You are now listening to The Model Health Show with Shawn Stevenson. For more visit themodelhealthshow.com. 

Shawn Stevenson: Welcome to The Model Health Show, this is fitness and nutrition expert Shawn Stevenson and I'm so grateful for you tuning in me today.

I'm pumped about this episode this is one of the most important yet overlooked topics in health and wellness. 

It's something that we covered years ago, a couple of years back, we'll put that original episode in the show notes for you, but today, this is The Water and Hydration Masterclass Reloaded. All right, we've got a ton of new, incredible information to share. 

And I think it's absolutely going to disturb you, but also inspire you and add to your health and wellness for many, many years to come. 

And I'm going just going to start this by saying, and this is a quote from Leonardo da Vinci, and obviously a renaissance man, a smart guy, a lot of stuff he was involved with, but he said, "Water is the driving force of nature." 

Water is the driving force of all nature. Why in the world would he say something like that? 
Well, this is because life as we know it would not exist on this planet without this miraculous resource. 

And every single life form on this planet, every cell in your body depends upon the network of water. 

And today, you're going to find out not only how deep this story goes, but you're also going to discover what water actually is, the critical roles it plays in your body, from digestion to DNA. function, how water influences your weight and your ability to burn fat. Crucial information about where the water you drink actually comes from, and this is probably going to shock you. 

And how access to the very best drinking water is available and where to find it, and also essential strategies to make sure you're properly hydrated, plus a whole lot more. 

Before we do that, something that comes from water, from our oceans, our lakes that is a powerful source of nutrition for humans has been used for thousands of years, a couple of my favorite things, one of them being Spirulina. 

Listen to this, there's a study published in the Public Library of Science that showed that Spirulina has strong potential to prevent and even reduce inflammation in the brain. 

Did you even know that was a thing— I didn't know that was a thing. Well, until a few years ago, but this is one of the underlying causes of so many different health issues ranging from Alzheimer's to even issues with things like regulating our blood pressure because all of the stuff is being regulated by your brain, which we're going to talk about today, funny enough in its relationship to water. But to know that there's a food that can have that kind of power is just really remarkable. 

Also Chlorella and Spirulina, which are both found in the Green Juice formula from Organifi, these are the richest sources of chlorophyll of any food that humans have consumed.

And there's a study published in The Journal Appetite, that is a peer-reviewed journal, they found that chlorophyll from these sources like we find in Spirulina and Chlorella can aid in fat loss, in weight loss by reducing the urge to eat hyper-palatable foods. So it helps to kind of reset our palate and our cravings, funny enough again, like what foods you know have that kind of power? These things come from our waters. So these are just a couple of things that are found in the formula of the Green Juice. 

There's also Ashwagandha, there's some coconut water in there, to make it taste good. But that's the thing, the bottom line is it tastes amazing, and this is why my kids have it, this is something that we have on a regular basis. I travel with the Organifi Green Juice go packs. It's one of my favorite things in the world. 

Also, spirulina has this very rare compound called phycocyanin. Phycocyanin is this really interesting antioxidant and this is like a primal thing that was like, I don't know if you know this, but the Earth at one point was like, we think the lands are kind of green but it was like more of a bluish hue in our environment and phycocyanin is like this kind of ancient compound that is a result of that time. 

And phycocyanin has been found to stimulate something called stem cell genesis so that literally means the creation of new stem cells, which what I was taught in my university setting is that your stem cells are really not a renewable resource. 

But guess what, my college professors were not on the money with this, and again, this is the thing about staying up to date with this data and it's a lot, it's a lot to filter through and this is what I'm really dedicated to and pride myself when doing for you. 

So definitely check them out, it's organifi.com/model to get their Green Juice formula, The Red Juice formula and their Gold is incredible as well. And these are all earth-grown sources, organic and you get 20 percent off everything they carry. 

So pop over there, check them out, it's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com/model, 20 percent off everything that they carry. Alright, pop over there check them out. On that note, let's get to the Apple podcast review of the week. 

iTunes review: Another 5-star review titled "Thank you" by Queen Amanda L.A. "Shawn, your podcast is so helpful to me and my family, I listen to you every week and every week I learn something new.

I appreciate your practical advice and sense of humor. You make it easy for anyone at any level to improve their overall health. 

My daughter who is 6 years old barely even touched fruits and vegetables, and after hearing your smoothie episode, I started making her smoothies packed with superfoods, and now her nutrition is complete. You're awesome, I can't thank you enough."

Shawn Stevenson: That is absolutely amazing, that's one of the most inspiring, heartwarming things that I've heard. Thank you so much for sharing that. And thank you, everybody, for leaving the reviews over on Apple podcasts and let everybody know what you feel about the show. 

If you're yet to do so, please pop over there and do it, make it happen, leave your review over on Apple Podcasts, or whatever platform you're listening to the show on. And on that note, let's get to our topic of the day. 

This is the Water and Hydration Masterclass 2.0. And to get things started, I think it's important for us to just kind of zoom out and take this meta-perspective.

A lot of us have heard some of these sentiments but we're going to drill in a little bit deeper, but the first thing to understand is that this planet is primarily water, about 71 percent of the Earth's surface is water covered. And the oceans hold about 96 percent of our Earth's water. 

And water doesn't just exist in our kind of bodies of water, water is able to exist in many other places, like the air you breathe in the form of water vapor, rivers, lakes in the ground as soil right, and moisture that's in the soil, in aquifers, which are these kinds of underground lakes as well, glaciers and even in you, and the other animals and creatures around you, here on our planet. 

Now, the Earth being about 70 percent water is really interesting because that's about the same ratio that you find in many of the organs of the human body. 

According to data published in The Journal of Biological Chemistry, your brain is about 73 percent water, your heart 73 percent water, your lungs are over 80 percent water. And overall, the human body itself is approximately 55 - 75 percent water. 

Even your bones, we think of our bones as these kind of like solid material, but they're 30 percent water as well. 
That wide ratio, by the way, 55- 75 percent that has to do with your age, your gender and even your lifestyle influences how much of your body is actually made up of water. 

When we're born as tiny, little babies we're like 75 percent water. Okay, but from there, that's when the drying out process starts. 

And just about the time you hit the age of 1, you're going to drop down about 10 percent, you are going to be hovering somewhere around 65 percent water making up your tissues. 

Now, as an adult, adult males are going to be about approximately 60 percent water whereas adult females are about 55 percent water. 

Now, this discernment has to do with the fact that men tend to carry more lean muscle mass and what's so fascinating is that muscle contains more water than fat does, muscle is about 80 percent water whereas fat is about 50 percent water. 

And for both men and women, as we age, folks in their senior years are only about 50 percent water. Again, aging is connected to this process of drying out. 

Now, I don't know about you, but I'm not trying to get dried out, okay. I don't want to end up like a raisin. I saw The California Raisins Christmas Special when I was a kid, not a good look for me, right. 

So just think about that in the context like what can we do to prevent this drying out process. 

And one thing clearly indicated in the research is that proactively maintaining your muscle mass as you age helps to protect your body from this drying out process because muscle carries a higher ratio of water. 

It's one of those serious hacks for longevity is making sure that you're proactively working on creating and maintaining muscle tissue. 

