Is the purer the water, the better? The “pure water is harmless” theory also depends on the situation →

Yesterday I talked about the difference between water purifiers and air purifiers. Today I will continue to share with you some knowledge related to water. For example, is "oxygen health care" really necessary? For example, what will happen if you buy the wrong water purifier?

01. Is “oxygen health care” really necessary?

In the history of the development of air purifiers, there was a term "oxygen health care", which means health oxygen inhalation. Supporters believe that with the continuous deterioration of environmental pollution, the performance of air purifiers is not up to expectations. Indoors, there is often an oxygen-deficient environment with an oxygen content below 20.9%, so oxygen inhalation is necessary. Oxygen inhalation increases blood oxygen concentration, increases the oxygen content in the brain, and keeps people awake and in a good mental state. Inhaling oxygen for half an hour to one hour at home every day is good for the human body.

However, since the advent of oxygen health care, the medical community has questioned it. They believe that inhaling pure oxygen has more disadvantages than advantages, is not good for blood supply, and that human tissues cannot withstand excessive oxygen. This is because oxygen itself can react with unsaturated fatty acids without enzyme catalysis and can destroy the phospholipids that store these acids. Phospholipids are the main components of cell biological membranes, which ultimately cause cell death. This process is called lipid peroxidation. In addition, oxygen damages cells by producing free radicals, which can induce cancer.

Regarding this controversy, the scientific conclusion now is that whether to breathe oxygen or not depends on individual differences and degrees. For some patients who really need it, they can breathe oxygen at home. But for ordinary people, especially adults, it is not recommended to breathe oxygen at home.

However, in the field of water purification, the issue is not so simple. To this day, there are still people who claim that drinking purified water for a long time is harmless to health. There is also a lack of necessary warnings on individual differences and degrees, which is unreasonable.

02. “Pure water is harmless”

The main basis of the "pure water is harmless theory" is that the human body's demand for minerals is supplemented by food rather than water, so qualified pure water has no harm to health. Pure water does not cause mineral deficiency in the body, and mineral water does not make any unnecessary contributions.

This is only one aspect of the problem. In fact, WHO has already concluded that many foods for modern people cannot provide sufficient minerals and trace elements. When a certain element is in a critical deficiency state, even a relatively small amount of the element taken from drinking water can play a corresponding protective role. Moreover, compared with food, drinking water has many advantages in supplementing minerals: this is because the elements in water usually appear in the form of free ions, while the elements in food mostly exist in the form of compounds. Therefore, compared with food, the elements in water are easier to absorb.

Shu Weiqun, a professor at the Army Medical University, pointed out that hidden mineral hunger is the main contradiction in the unbalanced diet of the Chinese population today, and the potential harm is extremely great. In addition to calcium and magnesium, metasilicic acid, manganese, strontium, cobalt, selenium, molybdenum, vanadium, and lithium commonly found in natural water bodies are all essential or potentially essential trace elements for the human body. Some of these elements are not present in high levels in the diet or are not easily absorbed, so drinking water has become an important way for the human body to obtain them.

In addition, some studies have pointed out that acute drinking of large amounts of pure water can cause intestinal mucosal osmotic shock and aggravate the imbalance of water and electrolytes inside and outside cells.

Therefore, water is not just a matter of simply supplementing trace elements.

03. What will happen if you buy the wrong water purifier?

What will happen if you buy the wrong water purifier? There will be health risks. In fact, it is not uncommon to buy the wrong water purifier, because safe and healthy drinking water is hard to come by.

There are two mainstream water purification technologies on the market:

One is reverse osmosis technology , which can completely filter out harmful substances such as heavy metals in water, but it also filters out minerals and trace elements that are beneficial to the human body. Although the pure water obtained by this technology is very clean, it lacks calcium, magnesium and trace mineral elements necessary for the human body. Long-term drinking of pure water will increase health risks and is not conducive to children's bone development, preventing bone calcium loss in the middle-aged and elderly, and preventing cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases.

The other is ultrafiltration/nanofiltration technology , which has a lower filtration accuracy and can retain minerals, but at the same time cannot filter out heavy metals. Bacteria, viruses, and chemical pollutants with diameters smaller than the pore size of the ultrafiltration membrane will exist in the water.

Whether it is reverse osmosis or ultrafiltration, these traditional filtration technologies rely on the pore size of the filter membrane for filtration, just like a "sieve", but the atoms of heavy metals and minerals are similar in size, and they cannot be effectively separated by pore size filtration. Either they are completely filtered out (reverse osmosis), or they cannot be filtered out (ultrafiltration) or cannot be filtered cleanly (nanofiltration).

Therefore, under the current water purification technology framework, it is actually quite difficult to drink safe and healthy drinking water. In other words, it is not uncommon to buy the wrong water purifier.

As long as people realize that the pursuit of purity by water purifiers is problematic, and change their mindset, there will always be a solution. Membrane chromatography technology is the product of a change in mindset. Membrane chromatography uses the characteristics of heavy metal atoms that "empty electron orbits" are easily attracted by negative charges. It only has an adsorption effect on heavy metals and has no effect on minerals, just like a "magnet" can only adsorb metallic iron and has no effect on other elements. Using this principle to purify water, it is possible to filter out heavy metals while retaining beneficial minerals such as calcium, magnesium, strontium and lithium.

04. What are the uses of minerals for the human body?

Some people may ask, why do we go to such great lengths to preserve those trace amounts of calcium and magnesium minerals? How important are they to the human body? Dr. Linus Pauling, a two-time Nobel Prize winner, once said, "All human diseases can be traced back to mineral deficiencies."

Minerals are vital to our entire physical and mental health. In layman's terms, the role of these minerals and trace elements in the human body is equivalent to the brine for making tofu and the yeast for making wine. Minerals are catalysts that can cause many biological and electrical reactions in the body, muscle reactions, nervous system information and energy transmission, promote hormone secretion, digestion, and the utilization of food nutrients. Minerals play a dual role of structural and functional. They are components of body tissues and body fluids, and can work together with enzymes, hormones, vitamins and transport substances. Trace elements play the role of synthesizing brain chemicals.

Finally, in the course of production and life activities, while humans are constantly producing and creating wealth, they are also destroying the environment on which they depend for survival. Due to population growth and industrial development, the amount of food is increasing, and agriculture has been cultivated year after year, and the soil is not replenished, causing the mineral content of crops to decrease.

On the other hand, people use a lot of chemical fertilizers to increase crop yields, which further increases the mineral content of the soil. Coupled with water and air pollution and the extensive use of artificial feed, the soil that feeds humans faces a serious lack of minerals. The emergence of air purifiers and water purifiers is the only way for human society to rely on technological development to regenerate water and resources. Humans no longer have the opportunity to make mistakes in this regard.