What Is The Healthiest Way To Hydrate?

The human body is an intricate assembly of checks and balances that is awfully good at its job. However, certain lifestyle choices like our diet or sleeping habits can tilt this balance enough that the body struggles to regain balance, resulting in illnesses or ailments. One key component of our diet is the type and quantity of fluids we ingest.

The Best Drink?

Most of us know of this age-old piece of wisdom – your body needs eight glasses of water a day. While not strictly true, the advice is a good guideline for staying hydrated, which you can read more about in this post. But aside from good old water, what beverages should we be drinking on a regular basis?

Soft Drinks

There is nothing quite like the Coca Cola/Pepsi experience – an icy-cold, fizzy burn down your throat that culminates in the cathartic ahhh that we know and love. Life wouldn’t be the same without the small indulgences, would it? However, the key to a longer, healthier life is moderation.

Many soft drinks have a very high sugar content, much of which consists of fructose, a problematic sugar that has been linked to higher levels of obesity and diabetes. Besides obesity and diabetes, the high sugar content accelerates plaque formation and tooth decay, which are made worse by the acidic nature of carbonated drinks.

Soft drinks are great, but only in moderation.

Most soft drinks owe their characteristic taste to a high level of carbonation and sugar. Zero-sugar alternatives have been described as falling short of the original flavour.

Fruit Juice

Fruits are healthy, fruit juice comes from fruits, ergo, fruit juice is healthy. This conclusion certainly has its merits. With a juicer, essential vitamins from your favourite fruits are captured in a delicious and convenient drink – much easier than eating a fruit. However, that is only half the truth.

Fruits are important not just for the vitamins they offer, but for their high fibre content as well. Indigestible fibres in a fruit’s flesh and skin provide roughage that help to push waste through our lower gastro-intestinal tract, giving us regular and smooth bowel movements.

Some fruits are also relatively high in sugar. Drinking juice without the fibres in whole fruit could mean a lower level of satisfaction, or how full your stomach feels, causing you to consume more sugar than you would with whole fruit.

Fruit juice is a much better option than soft drinks, but you lose out on the significant benefits of eating whole fruit and still consume a large amount of sugar.

Water

Water is undoubtedly the default method of hydration for most people around the world. Depending on your environment and level of activity, the recommended level of water intake may vary, but the fact remains that water is crucial for all our body’s core functions.

While all water may seem identical at first glance, there are actually subtle differences in water composition that could drastically affect your long-term health. The most evident difference that you may be familiar with would be the difference in taste between tap water, mineral water, and distilled water.

Tap water contains a mixture of dissolved minerals such as calcium, magnesium, and sodium that give it the taste of ‘plain water’. In contrast, mineral water has a different composition of such minerals that gives it a sharp taste, while distilled water is practically devoid of any minerals, giving it a taste that can put off some people.

A more subtle difference would be the pH balance of the water. One famous example is the ongoing water crisis in Flint, Michigan, US, where the local water system was tainted with dissolved lead, rendering all tap water non-potable without advanced filtering. The crisis began when the local government changed the city’s water source to a nearby lake that contained mildly acidic water, causing piped water to dissolve small amounts of lead in the lead pipes beneath the city.

Why Does This Matter To Me?

Singapore’s water is highly regulated and monitored, making it perfectly reliable for consumption. Hard as it is to believe, there are still ways to make water better for you and your family.

One such way is the emergence of technology that allows quick and efficient alkalisation of water in a household setting. When water is alkalised, its pH level is deliberately increased above the neutral pH of 7. Mildly alkaline water has been shown in some exploratory studies to have subtle and possibly cumulative long-term health benefits similar to antioxidants. Besides simply drinking alkaline water, its benefits can be enjoyed through more creative means like cooking or washing your food in it.

Water For The Family

If you’re looking to include alkaline water in your family’s life, the best way to do so is with one of Hydroflux’s water filtration and dispensing systems. With a huge range of systems from the practical and modestly-priced to the fancy and high-tech, you’ll be sure to find an option that best suits your family’s lifestyle.

It doesn’t hurt that most of the dispensers come with wonderful quality-of-life features such as hot and cold water or fixed dispensing quantities, both of which make hydrating with water a much more attractive and convenient option for you and your family.

To find out more about what systems Hydroflux offers, drop us a message, or come on down to the Hydroflux showroom.