And now just to be clear, when we are acknowledging the fact, and I just rattled off all these different statistics on the amount of water that make us up, I want you to keep in mind that your body and organs are indeed a percentage of water, but it's not just water, it's no longer water in the sense that we think it is. 

That water has been integrated and transformed into different things and you can't just say that blood is water, for example, although if you chemically break it down, it's primarily water, but that's not how nature works. 

Water becomes other things, it's really the ultimate transformer. Dare I say water Optimus Prime, it has so many different powerful roles in our body, and this ability to integrate, being that water, and this is something that I learned in my conventional education setting, but I didn't really get and I want you to get this, water is known as the universal solvent, it's the universal solvent. 

This means that water has the capacity to integrate with more things than any other substance on the planet. 

Water becomes you, water becomes the glass that you pour it into, it forms and shapes itself around it. And whatever you add to that glass, right, you add— when I was a kid we did the Kool-Aid or actually we were broke so we had Flavor Aid. 

Okay, and I became like a chemist with the Flavor Aid, it wouldn't just be the strawberry, I'd take the strawberry, add a little bit of the blueberry or cherry with it, okay, get the sugar right and everybody thinks I'm a genius, I make the best Flavor Aid. 

Okay, if you have never had Flavor Aid then you were pretty well off. I had Kool-Aid sometimes too. 

But it's able to integrate with that, just like it's able to integrate with you and your body and also so many different things in our environment.

Water is a universal— the universal solvent. 

Water is also a very powerful conductor. Now, just to be clear, water itself if we chemically are talking about water H2O is an insulator, it's not conductive at all, but because it's a universal solvent, the minerals that integrate with that water make it very, very conductive. And being that you're mostly water, you are conductive, right. 

And so this is why we can get shocked, right we can have like static electricity or like we see the scene in The Scary Movie where you're laid back in the bathtub and Jason's behind the door and he drops the plug-in radio into the tub, it fries you up, it's because you're conductive. 

Okay, now I don't know why I used that example, I saw too many scary movies as a kid. 

But you're conductive, all right, and this is because water is conductive, the water and minerals in your tissue make you sort of like a battery. Now, taking it a step further and how waters is existing in our environment, water can exist in 3 different states— as a solid, ice, (ice baby), as a liquid and as a gas. 

And that said, water is sort of like a liquid crystal in a way, it's able to transform, conduct information and even store information. 

It has the ability to literally communicate and it's the basis of communication systems in your body, all of the cells in your body are communicating via a water medium. 

This is how powerful it is, and this is just scratching the surface, so let's dive in and talk about some of the specific roles that water plays in our bodies. 

To start things off, water is actually in charge of the maintenance of your DNA, right, so your DNA is where your information about you is stored, right, the kind of copies that are going to get printed of you, that genetic information is stored in your DNA and the maintenance of your DNA is based on water. 

Also, the reactions of your mitochondria, right, so your mitochondria, and we all know this by now, these are the energy power plants really in your cells, right, producing the ATP, producing the energy currency that allows you to do everything your body does, to experience energy, it's generated via your mitochondria, and water facilitates these reactions. 

Without water, or as you become dehydrated, these processes begin to become debilitated. 

Your blood, I mentioned earlier, it's over 90 percent water, so your blood is transferring oxygen, nutrients, antibodies throughout your body. Waste removals, right, the removal of waste it's all determined by the level of water that you have in your system. 

Your lymphatic fluid, we have 4 times more lymph than we have blood, right, we know about the circulatory system, the lymphatic system 4 times more and this is really your extracellular waste management system, right. 

So the ability to, your immune system, a large portion of it is hanging out in your lymphatic system. 

So being dehydrated can literally damage your immune system and damage and hinder your ability to remove wastes from your system, which, this is not a good look, right. 

If you think about your home, if the sewage waste management system gets backed up, you've got problems. Okay, but we do this to ourselves and things start to get backed up. 

Alright, so also, the fluid for your digestive tract and digestive secretions, your seminal fluid, for the fellas, and also fluids of the reproductive system for both men and women, also, regulating your body temperature, water is like the execution medium for regulating your body temperature, your cerebral spinal fluid, and your central nervous system is all based on water. 

And according to research conducted by the US military, just a one to 2 percent drop in your body's baseline hydration level is enough to depress your cognitive function. Alright, translation— you get dumber when you're dehydrated, all right. But, again, this is something that can happen relatively easy, but it can be addressed and fixed, improved, relatively easy. 

Also, by the way, when I think of the dumb, I literally, immediately thought of Lloyd Christmas and Dumb and Dumber, I don't know about you but that's just what I think about. The first one, classic. The newer ones, not so much. If you didn't see it yet, don't see it. 

So next up, synovial fluid, your synovial fluid, your joints, your intervertebral disc, also are based on water. This was a big issue for me if you know my story, 20 years old, degenerative disc disease, two herniated disc in my lower back and guess how much water I was drinking— maybe a cup a day, but I was getting water vicariously sort of through these other things you know, through drinking juice and soda in Flavor Aid. 

And your body will do the best it can, a lot of experts believe that those things dehydrate you more but your body is resilient, it will try and siphon get all the fluid that it can and liquids that it can. 

But the optimal thing to do obviously is to provide ourselves with a real, clean, structured water, which we'll get into more as we go along. 

But for me, a big part of this was getting my discs hydrated again because they were dried out, basically. 

And my physician told me that I had the spine of an 80-year old man when I was 20 years old because my disk had aged so much. 

And here's the big issue is that water really functions in your body on a hierarchy of needs; it goes where it's needed first, obviously your brain is a priority, your blood is a priority. 

But if you're not providing enough fluid for your system, other places aren't going to get the adequate amounts they need, your disks are one of the last places to get hydrated. And it's because it doesn't directly go, they are non-vascular, they are non-vascular,  it doesn't directly have a fluid supply or a blood supply. 

Water gets into your disks as a process called remote diffusion, and so you have to have enough water available that it can do that whole process, that extra process to hydrate those disks. Okay? But it's not difficult to do once you become aware of it. 

So that's just a little smidgen and even in addition, and this is super important as well— your body uses a water superhighway to transmit neurotransmitters and hormones throughout your entire body, so the communication of every cell from your brain to your pinky toe is all based on a water medium, f communication for your hormones and neurotransmitters, right?

As you become more and more dehydrated, those highways start to become less and less lanes to the point where they become side streets, to the point where they could become back alleys and you don't want to see what happens in those back alleys, all right, there's some sketchy stuff there. So you have to be mindful, be aware of that. 

It's not just, "Oh I need to drink more water," like this is what's happening when we deprive ourselves of this essential nutrient, far more important than any food that we can discuss. 

Water is the basis for life on the planet. 

And just kind of going back and looking at the neurotransmitters, and your hormones, what's really interesting that I want to share is that these systems appear to be kind of separate, right, your hormones have to do with your endocrine glands and your neurotransmitters have to do with your brain right and your nervous system. 

But these two systems are integrated into the master gland in your brain which is known as your hypothalamus. Your hypothalamus is the governor that is regulating your thirst, funny enough, and it's regulating your hunger as well, and many other things. 

