Re: [permaculture-61] Fluoride in our waters
| From: | Carol Soto |
| Sent on: | Monday, February 15, 2010 2:19 PM |
From a holistic health counseling view point :
Water
Let's start with the most important element of your diet: Water!
Water makes up more than 70 percent of your body's tissues and plays a role in nearly every body function, from regulating temperature and cushioning joints to bringing oxygen to your cells and removing waste from your body. Therefore, it's vital to pay attention to what you drink.
Drink enough water to turn your urine light yellow
Drinking enough water is one of the most simple, basic, and important health steps you can take. However I am no longer convinced that we all need 8 glasses of water a day, which I used to recommend.
This is a personalized water test. As long as you are not taking riboflavin (vitamin B2), which fluoresces and turns your urine bright yellow (it is also in most multi-vitamins), then your urine should be a very light-colored yellow. If it is a deep yellow then you are likely not drinking enough water.
If you drink the required amount of water to maintain a light yellow coloring, you can easily avoid dehydration, which can have profound effects on your health.
Dehydration can cause:
* Fatigue
* Dry skin
* Headaches
* Constipation
Drinking enough water can help keep normal levels of acid in your stomach and make your heart pump more efficiently!
Drink your water at the right rate.
It's better to sip water all day long than to guzzle a large amount all at once. Depending on your size, your body can only process a bit more than a glass of water per hour. If you drink much more than this at one sitting, the extra water will not be used, but merely flushed down the toilet bowl. So keep your water bottle with you all day long, and let your thirst be your guide for when to drink. If you are extremely thirsty, you are already dehydrated!
Drink pure water.
Pure water? Don't be tricked!
Healthy water is water that has been properly treated to avoid contamination. Nearly all municipal water supplies have chlorine and fluoride (a highly toxic bone poison that should be avoided at all costs) added during water treatment, both of which are detrimental to your health. Europeans have known for many years that fluoride is toxic and have long since removed it from their water supplies. Be sure and obtain a filter (see my recommendations below) to avoid ingesting chlorine and fluoride. About 5 percent of the water supplies in the U.S. also contain unhealthy arsenic levels that can cause you health problems.
Additionally, thousands of tons of drugs are flushed down the toilet, and many wind up in your water supply, as most filtration plants aren't designed to remove them.
There are several ways to obtain healthy water in your home:
* Avoid distilled water. While this is a controversial area in natural medicine, I believe there is enough evidence to recommend avoiding distilled water as it has the wrong ionization, pH, polarization and oxidation potentials. It will also tend to drain your body of minerals.
* Filter your water. There are two main types of filters that I recommend:
Carbon filters: There are many brands that work well to remove impurities but may not remove fluoride and protozoa. I highly recommend Aquasana or the PUR Faucet Mount Water Filter. For a discussion on the various filtration systems, there is a good set of FAQ’s on the Aquasana website: http://www.aquasana.com/product_which.php
Reverse osmosis: This type of system removes most impurities and is suggested at the intermediate level.
For a discussion of demineralization of water see the Pub med site from the National Institute for Health: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC182827/ - reference-sec <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC182827/#reference-sec>
* Avoid bottled water. This kind of water is usually acceptable, but it's expensive and also negatively impacts the environment. http://www.buzzle.com/articles/bottled-water-industry-effect-environment.html, http://www.allaboutwater.org/environment.html Despite its hefty price tag, bottled water is NOT an assurance of purity. About 40 percent of bottled water is just regular tap water, which may or may not have received any additional treatment. In fact, most municipal tap water -- though generally far from pure -- must actually adhere to stricter purity standards than the bottled water industry. About one third of more than 100 bottled water brands tested for contaminants were found to contain chemicals like arsenic and carcinogenic compounds, at levels exceeding state or industry standards, and fluoride is usually still present in bottled water.
* Store your water safely. Avoid purchasing the one-gallon cloudy plastic (PVC) containers from your grocery store as they transfer far too many chemicals into your water. The five-gallon containers and the clear bottles (polyethylene) are a much better plastic and will not give the water an unpalatable plastic taste.
