By GEORGE MALKMUS Water is the universal solvent; it’s probably the most stable compound in creation -and it’s the single most important compound for the support of life. As living organisms, we depend on the life support systems on Earth which themselves depend on the whole stable structure of the universe. Every drop of water we drink today has been recycled countless times in the Earth’s hydrologic cycles. The natural distillation and condensation cycles across the Earth wouldn’t be possible without the vast complex of physical forces held in delicate balance by the sun’s energy and the rhythmic motions of all celestial bodies in space. It’s the most amazing thing! God designed everything in creation to maintain a balance that makes our life on Earth possible. This balance provides us with just the right amount of water, breathing gases, light energy and protection from solar radiation. With that in mind, let’s focus on the importance of clean water to our health.
Water is absolutely essential for survival. It plays a part in almost every bodily function-from breathing to thinking. You can go many weeks without food, but only a few days without water. Here are a few ways our bodies use water:
• It is required to transport nutrients throughout the body
via the bloodstream.
• It stabilizes and cools us, allowing us to maintain proper body temperature.
• It hydrates our skin from the inside -it’s the best lotion around!
• It dilutes toxins that our cells produce during metabolism and carries them away.
• It is part of every cell-70 percent of our body is composed
of water.
• Saliva is used to moisten and predigest cooked food in our mouths.
• It helps keep the colon clean. Our large intestine is like a sewer system; keeping the body hydrated helps keep it clean and waste moving through it.
• It dissolves mineral buildup in the body, helping to eliminate arthritis and heart disease.
In our daily metabolic functions, our bodies lose between four and six pints of water. We lose water when we breathe, when we urinate, and when we sweat; so it is imperative that all this water be replaced. Many people try to replace the water they lose by drinking sodas, tea, and coffee. These don’t help the body at all, and they actually add toxins to the bloodstream. Coffee and tea (unless it’s naturally caffeine-free tea) are diuretics, so consuming these liquids will require even more water in order to get the toxins they contain out of your bloodstream.
Municipal tap water is not a desirable source for clean drinking and cooking water. It often contains chemicals like chlorine and fluoride. Chlorine is dangerous and fluoride is an extremely toxic substance used in rat poison. Wells are also no longer reliable sources of clean water due to widespread pollution of most ground water systems. Collected rainwater isn’t a desirable solution either because cloud-forming micro droplets pick up air borne, suspended particles of industrial and automobile pollution as they form into raindrops.
Thankfully, God has designed plants with a certain ability to work with microorganisms in soil in order to neutralize a limited amount of contamination. Unless food plants are watered from heavily polluted streams or grown in urban areas where the rain is badly contaminated, your produce should be mostly unaffected by the polluted rain in rural areas.
Distilled water is the most reliable source these days for clean drinking and cooking water. It is produced by boiling water and condensing the steam in a cooling coil that drips the water into a collector. Distilling water removes most harmful chemicals and pathogens because they aren’t taken up into the cooling coil with the steam; they’re left behind in the boiler. Besides being free of contaminants, distilled water has the added benefit of being the best solvent for cleansing body tissues and joints because it has no suspended solid particles. It will tend to absorb toxic particles from your tissues more aggressively than mineral water and certainly more than tap water.
Some people discourage use of distilled water, specifically because it has no minerals in it. I’ve even seen mineral packets available in health food stores that are intended to fortify distilled water. There are two problems with this: First of all, the minerals in mineral water are just elemental solids that can’t easily be used by the body, because they aren’t in a form that your body can recognize as nutrients. Your body can use these dead minerals to some extent if it has nothing else to work with. But the energy needed to change them into a usable form makes this source inefficient at best and damaging at worst. Secondly, even if your body could use these dead minerals, it wouldn’t need to if you are getting easily metabolized nutrients from live foods.
There are many quality home water stills on the market. It pays to buy a quality still that is made of stainless steel parts. Until you can afford to make this investment, you can find distilled water in jugs at your local grocery store. Some stores even have water refilling stations for your own large containers.
By eating raw fruits and vegetables, we can supplement our water intake. Generally, fruits contain the most amount of water -around 88 percent, while vegetables contain slightly less. If we eat raw fruits and vegetables, our bodies need less water outside of a food source.
Cooked foods do not contain the water we need. Often our bodies have to add liquid to cooked food to make it more digestible. There’s a catch-22 with this: If, while you are eating cooked food, you drink enough liquid for your body to use in digestion, you will be diluting the first-stage digestive juices and thus cause incomplete digestion. This will result in loss of energy and even some degree of putrefaction of the food in the intestines and colon. On the other hand, if you don’t drink enough liquid to assist digestion of cooked food, your body will extract some from the blood supply, resulting in mild dehydration. I say “mild” because above everything else, your body will protect your blood chemistry and especially the pH levels. Ultimately, your body will allow you to have unhealthy digestion before you have unhealthy blood.