But this is important to understand and just for example, like your hypothalamus is monitoring the level of water that you have in your body, as compared to the ratio of total dissolved solids or our minerals and it works with your kidneys to try to maintain that proper water balance inside and outside of your cells. So I hope that makes sense. 

So your brain is obviously important, we talked about reducing brain information earlier, this is one of the things that can be a side effect as your hypothalamus stops working properly. 

And since the hypothalamus also regulates hunger, the signals from hunger and thirst can get mixed up for some folks who aren't acclimated to listening to their body signals, right. 

So often today we've got so much going on, so much external noise and distraction and also just our health in general, it can become very difficult to differentiate the two signals and so we might be very thirsty and your body's crying for water yet we feel we need to eat a sandwich. 

And so what does that do, that just exacerbates the dehydration. And so this is just a little snapshot of some of the roles that water plays in our bodies, and also I wanted to share some of these water fun facts with you. Let's go to a couple of fun facts.

Approximately 75 percent of Americans are significantly dehydrated on a regular basis. Even mild dehydration can slow down your body's metabolism, you want to burn fat— if you're dehydrated it's slowing that process down, we'll come back to that in a moment. 

Another fun fact— insufficient hydration is the number one cause of daytime fatigue, according to the experts. Number one cause. 

People are like, "What can I take, what can I take for more energy, right, give me energy shot, give me an espresso." Water. Number one reason. 

Also, there are lots of commercials now that are playing on the topic of late-night hunger, right, it's kind of like a funny cultural thing. 

But one University of Washington experiment found that a single glass of water shut down midnight hunger pangs for almost 100 percent of the dieters in the study, they weren't hungry, they were thirsty. In a study published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, found that just a two percent drop in your body's baseline hydration levels lead to impairment in task requiring attention, motor coordination and executive function. 

And this includes things like map recognition, grammatical reasoning, mental math, and proofreading. Math is hard enough. Trying to figure out a tip— have you ever, right? It could be difficult even map recognition— please if Dora the Explorer is dehydrated, she's not going to fit find her way.

Okay, so real talk, make sure that we are adequately hydrated because even a small drop in our optimal percentage of hydration can lead to cognitive dysfunction as we talked about earlier as well. 

Another fun fact, there's a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine that revealed that adequate daily water intake significantly reduces the risk of bladder cancer in men. So now we're talking about cancer prevention. 

Another study published by the American Association of Cancer Research found that adequate water intake has a significant role in reducing the risk of colorectal cancer, as well. 

Really, really powerful and more people need to know this. Our physicians asking these questions when we're seeing these situations show up, like, "What does your water intake look like?"

This needs to be basic, foundational stuff that's taught to us and shared by our health care practitioners as well if we happen to miss the memo but it should be taught to us in our early education. 

A couple of connections between water and body weight now, let's talk about this, let's talk about the aesthetic, let's talk a little about that. 

Your body is actually, you know will do, let's talk about some diet components itself, right. We know about the 3 macronutrients the proteins, fats, carbohydrates, something the really interesting about carbohydrates now, today, we know that— 

When I went to my university I was taught we need to eat mostly carbohydrates 7 to 11 servings, the whole grains, crazy stuff, right? 

And what do we see, we saw skyrocketing issues of obesity, folks being overweight and diabetes as well. 

Now we know that carbohydrates, we don't want to base our diets for the most part, many of us, there are some cultures that thrive with a higher ratio of carbohydrates, where for many of us, reducing our body weight can, one of the side effects of reducing carbohydrates is we're not retaining as much water because carbohydrates cause you to retain more water and store more water in order to process them. 

For every one gram of carbohydrate in your body, you'll generally store 3 to 4 additional grams of water along with it. All right, carbohydrate— hydrate, right. 

So modulating those ratios are one of the things that help us to reduce our body weight. 

Also, there's this really interesting phenomenon called water-induced thermogenesis, right, water-induced thermogenesis. 

It's essentially a fortified boost that your metabolism gets from simply drinking water. When you drink water your body has to heat and process that water that you consume. 

Of course, if you're consuming the right amounts, and so this was a study published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism found that drinking 500 milliliters of water, which is about 17 ounces, at one go within a minute or two can temporarily boost your metabolic rate by 30 percent. 

You're burning more calories, 30 percent increase, it's a temporary boost and they also found that this increase occurs within 10 minutes and reaches a maximum after about 30 to 40 minutes. 

The total thermogenic calorie burn is about 24-30 calories additionally that you burn just from drinking water. 

You drink this calorie-free thing, you burn more calories. But just to be clear, just to be clear, this is through drinking an optimal amount of water, going water crazy to try to set your metabolism on fire will backfire, as we'll talk a little bit about in a moment, and result in cellular dysfunction.

All right, so keep that in mind. We want to make sure we're getting adequate amounts of water for our metabolism, but the next question is how does water even get into your cells in the first place? 

Now, this is super fascinating to me, because again, I wasn't taught this in my conventional, expensive university setting. 

I read a book, getting close to probably I think it was about 12 years ago and I learned about these protein channels in our cells that enable water to actually cross over into the cell itself and these protein channels or water channels are called aquaporins. Aquaporins. 

And these aquaporins facilitate and enable water to actually enter your cells and they have a certain size and this is key, as we build on this, they have a certain size that only allows the right size water molecule and the components that are connected to the water. 

Remember, water is a solvent, into the cell, so a lot of the minerals or the dissolved solids can't make their way into the cell itself, it has to maintain a balance. 

And so we're going to come back to this, and so the aquaporins are allowing the certain structure of water to make its way through into the cell itself, so that's how the water goes from you drinking it to actually getting into your cells itself.

Now, how do we get the right form of water to properly hydrate ourselves? Well, there's so many, there are quite a few options that we're exposed to today that haven't existed before. 

And the first one to talk about, and this is where we really, like you've got to listen to this, this is a little weird, but it's also important for you to know about. 

And the first one is a public water supply.

We have excellent systems in place to kill pathogens and to "clean" our water, there's a lot of issues in many other places, many other countries where folks are extracting and going to get their water from sources that are polluted and that are being utilized by other animals and different things like that and they're bringing back different nefarious diseases, and water-borne illnesses and things like that. 

We don't really have that as a major issue here in this country, but the way that we're going about cleaning our water and the water itself is definitely concerning. 

There was a study that was published by The Associated Press and their investigation was looking at 41 million Americans' water supply coming through the faucets in their homes. 

And what they discovered was that the water coming through millions of people's faucets was tainted by pharmaceutical chemicals from antidepressants to muscle relaxers, there were 56 different pharmaceutical chemicals found in water supplies, reaching from Southern California all the way to New Jersey. 

And another comprehensive study of the drinking water of 28 million Americans detected a widespread level of pharmaceutical drugs and hormonal active compounds in our water supply. 

This was looking at 19 municipalities that were monitored over the course of a year. Now, please know the experts and the scientists doing the studies noted that this was very small concentrations, but they were there nonetheless. 

And the question immediately arises like, "How? Why? How was that coming through my faucet? Pharmaceutical drugs, what's going on here?" 

