 People consider hydration and water a key element to overall health, but few people actually think about the type of water they are drinking. As much as I would like to look at our indigenous ancestors and what they did, there is far too much variance. Bushman hunters in the Kalahari Desert might have only gotten water from a melon once a week, and the First Nations people in Alaska might have drank low mineral glacial water every night. One thing for certain is the absence of negative components in their diet and lifestyle, and they possibly consumed much higher mineral foods than we consume today. We can look at the water that occurs in nature, what's in it, and what we're doing differently in our modern world. This starts with the physical and chemical components of water. Physical are measured in parts per million as total dissolved solids, and the chemical could be things like chloride, chlorine, pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics. We definitely want to remove any negative components, and what we mean by this is just because a water has a certain parts per million doesn't mean it's all beneficial electrolytes. It could all be lead, and the chemical component obviously we don't really want any of those things in our water. To understand total dissolved solids briefly, 0 to 50 is reverse osmosis distilled, doesn't really occur in nature. Same with 50 to 100 countertop filters, we have some types of glacial water, aquifers, deep bedrock water. Once you go above 100, that's where we see water that can occur in nature, lakes and streams. Above 170 is hard water, higher mineral water, 300 to 400 is high mineral springs. Above 500 is considered polluted, but if I put a teaspoon of clay in some water, that's technically not polluted because you know all the components of it are adequate to drink. New York City water for example has a low total dissolved solids, but an incredibly high negative chemical component to it as you can imagine. The level of pollution in New York City water is astronomical with antibiotics, probably fluoride and chlorine, but people think it tastes good because of low mineral content. So you know low mineral content isn't necessarily an indicator that everything else in the water is okay. So how do we actually go about achieving optimal versions of these components? We could get a filtration system or reverse osmosis or distilled that will remove the negative physical components and that will also remove chlorine and fluoride. We could go out to a well or a spring and fill up gallon jugs every week. We could go to the store and buy glass bottles mineral water. There's various ways we can go about this, but once we do have water free of negative physical and chemical components, we're pretty much good to go. There's no real need to replenish it with electrolytes, calcium, potassium, magnesium and sodium. Those can all be obtained from food in natural ways. There's no real reason to add. I mean in the past I have used things like clay and seaweed and electrolyte powders, which we will touch on in this video, but at this point you're pretty much good to go. Here I actually have a reverse osmosis filter. So reverse osmosis is pretty much bare bones of what you need to get healthy water. This is a sediment filter and this literally turns brown. You can check out my Instagram for pictures of how gross this gets. It fills up with grease and stuff. Two carbon filters that remove the chlorine, that remove the tinier particles, then there's a fluoride filter up here and then a deodorizer that makes the water taste normal after it passes through the filters. These filtration systems can get very complicated. They can have 10, 15 steps. They can have rocks in it to remineralize the water, but this is pretty simple. And then there's the tank over here. Once we come up to the top of the sink, we have the water that comes out and I can cook with this. I can drink this. It's always good to go. Fortunately, I did test my water recently, so I know that it's working. I know the chlorine content is low. I know there's no fluoride in it. I know the total dissolved is low. I'm not sure on the chemical, the antibiotics, the pesticides, all of those things. That is something I think most of us are just going to have to live with. I actually got a letter from my water company and they said the chlorine levels were high outside the average range, but the problem is if the chlorine measures 150 one month and 50 the other month and the safe level is 75, as long as the average throughout the year is 75, they don't really have to alert you. And the levels that are deemed adequate by the water company are certainly not what's adequate for your health. I mean I could go on for hours and hours about how I haven't been able to swim in pools because I'm afraid of the chlorination and why can't they just have saltwater pools? That's a whole different story. Before getting really involved in this, what I suggest people do is test your water, test the tap water, go on Google, type in water fluoridation by country, search your country, search where you are, search your town. There's information that you have access to about the reservoir your water is coming from. You can figure this stuff out without having to test it over. You should still test it. There's definitely information that you can probably find online about your local water source. If you do want to jump into this, I don't necessarily suggest buying a filter, paying a plumber, doing all of those things. Go to the supermarket, look for a glass bottled water, make sure you either test that water or make sure that it's from a good source, and see how your hydration pattern changes over a week or two. If you're confident that you need to switch the type of water you're drinking then you can invest further. I mean it'll cost you time and money to do either of these methods, whether it's getting a filter installed, going to a well or a spring every week, or buying glass bottles from the store every week or however often. It is an expense that adds up over the course of the year. Now what else can we do? In past videos you guys have seen me do various things to my water from add clay to it, to seaweed, to mineral powders, to salt. So we will touch on all of those things. Like you guys asked me about snake juice, I do want to make my own electrolyte