* Find an economical solution: Pur and Brita are two high-quality and leading brands in water filtration. Aquasana and PUR Faucet Mount Water Filters are solid and economical choice, while Brita water filtration pitchers are also a good choice (Brita filters costs approximately 24 cents per gallon, while bottled water costs about $1-2 per gallon!)
You can use lemon juice to add a bit of flavor and normalize your body's pH level.
You can add lemon juice to your water occasionally, to help flavor it and normalize your body's pH if you're too acidic. However, be careful not to use the lemon juice continuously or you run the risk of developing an allergy to it.
Assess your water delivery system.
If you have a water softener, you need to divert the softened water away from the kitchen tap to a reverse osmosis system. If you have municipal water you will also want to add a filter to your shower to remove the chlorine, as this exposure could actually be greater than exposure from drinking your water. If you are on your own well, this is not necessary.
Be careful of what you drink daily.
* Coffee and tea: One cup of coffee or two cups of black tea have a negligible effect, unless you are pregnant. Caffeine has clearly been associated with pregnancy complications and should be avoided by all pregnant women. If you struggle with insomnia or anxiety, please avoid all caffeine.
* Alcohol: Beer, wine, and distilled spirits are healthy in moderation. Moderate alcohol intake is defined as a 5-ounce glass of wine, a 12-ounce beer or 1 ounce of hard liquor with a meal.
* Juices: Fruit juices contain large amounts of sugars, you should seek to limit them as much as possible because as a society we ingest too many sugars. In a natural environment rather than the global environment, fruits are seasonal treats that are not available all year round.
* Avoid all soft drinks! I don't ever advocate drinking any soft drink for any reason, as they have no redeeming value whatsoever. Both regular and diet sodas are potent contributors to a number of health challenges. For example, did you know that for every can of soda you drink per day, your risk of obesity increases by 60 percent! This is one of the easiest changes you can make that can significantly improve your health.
On 2/15/10 12:49 PM, "ian kirby" <[address removed]> wrote:
Hi.
That's why I drink from natural springs and streams given the chance, although, according to the USGS, every stream in the United States is contaminated with carcinogens. So at this point, the world is so polluted, there's really no way to avoid it. And we continue to pump these carcinogens into our atmosphere as long as we live as industrialists. But we live in a society designed around industry for subsistence. Since permaculture also includes earthcare, industry itself becomes a question. And as pointed out in a recent repor <http://www.unews.utah.edu/p/?r=112009-1> t, carbon emissions "cannot be stabilized unless the world's economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day." So a downturning economy and joblessness has just freed up lots of time for people to spend on new things, like permaculture.
I watched a Youtube video of a Texan farmer who does not use municipal water on his crops because the fluoride affects the soil biology.
-ian
On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 11:06 PM, Sue Peters <[address removed]> wrote:
Nir,
There are other writings about the reason floridation began in the United States. It is banned in many many countries in Europe because they consider it unhealthy.
http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=14949
Since permaculture includes care of people, floridation of our drinking supplies becomes a question.
Sue.
Feb 8, 2010 09:58:09 AM, [address removed] wrote:
Large-scale fluoridation began in the 1950s, after it was noticed that
people living in places where fluoride was naturally present in the
water had fewer cavities. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoridation for details. Amusing tidbits
from there:
U.S. data from 1974?1992 indicate that when water fluoridation is
introduced into a community, there are significant decreases in the
number of employees per dental firm and the number of dental firms.
The data suggest that some dentists respond to the demand shock by
moving to non-fluoridated areas and by retraining as specialists.
U.S. children born 1957?1964 who grew up in fluoridated areas have
earned significantly more as adults than children who did not; this
effect is heavily concentrated among girls from poorer families,
consistent with the hypothesis that the effect is due to consumer and
employer discrimination in favor of women with physically more
attractive teeth.
Nir
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