It’s just better all around for you to hydrate your body by eating live vegetables and fruits and sipping water and live juices throughout the day. Gradual, steady ingestion of fluids and nutrients is the optimum way to heal and feed your cells. And the cleaner and more nourishing your hydration is, the more gratitude your body will show you by setting you free of pain and ailments.
Life cannot begin without oxygen. At birth, it’s the baby’s first and most important need. If that first breath doesn’t occur there is little hope for life. God gave Adam the first “breath of life.” All the body’s cells need it every single one of them. Much of the energy we need to function comes from the oxygen we inhale. We unconsciously breathe all the time it is so important, we do it automatically! Without breath we would die very quickly.
However, oxygen isn’t given the credit it’s due in today’s society. Rarely do we exercise or execute hard physical labour; technology has created an advanced society of people who can barely breathe due to the oxygen-starved condition of our polluted air, combined with lifestyles that don’t require deep breathing.
Household pollution is also a great threat to our health. Homes are built so tightly sealed for energy efficiency these days they don’t allow any air exchange. Central air systems typically recycle the same air throughout the house. Preservatives and chemicals in building products, carpets, and paint will outgas for years. Household cleaning chemicals emit toxic gases as well. Many candles produced outside of the United States have lead in them that can coat everything in the house and contaminate the air. A report from the EPA called The Inside Story says that out- gassing and other contaminants in the average home can make the air up to 70 times more toxic than the outside air in a large city. The EPA considers indoor air quality to be one of the biggest issues in today’s health.
You actually breathe 23,000 times a day. You have 100 trillion cells in your body, and every minute, 300 million cells die and are replaced. Some of these cells are skin cells that flake off and waft into the air. Have you ever noticed what is floating in the air when a beam of sunlight comes through a window? Much of it is dead skin and other particles our bodies expel. Hitching a ride on those particles are millions of dust mites that feed on them and then expel their own waste into the air. Right about now, you’re probably covering your mouth and thinking about purchasing air purifiers for your home!
What we ingest, my friends, becomes a part of us  this includes air. When we breathe polluted air, we draw that pollution deep into our cells. Our bodies need fresh, clean air for proper cellular reproduction and to provide us with the energy that sustains us.
Your body longs for oxygen, and respiration introduces oxygen into your system. That oxygen is used for cell metabolism. The main gaseous by-product of that metabolism-carbon dioxide -is expelled when you exhale, mixed with other waste gases and water vapor.
Deep breathing and exercise wake up your brain better than a jolt of caffeine ever would—and it’s a lot better for your body. With increased oxygen intake, your brain becomes more alert and your mental capacity increases. Of course, it helps to have an
optimistic and joyful outlook. Smoking, air pollution, and a sedentary lifestyle all have damaging effects on your brain, since they inhibit the absorption of oxygen. Many mental illnesses are the result of oxygen starvation of the brain. Suffocation of the brain will darken a person’s mood and outlook. A lot of chronic depression could be greatly helped with strenuous exercise because exercise has the incredible power to hyper oxygenate every cell in your body. Depression tends to drive a person into lonely, isolated places where less light and air can reach them. It’s a vicious cycle that, most times, requires the wisdom of a caring person to interrupt.
Oxygen also increases the energy in your cells. It allows them to function more efficiently as they process fuel. Using plentiful oxygen and nutrients, your cells start a “spring cleaning” routine, expelling toxins out through the cell membrane. But with an inadequate oxygen supply, your cells cannot function properly. This makes you feel sluggish, fired, and drained.
Disease is thwarted in an oxygenated environment. Sickness can’t manage a foothold in a body that is full of oxygen. It was proven decades ago that cancer cells cannot multiply in an oxygen-rich environment. However, delivering more oxygen to the body by artificial means (such as the many so called oxygen therapies, while ignoring the causes of oxygen starvation, will produce little or no healing or no healing results.
Your body’s design must have cooperation! There are on lasting shortcuts to vibrant health. To regain and keep vibrant health, you need fresh air delivered to your body in two ways. First, you need to fill your lungs with fresh air . Breathe slowly and deeply when you’re resting and when you’re engaging in regular vigorous exercise that makes you breathe hard. Secondly you need to consume oxygen-rich foods. That means raw vegetables and fruits. The most immediate lift you’ll feel when you to finally having enough oxygen to function properly. So stop suffocating yourself! Help your body to breathe.