And so before we get to that, listen to the list of things that were found in our American water supply: antibiotics including penicillin, tetracycline, pain relievers, Tylenol, Aspirin, Ibuprofen, all trace amounts coming through our faucet. 

Mental health prescriptions from Prozac to Valium, other, under the category of others: caffeine, nicotine, pesticides, hormone replacement medications led and arsenic, for millions of Americans, coming through our faucet. What is going on? Wow? 

Right, so this is a big, broad picture first, we've got about 32 billion gallons of municipal wastewater produced every day in the United States, right. That's a lot of water 32 billion gallons of wastewater, this is from our faucets, coming through our showers, our toilets, it's a lot of wastewater. 

And here is a breakdown of how this process happens with like so where does this water go? All this, when we flush a toilet, where does it go? 

Well the sewage water from your home is piped to a central location where the solids are removed and all kinds of weird stuff that gets in the water in the first place, like one of the researchers that I was studying was finding like stuffed animals, a cell phone, whose flushing a cellphone, like just all of the solid materials, but we would normally think solid materials would be like poop, but then there's like other random crazy stuff as well. 

But anyway, so it's piped to a central location where the solids are removed, and then sent to a primary sedimentation tank where the solids settle and sink to the bottom and the greasy kind of insoluble compounds rise to the top, so there's a separation effect with water because you know water and oils don't mix. 

And so these solids and grease are separated from the water and the water goes to an aeration tank, where it's mixed with oxygen and bacteria, this is key. Water treatment facilities are using bacteria to treat and clean the water, okay?

Again, we're really starting to understand how powerful bacteria are and that humans, ourselves are mostly made of bacteria. And so the bacteria and oxygen to clean the water, and this happens for several hours process. 

And the bacteria consume any organic solids that remain in the water helping to decontaminate it. 

And then from there, the water is sent to a final sedimentation tank where the bacteria have a chance to settle to the bottom so they can be separated from the water.

And sometimes from there, the water is then run through a hydrological cycle mimicking filter, right so that's what the Earth really is, it's a giant water filter, right.

If we look at the hydrological cycle, it's going to these different layers of like rock and the sedimentation layer and all this stuff, and going into these underground lakes, these aquifers and then eventually being presented through these springs, right. 

Or another method is to go down and digging get it which is what a well really is. 

But that water is the cleanest, the purest thing on the planet, once it's actually in an aquifer.

And so the treatment facilities are trying to replicate that. And from there, the water is moved to a chlorine contact tank and this is where it's mixed with the solution of sodium hydrochloride and this is the same chemical that's in bleach. This is literally bleach, the water is bleached. 

And eventually from there, once the water is bleached, it's released back into our rivers and our oceans, and this is one of the ways that it indirectly ends up back in our water supply, right. 

Because you're wondering how are these drugs getting into our tap water, it's because people are peeing and pooping out the byproducts of these things and they're finding their way back into our water supply via just the normal water cycle and how we're snatching this stuff up. So that's one of the ways. 

And also, this is another way again, that hydrological cycle, and if the water is like filtering its way through the groundwater and then maybe running off into a lake or a river or wherever the municipalities are grabbing their water from, this is from because that sewage water that I walked you through the steps of how it's cleaned, sewage water is regularly used as agricultural and landscape irrigation water, okay. 

Also, it's used in industrial processes, it's used in for some folks' homes and businesses for toilet flushing, which I didn't know there were separate pipes for that. Isn't it creepy, when like you, have you ever seen like somebody flushes a toilet and then your water coming through the faucets starts to get like a little bit weaker?

Little weird, but also to replenish groundwater basins and even this wastewater, this recycled wastewater, is even directly used for drinking water.

Okay, and now that we've looked at the big picture of the water cycle and this recycled waste water and some of the ways that these compounds are making their way into our drinking water, I want to share this with you, because many water experts assert that recycled waste water is totally safe to drink. 

But the thought of drinking their water, it's come through millions of people's toilets, can definitely sound unappealing. Okay, unappealing is a good word.

However, there is a recent study conducted, how I am going to say however about drinking recycled toilet water— however, a recent study conducted by researchers at the University of California Riverside and Santa Barbara City College found that in a blind taste test more people preferred the taste of recycled waste tap water over conventional tap water. 

They call it "toilet to tap" for the study this was published in The Journal Appetite researchers gave bottled water, recycled waste water from the tap and conventional ground water, tap water to 143 participants and asked them to rate the waters without knowing where they came from.

Most of them picked the toilet to tap. 

I don't know, but this is an option, this is an option that is used today whether you know it or not, whether you know it or not. Now, again, most municipalities are you know, getting water from aquifers and rivers and things like that, and those compounds are indirectly making their way. 

But one of the options that are being really looked at is recycling this because we are very good at cleaning it, they're very good at cleaning it, but our current methods cannot get rid of these compounds, these byproducts from drugs, like we've never experienced or seen this before in human history, it's a new thing that we're trying to deal with. 

And so going back what's used to treat and like finalize, finish off any potential pathogens is chlorine. It's a powerful antibiotic. And we're sipping on that, so it's killing bacteria. 

What are you made of? We know that we've talked about this on many episodes, your body, you are more bacteria cells than you are human cells, you have trillions of bacteria in and on you that make up your cascade this microbiome. 

And these bacteria have their own genes and their own goals and mission, and many of our bacteria, especially when our body is in balance, they're doing things in us for us, this is a symbiotic relationship. 

But if we're drinking this conditional tap water, we're just like throwing in stuff that's like, it doesn't care if it's a good or bad bacteria, it's killing everything, and only the strongest will emerge. And usually it's not a good guy, all right. 

And so, keep that in mind, just from that one principle alone understand that drinking just straight tap water, if we have an option, it's probably not the best idea, and we'll come back and talk about what the best ideas actually are, in a moment. But so that's number one, it's chlorine.

What else? Number two compound at water treatment facilities that are coming for our municipal water supply— fluoride. Fluoride. Right, you hear fluoride what do you think about? You think about safe? You think about a sparkling smile? 

That's what we think about but is this really what's going on? According to the National Research Council, fluoride can significantly damage your brain. Studies by the EPA have found dementia-like effects when exposed to fluoridated water. 

The NRC, The National Research Council notes significant risk to your thyroid, bones and also increase the risk of bone cancer with repeated exposure to fluoride. 

This should be shocking! I know this shocked me when I first heard this, because this was like all the toothpaste, get the fluoride. 

Harvard scientists found a direct correlation between fluoride and a very dangerous form of bone cancer called an Osteosarcoma. 

So my question is, okay, why is it added to our water? Why is it been added to our water for so many years? 

And this information has been out there for so many years, it's not used to treat the water in any way, it's not used to kill pathogens, why? 

Fluoride is essentially like medication, it was put into our water supply to so-called improve our bone health, right, so the guy who was concerned about our bones, no conspiracy theories, we don't do that here. 

But it's to support bone health, but because it's a medication, this is a direct violation of our rights to informed consent about taking a drug. People have no idea about this. 

Most industrialized countries have actually banned the use of fluoride, but not here. Dr. Robert Carlton who's a former EPA scientist, Environmental Protection Agency, said, "Fluoridation is the greatest case of scientific fraud of the century." That's strong words Robert, strong words. 

