Water is referred to as the universal solvent and is considered the essence of life. It is this very presence of water that is attributed with our planet’s ability to have created life and to sustain it. The mantra in planetary cosmology is “where there is water, there may be life.”

Considering that our body is about 72%, our blood 83% and our brain 80% water, we need to re-think the conventional recommended 6-8 glasses of water a day. I look at this antiquated recommendation much like the RDA for vitamins. Taking the minimum amount of vitamins or water will only maintain a minimum level of health.I suggest that an optimal level of water intake would be twice that amount or 12-16 glasses of water a day. This would be on average about one glass of water every hour. Why? Because the body’s basic needs of digestion, temperature control, joint lubrication and skin hydration exhaust the aforementioned 6-8 glasses of water.

Another method to discover your optimum water intake is to divide your total body weight by 2. The result is how many ounces of water you need to drink each day. So a 140 pound person would need 70 ounces of water per day. Keep in mind that certain health, exercise and climate conditions make the amount go up. It never goes down.

Recent findings indicate the need for greater hydration:

• One glass of water shuts down midnight hunger pangs for almost 100% of the dieters studied in a University of Washington study.
• Research indicates that 8-10 glasses of water a day could significantly ease back and joint pain for up to 80% of suffers.
• Drinking 5 glasses of water daily decreases the risk of colon cancer by 45%. It can slash the risk of breast cancer by 79% and reduce the risk of developing bladder cancer by 50%.

Today we need additional water to help the body detoxify the tens of thousands of toxic chemicals in our environment and deal with the consequences of many modern day health issues and prescription medication side-effects. Chronic dehydration has been implicated in Attention Deficit Disorder, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Alzheimer’ Disease. If you consider the brain as an electrical energy producer like a battery, which is 80% water, it does not require a leap in consciousness to understand how a lack of simple, elemental water would compromise its most basic function. Much like a car battery that dries up and dies.

Once we understand the importance of increasing the quantity of the water that we drink, equally important to all bodily functions is the quality of the water. Over 2,100 different synthetic chemicals have been detected in our water supplies. This does not include the recent findings of pharmaceutical drugs in our water. You can not expect the body to function optimally by ingesting potentially toxic water.