Tap, Bottled, or Filtered? What’s REALLY in Your Water And How Does it Affect Your Health & Teeth

Why Tap Water Matters 0:00

I don't know about you, but I remember the days when I would just drink tap water. Water straight out of the tap. And my kids today, they'll look around and they'll say, well, where do I get water? And I think, well, there's the tap, but we're very fearful of what's coming out of our tap anymore. What's in our water is going to be dangerous for our bodies. And a lot of people believe that the water that's in these bottles is better for them than something that's coming out of the tap. Well, today we're going to debunk a lot of things.

We're going to talk about what do we really need in our water? What are potential problems with the water? How do we avoid it? And are these all what they say they are? So let's get into this. Let's talk a little bit about the problems or potential things that could be in water and also the things that we need from water. First of all, We need the water. Water is like the transport medium. It is the semi truck that moves everything through your body. It's what carries nutrients to your cells. And if you don't have water or enough water, no cell in your body can work properly, which means you can't work properly.

So you have to have water. Water is essential. Water can carry a lot of things. I like to think of it kind of as like the UPS truck, you know?

What Water Needs to Do in the Body 1:14

And if it's already full of things before you drink it, then it can't carry other nutrients that you need carried as well. So how full is your water before you're getting it? That's honestly the concern that we have with tap water. and every single water. How full is it before we're already getting it? And is it full of things that we don't want to be putting into ourselves? So what are those things that it can be full of? Well, one that we're always concerned about is some sort of microbe, right?

A bacteria, a virus, a fungus, a parasite. That's why we don't drink water at a stream in the mountains because of Giardio. Well, there's also potentially those sorts of microbes in the water that we're drinking coming out of a tap or any other source. So bugs. That's one thing we're concerned about. A second thing we're concerned about is certain chemicals that we don't want in our body. Fluoride is the one that I don't want in your body. Chlorine, I don't love that as well. Chlorine causes a lot of issues with the way cells talk to each other.

We don't want things like solvents and petrochemicals. We don't want other people's pharmaceuticals, right? Their prescription medications that have maybe gotten into our water supply. We don't want things that are called forever chemicals that are in a lot of things like Teflon and plastics. We don't want that in our cells either because they gum up our cells. These are all things that we're concerned about and that we want to take out of the water. Now what else may that water be carrying? It's carrying minerals.

Now, minerals are naturally occurring compounds that came from the water source.

Contaminants and Minerals in Water 2:50

So the water comes from the sky, right? Rain comes down, it hits the soil, it then moves through the soil, through the rock, to the stream, the river, the spring, wherever it then emerges that we then source the water from to go back to our municipal water source. As the water passes through the earth and the soil and the rocks, it picks up different components. Now, different waters have different levels of minerals in them because they come from different places. So when you say, my water is very hard, what are you saying?

You're saying your water actually has a lot of minerals in it. That's what hard water is. You're also going to find that that mineral or that water is very alkaline. So if we are measuring the pH, which we're going to do here in a minute, but if we measure the pH, it's going to be on the alkaline side. Why? Minerals make things more alkaline, less acidic. So where your water comes from determines that mineral level. That's not necessarily something we want to remove all off. We're going to talk about that in a minute.

So how do we clean the water that we drink from our water, from our tap? How do we clean it? How do we make sure that it's clean? There's a bunch of different types of filtration systems. There's very simple filtration systems that are like carbon filters or ceramic filters that will remove the bigger pieces. They'll remove some of the minerals that you don't want. They'll remove some of the bacteria, some of the bugs that you don't want. They actually don't remove things like chlorine and fluoride and solvents and pesticides very easily because they only remove bigger things.

You can add something like a UV filter. What does a UV filter do? It's going to kill bugs. So that's going to take care of some of the rest of the bugs that are still in it. But if you really want to remove everything, there's only two ways to truly do that. So reverse osmosis filtration passes water through a very fine filter, uses pressure to do it. And in doing that, it removes everything. So it takes out all of those pesticides, solvents, fluoride, chlorine. It takes out all the bacteria, the parasites, viruses, everything that you're going to want removed from that water.

It also takes the minerals out. So we're going to talk about that in a minute. The other way that you can clean the water completely and make it completely pure is by using distillation or using distilled water. What is that? water that's been boiled and condensed and then they use the condensed water. Everything is left at that point. So reverse osmosis and distilled water are completely free of everything. Now I will say reverse osmosis has maybe you know 0.0001% so there may be a little bit of things in there but mostly completely free of everything.

Filtration Methods and What They Remove 5:32

The problem is, is that those minerals that come in the water are important for our bodies. Those minerals are the things that take those packages from the UPS truck and move them through the cell membrane. So they are the things that allow the nutrients to get into your cells and allow you to utilize them properly. Those minerals, calcium, magnesium, they're used in so many different processes that happen inside of our bodies and inside of our cells that they're very essential. And this is why a lot of people end up supplementing them instead of just getting them from their water.

It also changes the way that it works for your teeth. So your teeth require those minerals as well. Remember this outer layer of your tooth is mineral. It's a mineral layer. And if you don't have minerals to put back in, or minerals to use elsewhere in your body, your body will actually steal these minerals and the minerals in your bones to take care of its other functions. So minerals are incredibly important. I have a patient who actually is very big in the healthcare world and she was a big proponent of drinking distilled water.

