Another important factor is the amount of water necessary for our body to function at its peak performance. Bearing in mind again that your body is about 75 percent water it is easy to understand that water must be your body's most essential daily ingredient. Your body looses each day about 2-3 litters of water through elimination, urination, perspiration and respiration. However, this may increase during illness, high performance, exercise, pregnancy and nursing. The beverages most people choose to consume are often counter-productive in promoting hydration. Coffee, tea, alcohol, soft and sugary drinks are all diuretics and will cause not only the loss of water the are dissolved in, but they will also draw water the bodies reserves. In normal conditions your body needs to replace the fluids it has lost throughout the day. Most of fluids should be replaced by drinking pure water. The rest you should get from fruit, vegetables and their juices. Attention must be given that the elderly and children are meeting their daily requirements. Dry mouth is not the only indication of dehydration, in fact it is the last sign. You need to acquire the habit to drink water even when you think you don't need it and eventually your true thirst mechanisms will be reawaken. Signs to look for that identify with dehydration are constipation, headaches, indigestion, weight gain, fluid retention, dark and pungent urine, and their associated pathologies colitis, kidney stones, bladder and urinary track infections to name only a few.

WHAT CHOICES HAVE WE GOT?

Dr Batmanghelidj talks about the shrinking of the vital organs due to insufficient hydration. Dr Bragg postulates how inorganic minerals in water turns people into 'stones' and advises the use of pure water. John Archer alarms of the dangers and condition of public (sewage) water

You are what you drink so make sure what you drink is pure'

Ten years ago the prospect of drinking only purified or bottled water was a fiction, or a novelty for most people. Nowadays, it is becoming a necessity in maintaining and preserving good health. Finding pure water is becoming more than just food for thought and with our brain being 85 percent water, we better start thinking of the choices. It is my opinion and as well of others that tap water should not be drunk at all if other sources are available. However, if tap water is your only option, then boil the water for a few minutes, expose it to the sun for a while in a clear glass container and then aerate it by pouring it back and forth from one container to another. Keep in mind that boiling will only kill bacteria and that harmful chemicals and minerals will still remain in the water. Rain water it is no longer the best available option with today's pollution. Water is a hungry solvent and as the rain falls, it begins to collect hundreds of potentially harmful substances, such as radioactive isotopes and their degradation products of atomic fission including barium, caesium and strontium from world wide atomic experiments and "accidents" which travel around the atmosphere (refer to chart). In addition industrial and exhaust fumes including carbon monoxide, sulphuric acid and lead are collected. That is why the sky looks so clean after a good 'acid' rain.

Spring water contains those unwanted inorganic minerals and their purity is debatable if you consider the pollution of the soil. So use it sparingly or when nothing else is available. Don't be mislead by claims about the value of inorganic minerals, the body cannot make use of any minerals unless they are derived from the plant kingdom (organic minerals). A well balanced diet will provide an abundance of organic minerals that water never could. In his book 'New Life Through Nutrition' nutritionist Dr Shelton Deal debates that we should not look to water as our source of minerals. As for the inexpensive supermarket filters they don't eliminate all impurities and toxins (not that it is claimed that they do).

Reverse osmosis is by far the most advanced technology for home installation available to the public. It is based on the process by which the human cells diffuse fluids between the intracellular and extracellular spaces, by separating and selectively preventing the passage of solute molecules (through a semipermeable membrane) and allowing the passage of the solvent H2O. Through this process almost all harmful bacteria, minerals and toxins are eliminated. Professional installation and surveillance is necessary for if the membrane is ruptured without your knowledge the final condition of the water could be worse than if it were not filtered.

Distilled water, contrary to the wide held view that it leaches organic essential minerals and micronutrients from your body, its emptiness works in your favour. It dissolves and eliminates harmful inorganic minerals and toxic waste accumulation. Once the organic nutrients have been absorbed by the cells they cannot be taken away. Is there an inherent intelligentsia behind all this? The answer is yes! after all, what is the animating factor behind all things? but far from being just an esoteric answer, the key lies in the inherent 'instructions' of the human body's filtering system. The kidneys make sure that nothing valuable will be lost, there is a constant recycling, so even if nutrients were to be 'stolen' they would be returned by the kidneys. Which explains the dark appearance of urine during times of inadequate hydration. Distillation is achieved by boiling the water, steam then rises and is collected in a condenser where it is stored and cooled. The problem in this process is that together with the steam, percentage of the pollutant gases such fluorine and chlorine are also evaporated over into the condenser. To overcome this problem scientists developed other methods like fragmented distillation and C.M.D method (Cold Molecular Distillation) amongst others. C.M.D water is available from companies6 specialising in this area and supply water for medical purposes, allergy affected chemical sensitive people, cancer and dialysis patients (were even small traces of contaminants can send the patient into shock) and generally to any one who is seeking good health. C.M.D water contains no solid matter and is solely consisting of two elements, Hydrogen and Oxygen.

SUMMARY

Water is involved in all bodily functions: digestion, assimilation, elimination, respiration, maintaining temperature (homeostasis) integrity and the strength of all bodily structures. Today, the water is polluted with hundreds of toxins and impurities. Authorities only test for a small number of them. Your body, being primarily water, requires sufficient daily water replacement in order to function efficiently. Water treatments, that are aimed to render our drinking water bacteriologically safe, have been proven ineffective and the presence of certain pathogenic bacteria like giardia and cryptosporidium recently found in Sydney water is just one of the many examples. Viewing the effects of individual chemicals, inorganic minerals and their by-products, you can see a link to today's major diseases. If you drink devitalised, impure water how can you expect vitality and health. Dehydration, due to the offensive taste of the water and the introduction of commercial sugar loaded beverages, has become another contributing factor to dis-ease. The advice of Dr Batmanghelidj to stop treating thirst with medications holds lots of merit. Mineral water may be wonderful to bathe in, however, the presence of inorganic minerals makes it undesirable. Tap water has been proven unsuitable even for showering7. In an article published in the magazine New Scientist, by Ian Anderson 18/9/86, he writes "Showers pose a risk to health". Pure water may become the medicine of the future. 'Oxygen enriched and free of radioactive and chemical compounds' may read on the label of our bottle water in the next millennium.... At this stage Reverse Osmosis and C.M.D water are our best available options.