In an episode of The Model Health Show featuring New York Times' bestselling author of the Hashimoto's Protocol Dr. Isabella Wentz was featured on the show and she shared how fluoride has been found to contribute to thyroid dysfunction. So listen to this:

Dr. Isabella Wentz: A research study was done in 2015 in the UK. So the UK. adds fluoride in some parts of the community and other parts they do not add fluoride to the water supply. 

And they found in the parts of the UK where fluoride was indeed added to the water supplies they saw higher levels of thyroid disease in that population and lower levels of thyroid disease in the population that didn't have fluoride in their water supply. 

And they were also able to make correlations based on the levels of fluoride within each community. So this is one of those things that can be very much toxic to the thyroid gland, it can suppress thyroid function, it can potentially damage thyroid cells, creating that autoimmune response or triggering that autoimmune response.

And I generally will recommend that people use fluoride for a toothpaste for that reason and that they also drink chloride free water or reduced fluoride water.

Shawn Stevenson: So hearing that, the question still remains— is this fluoride treatment necessary? And is it even safe? From the looks of it, it is definitely something that we need to be more cautious about, and I'll just leave it at that. 

Now, we've got our tap water option, right. There are simple things that we can do to help to eliminate, modulate, chlorine, fluoride. But if you get the basics right, we talk about the real stuff here, you go to your local HwaMart or Walgreens or whatever Wal, you go there, why do they call them wal? Never mind, maybe it's their last name, I don't know. 

But why when you go there, you get the basic water filter, right, you get a Brita, get a Brita water filter, it says on the package, "Removes the smell and taste of chlorine". It doesn't remove the chlorine though. It says it on the package. It's not set up like that, that's not what it does. Brita is made by 43:17 [indiscernible] by the way. We don't do conspiracies here, but it's just, it's weird, right? It's weird. 

So my question is because I'm thinking about this in a bigger scale, because we have billions of people on the planet, we have hundreds and millions of people here in the United States, so this is my first wrong like what do we do, because water is like, you can see the water issues in the horizon, right? 

The potential conflicts, cities and states and governments and countries over water. You could see it on the horizon. But we're on a water planet, we have so much water. What's going on? What can we do? 

And so my question arises— why can't we drink the ocean water. There's a way but first of all I'm going to explain to you why we can't drink ocean water because I know that for a lot of us we don't really know why, we just know that we're not supposed to.

And essentially, here's how it works, it has to do with osmosis, going back to high school biology class, which I didn't like, because it didn't relate to me, it didn't connect. Why am I dissecting a worm? I didn't show up for this, right? 

Anyways, but I fell in love with biology and with osmosis, in your body, in nature period, water is constantly moving from a place of less concentrated solution to a place of more concentrated solution. 

Water is drawn to a place of more concentrated solution. And so the water we drink goes into our cells through this semi-permeable membrane, that we talked about a little bit earlier. 

But here's the thing— not all of the particles that are in that water, because it's not just water H2O doesn't exist in nature, it's H2O with other things dissolved into it, not all of the particles that are in the water like salt actually can get inside of the cell, all right. 

And water with the semi-permeable membrane can move inside the cell and it can move outside the cell, to try to maintain balance, a balance ratio of minerals in the cell and out of the cell, and a balance ratio of water in the cell and out of the cell. 

And so here's what happens, when it's in balance it's something called an isotonic state, that's when there's a balance of minerals, salts and water inside the cell, outside the cell. 

But here's what happens when it gets in balance, when you drink ocean water which is incredibly high in salt, the saltiness outside of the cell starts to build up rapidly and so the cell will force water to be moved from inside a cell and push the water outside of the cell to try to restore the balance of all the saltiness outside of the cell. 

And when you keep drinking that water, the water is not going into your cells, it is trying to buffer all the salts and you literally die from dehydration; you're drinking a lot of water but your cells are not getting hydrated, your cells are not getting the water, so you just keep peeing and peeing and peeing and you'll eventually die. 

Okay, not a fun story, okay, this is not one to share a bed time, it's not, okay. But this is essentially, and I hope that that made sense how this osmosis process and drinking salt water can affect the human body, this is why we can't just go guzzle all of this incredible water we have on the planet. 

Now, by the way, the opposite happens when you drink too much "clean" water or drinking specifically H2O that doesn't have the minerals, the opposite thing happens— that water keeps getting driven inside of the cell because it doesn't have the minerals, just keep going to this place of a greater water concentration solution, it is going to keep going driven into the cells so you continue to drink that water, your cells are literally getting filled up and they can explode, like actually explode from being over hydrated. 

And that balance, the extracellular fluid, the space outside the cell is not getting that hydration, All right, so it just throws the whole signaling off, so this starts to ask the question of what is the right kind of water, what is the ratio, what are we looking at here? 

Well the bottom line is, of course, we need minerals in our water, that's how water exists in nature, that's how we've evolved, just having H2O with other things dissolved into it, because H2O really is like a, it's a chemical, like it's just a chemical compound that doesn't really exist anywhere unless we manufacture it. 

And why don't we basically desalinate, eliminate or reduce the salt in ocean water, why don't we do that? Because we can, we have the technology to do it, there are several methods that can do it. But the short answer is apparently it's too expensive. 

Apparently, it's just cost effective to just harvest fresh water sources even though they are a much smaller ratio of availability, but we do have the technology to do it. 

And we'll talk about some of those methods of eliminating salts and also other nefarious materials that are in the water in a moment here. 

But so now that we've kind of covered our municipal tap water and knowing that we do need a filter if you don't get a filter you become the filter. 

All right, so we do need a filter for our municipal tap water, but there are some other choices that we have as well and let's go through some of those. 

Well, instead of dealing with all of the sketchy things that can be going on with our municipal water supply, one of the obvious things is to go for bottled water. 

This is like a huge industry now. I remember the first time that I saw bottled water, I was so confused. I was like, "Just give me a cup, why is there, like why is the water in a bottle?" 

It didn't make any sense to me, it was a new thing and this industry has just grown, like this is like a multi-billion dollar industry and we don't question it though, right, it was something that was just totally unusual to something that is super common and kids that are born today they're just born into it, bottled water is just a thing. But nobody is questioning like, "Where is this water actually coming from?" 

And here's the thing— the only requirement, the only law for bottled water is that it's as good as tap water. Only regulation! 

The environmental working group tested and found 38 contaminants in 10 of the major bottled water brands, including arsenic, Tylenol, nitrates, caffeine, and industrial chemicals. What? And this is again, we think this is a better option, maybe not so much, right? 

Also, most bottled water is bottled in plastic, and so now we are well aware that this is not the best option, because plastics contain these hormonal compounds, this primary class of things called xenoestrogens which basically means external estrogens and they have the interesting ability that when we consume these xenoestrogens, they can fit into estrogen receptor sites in our bodies, and turn on programs that are linked to estrogen. 

Men and women have estrogen receptors from our brains to our liver, we have estrogen receptor sites. 

Alright, so the xenoestrogens, one of them is BPA, but there are others, this is the popular one: bisphenol a, xenoestrogen and the question is well that's in the plastic bottle, it's not in the water. 