mix in the future because for me snake juice, the ratios and the forms of collated minerals he's using leave a little bit to be desired but I'll touch on that another time. Let's go over clays briefly. So there's four types of clay. There's callan clay that primarily occurs in Africa and Asia. There's montmorillonite smectite clay which occurs in various parts of the world. There's illite clay which I believe is predominantly in Europe and then there's chloride clay which is actually rock but it's classified as clay. Bentonite clay is a derivative of montmorillonite smectite clay and I actually did consume as my mineral powder a type of bentonite clay from a deposit in Utah for years and years without any issues although the concern with bentonite clay is the high heavy metal content although as I said I did not see any issues with it personally. I have been using callan clay in my water up until recently. Now I've just been drinking the reverse osmosis water but anecdotally this actually helped my acne a lot. I noticed that when I didn't add it to my water I would break out from time to time and there's something actually called geophagia which is very very common outside of the United States where people eat dirt or clay or especially pregnant women to get certain minerals in their diet. So what I do with the clay is I mix it with water in a jar and I let the clay rehydrate. It's important that the clay hydrates overnight. It digests easier, it has more availability but what you have to keep in mind with clay is that it's mostly silica so the mineral content is very low. Same thing with salt. People think they're getting trace minerals by adding salt to their water or food but the mineral content of salt and clay outside of their primary components is fairly negligible. Seaweed is an excellent source of potassium and magnesium and some of you guys might be thinking Frank it's a plant food, it has oxalates, yes but you're still getting adequate potassium, magnesium, iodine from this food. What I do is I soak this in water then I drink the water and then I eat the seaweed. Maine Coast Sea Vegetables has a chart on their website with various electrolyte ratios of the seaweed and you guys can check these out on my Amazon shop if you like. So the issue I have with mineral supplements is how they're made, bleached, deodorized, solvents and what these are are collations of minerals. So magnesium glycanate is magnesium bound to a glycine molecule. Potassium citrate is potassium bound to a citric acid molecule and there's dozens of different molecules that combine these two. Potassium citrate is the form of potassium that does naturally occur in foods but there are various forms of these minerals occurring in different ways in nature. So this does get complicated from issues with processing to issues with determining bioavailability and they tend not to taste too good. On the topic of magnesium I think the form that occurs in food is taurate so it's bound to a taurine molecule and citrate is known as shitrate, you know you shit your brains out if you eat it and another problem I have with this is the dosage. Yes we can look at electrolyte ratios that naturally occur in foods and determine how much we should be using but for things like magnesium I prefer to take it transdermally with like an oil or a spray and potassium. I'd like to get it with plant foods if I really need potassium I'll have some seaweed maybe I'll salt my food less maybe just look into plant food alternatives for getting your potassium in. So I don't add salt to my water I do put it on my food and one thing that I want to emphasize guys that I should have said earlier is everything past the point of removing the negative components of the water is anecdotal. So this will derive from person to person because I've tried every version of various diets and I can safely say that hydration patterns are specific to the person. Some people need a lot of water some people need a little water me because I took acutane mess with my liver and kidneys I need more water than I used to I'm always thirsty but some people need very little water some people need a lot of water some people can salt their food heavily some people can't really salt their food at all so I suggest you experiment with these various options and see what works for you because people have people have told me oh Frank go rock primal all you need to do is hydrate with milk blood and eggs and I did that and I was still thirsty for water I've tried salting my food I've tried not salting my food I've tried various forms of the carnivore diet and other diets and for me my hydration pattern tends to be very similar in the sense that I need to drink a lot of water the pH of the water whether it's acidic or alkaline doesn't really matter too much because it's regulated by the stomach before it enters the bloodstream now most neutral water is between a pH of 6.5 and 8.5 people will talk up and down about the benefits of alkaline water no one really talks about acidic water but it is regulated by the stomach so you can test the pH of your water just to make sure it's within the normal range 7 on the dot being neutral and then the variance being between 6.5 and 8.5 I've never really been too concerned about it but you guys can do a little bit more research on that if you want to hear more about it so I think I've given you guys an idea of what definitely needs to be done and then what is hypothetical if you want to understand more about salt you can check out my video on salt I think I also did a video touching on electrolytes and electrolyte ratios in the past that you guys can try to dig up outside of that if you guys would like to support the channel please subscribe and share the video I do have all of this stuff on my amazon shop from the water filters to the seaweed to the clay but as I said guys go to the store get your water tested switch to mineral water for two weeks see how your hydration changes don't just dive into this head first if you guys do want to check out my twitter and my instagram I do have various things related to water on there you know on my instagram is my filter and I do post pictures of my bottles of water I buy sometimes if you guys would like to reach out to me for consultations you can send me an email frank at tafano at email.com or contact me through the form on my website