The good, the bad about water

Water is one of those rare things in life that we can't be ambivalent about. Right?

After all, we can bathe in it and it will make us clean. We can swim in it and it makes us healthy. Babies frolic in it and make us smile. Drinking it helps with menstrual cramps and keeps you full so you don't munch yourself through a bag of Doritos. Rumor has it drinking plenty of it also helps with constipation, cellulite and hemorroids.

But not so fast. Drinking water, despite all of its press, is not the slam dunk we assume it to be.

There is something called hemodilution.

This is a state where prolonged exposure to heat causes one to lose water and sodium (salt) through sweating. When one compensates for this by overhydrating with plain water, the sodium remaining in the body is diluted and sodium levels fall.

Marathon athletes and fierce weekend warriors might know something about this. Knowing the importance of rehydrating during athletic events, they can drink too much water, which can "hemodilute" their system. According to The Clinical Journal of Sports medicine, a dangerous condition called hyponatremia can occur where overhydrating can cause low sodium levels. Dr. Lewis Maharam, medical director for the New York City Marathon, told Web MD, "Low blood sodium levels can lead to nausea, fatigue, vomiting, weakness, and sleepiness. In severe cases, it can lead to coma and death."

That is why the athletes favor sports drinks, such as Gatorade, that have electrolytes.

I don't want you to get the impression that I am advocating dehydration. As anyone who has suffered through a hangover will attest, it is not a pretty state to be in. Water is, after all, one the most important and essential elements we have for supporting organ and cellular health. Drinking the universally advised eight glasses of the clear stuff a day is probably a good health bet.

So that leaves the issue of what kind of water to drink. I have notice that if you drink out of the tap these days, it is tantamount to being caught picking your nose in public. We have all been seduced into the joys -- and the tyranny -- of bottled water.

You can now get not only water from a glacier (while they last), but H2O that is vitamin enriched, oxygenated or kiwi-flavored. You can even buy one readily available brand that suggests it will make you smarter. I am sure there is one on the horizon that will claim to make you more righteous. All of them will claim greater purity than the tap water stuff only cretins drink. But according to Brian Howard, of the Earth Action Network, "In most cases tap water adheres to stricter purity standards than bottled water, whose source -- far from a mountain spring --can be wells underneath industrial facilities. Indeed, 40 percent of bottled water began life as, well, tap water."

The National Resources Defense Council concluded that "there is no assurance that bottled water is any safer than tap water."

Americans are not so ambivalent about bottled water, it seems. According to Co-op America, we will think nothing about paying more per gallon of packaged water than we will for gasoline! That means we are shelling out more than 10 grand a minute for the stuff in this country.

There is so much in our modern lives to feel ambivalent about, but water is probably not one of them. Right?

Dr. Michael O.L. Seabaugh, a Cape Girardeau native, is a clinical psychologist who lives and works in Santa Barbara, Calif. Contact him at mseabaugh@semissourian.com For more on the topics covered in Healthspan, visit his Web site: www.HealthspanWeb.com.