Clean Water Tips: Water Water Everywhere – Yet What to Drink?

updated 6/27/20

Looking for tips regarding clean water?

I recently did a series of stories on my Instagram, responding to a number of questions in the Medical Medium community about alkaline water. This spurred a whole bunch of questions about water in general, so I thought it would be best to address the questions about water on a blog post. 

Water is so important to our bodies since 80-90% of our cells are made of water. The problem is that in spite of so many of us chugging away at our daily water intake, most of us are still chronically dehydrated. So this presents us with a couple of issues: a) finding a source of clean, poison-free water and b) finding water that will hydrate us on a cellular level. 

These days poison-free or toxin-free water is hard to find naturally. So most likely to obtain that, you will have to filter and purify your water. 

Clean Water Tools: Water Filters & Purifiers

There are many ways to clean water and a whole slew of water purifiers on the market that you can go a little crazy trying to figure out what is right for you. 

1. The number one filter that Medical Medium recommends using (it is what I personally use at home as well) is the Berkey Filter. The Berkey filter is known to filter out 99.9% of all toxins and poisons including heavy metals and fluoride, which very few filters do to that degree. The Berkey is a counter top filter and I recommend using it to clean your drinking water. Anthony William, Medical Medium always recommends adding some lemon/ lime juice to your drinking water to structure it and make it ‘living’ water and more hydrating for our cells.**UPDATE**: Pending a lawsuit against the United States EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), the manufacturer of Berkey filters is unable to continue direct sale of their product. One major distributor of Berkey products has announced it is going out of business (www.berkeyfilters.com – read their announcement here), while several others continue to offer certain Berkey products. European distributors are still active as well.

   You can currently purchase replacement filters from the following distributors in the US:
   https://myberkey.com/products/black-berkey-filter-elements
   https://9ghealthfoods.com/shop/black-berkey-filters/
   https://www.bigberkeywaterfilters.com/black-berkey-filters.html

   We will share more updates as soon as we become aware of them, but unfortunately, Berkey products are increasingly difficult to purchase as supply dwindles. Read below for my other two recommended brands.

    

2. If your tap water is from the city main water then you also need to be cleaning the water coming into your home. I recommend that you use a Pur2O filter (we use this at home) or Aquasana. The problem with city water is that it is chlorinated and fluoridated. It may also carry a toxic load you are unaware of – traces of birth control, antibiotics, chemotherapy and rocket fuel are some of the pollutants that have been found in tap water. Both the filters suggested here are Reverse Osmosis filters and actually remove everything from the water, including all the minerals and any structure the water may have from minerals. This is clean water, but not healthy to drink. It is ok to shower or bathe with this water and to wash fruits and veggies and to cook with. Aquasana has a system to add back minerals but I prefer to add them back with fresh fruit and veggies.
3. Distilled water is also really clean and pure water, but not mineralised. Minerals should be added back in the form of lemon/ lime/ cucumber to make it living water.
4. If you cannot afford a whole house filter, I recommend getting a Berkey shower filter (we have these on all our showers as well for additional filtration) so that the water your shower with is filtered of chlorine and some of the fluoride. Note, that the shower filter is not as powerful as the countertop water filter at removing all heavy metals and toxins from your water. However, I have used this filter when traveling and it DEFINITELY reduces the chlorine from the water, which I react to. If you have kids who do not take showers, you can use the shower to fill their bathtub, so they are still getting cleaner water.

Living or Structured Water?

In nature, water always has a beautiful structure that is recognised by our cells when we consume it. Anthony William, Medical Medium shares with us, in his book, Life Changing Foods, about the fact that fruits and vegetables contain two types of living water. The first, is hydrobioactive water that hydrates our cells. The second is co-factor water that heals our souls. Yes, you read that correctly. A similar hydrating water structure is found in breastmilk and it is found in true spring water that gushes out of the earth, say on the top of a mountain. The problem with natural springs is that we have to be sure that they are not picking up contaminants after the water comes out of the earth, or picking up unusual levels of Radon, for example. You also have to be careful of bacteria levels in the water and if you are going to choose to harvest your water from a fresh spring, make sure that the water is lab tested. We go to a beautiful spring in Roxbury, Connecticut and the water there has been tested and is clean and tastes really sweet. These are some of the qualities of fresh spring water: it is highly mineralised and structured so it tastes sweet, it is SUPER hydrating (you don’t need to drink 8 – 10 glasses a day to be truly hydrated) and it comes out of the ground at about 32 – 34 degrees no matter how hot it is outside. Spring water has a similar structure of water to that found in fruits and veggies. This is why when I started to eat a mostly raw foods diet, I did not need to drink as much water and I was less thirsty overall, because my body was getting a ton of structured water all day long. 

pH of Water

Most natural spring water is about 6.8 – 7.2 pH. It is the recommended pH for our bodies. Medical Medium does NOT recommend drinking alkaline water as this weakens our digestion by weakening our stomach acid (one of our main lines of defense for our immune system). When we have weak stomach acid, this also weakens our bile which we need for better digestion. He also says that the body will go to WAR before it allows alkaline water to leave the stomach as it is. The body has to do a lot more work for the alkaline water to be neutralized before it will be allowed to leave the stomach and the intestines for the bloodstream. Our blood pH is around 7.365 and drinking water as close as possible to that is the point at which our bodies have to do the least work to convert it, to make it OK to enter the bloodstream. Also it does not matter HOW the water is made alkaline – one of the arguments I keep hearing is that, for example, the Kangen machine (see Ionized Alkaline Water below) produces water that is a different process than that of other bottled alkaline waters. It doesn’t matter how it is produced. If it is alkaline, don’t drink it.

Ionized Alkaline Water – update added 6/27/20

Ionized water should be avoided. Anthony calls it vampire water because it takes from you versus giving to you.There are several issues with this water, but the most important is that you end up drinking dead, mutated water that has oxidized and more antagonistic metals with free radicals. Click here to watch Anthony’s live on water where he goes into great detail regarding this water.

Where to Find Clean Spring Water:

There are springs all over the country. For us, searching for and harvesting fresh spring water is a such a beautiful devoted practice. However, it is not for everyone. 

There are examples of clean spring water you can find bottled: 

1. Mountain Valley Spring Water  – this comes from a spring in Arkansas and is bottled in glass.
2. Fiji Water (from artesian aquifer) – Anthony has recommended this to me when traveling through airports, even though it is bottled in plastic. I always carry lemons / limes with me and add some to my Fiji water when traveling. (Another brand recommended by Anthony while traveling is Volvic Water.)
3. Mount Shasta Spring Water bottled in glass (this is available mostly on the West Coast).

I have just shared a few examples here. However, not all bottled spring water is really from a natural spring. And you have to be very careful when doing your research to look for clean spring water. 

The reason Anthony recommends the Berkey filter because its much less work to put your water through a Berkey and get a good filtration result and add a squish of lemon/ lime juice to it for making it living water than to figure out a good, clean spring water. In the long run, the Berkey filter is also really cost effective. 

My kids have only ever drank spring water or Berkey water. They have a couple of times tasted other water and basically spit it out saying it tastes disgusting. They can also taste chlorine in the water when it has been tap water and could not drink that either. In those cases, we have gone with fruit or apples in particular to hydrate. 

I hope this blog has clarified some of your concerns and given you a clearer direction on the kind of water to drink and why. 

**References: Anthony William interviewed by Dr. Deanna Minich: https://youtu.be/SNYmcj2rZXM (starts at around 56 minutes)

**Hay House Radio podcast by Medical Medium: Debunking Health Fads (starts at around 9 minutes)