That's all she drank was distilled water. Well, the first time I saw her, I expected that her mouth was gonna be really healthy because she was very, very healthy. She took great care of herself. The first time I saw her, I was shocked. she had about 20 cavities. They were everywhere, especially around the gum line on her teeth. And I didn't even know how to tell her. But I just kind of sat back and said, I need to be really frank with you right now, because your mouth is falling apart. Your teeth are so full of tooth decay, but yet you do everything right.

So let's go through everything you're doing and find out what's missing and what's not going right here. And what we discovered is that it was the water. Her water was deficient in minerals. And she said, well, I put mineral drops in when I drink it, but not always. Exactly. Not always. And her body was pulling the minerals out of her teeth to feed the rest of her and take care of all of her other systems. very dangerous to use reverse osmosis and or distilled water without actually adding minerals back in.

So some of these filtration systems have a remineralizer on them. It's very important to do that. And they'll sell you on the idea that you don't want minerals because it creates, you know, hard water spots and plugs things up. It may do that to a degree, but those minerals are necessary for you. So you need to have minerals. These waters in front of me, are they better? Are they better than what's coming out of the tap?

Why Minerals Matter for Health 7:54

You think, well, this is a lot of work. How am I going to do this? Is this better? Let's find out. I want to see what's the alkalinity or acidity in these waters. And remember, we want to be neutral. We would love water that's about seven right in the middle. Why? Well, because if it's seven, if it's acidic, it's going to pull minerals from your teeth. If it's alkaline, it's going to add minerals to your teeth but it's actually going to decrease your stomach activity. Your stomach needs to be acidic.

So if you're drinking a high like some of these say 9.0, that's actually really alkaline. If you're drinking only that water, you're going to decrease the acidity and the activity in your gut. So alkaline water can be extremely dangerous on your absorption on how you uptake nutrients. And I look and see tooth decay because of alcohol and water. So we don't want to go either way. We don't want to go extreme in either direction. We don't want to be acidic and we don't want to be alkaline. We want to be 7, 7.5, 8 at the most, which is right up there, just a little higher than neutral.

So let's see what these are. Let me tell you the scale, what we're looking for on here. So anything in the red or yellow area is acidic. Green is neutral and anything in the blue is alkaline. Let's see what they all are. I've already added one to this one. You can see that one's blue, that means it's alkaline. Let's go through, got two in that one, maybe we'll do two in all of them just so that they're all the same here. Interesting how some are changing and some are doing nothing. Some are staying yellow.

Remember blue is alkaline, green is neutral, orange or yellow is acidic. Let's see what we have here. Okay, you can see which one is the most alkaline right over here. This is Smartwater 9.5 pH.

Testing Bottled Water pH Levels 9:50

And what it's showing here is that dark of a number is going to be in the 8, 8.5 range. So this is definitely true to the label. Most alkaline. This is a secondary alkaline one. This one says it's 9.5. I think it's probably more in the 8 range, but it's also alkaline. Interesting. This is Arrowhead, and it's slightly alkaline. This is actually a good water from alkaline acidity standpoint. This is Fiji. This is labeled or marketed as alkaline, slightly alkaline. This is probably my preferred one.

This or this one here. This is a Hawaiian volcanic. These are gonna be from a natural source. So these are spring water. And what they're doing is they are right about where we want them in that sweet spot, about 7.5. These are looking right where we wanna be. This one's a little closer, not bad, core hydration. This is to alkaline, or this is a little more alkaline than we'd like. It says it is, it's 9.5, so it's actually claiming that, it's true to claim. What's the most acidic here? All these others are in the range of about 6.0. So this one, Aquafina, just the generic, whatever version this is, same thing here, Pure Life.

Those are all ranging in the acidic side. So which do we prefer? If I'm going to pick, I'm going to pick this one here, Cor Fuji or this I'm not going to be able to pronounce it. Hawaiian volcanic water. The others are a little more alkaline than I like. This one isn't bad either. Life water isn't bad. That one actually looks pretty good too. The others are more alkaline or more acidic than I would like. easy way to test. Little reagent bottle, drop it in, see what your water is, test your water at home.

We want it to be slightly on the alkaline side, not too far, and certainly not acidic for tooth health, for bone health, for overall health. So let's wrap this up. What do you need in your water? You need it to not have the things you don't want, which are solvents, chemicals, pesticides, bugs. You don't want those coming in your water. You do want minerals, beneficial minerals, not too many, but enough that it enables your body to work correctly and not steal minerals from you.

Choosing Better Water 12:02

This is a way to do it or reverse osmosis with a remineralizer is a great way to do it. Can you make the water better with a carbon filter with a simple filtration mechanism? You can. You're not taking out fluoride, but you are taking out a lot of the bugs and some of those chemicals that you don't like. Learn about this. Look past the marketing messages. Find out what really works and what doesn't. Test it yourself. And let's see if you can't ensure that every bit of water that's coming in your body can carry the nutrients you need, nothing that you don't want, so that your body can continue working as it should.