Is it worth purifying your drinking water? In this article, we’ll attempt to answer this question as well as provide insights into the benefits and potential downsides you may get upon installing a water purification system. Read on!

What Is Purified Water?

Purified water is water that has undergone mechanical filtration or similar processes to remove impurities, making it suitable for drinking and use.

Households purify their water for many reasons. Some places have cleaner water supplies than others. Depending on your location, having a filtration system may be the best option if your supply may get you sick. Check out Filtersmart.com to know more about house filtration systems.

Health Benefits Of Purifying Drinking Water

Apart from your location, you can also consider the following advantages of drinking purified water.

Get Healthy Skin

Drinking purified water can help you gain healthier and more hydrated skin. Without healthy drinking water, your skin may feel dry and dehydrated because of dead epidermal cells.

Skin cells, like many other cells in the body, are made up of water. Water also reaches all other organs of the body before it reaches the skin. Therefore, it’s important not only to drink plenty of water but also to make sure that it’s clean and healthy. Purified water does that job.

Good Taste And Smell

Not only is purified water healthy; it also tastes and smells good. Unlike hard water or other unpurified water, purified water doesn’t taste funny. It doesn’t taste like chlorine or salt.

At the same time, purified water doesn’t smell bad. Hard water can be contaminated with microorganisms and bacteria too much that they produce a rotten-egg smell.

Promotes Good Digestion

Your digestive system makes use of a lot of liquids, including water. It’s also composed of the most essential parts of our bodies. Purified water helps promote good digestion and prevent illnesses related to it.

Drinking water helps it function well as it breaks down complex minerals and foods for us to acquire the nutrients that we need. Without proper and healthy hydration, you can suffer from indigestion or constipation, among other illnesses.

Strong Body

Because clean, purified water promotes good digestion, your body absorbs nutrients more easily. As a result, you can expect your body to be stronger and more resistant to more diseases.

Your muscle and joints, for example, will benefit greatly. Human muscles are made mostly of water, and drinking water and exercising keep them functional. Water also lubricates joints by promoting the creation of synovial fluid.

Lose Weight

Drinking purified water can also help you lose weight and keep that belly in. After all, clean water has zero calories. More importantly, it can speed up your body’s metabolism, which is the set of chemical reactions that convert the food you eat into energy.

A faster metabolism means faster digestion, faster nutrient absorption, and faster burning of fat. It can also help flush out toxic chemicals from your body. Moreover, you won’t get hungry fast, preventing you from overeating.

Potential Drawbacks Of Purified Water

On the flip side, there are some drawbacks to drinking purified water that you should be aware of. Most of these are related to how you acquire purified water. For most households, a filtration system does the job. So, we’ll focus on the downside of such a setup.

Upkeep

A water purification system needs regular maintenance. Failing to maintain a properly running purification system can lead to a buildup of contaminants in old filters. And these contaminants can leach into your drinking water.

Cost

And because of the need for regular maintenance, installing an in-home water purification system can be expensive. The installation alone can cost hundreds of dollars.

Waste

Purification systems can be wasteful as well. Water softening systems, for example, use tons of bags of salt to remove contaminants in hard water. Salt can be dangerous to the environment.

Contaminants

Water purification systems aren’t infallible. Although they can remove many contaminants in the water, certain minerals, microorganisms, and chemicals can remain in the water, depending on the type of purification system used.

Excessive Fluoride

In public drinking water supplies, fluoride is added to improve dental health. Although this has been helpful in the decrease in tooth decay cases among children, excessive fluoride can be toxic for nerve and brain cells, resulting in memory and cognitive problems.

Ways To Purify Water

Many ways exist to purify drinking water both at home and not. Some of them are:

• Boiling – the simplest method of water purification is by boiling it for a good amount of time. High temperatures dissipate bacteria and viruses, helping remove impurities in water. On the other hand, dead microorganisms and impurities settle at the bottom, so boiling doesn’t entirely remove all impurities.
• Reverse Osmosis – reverse osmosis pushes water through a semipermeable membrane, thereby removing contaminants.
• Chlorination – this is an older technique where a mild solution of chlorine is added to the water. Chlorination works as an oxidant, and it quickly kills microorganisms to make water safe for drinking and consumption. However, it’s also only used during emergencies.
• Distillation – this water purification process involves evaporating water and collecting it afterward. This ensures that water is free of contaminants. On the other hand, this isn’t as effective or efficient as the other methods because it consumes too much time. It also eliminates some important minerals from the water.
• Ion-Exchange Filters – ion-exchange filters are best for dealing with hard water, which is water that contains excess minerals like calcium or magnesium. These filters use a chemical reaction process that replaces excess minerals with sodium.
• Carbon Filters – these are considered the cheapest method to purify water. However, it’s also not the most thorough process. The simplest carbon filters succeed in removing the chlorine taste in the water while also improving its smell. More complex ones can also remove toxins like lead and mercury.

The Wrap Up

Water purification systems have benefits that are arguably worth the expenses and effort needed to maintain them. If you want these benefits and avoid the negative impact of drinking unpurified water, then purifying your drinking water is a wise choice.