Recently I've been diving into information about water and how to find or create much cleaner drinking water.

Firstly, I probably need to acknowledge that we're very lucky here in Australia. There's nothing rarely anything in our tap water that's going to make us brutally or acutely sick. I know, from travelling to many other countries, that this isn't the case everywhere. So I count myself lucky.

And... and, our tap water in Australia, like in many developed countries around the world does make us slowly sick.

It has too much chlorine in it.

It has added fluoride.

And it's too acidic for the body.

So, I've been seeing how else I can improve our drinking water here at home to continue my long journey towards greater physical health.

Many years ago, Brad (my partner) put a filter on the tap in the kitchen where we dispense most of the water we plan to drink and cook with. It's a simple one from Bunnings (the big, local hardware stop) and I'm sure it's better than nothing.

I knew I wanted to pull the fluoride out too since many other countries have banned fluoridated water since--while our teeth need this mineral--too much of it floating around the body appears to be toxic.

So, we bought Pure Pods earlier this year and two of them now live in a water container I have been pouring my drinking water from.

But as I did more learning and searching I realised that pulling out (or absorbing into itself, as these pods do) all these nasty metals and compounds meant that all the minerals our bodies need were also being removed from the water. 🤦

I've heard there was a process we can do to re-mineralise the water. And--since we don't have cash to born on my desire for the best drinking water ever--I searched for a cheap way to do this.

I found lots of these online.

It's an alkalising stick that you put into the water source and while it raises the pH to make it less acidic and more alkaline, it also allows minerals to be absorbed back into the water from the tiny rocks inside the stainless steel stick.

I bought one from the nearest online shop I could find here in South East Queensland and started using it within a day or so of it arriving.

As usual, I made a mistake. Unlike the Pure Pods that can be left indefinitely in the water container (I think!), the alkalising stick makes the water more and more and more alkaline over time.

After leaving the stick inside my water bottle all day and the simply refilling it again and again from the water container on our kitchen bench, I remembered that the packaging said to remove the stick and dry it out rather than sit in the water overnight.

I thought, "Hmmm, maybe I need to pull it out even more frequently than that!" 🤔

I only thought of it because I noticed the inside of my mouth and nose felt really dry since starting to use it. I wondered if I was overdoing this whole "alkaline" thing. After all, the websites I was learning from said human blood sits between a pH of 7.35 - 7.45 (can't remember the source but I've seen and heard similar numbers for a long time now). What if I was accidentally putting water with a pH of 8, 9 or even 10 into my system? 😨

I thought I better do some more researching and testing. So I bought a pH test kit and, when it arrived a week later, I put it to work. While the colour chart is as gradiated as I would like it's a start. Here are the photos.

{All photos taken by me on my phone.}

You can probably see what I wrote on the post-it note for each water sample, but the colour is difficult to see. So, let me tell you what I noticed when I looked closely at each one in good daylight.

The tap water with Brad's basic filter had a pH below 7. I.e. Too acidic.

The tap water filtered with the Pure Pods was around 7.5 ish (best guess with colour chart and my eyes). So, pretty good

When I took that twice-filtered water and left the alkalising stick in for five minutes, the pH went up to around 8 (or more).

And when I left it for 30 minutes, with the timer running to remind me, then it was closer to a pH of 9! 😮

The last one is important because, prior to these experiments, I had been leaving the stick in my water bottle for more than 30 minutes regularly.

Ergo, I was overdoing it. Big time. No wonder my body was reacting! 🤦

So now I'm putting the stick into my water bottle for about five minutes while I do laundry or make breakfast and then transfer the water to another bottle to drink while the stick dries out.

That's the best I know to do for right now. And that's what I'll keep drinking (supplemented by our tap water when I'm tired or in a hurry) while I continue to learn more about healthy, life-nourishing water from people like Carrie Bennett and Tracy Duhs.

Do you know a lot about accessing or re-creating really healthy water?

I'd love to know if you have any tips or gold on this matter! Share in the comments 👇

5% of your upvotes on this post goes to @collinz to support his work in Ghana, some of which sees drinking water projects being built into communities that may not have had reliable access to safe water previously.