When I was growing up in rural Southwestern New Mexico, I was blessed to live on a piece of land with abundant geothermal hotsprings. From my earliest memories up until I left my home, it was a normal everyday occurrence to bathe in soothing mineral waters, perhaps with a family of deer grazing nearby, or a vivid rainbow arcing across the mountainside after a monsoon rain.
I would steep in the warmth, enjoying the surrounding nature – the way the steam from the hot baths would billow up in a foggy mist as it contrasted with the early morning or cool fall air.I washed my hair and body outside the pool with a simple pitcher and some biodegrade-able shampoo.
In the evenings, I would lean back against the hotspring tubs and face the huge expanse of night sky, which was thick with a milky clusters of stars. As I got out of the bath, I would throw a robe on and walk barefoot home, over the wooden bridge that crossed the steaming hot creek too scalding to touch.
A series of springboxes built during the last century dotted the hillside, where they emptied into the hot creek. These springboxes were built back when the land was a Nature Cures sanitorium. People would come from far to soak their ailments away. As a child I often found pottery shards from the ancient Mimbres people who had also lived here over 1,000 years ago. They had also taken fancy to this hotspring valley. Clearly, the healing waters had been beloved to many different peoples over time.
Years later, I would bathe in the mineral waters of Germany, Hungary, and the bathhouses of ancient Turkey (where I was scrubbed down to almost newborn pinkness by two loving grannies).
I chased down hotsprings in remote forests in the Pacific Northwest. I even dated a Naturopath for awhile who provided a form of hydrotherapy in his clinic that he had learned at the Jeseník Spa in Czech Republic, birthplace of alternating hot/cold hydrotherapy.
Just recently, I had the pleasure of floating in a deep turquoise pool 65 feed deep in the Homestead Crater in the town of Midway, Utah. I found myself literally embraced by Mama Gaia, encased in a lovely travertine dome of calcium deposits.
I tend towards being lower in calcium, so this served as the ultimate fortifying mineral balancing bath for my metabolic constitution. Floating in this rich mineral water was profoundly relaxing, offering me a deep mineral bliss I have been much in need of during the stress and craziness of what the world has become since the pandemic started.
Bathing in minerals like this is both grounding and refreshing. For someone with a constitution like mine that is sometimes dry and stiff, fixed and driven, coming to spots of sacred healing waters to remember fluidity and renewal is especially important. Drinking these mineral waters with a conscious awareness to their mineral properties amplifies the healing effects of mineral waters.
Why Mineral Water Is So Healing
Water is a sacred element that is essential for all life on earth, and the quality of the water we have access to has a profound effect on our overall health, vitality, and wellbeing on a cellular level. Part of this healing property of water is due to the mineral components from the rocks and underwater geological features the water travels over and through.
Depending on the mineral components of the individual springs and waters, mineral water baths can be supportive for a wide variety of complaints. The relaxation effects alone can be greatly supportive for many conditions.
As Dr. James Dinicolantonio points out in his book The Mineral Fix,
“There are 22 different minerals that make up about 5% of our bodyweight. Those same minerals were present as rocks on Earth when life first formed. Life on Earth began in the oceans where there is an abundance of minerals, salt, and electrolytes. They are essential for cellular functioning and energy production.”
This is not to imply that all minerals in water are supportive for human physiology. Many people drinking from deep wells may be inadvertently exposed to minerals that are not healthful in excess – like the iron and manganese in my well water. I’ve written about that here.
Drinking Mineral Water
A majority of people on planet earth do not have access to clean water, or have the opposite problem of access to water sterilized or treated with chlorine, fluoride, or other chemical pollutants. Water quality also affects the nutritional value of food according to the type of water the food is irrigated with, while synthetic fertilizers limit the uptake of minerals from water and soil into our food.
Dr. Dinicolantonio says in The Mineral Fix:
“Minerals, and mineral-infused waters, have been considered to have medicinal properties for centuries. Some of the earliest bathing descriptions originate from ancient Greece in the 5th century BC. . . Hippocrates thought that bathing could help to re-establish a healthy balance in bodily fluids and thus treat disease. Galen, the Roman surgeon, promoted the effects of mineral water on various diseases. Romans also built spas across Europe in newly conquered lands to treat wounded soldiers and recover from physical exertion. During the Renaissance, Italian doctors began to associate the health benefits of spas with the waters high in minerals.“
When I lived in Portland, OR, I would even drive :45 minutes outside the city to collect water from a special spring. I did this not only because of the minerals available in this fresh spring water, but because of the structured nature of the water.
As water tumbles over rocks and organic shapes in streams and aquifers, it becomes oxygenated and “structured” in a way that is optimal for our cellular health in a way that water flowing through straight pipes is not. While many devices exist on the market to structure water, the best form of structured water is from a remote artesian well.
