The mighty brains who write books about why your brain is going to melt unless you follow their advice often share an amazing new insight my Mom was well aware of all her life: drink tap water. It's good for you,* full of essential minerals and trace elements. There's such a thing as too filtered.
On the other hand, if you want me to laugh at you, even if you have a Ph.D. and say you've got a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to study Alzheimer's disease and women's brains, just say this:
"Purified and distilled waters are just fluids," [she'd love the free mention] said. "There is nothing hydrating there."
Stop and let that sink in. Here, let me help: "...water...there is nothing hydrating there." I'm not a Ph.D. biologist, but I did all right in etymology, and when water has ceased to be hydrating, both studies are too broken to be of any further use.
Or, a-hem, it might just be pretentious nonsense to sell fad-nutrition books.
Drink your damned water. If you're the kind of idiot who drinks distilled water, take your vitamins and, you know, electrolytes -- or wise up and switch to tap water or the tastier water they get from taps elsewhere and bottle up as spring water.
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* This presumes you don't live in Flint, Michigan, and that if you're on a well, you haven't dug it too close to your privy or a leaking tank of benzine, etc. Most city water and well water is clean and wholesome, or at least until TV ratings time, when they'll set it on fire and explain how it will kill you dead.
I AM a Ph.D. biologist (specialization in plant ecology, though) and I am shaking my head. Isn't....hydrating....kind of the point of drinking water? I mean, there are myriad chemical reactions in the body that require H2O as a reactant, even beyond the whole "having enough water in your body allows you to stay cool on a hot day so you don't die" thing. And keeping one's plasma volume up, and all that.
ReplyDeleteAnd if a person is going to drink distilled water, don't overdo it - "water intoxication," while rare, is a thing.
I think that when Overeducated Professional People say hydration, they mean not just fluids but the potassium and other stuff we lose from sweating and excretion. Which is the rationale for Gatorade and similar, and for eating bananas after diarrhea.
ReplyDeleteBut, Jeffrey, would that not be "mineralization?" I should quite think that it would.
ReplyDeleteOne would think that a Doctor of Biology would go on to explain that you need more than "mere" H2O to hydrate... or something... but I'm just a knuckle-dragging retired NCO, which probably explains why I have this sneaking suspicion that there may be a corelation between the fact that her research is gender-specific and her inability to clearly make her point.
ReplyDeleteMe, I never worried too much about drinking filtered tap water, I figure any good stuff that was removed was probably balanced by any bad stuff that was removed, and it's not like I don't eat a varied diet. Having just entered my 6th decade, I got an annual physical last month, and the only deficiency the doc noted was vitamin D, said deficiency being common here where the sun don't shine.
So to speak.
It has always amazed me how we take every thing a doctor utters as gospel. I mean we did not raise any successful children till Dr Spock told us how to do it.
ReplyDeleteBah. A pox on them all.
Need more than "mere" H2O to hydrate??
ReplyDeleteYou mean like this:
http://htwo.com/
When traveling on vacation, my father would often remark that the local water lacked the "body" of Philly water.
ReplyDeleteNext up: An academic research paper on the dangers of Dihydrogen-monoxide. Or or the acid hydrogen hydroxide.
ReplyDelete