Well, guess what— water is a universal solvent and plastics don't biodegrade, they actually photodegrade, so just even being in light breaks plastic down. I don't know if you've ever had this experience, I know I have.

Leave your bottle in the car, maybe, you know, plastic bottle, it's a warm day, you come back, drink your water. And you can taste the plastic, you can taste it.

Most times you just can't taste it, but it's there, that is definitely plastic tea you're drinking if you drink plastic bottled water. 

Or we can call it estrogen water, you can pick one, but it is, it is what it is. So here's the thing, I talked about this on a recent episode— do not be neurotic about this though, I mean, I definitely became neurotic and I was like on a long complicated flight and I just straight just didn't drink water because I didn't have the quality of water that I was accustomed to and that I demanded. 

And so rather than dehydrate yourself and hurt yourself and damage yourself, if bottled water in plastic is what's available, it's better to drink some water then to not drink water, especially if it's like clean, decent water. 

So don't be neurotic, we do need to know this stuff, if you have a choice, we can choose better, but it's still not, it's something that humans have, we've achieved something that gives us a safe option, it's not, it's got issues, but it's one of the options. 

Alright, so rather than have that plastic tea, what are some other things that we could do?

Let's go a little bit back to what are the process is for the municipal water supply, for filtering the water and also what can be done with ocean water, sea water as well. 

Distillation is one of the tactics or tools that we can use to remove a lot of these harmful compounds and also that high level of salt. 

Distillation involves heat, so this is boiling the water until it turns into vapor and this leaves the salt behind and then you collect the condensed water and then, of course, you can cool it down and then that could be your consumable water. 

Now here's the issue— we've extracted the minerals from the water, so what's left? H2O. Again, this does not exist in nature, so this water and water is hungry, it's hungry water it's looking for things to interact with, being a universal solvent. 

And so this water can potentially just start like snatching up your minerals in your body to try to process it, if that makes sense. 

So we need minerals and we typically get that from our water, but now this water is hungry and it can take some minerals from us if that makes sense. 

So with distillation, we want to rehydrate, restructure the water, add some different things to it even a little bit of salt, right some high-quality salt can give some structure and turn that water from chemical compound to something more similar to what's existing in nature. 

Alright, so distillation is one of the methods, some folks by distilled water, you definitely need to restructure that water. Some folks have the distillation technology at their homes, as well. I just wanted to share that, that is one method. 

Another popular method and folks are constantly asking me about this, and I talked about this years ago on the original water hydration masterclass but these alkalizing technologies and this is— 

So the principle is something that is decent in its approach, people are not outwardly trying to dissuade people from other things or to do any harm, but we need to just take a little bit of a deeper look at what the technology really is. 

And so this is ionizing water to give an alkaline PH. So the first thing to understand is that your body, this PH thing again I learned in school acids and basis right, acids and alkaline, there are many organs of your body that are supposed to be acidic, your stomach, you want that to be like— 

You know that game when you're a kid and you try to step on certain things or you're going to step in lava, right? You want your stomach to be like lava, the wrong thing, the wrong pathogen gets into your belly, it burns it up. 

There are other organs that are more neutral, there are other organs and systems that are more alkaline, but we could just really hammer this alkaline thing down to a place of silliness, really. Because both matter in nature and in our bodies. 

And so with ionizing the water, this is artificially giving it an alkaline PH and it's nearly impossible to grossly like alter the PH of our bodies, no matter what somebody is marketing and saying of changing your blood by drinking certain fluids our foods, like your body is constantly working to maintain the PH that it needs to be at. 

And so even if you bring in a lot of acidic things, your body will like, literally, it could even leach minerals from your bones to try to neutralize it and keep it the PH that it wants to be, that's not good. 

That's why we don't want to have like extremely acid forming nutritional approach, obviously. 

But we don't want to be too far on the other side as well, because again, your body's always working to support itself and be in the right PH. 

So, when we talk about acids, let's just get right to it, when we talk about acids and alkalines, what we're really talking about in nature is the mineral content, the minerals are what determines whether it's acid or alkaline, right, there are acidic minerals like phosphorus and then there are alkaline minerals like calcium and magnesium. That's what we're talking about in the context of water in nature, right? So that's what it is. 

Now, when it comes to these. alkalizing water machines, these ionizing machines, this means the PH is being altered unnaturally by man changing it with electricity. 

So it's changing not the mineral content, it's changing it with electricity, it's using electrolysis and this creates something called the disassociation of water. It's a splitting of the ionic compounds in the water, and already this doesn't sound right, right? 

If you were water would you want to be electrocuted? Would you want to be disassociated from yourself? No. 

Okay, so what we have here when we have the disassociation of water, you have two channels resulting one acidic one alkaline. The water molecules are actually split open, again artificially, and resulting in this alkaline water. 

Now the marketing would tell you today, because they got smart, not just like, "Okay, we've got this alkaline water and then the acidic water, this is like a throwaway compound," now they'll say, "Oh, you can use acidic water for this, you can use it to clean stuff" and use the alkaline water and different levels of alkaline water like wash your face, and some is to drink. But the truth is, again, this doesn't exist in nature like that. 

Not to say that those things don't have value, please don't get me wrong, I'll drink some alkaline water, but to have that to be your primary water source it might not be the best idea. 

Because clinical trials have revealed that there is a potential injury risk to cardiac tissue due to drinking ionized water, because it's an alkali, this is like, it's a drug, like a supplement, that's what alkalis are. It's not all bad but it might not be ideal long term because drinking a gallon of a supplement might not be so good. That's all I am saying. 

Okay, so again, just like having a bigger picture, thinking about this stuff logically and making the best choices for us, again, not to say that it doesn't have value, but especially right now, we don't know the long term what some of the effects are going to be.

Drinking some alkaline water can get people feeling better, they're just drinking water, period though. But there are some benefits to it, it's just the artificial nature of it concerns me, it just concerns me.

And so that's another thing that's out there and available but we're not talking about removing or eliminating these harmful byproducts and waste that we've been talking about earlier as well. So you get nice alkaline water with some residual hormone replacement medication in it. 

Okay, we're not getting rid of the potential problems that we've been talking about. Another way we can do it— reverse osmosis system, RO, reverse osmosis. 

What that really is, it's kind of, again, simulating the Earth's activity as a giant water filter by forcing the water through a semi-permeable membrane that separates the minerals, salts and things like in all these other compounds because they have a certain size, like the arsenic, the Tylenol residue, they have a certain size and this pushes water through a very tight membrane .0001 microns and that's compared to a bacteria for example, which is .4 microns, so it gets rid of a lot of stuff, a lot of pathogens. 

This is another way that we can treat ocean water, for example, but also just the water coming through our faucet. 

And so this can remove a lot of pathogens, chemicals, drugs. But again, it gets me thinking that the amount of pressure that the waters undergo, does the water like it? I think, you know, just understand the intelligence of water, I think that it matters, it matters and water still carries this memory, you know, it carries information, it carries data. 

But this is kind of giving it a clean slate, so again, we need to restructure and rehydrate this water from reverse osmosis, distilled water, whatever the case might be, we need to make sure it's the right structure. 

