Water: Let It Flow.

 

Water, water, water.  Healing.  Oh, yes.  Or at least it should be.  What with all of the contaminants in water everywhere, how does one remove the contaminants that affect you in particular?  Can we boil the contaminants out of water?  Perhaps.  But which ones?  Fluoride, chlorine, BPA.  I was shocked to read that BPA can cause obesity; that it can produce a hypothyroid; that it can interfere with neurological function; and that it can feminize men as well as destroy a man's fertility.  I wish that life weren't so complex.  Maybe life 200 years ago wasn't.  But we are here and we have to deal with what we are dealt.  I've been drinking bottled water for far too long.  I'd also heard all the arguments about which is better--bottled water or tap.  I think that they are both bad.  I'm just not sure that filtered water from some of the counter top filters produce adequate results, and by adequate results I am referring to water that both tastes good and fresh and water that is free, yes free, from biologically disruptive chemicals.

THE PROBLEM: CHEMICALS FOUND IN BOTTLED WATER DISRUPT BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES.  I like lists.  Here is a list of contaminants identified by the US EPA.

I purchase Arrowhead's Filtered water and Mountain Spring water.  I purchased the filtered water because I thought that I was getting the purest kind of water.  Well, maybe.  The problem is that filtered water has little to no taste.  I taste nothing . . . except the plastic that has leached into the water.  The texture of the water is not crystal clear crisp and sharp.  The texture and the taste is oily.  I'm not sure but I believe that the BPA is an oil by-product.  Plastics are oil by-products.  This article that calls for a ban on BPA states the following:

"Of course what the scientists are doing will be amplified many times by public opposition to such chemicals. BPA leeches from its container into whatever it happens to contain. If you microwave a TV dinner for example, the chemical content of the plastic container would find its way into the food you are going to eat. Likewise, when bottled water or a soft drink is manufactured and shelved, BPA leaches into the liquid over the time it takes to be purchased and consumed. The chemical is in food can linings, often in dental fillings, and can be found in 95 percent of paper money. It seems clear that public opposition is more than called for to reduce exposure, and it will be key in future regulation."

The subject of bottled water gets more distressing by the hour.  I read on Wikipedia tonight that bottled water companies are not required by law to report that their product has fluoride or if it does it is not required to report how much fluoride it has.  Unbelievable.  Here is the statement on Wikipedia:

"In some areas, tap water may contain added fluoride, which helps prevent tooth decay and cavities.^[21] Most bottled water manufacturers in the United States either add fluoride to their product or provide a fluoridated bottled water product (my emphasis). The Food and Drug Administration of the United States does not require bottled water manufacturers to list the fluoride content on the label.^[22] Water fluoridation remains controversial in countries where forced fluoridation is practiced (the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and a handful of other countries)."

SOLUTIONS?

Few and far between?  Not what you'd think.  Expunging the PBA out of your cells and tissue can be had with a few adjustments made to your diet, or accomplished with things that you're already consuming in your diet.  Here is a short list:

1.  Black tea

2.  Probiotics

3.  Melatonin

A longer list is here.  I am skeptical about melatonin.  Dr. Barry Sears, who I followed for many years, made the point that melatonin in doses larger than 1mg can have adverse side effects on testosterone: so men beware.  In fact, this is one of the side effects of BPA.  So if you find yourself consuming a lot of bottled water, avoid the melatonin, unless you want to be transgendered without expensive surgery.  That was a really bad joke.  A Japanese study found that ". . . out of the Japanese Department of Environmental Technology, found that the probiotic bacteria – Bacillus pumilus, is capable of degrading BPA."  That's quite a claim. 

FINALLY.  WHERE DOES WATER COME FROM?

WATER STORAGE

The best way to store water would be in a glass container, a ceramic container, or a metal container, preferably steel.  It has been my experience that if you use any plastic container, the plastic by-products will leech into the water itself and the water, though pure of any bacteria, my taste oily and plastic, particularly if you leave the plastic container out in the sun.  Does that oily, plastic taste mean that PBA has leached into the water?  I can't say for sure, but I can say that water does taste like an oil by-product.  So my answer is ceramic, glass, or metal--copper, steel, aluminum

I had a discussion once with my niece over bottled water, specifically Arrowhead's bottled spring water and distilled water.  We shared a similar experience where we both purchased a 1 gallon bottle and talked about how the water tasted like the plastic.  All of these companies ship their bottled water on trucks.  Sometimes these delivery trucks sit for hours, days, and weeks with merchandise locked in the covered bed.  Depending on the season and depending on the location, like Southern California, the heat can have a destructive influence on the plastic of which the bottles are made.  Imagine hundreds are thousands of bottles sitting in a diesel trailer under a 100-degree August sun.  Those bottles will melt as will their chemical composition: the chemicals will leak into the water, change its composition and structure, and definitely changing its taste.

So storage is a big issue of water quality.

