H2O – Friend Or Enemy?

Water is life, and clean water means health. This is a statement that everyone can agree on. Most people even like to think that water is a natural healer of most illnesses and discomforts that they might suffer from. While there are some natural doubts about the latter – Have you tried to remove financial discomfort with water for instance? Mineral water doesn’t exactly improve your credit score, for a start – nobody can deny the importance of water in everyday life. However, there is another thing that nobody can truly ignore, and it’s the risk of water in everyday life too. Is water a source of good or a source of bad, this is left for you to decide! But maybe everybody can agree that sometimes one can have too much of a good thing.

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Water And Your Body

Water is one of the vital needs of the human body as, without it, essential bodily functions would collapse. Indeed, while everybody knows that water keeps the body hydrated, and helps your skin to look fresh and healthy, there is also a lot that you don’t know about water. Water is a key component of the cells in your body – from your big toe to your brain – and it is essential in keeping these cells alive. Additionally, water also supports chemical reactions in the body, such as hormonal balance and messages for instance. Without water, you wouldn’t be able to identify smells, for example. Water is also an essential factor in draining waste products through your urine and in helping digestion. Drinking water also helps your body to regulate its temperature via perspiration among other factors. In short, it seems ridiculous to consider surviving without water, even for a bet. In average, studies recommend drinking every day 1.5L of water as a minimum. However, you have probably heard fitness gurus mentioning larger quantities, such as 2L or more.

Can You Drink Too Much Water?

When faced with a palette of different recommendations about how much water one should drink, it becomes important to ask oneself: Can I drink too much water? Is too much water going to harm me? Contrary to the common belief that you can’t have too much of a good thing, consuming too much water is a risky business. This is called overhydration, and it can have dramatic impacts on your health. In the most extreme cases, too much water can kill you. So maybe it’s time to sit down and reconsider the advice of your favorite fitness guru: Should you really drink a glass of water every hour? Well, the answer is probably not! You begin to have too much water in your system when your kidneys are not able to get rid of the excesses in the urine and have to expulse it via other ways. This is when water retention happens. However, water retention is a complex phenomenon that can also happen when you drink too little water, but in this case, it occurs because your kidneys actively store water to face any future shortage. Drinking too much water throws off the balance between water and sodium in your blood. If you over-hydrate, you will commonly experience symptoms related to low sodium levels, such as nausea, vomiting, headache, muscles weakness, spasms, seizure, and even coma.  When left untreated, this can also kill you.

Water In The House

Your house has direct access to water, and you wouldn’t wish it otherwise. Water is a key element of your house maintenance. It is part of your washing rituals, from bathing to brushing your teeth, and you use it to clean the household, whether in your dishwasher or washing machine or simply to mop the floor. But it goes further, of course: Without water, you couldn’t maintain your garden, and quite frankly a garden of dead plants is not the most attractive thing on earth, and that is without mentioning the pond. For some, water is part of the heating system, and it is what keeps you warm in winter. Finally, everyone uses water in their cooking routine: Have you tried to enjoy pot noodles without water? They tend to taste a little dry then!  

Help, I’ve Got Water In My House

But sometimes having water in your house is the last thing you want, especially if this comes from a burst pipe or heavy rainfall. Specialists talk about clean, gray and black water to describe the health risks of each type of water, black water being the most dangerous as it contains pathogenic agents and bacterial growth. Whether it comes from a leak, or flooding incident or even a contaminated source, such as a toilet bowl overflow, you should organize a water removal party with an expert company to limit the damages to your house structure and your health.

The Friendly Water From The Sky

More and more homeowners now harbor positive thoughts about rainwater. Indeed, it has become more and more common for households to invest in an additional system to harvest rainwater and actively lower their water consumption. While there are still uncertainties about this method of saving costs, especially because it is difficult to predict rain accurately in advance, this is an environmentally-friendly way of reducing energy consumption and water extraction.  

The Drowning Giant

But water is not only a cost-saving friend that keeps the nature green and fresh. Heavy rain can lead to severe floodings of entire villages. Occasionally, contaminated rainwater has been known to destroy entire harvests within a few minutes, leaving only death in its passage. Sea and ocean waves have also caused the massive destruction of countless of coastal towns, including the legendary Atlantis which has gained fame from drowning in the sea. It becomes difficult not to fear the power of water when one sees the damages that it can make to houses, vehicles, and people. If one needed a last argument to think about the danger of water, the sorry fate of the Titanic would be a strong image. What’s an iceberg after all but solid water?

Wreck of the Titanic

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