Alright, so those are a couple of these, a couple of different options for us today, and we'll hit just a couple more and then we hit these final bullet points on what to do, our actions to take. 

Another source and we mentioned earlier is getting water from these aquifers. And some municipalities do that, some homes have access, they're getting their water from the aquifers via wells, right, we drill down into these underground lakes. 

And so aquifers are water that's been filtered through the Earth's process, this hydrological cycle, it has been under the ground for like thousands of years in some aspects like this is the cleanest, purest thing in the world, it's really amazing. It's kind of like when we're going and drilling down and getting the water from the aquifer, it's not quite ready yet.

It's like when you put your hot pocket in the microwave, it is not cooked all the way through, but you're really hungry and then you bite and it's like steaming hot in one bite and then you bite like an ice cube, the next bite/ I don't know I am using this example, I guess because I was talking about Kool-Aid earlier and just like I was on the Kool-Aid and Hot Pocket bandwagon, I would not recommend you eat that now, in any form or fashion. But when I was trying to get healthier, you know what I did?

I went from the Hot Pocket to the Lean Pocket. Come on now. Don't do that either. And so, it's like, it's not quite ready yet, because the water coming back up also goes through a process, that's what's presented in the spring. 

And so well water might in some instances have too many dissolved solids, right, so too many minerals, but again, this is things that we can literally, we can measure these things, there are little simple tools you can get on Amazon, a place like that to measure, a TDS meter. 

So that's another great option, but then, spring water, right, spring water from the source is one of the most incredible, magical things I think in our universe.

It's gone through this process, and this is what humans used to do for centuries, we would move to where the springs are, we moved to the water sources, that's what we would do. 

But now we have the opportunity to create essentially water sources, pretty much anywhere we go, we can get access to some kind of water whether we're bringing it there or whether we find it there, under the ground or these different sources we've been talking about. 

And just a little, another fun fact before we get to like, "Okay, where do we get these things from?" It's not just the water we're drinking, according to one piece of data, in taking a 10 minute shower, you're going to be absorbing because your skin eats, you're going to be absorbing about the same amount of chemicals and pharmaceuticals that you would from a gallon of that conventional water we've been talking about. So think about getting yourself a shower filter as well. Okay. 

Alright, now let's go into it. Four sources, what are the top four sources for the best water possible. I already said, it's spring water, that's the ideal source, if we can get our little paws on it, you can go and gather spring water from the source yourself if you want, there are resources to do that. 

You can go to findaspring.com, findaspring.com, there's a map. When I first was interacting with the folks behind Find a Spring, shot out to Daniel Vitalis, there were just a couple little places on the map. 

Now there's so many, people from all over the country, all over the world have been putting up locations of springs in all these different states and countries and it's just really cool to see. 

So that's one option, and again, the majority of spring water, the cleanest, purest thing you are going to find because we automatically have this fear like, "Am I going to drink water that's going to kill me?" This is what we've been doing for a long time, okay. 

But there are some places like you do need to be aware, you know, be smart about it, if it's like a spring and it's like going into like a pond and there's like a bear across the pond taking a dump like think about it, maybe don't drink that spring water, okay. So, but spring water 1:05:07 [indiscernible] self is a great source.

Also well water, same thing. 

And then from there, spring water bottled, like you can buy bottled in glass preferably, but sometimes you know, you're going to find in plastic BPA free there are other issues with plastic, just to be clear, but we do the best that we can. And so that's another option. 

Spring water, bottled in glass, there are so many different companies that provide that. 

And then we've got for four, the other, it could be like the reverse osmosis plus restructuring that water, adding some life back to the water because we don't want pure H2O, that's a supplement.  

All right, so what do we do now to hydrate and restructure that water. Let me share a couple of things with you. 

Here are four ways to liven up your aqua. 

Number one, salt, high-quality salt. I am not talking about the salt with umbrella, girl, I am not talking about that, I'm talking about high-quality salt, Himalayan, rock salts, real salt, we got black Hawaiian salt, we've got salts, all kinds of salts. 

But just like good sources of salt, little, little bit add structure to that water. Lemon. Something we naturally do, those electrons and you would think like it's acidic but it actually kind of has like an alkaline forming response in the body which is really interesting. It adds hydration to the water. 

Also, electrolytes themselves like getting some high-quality source electrolytes, this is like the biggest thing happening in supplements right now because of all the different things, like a lot of folks are doing like ketogenic approaches and things like that, electrolytes are super important with that protocol. 

But just for us in general, especially if you're active, you know you're doing an athlete thing. 

Electrolytes, for me I love the mineral electrolytes from Onnit, because they're using Earth grown sources of their electrolytes and it tastes good, too. And so if you're not using the Mineral Electrolytes, definitely check it out, it's onnit.com/model, it's O-N-N-I-T.com/model, their mineral electrolytes are fantastic. 

And also, you know what, something that I add to my water that I've been utilizing recently is my pre-workout that I get from Onnit as well and the name of it is literally Total Strength + Performance and the reason is, listen to this, this was a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial and what they found was that Strength + Performance from Onnit significantly increased improvements in squats, bench press and deadlift compared to a placebo.

This was a 4-week, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. It actually works. Again, but the reason I love Onnit is it's based on Earth grown nutrients, it's not artificial, it's from Earth grown sources. 

So check out Straight + Performance, I literally just had it before my workout. And so Straight + Performance or their mineral electrolytes product, really, really awesome, yet another way to add some structure to your aqua. 

Also, just fruits and veggies in general. This is another cool thing that we're seeing are these like infuser bottles, you can use like little blueberry, of course, we mentioned the lemon early, but there are so many other things.

You can use a little pineapple, but what that does is, with these food sources they're adding like free electrons to that water and also some minerals. And so there's many different ways that we can liven up our water and those are 4 of them for you. 

Now the question is how much water do we actually need? How much do we need? 

Here's the thing— I generally provide a baseline amount because so many of us are dehydrated but the answered really is how much water you need really depends on you. I want to get people, get all of us to a place where we can listen to our bodies, because our bodies, our hypothalamus is regulating and governing all this stuff. 

You know, how when you're thirsty, but we're just usually not paying attention to it, or we have our signals crossed up; when it gets to a place of drinking when you're thirsty, but in general, as a baseline for people, as we work on getting our hydration levels and our brain back online by hydrating it properly, is to take your body weight and divide that number in half. 

So say somebody is 150 pounds, you divide that in half, that's 75 is the number you come up with. Drink 75 ounces of water.

So take your body weight, divide it in half, the number you get that's how many ounces to drink as a baseline. It's not 100 percent foolproof, some of us need a little more, some of us need a little less, but also just keep in mind if somebody is like 200 pounds plus, 100 ounces is probably solid even if it's set to 50. 

But again, it depends on the person, it depends on the person, they might be eating a high fiber diet, you need more water to move their fiber through, okay. Because if you don't, this is just going to kind of bulk up, maybe I don't know, clog a pipe or something, I don't know. 

But the bottom line is if they are active, you're right, so is this somebody who is just couch surfing or is it somebody who's playing collegiate sports.

So all these things are going to matter, you take that into your own personal equation of how much water you need.

