an energy booster. The Japanese have been reaping the glowing benefits for years, chugging bottles of the stuff, dosing up on supplements and even bathing in hydrogen-infused bath salts. Hydrogen water can be made at home upon purchase of hydrogen water sticks — magnesium sticks that, once added to water, produce the energising chemical.
Drink Alkaline water post-workout
You don’t need us to tell you that water and exercise should go hand in hand, yet the type of water you should be drinking post-exercise is not so widely known. Alkaline water rectifies the body’s pH levels which become more acidic during extreme physical exertion (think of the lactic acid that forms during a high-intensity workout). But that’s not the only good news, the multi-faceted alkaline water is also reported to slow the ageing process and help with fertility issues.
Drink distilled to detoxify
While swigging glasses of tap water throughout the day may make you feel as though you’re on the road to purity, the stuff flowing from your faucet can harbour a variety of harmful contaminants. Distilling this water alleviates the risk of illness as impurities, environmental chemicals and viruses are stripped during the process. A note to remember though, distilled water is purified so vigorously that it loses its naturally occurring minerals, so we recommend using it as a temporary cleanse, rather than a full-time alternative. Distilled water is usually sold in supermarkets or pharmacies, although the best way is to distil it yourself via an at-home water distiller.
