Water, water everywhere! For pink and blue!
Updated 1-6-17 Please note, it is highly, highly unlikely this makes one bit of difference to the outcome of anyone's sway! Almost more for fun than anything, but if you are a big believer in the mineral or pH type of diets you may find it helpful.
Is it something in the water? And what are the best waters for conceiving a baby boy or girl? Find out what is best and worst for your sway!
One of the first things people jokingly tell you when they hear you have a lot of a particular gender is "Stop drinking the water!" Since we all drink at least some water every day, it's easy to jump to the conclusion that water in and of itself has some sort of magical property that is causing you to conceive a child of a particular gender. People have spent a lot of money on fancy mineral waters hoping to get their DG but how necessary is it, really?
The answer is, probably not very necessary at all. If ONE food or drink, especially something as fundamental to existence as water, could overwhelmingly lead to the production of all one gender child, the human race would have died out a long time ago. The first time humans settled down by a lake or river for an extended period the gender ratio would have skewed out of control. The pH of water from various lakes in just one state (Utah) varies from 6 to 9 depending on the minerals present in the water.
In modern times, if this idea were true, we would find some cities (most towns and cities use one or two wells for everyone's drinking water) producing large amounts of one gender, year after year, while others would produce mostly the other gender. At the very least, we would surely see some isolated villages somewhere in the world that constantly had mostly boys or mostly girls. That there are no such places and the gender ratio is pretty close to 50-50 wherever you go, leads me to think that water is probably not an overwhelming factor in swaying.
That having been said, in our modern world there are chemicals like pesticides and pollutants that may be present in water that may sway in some way, even if water itself doesn't. Some water may even dissolve harmful minerals and BPA from pipes and drinking cups!
We all want to have the very best sway we can, so even if it's just a minor factor, let's take a look the various waters available!
:beer: Qualities of water that may sway:
:C: pH - A lot of concern has been given to the pH of your drinking water. People have tested their water and panicked if the pH was 7 or so. But the pH of water is usually between 6 and 8. The natural pH of pure water is 7 and most of the babies who have ever been born on the face of the planet have been born to parents drinking water at this pH.
Waters both very low in pH and very high in pH are toxic to plant and animal life and because of this, it's highly unlikely that we would have evolved or been designed by God to require either very high or very low pH water to conceive children of a particular gender.
Waters that tend to be very low in pH are "soft" water, water from a reverse osmosis water system, water from watersheds that have pine/fir forests, and carbonated waters. Rain water is also somewhat acidic due to the presence of dissolved carbon dioxide (same ingredient as in carbonated water). Because they are acidic, they tend to be corrosive and may dissolve harmful metals in pipes into your drinking water and BPAs from plastic cups and bottles which may affect fertility negatively (swaying pink).
They also may be higher in pesticide residue and pollutants because they haven't been filtered through the ground like hard waters have. However, low pH water is considered better for cleaning clothes and skin and may even kill germs if the pH is low enough!
Waters that are higher in pH are "hard" waters. Well water, ground water, and other water from aquifers is usually (not always, but usually) hard because it is filtered through the rocks and soil in the ground and picks up varying levels of minerals which in turn affect pH. Interestingly, hard waters are higher in dissolved mineral content (see Mineral Content below). Hard waters are believed to be better for human health than soft waters are due to their mineral content and their healthier, higher pH.
You can see from this map http://water.usgs.gov/owq/map1.jpeg the naturally occurring distribution of soft and hard waters and BOTH boys and girls are conceived in these parts of the country. It is very unlikely pH of water is swaying.
:C: MINERAL CONTENT
For a great resource for checking the mineral content (calcium, magnesium, sodium) in many US city's waters and also various brands of bottled waters in both the US and Europe, please see the following excellent link Comparison of the Mineral Content of Tap Water and Bottled Waters. Please note that despite having various concentrations of cal/mag/sodium in the drinking water and correspondingly low/high pH, people who live in the cities described in this study STILL have roughly 50-50 boys and girls. It is very unlikely mineral content of water is swaying.
As I said above, low pH soft water tends to be lacking in calcium and magnesium. This soft water is made one of three ways.
Distillation removes all minerals from the water and may not even be healthy to drink because water "wants" to have minerals in it and so distilled water may react in your body to leach minerals from your body that you need to survive.
Reverse osmosis lowers pH and is commonly recommended to pink swayers, but removes calcium and magnesium from the water. (oops!)
Water softeners replace calcium and magnesium ions with sodium ions. Soft water may be an unexpected source of sodium intake and so if you're following the French Gender Diet or aspects of it and you have a water softener, you need to drink only bottled water.
Also, since the low pH is corrosive, soft water may contain minerals you DON'T want like lead, mercury, excessive amounts of copper, all dissolved from your or your city's old plumbing pipes - very harmful when trying to conceive!
On the other hand, high pH hard water has plenty of calcium and magnesium and varying levels of sodium. Also, many hard waters are considered "buffered" meaning they contain so many dissolved minerals that they are somewhat immune to the effects of adding acids and bases to water, making them less likely to change pH.
Special note about sulfur - sulfur is not considered a "swaying" mineral like cal, mag, pot, and sodium are BUT it is common in many health waters. Sulfur is acidic, but is an antioxidant and may raise testosterone, so it's probably best to avoid waters that are very sulfur-heavy if you are TTC pink, and use with caution for blue while keeping an eye on pH.
Some people have heard that carbonated water causes calcium to leach from your bones. This isn't true, it's caffeinated soda that supposedly causes calcium to leach from your bones (and you would have to drink gallons a day for months for that to happen, plus it's not entirely sure as to whether that is a good or bad thing for a sway anyway). Here's an interesting thread where that is discussed. http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...3382#post23382 We have had good results with people drinking selzter as a part of a pink sway - not because it sways, because it likely does nothing at all, but because it's something to keep your stomach full and your tongue occupied while on a sway diet. I drank gobs of seltzer when I got my daughter.
:C: OTHER CHEMICALS PRESENT IN WATER
Low pH, soft water is highly corrosive. It dissolves pipes releasing toxic minerals into the water, causes harmful BPAs to leach from plastic drinking cups, and is very responsive to changes in pH due to the lack of buffering minerals, so it becomes even more acidic than normal when exposed to acidic pollutants.
Also, the reasons why water is low in pH to begin with are pollutants in the air (such as sulfuric and nitric acid which produces acid rain) and watershed pollutants like mine drainage and industrial runoff. (Yuck!)
All these things may sway pink (if you Google "pesticides and sex ratio" or "toxins and sex ratio" you will come up with dozens of hits - too many to link here). But this is not really the kind of sway any of us are looking for.
Higher pH hard water contains buffering agents that make it less likely to become acidic even when exposed to acidic or highly basic pollutants.
:beer: NUTSHELL VERSION
Low pH soft water, despite having less of the girl-friendly minerals calcium and magnesium, probably sways pink due to its increased levels of toxic chemicals, but that is not really a sway I personally would want to have.:wink:
Higher pH water, despite having higher levels of girl-friendly calcium and magnesium, is better for blue not only because of the pH but also because it is healthier overall which is helpful for fertility and swaying for boys.
It is very, very unlikely that anyone's sway comes down to their water or we would see at least some cities, towns, or remote villages that have wildly skewed gender ratios. We do not see this, gender ratio stays at about 50-50 wherever we go, and so it's pretty unlikely that water makes any difference at all for the outcome of sways.
