BellaOnline Forums Health and Fitness Allergies & Colds Is your water bottle safe?

We've been talking a lot about drinking enough water to help keep your immune system strong. But before you chug any more water, you might want to make sure the container you are drinking from is safe. Many water bottles on the market, like soda containers, are made of hard plastic, called polyethylene terephthalate, or PET. The material is perfectly safe for single use but should not be reused because it degrades with use and the wrinkled surfaces can host germs. And here I've been reusing the same Smart water bottle for weeks. No more of that.

Other types of bottles need scrutiny too. Nalgene bottles are popular but some are made of polycarbonate. The FDA insists these bottles are safe but some scientists disagree, saying that studies show the polycarbonate can leach a potentially harmful synthetic hormone.

A safer bet for your Nalgene bottle is HDPE, high-density polyethylene, a softer, opaque plastic made from petroleum. There have no known problems reported with HDPE. Stainless steel bottles appear to be safe too.

I guess it's time to go shopping for a new water bottle.

I am definitely going for stainless steel and recycling / donating any other bottles in the house

any pictures to share of water bottles worth the purchase? Dr. Oz answered a question earlier in the season on drinking 8-10 glasses of water and they discovered no difference. They showed for Discovery health some test amongst women in groups to see the effects.

Was the study to test different types of bottles? I'd be interested in seeing the study.

Bonnie - I'm confused by your post - are you saying there's no difference between drinking 8oz a day and 10oz a day of water? Or something else?

The best plastic bottles (and plastics in general) to use are the following:

#5PP (chugabbles by Rubbermaid is an example)
#2HDPE
#4LDPE

Hope this helps!

I know that during one of Dr. Oz's segments on Oprah they showed something they did for Discovery health and they did these tests to see if there was a health benefit to drinking 8-10 glasses of water a day and Dr. Oz said that nothing was proven.

I did a google search to find the story, but mostly I came across numerous board postings online from people who watched that asking about it too.

I think this is the link you're talking about, Bonnie, and what it didn't prove was if water makes a difference in what your skin looks like, but if you read the next page, he says water does have benefits, particularly losing weight.

Dr. Oz on Oprah about drinking water

Excerpted from Oprah.com: Although Dr. Oz says drinking water doesn't matter to the skin, it does have other benefits. "Water's great to lose weight. It satisfies your satiety center. You don't get the urge to eat quite as much," he says. "It's got lots of benefits that go beyond its ability to affect your skin, but you don't have to force fluids to get that benefit."

Well definitely I think we all agree that humans need to drink water And also, that the average person only drinks water when they're "thirsty" which means they are already in a dehydrated state. It makes much more sense to drink regularly so you have water in you - not that you get so under-watered that you start getting "pain signals" to fix a problem, i.e. thirst.

Now, does a 500 pound person need as much water in them each day as a 50 pound person does? Probably not.

The way they came up with the 8-10 glass value is they took an "average sized person" into a sealed room and they measured how much water they peed, pooped and sweated out of them - on average - over the length of the day. So the thought is you need to maintain a balance. Which makes sense.

But if you exercise more - you should drink more! If you are a tiny person and lay on the couch all day, and were only 50 pounds, then probably you don't need 8 glasses to maintain your balance.

I also want to comment - on skin - that if you're dehydrated your skin definitely DOES suffer because it is moisture in your skin that has it perform its job properly. If your skin is dry and cracked, it lets in infections. That is why people moisturize their skin to have it be healthy (which then attracts other humans, because humans are drawn to healthy looking humans for having-healthy-baby reasons). So definitely it is in a human's best interest to be taking in enough water every day for their skin to get the moisture it needs to stay healthy. Is it exactly 8 glasses for every single person? Probably not. But if you get too little it *will* cause a problem, while if you get too much you just pee it out, so it's better to go over than under.