HOW TO ACHIEVE SAFE, CLEAN DRINKING WATER

Here is one step.

DRUGS IN OUR WATER SUPPLY: CAN THEY CAUSE AUTISM?  I DON'T KNOW, BUT I DO KNOW THAT WHEN I DRINK FROM THE TAP I GET HEADACHES

Check this out. 

Evolution of Medicare . . . from Idea to Law

Here is an online book, written in 1969, that makes the case for Medicare.  I don't like Medicare.  It's too costly.  It's run poorly, and doesn't really serve people's best health interest.  But this book enlightens people on the argument and of its origin.  It's worth the read.  The book is written by Peter Corning and its title is The Evolution of Medicare . . . from Idea to Law.

Wrestling with the Errors of Our Teachers

I purchased a bottle of Solgar's Vitamin E 400 IU, 250 count soft gels.  It is a brand that I've trusted through the years, in part to the influence of a "friend" who touted the virtues of vitamins in general.  I am beginning to realize that vitamins extracted from their food source are not the best source of nutrition or supplementation.  I've believed that with vitamins I will get extra amounts of life-sustaining nutrients.  Maybe, but at a price, and I don't mean the sticker price on the bottle.  No, I mean a chemical price.  It's not a little upsetting, too, that guys like Dr. Mercola and Mike Adams make their living off of certain vitamins for this condition or that complex.  People only want to feel better.  They want heightened performance, better thinking, more flexibility, greater range all in the service of greater productivity.  And vitamins have been sold as the ticket on that train.  Well, they're wrong.  

Back to the Solgar Vitamin E, I called Solgar to ask if their product contained any soy.  The noise about soy is bad from a nutritional standpoint.  It negatively affects sex hormones--testosterone and estrogen.  Anyway, the operator at Solgar, who asked for the bar code number on my bottle (maybe as a way to track me as a customer), told me this: that Solger vitamin E contains:

highly refined soy that removes the protein from the soy,

hinting that the protein is the allergen that causes the hormonal alterations. 

I'm not the most qualified to evaluate a nutrient but I am getting there.  So far, I haven't committed to supplements long-term; as yet, I don't have the discipline or the desire for a long-term commitment.  At some point, I just get tired of taking pills.  I want to believe in the benefits of Vitamin E because I have experienced benefits.  All it took me was one incident to convince me of the miracles of vitamin E.   I had a tiny wound on my wrist years ago.  It was healing but slowly.  So I took a Vitamin E capsule and broke it open and spread the oil from inside the capsules on top of the wound, saturating it in vitamin E.   Though the results weren't immediate, within a day or two my skin became smooth with the wound's scar having dissolved almost 50%.  I could not believe my eyes.  I'd heard of the benefits of Vitamin E, but it is another thing to see them.  

A friend of mine takes a lot of Vitamin E, probably up to or more than 1,600 IU per day.  When recommendations came out about 8 years ago that 400 IU was now the preferred dose, a point that I shared with him, he almost went ballistic, insisting that high doses were the way to go.  He is and was an admirer of Linus Pauling, who advocated high doses of vitamins to treat chronic conditions.  Art Robinson proved Pauling was wrong on the point of mega dosing being an effective way to treat cancer.  But who knows?  Maybe my friend who takes 1,600 IU of Vitamin E experiences great relief, maybe even a sedating relief from internal pain.  I don't know.  I didn't want to press him.  His health is his business; his and the writers he consults and trusts.

Bromelain has been shown to reduce scarring.

For the overall health of your skin, B3 is the preferred nutrient. 

Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride on Fermented Foods: "Lactic Acid . . . Is One of the Most Powerful Antiseptics."

This was interesting.  Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride asserts that what is going on in multiple sclerosis is your body's own immune system trying to purge the mercury and lead that has embedded itself inside your fatty tissue along the nerves, your myelin sheath, and in your muscles.  She makes a compelling case for the benefits of yogurt and other fermented foods.  

She explains how the fermentation process in foods works to our benefit:

Mother Nature is extremely wise and extremely kind. It populated all organic fruit and vegetables, the dust on our soils, and all plant matter with Lactobacilli. The fresh cabbage leaves, if it’s organically grown (not the one from chemical farming), will be covered in Lactobacilli—lacto-fermenting bacteria. You don’t need to add anything. You just chop it up. Add some salt in the initial stages. (The salt is added in the initial stage in order to stop putrefactive bacteria from multiplying.) Then as the Lactobacillus stop working and start multiplying, they produce lactic acid. That’s why they’re called Lactobacillus. That’s just lactic acid.

If you look at the research in lactic acid, it is one of the most powerful antiseptics. It kills off lots and lots of bacteria.... So as the lactic acid starts producing, it will kill off all those putrefactive and pathogenic microbes and preserve the food. It’s a great preservative... A good batch of sauerkraut can keep for five to six years without spoiling or rotting, as long as it is covered by its own juice.