But that's a good baseline example to roll off of. Alright, and finally, enclosing. I want to share with you 3 times that it's essential, it's absolutely essential for you to proactively drink more water. 

The first way is during and after a flight, this is one of the most chronically stressful situations for our bodies that we just don't think about as far as our water balance. 

And this goes back to talking about osmosis when you're on an airplane, many folks don't realize that the dryness of the air, the humidity of the air, the air is so dry on an airplane, it's almost 3 times more dry than the Sahara Desert. Totally crazy, right ? 

But keeping this in context is just like well in the Sahara desert it's because you know, they've got the sun, you've got the sweating, you just don't have that environment but the air, the humidity of the air, the dryness that you're experiencing on a flight is almost 3 times more dry then in the desert. 

And so what's happening is the water is literally being pulled from your body to make it more humid and moist in the air around you. That's just how nature works. Nature doesn't care that the water's in you or not, it's all under nature's care, so it's trying to get the water right in the air and if it's coming from you, so be it. 

This reminds me of a scene from Aqua Man, I don't know if you saw it, but there's a scene where they actually go to the Sahara Desert and then there's like this key that they need to put into this contraption to make this map open up or something. 

And they put it in, it doesn't work, and then they realize that this was happening, or working when this place was underwater because a desert was once the ocean. And so they had this bright idea like, "Okay, we just need to add some water to this contraption to make this key work." And so Mira who is like the princess of like Atlantis or whatever, she does a little fancy little trick and pulls a little bit of the condensation, a little bit of water from Aqua Man off of his body and drops it onto this key and then everything turns on. That's kind of what's happening with the water, moisture being pulled from your body on the flight. But also he said, "I could've just peed on that." 

Anyways, so being proactive about drinking water because one of the things that we consistently see in the research regarding flights are fatigue, headaches, cognitive decline, drink more water when you're flying, be proactive about it. Even if it's in a bottle, a plastic bottle, get yourself hydrated. 

Take care of yourself because then you can get the preferential water that you want later and your body will preferentially choose the higher quality water once it has access to it. 

So that's number one, during and after a flight. Also, during and after high heat exposure or intense exercise where you're sweating a lot. Sometimes those signals can get off and we don't realize how thirsty we actually are, we need to be proactive at drinking a little bit more water when we're in those circumstances.

And also, finally, the third way, third time is after you wake up in the morning. This is one of the times that we're the most dehydrated, is when we first get up in the morning, this is for many of us, somewhere between 6 to 8 hours of not drinking water and your body while you're sleeping is doing a tremendous amount of metabolic processes to bring you back better. 

There's a lot of metabolic waste products that are left over and this is why when you get up in the morning and you go pee it's very concentrated, right, your body's just removing waste. 

And everything is actually slowing down in your body from your blood to your spinal fluid, all the stuff we talked about because there's no new water coming in.

And so getting up and getting yourself hydrated first thing is one of the greatest things that you could do and be proactive about. And so to wrap everything up for you today, 3 ways to ensure that you're getting adequately hydrated number one drinking water first thing in the morning, this is called taking an inner bath, taking an inner bath. 

This is one of the first things that I do going on about a decade and a half now when I get up in the morning, I drink water first. This could be anywhere from say 16 ounces to even a liter of water sometimes, is what I'll do, I'll take that inner bath. 

Good high-quality water, maybe a little pinch of salt or some lemon or something like that, take your inner bath. We take an external bath, right, but isn't the inside more important? And so getting up in the morning, making this a habit. Now, for some folks, it might be like, "I just don't like water, I don't like the taste." 

My wife does not dig drinking water first thing in the morning, she found that for her if she has hot water with lemon, that's her jam, like she does that every morning, she found that little hack for herself. 

So there are so many other things we talked about that can add some texture in it, and flavor to your water, there's liquid stevia drops, find whatever way, experiment, find something that works for you but now, today, you truly do know how important this water is. So number one, take an inner bath. 

Number 2 of 3 ways to ensure that you are adequately hydrated is to simply keep it with you, keep the bottle with you. 

You're more likely to drink water when it's around, right, so it's like for me, I see my bottle as like my buddy, right. 

When I was a kid they had this cartoon, "My buddy, my buddy, wherever I go he goes, my buddy, my buddy and me." Then they have the girls, like, "Kid sister," so it was like, "My buddy, and then kid sister", right. Wherever I go, my water goes, it's my buddy.

Now, and so, you also you can get some really great bottles, so ideally we don't want to bottle our water in plastic, so I've got stainless steel is pretty dope, I got this one from Jamaica, on our last phenomenal life event which was absolutely out of this world epic and you know, I just keep it with me, this is my buddy. 

And by the way, Phenomenal life event, if you're ready to take your life, your relationships, your finances, your health, your connections to another level, you need to be at the Phenomenal life event, and this is going down this year, we're doing it in Mexico. Go to phenomenallife2020.com/modelhealth, that's phenomenallife2020.com/modelhealt. Come hang out with me, we're not just going to do incredible workshops and give you access to incredible talks from some of the world's top experts including Eric Thomas, number one motivational speaker in the world, but also one of the best human beings that I've ever met in our entire team, and so many people who are just ready to take their lives to another level and they're playing at another level, to get yourself around like-minded people but we're going to have all that good stuff but also, we're going to have fun, we're going on excursions, we're hanging out, we're having parties. It's just an absolutely amazing event and just one of the funniest things that I get to be a part of and I want you to be a part of it as well. 

So whatever you've got to do, put all of your excuses to the side, you need to come to Mexico and hang out. 

All right, so it isn't just to kick it, but also to uplift yourself and you deserve it. So pop over, Phenomenallife2020.com/modelhealth. Get your ticket, get all your stuff in order and come hang out with us. 

All right, so number one inner bath. Number two, keep it with you, stay strapped up with that bottle. Number 3, the best advice to ensure that you're getting adequately hydrated is to listen to your body. If you feel thirsty, drink, if you don't feel all that thirsty, you don't have to drink, we don't have to force it unless you know that things are not really on line in your body and you know that you're not getting enough water in and to do all these basic, powerful, fundamental functions, then you need to retrain yourself to get in adequate amounts of water. 

But the number one piece of advice is start to listen to your body and not to mistake the hunger pang for the cries for water, and those communications that are all happening within your own body.

All right, so I hope that you got a lot of value from this episode today, and there are incredible, powerful takeaways but the most important thing is to take action on it, to take this information and it's really transformed into knowledge when you apply it. 

And if you feel like this has been something powerful and uplifting in your life, please make sure to share it out with all the people you care about on social media, you can email them link, text the link to the episode just make sure that you share this out with the people that you care about. Of course, you can tag me on social media, I am at @ShawnModel, S-H-A-W-N model, ShawnModel on Instagram, and on Twitter I pop in there and drop some ideas as well. But I am on Facebook at TheModelHealthShow, so tag me, let me know what you thought about this episode, let your friends and family know, let your followers know what you thought about this episode and how important it is for them to get educated about the science and art of getting hydrated of water. I appreciate you so much for hanging out with me today and listen, we've got some epic, powerhouse episodes coming your way very soon so make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon. 

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