Summary: Drinking lots of clean, fresh water is good for the health of your body and your gut.

There’s not a day that goes by without someone somewhere reminding us about the importance of drinking clean, fresh water for our good health.

This certainly makes sense. As much water as you consume every day, your body is using and losing large amounts of it for vital things like breathing, protecting your skin, transporting waste and toxins out of your system and maintaining your muscle strength.

But experts neglect to remind us about why water is so important for maintaining our good gut health. Here’s a few things to think about.

Absorption: Drinking water improves how your body breaks down food and absorbs the nutrients it needs.

Constipation: The presence of water in your digestive tract keeps your stools softer, preventing constipation.

Your diet: Eating foods containing high amounts of water — such as cucumbers, watermelon, oranges and strawberries — can be a great way to keep up with the water your body and gut needs.

Dehydration: In some cases, your body will lose more fluids than you’re taking in when suffering from acute diarrhea and vomiting, another reason to ensure you’re consuming enough water to maintain good health.

Did you know the source of the water you drink may influence the health of your gut too?

The best water for your gut?

An interesting finding from a 2022 study taken from data collected by the American Gut Project on 3,000 patients in the UK and America concluded that the source of the water you drink (tap, well, filtered or bottled) may have some influence on the makeup of your gut microbiome.

Compared to filtered, tap or bottled water, patients who drank well water had greater fecal microbial diversity, considered an important measuring stick of good gut health.

For example, patients who drank well water had lower amounts of bacteria from the Odoribacter family that is associated with gut-related health issues and problems with stool consistency and the Bacteroides family that is linked to a less diverse microbiome.

This direct benefit to the gut sounds great until you look at the numbers away from the study that really matter. For one, only 15 percent of Americans (43 million) have access to well water, according to the EPA.

What’s more, having access to well water is no guarantee that the water is safe to drink. Flooding and other environmental problems can also allow toxic substances to leech into well water, exposing you to high amounts of arsenic, nitrites and chemicals from fertilizers that certainly aren’t safe.

If your main source of drinking water comes from a well, experts recommend that you have it tested once a year to monitor those chemicals.

The fact remains that your water intake goes hand-in-hand with good gut health, but the good news here is that you don’t need access to well water to improve it.

The safest and most effective way to protect the health and diversity of your gut is also the simplest, if you take a probiotic formulated with multiple strains of beneficial bacteria like those found in EndoMune Advanced Probiotic every day with a glass of clean, fresh water.

Resources

Journal of Nutrition

Gut Microbiota For Health

WebMD

Healthline

Mayo Clinic

Well+Good

Cleveland Clinic

EPA