Glacial “Milk”, Colloidal Minerals, and Human Longevity
In his amazing book Rare Earths, Forbidden Cures, Joel Wallach, ND describes the incredible phenomenon of “glacial milk”, and how cultures living beneath the runoff of glaciers have the most robust health due to the way that their plant crops can convert the rich minerals from the glacial runoff (ie, the highly mineralized opaque water, or “milk”) into colloidal minerals, which are 98% bioavailable for absorption by people and animals. Unlike metallic minerals, which are only 12% bioavailable, and chelated minerals, which are 40% bioavailable, colloidal minerals are the prime form of mineral for maximum bioavailability.
Colloidal minerals are found in plant foods. They are ultra-fine particles barely larger than most molecules which are suspended evenly in a solution, do not dissolve in solution, and carry an electrical charge. This form of bioavailable mineral state is known as a crystalloid, and it readily passes through cell walls.
Dr. Wallach explains how these colloids are created from glacial milk:
“Plant derived colloidal minerals start in the parent rock and frigid heights of great mountain ranges, the Caucasus, the Karakorums, the Himalayas, the Andes, etc. Ageless glaciers scrape, grind, and pulverize from two to six inches of parent rock from the mountain surface each year into a fine dust or rock ‘flour’ that is carried from under the glaciers by water melted from the glacial ice by the frictional heat of the moving glacier. . . The great common denominator of the “glacial Milk” that nourished the long-lived cultures is that they contain 60-72 minerals; there are thousands of glaciers in the world that produce vast quantities of “Glacial Milk”, however, they may only have three to 20 mineral in them – not the number required to fulfill the human genetic potential of longevity.”
Glacial Milk, which is not something most moderns have access to, is highly variable in color, ranging from pearl gray, silvery gray, to white, to bluish white to a brownish gray, depending on the mineral combinations of the parent rock.
While mineral water coming down from glaciers contains minerals as suspended solids in the form of rock dust turned to clay, the food crops watered with this Glacial Milk take this slurry up into the plant and reconstitute it into a colloidal mineral form that is uniquely bioavailable for optimal functionin of human physiology.
Present day farmers farming in these regions where glacial milk is available still practice ancient methods developed to fully optimize access to the minerals, as their ancestors have been doing literally for thousands of years. They fill stone terraces basket by basket with the highly mineralized muck and silt dredged by and from the bottoms of glacial rivers. These people are largely free from hypertension, heart disease, stroke, aneurisms, arthritis, osteoperosis, dental disease, cataracts, diabetes, cancer, etc.
Dr. Wallach reminds us:
“We already know the common denominators of the long-lived cultures, they are few, simple and very clear. Their basic truth for health and longevity boils down to the routine daily availability of a highly usable source of 90 essential nutrients of which the most critical are the plant-derived colloidal minerals.“
For those who do not live at the base of the Himalayas with access to Mama Gaia’s rich glacial milk, the next best way to get colloidal minerals aside from eating a lot of fruit and vegetables, is through humic shale. Farmers also often add humic shale to their soil to help their plants uptake other minerals from the soil.
Humic shale from fossilized hay is the most readily available form of supplemental plant-derived mineral colloid. There are a few forms in this family, including fulvic acid and shilajit. Dr. Wallach says that humic shale can be ground up and added to water where it is soaked to reach a spcific gravity of 3.0, making a colloidal water. I have not been able to find a good source of bulk humic shale, but humic shale can be purchased in various supplements. Dr. Zach Bush’s Ion product is probably the most popular supplement in this category, although I have yet to try it. I did take Shilajit years ago from Swanson. Sourcing is important for all humic and fulvic minerals to avoid contamination.
Mineral Waters and Hydrotherapy for Migraine
This blog post has mostly been about why mineral waters are supportive to human physiology in general. But what are special considerations for migraineurs?
For the reasons outlined already, drinking mineral-rich water can certainly be supportive to migraineurs, while bathing in mineral waters requires unique consideration, as extremely hot water can dilate blood vessels leading to migraine. Therefore, migraineurs should bathe in medium-temperature waters that are relaxing and not overheating, and ideally alternate hot with cold water to improve circulation – ending the hot/cold therapy with cold water.
Where I Get My Mineral Waters
These days, I don’t have the same easy access to hotsprings that I used to, but I make it a practice to go down to the sandy spot a short walk from my home, to do some nature bathing among the Alder trees where Spring Creek meets the White Salmon River. There I splash my face with the cold water, the bright intensity of the cold reviving and tonifying any weariness or lethargy, as I rediscover my vitality and give thanks for the gift of the springs and the snowmelt from nearby Mount Adams that feeds the tumbling river.
I also drink structured water from the nearby Spring Creek so as to avoid my iron-rich well water, running it through a carbon water purifier before doing so just to play it safe. The ritual of going down to the spring to gather water helps me to have gratitude for the water and to not take it for granted.
Water is life! Water is sacred.
Our bodies can be greatly supported with the healing power of water.
