DECIDING WHAT TO DRINK

Your water should be as pure as possible. Tap water varies widely from one city to the next, and well water is even more variable from one well to the next. The bottom line is that you want as little of any dissolved substances in your water as possible. For the many rea­sons outlined in chapter 8 on supplementation, you do NOT want to drink a lot of mineral-rich waters. One authority estimates that 4,000 to 5,000 gallons of nondistUled water, representing a typical lifetime's consumption, includes from 200 to 300 pounds of inor­ganic, dissolved rock-form minerals. These water minerals are not present in a bioavailable form, even though the body can absorb them. There may be short-term benefits to be gained from drinking such water, but it also has long-term accumulative toxic effects.

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Enough dissolved rock, as with enough dissolved anything, even­tually falls out of solution and deposits. In the case of mineral-rich water, the inorganic minerals can deposit and accumulate through­out the body. Also, since low levels of toxic minerals are often also present in such water, levels of these toxins will also accumulate over the years. Good food and high-quality supplementation should be your primary sources for your minerals.

Chemically softened waters should also be avoided. In addition to the other nonbioavailable minerals that you should be avoiding, these softened waters have huge amounts of sodium or even potas­sium, far beyond what your body requires. Anyone with enough kidney disease can actually put themselves at risk of life-threatening accumulations of potassium if they use the potassium-based soften­ers in their water. As it turns out, the chemical softening of water is also completely unnecessary. Proper use of magnets can easily soften water satisfactorily, without the addition of any chemicals. The application of a strong south pole magnetic field to a water pipe softens water naturally. See Appendix П at the end of the book for more information on such magnetic products.

Another commonly heard refrain concerning water is that hard water is better for you than soft water. Statistical studies seem to consistently show that communities consuming hard water have a lower coronary heart disease death rate, as well as a lower rate of strokes. This may be true, but this does NOT address that neither hard nor soft water is being compared to much purer water, such as distilled water or reverse osmosis purified water.

Before rain gets contaminated, it represents nature's way of water distillation and purification. Water is a substance that naturally leaches out the impurities of its surrounding environment. Most substances, toxic or otherwise, will dissolve in water to some de­gree, given enough time. Just because a water source is "natural" doesn't mean that every attempt shouldn't be made to further pu­rify it as completely as possible.

118 Optimal Nutrition for Optimal Health

Hard water does have minerals in it, but these are present in non­food, nonbioavailable forms. If someone is severely mineral-depleted, even these nonbioavailable forms may help for a while. However, hard water is never a good way to treat mineral deple­tion. Inorganic minerals, such as those found in hard water and rocks, should be excluded from ingestion as completely as possible, and bioavailable mineral sources, such as those found in foods and good supplements, should be used to correct any mineral deple­tions. Remember what happens to pipes that have carried hard water for many years. They fill up with rocklike mineral deposits, which can sometimes block them off completely. The same thing can happen to your arteries, given enough time and enough non­bioavailable minerals. Keep your arteries and your organs clear, and drink only the purest of water.

Tap water also has two additional enemies: chlorine and fluoride. These highly reactive chemicals create a lot of toxicity in the chronic consumer. It's just one more example of not having a sizeable con­trol group for comparison. The majority of the population that drinks tap water every day continues to dwarf the minority that doesn't. When most people are in the same boat, ifs very hard to ever fully evaluate the benefits of avoiding toxic water additives such as chlorine and fluoride.

A few words about fluoride. While all of the information on the toxicity of fluoride could fill many volumes of books, some of the more notorious facts about fluoride toxicity will be highlighted here. For a more extensive treatment of this subject, see Fluoride: The Aging Factor by John Yiamouyiannis,² from which the following in­formation is taken.

Fluoride, at levels less than those currently promoted for the fluoridation of public water supplies, will reliably inhibit DNA re­pair enzyme activity. Also, fluoride will inhibit the normal use of oxygen by the body, promote free radical formation, and interfere with the immune functions of white blood cells. Fluoride has also

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been shown to increase the frequency of mutation in the sperm cells of fruit flies exposed to X rays. All of these effects (decreased im­mune function, decreased cellular use of oxygen, decreased DNA repair enzyme function, and increased level of mutation) can in­crease the risk of developing cancer. And, in fact, Yiamouyiannis and Burk published a study detailing evidence that points to fluo­ride as a cancer-causing agent.³

Amazingly, fluoride had been mainly used as insect and rat poi­son before being introduced to the American public water supply. Even if fluoride did prevent tooth decay, which is also highly de­batable, there is no justification for the massive administration of such a toxic substance to so many people without their consent. For some reason, public water fluoridation is another political flash­point for many people and politicians, with name-calling and finger-pointing always overwhelming any rational discussion or scientific review of the case against fluoride. But you have now been warned. Research the issues for yourself before you decide that fluoridated water just has to be beneficial.

Consider avoiding tap water where the fluoride levels are "natu­rally" high. Know that the fluoride content of fluoridated tooth­paste and fluoride treatments administered by your dentist are enormously high relative to fluoridated water, and they should be carefully avoided if you decide that fluoride is not best for you and your family.

Chlorine is another toxin that has gained widespread acceptance. The proponents of chlorine point to its effectiveness at eliminating so many of the microbes in water, claiming that this has greatly re­duced the incidence of transmissible infectious diseases. While that may be true, it ignores the fact that water can be purified even more completely of microorganisms with proper ozonation or exposure to ultraviolet light, neither of which entails any known residual tox-icity. In his book Coronaries/Cholesterol/Chlorine, Joseph M. Price, M.D., makes a compelling case that the chlorine in our water supply

120 Optimal Nutrition for Optimal Health

contributes significantly to the ever-increasing rate of heart dis­ease.⁴ If other better methods of purification are available, why even take the risk of adding anything to your drinking water that can have negative effects on your health?

In general, well water, without purification, should not be your drinking water. Well water is very much a "mixed bag," with little predictability as to which types or what amounts of different con­taminants commonly found in our aquifers today will find their way into the well-water sources. Even if you pay a laboratory to have your well water tested, most testing does not cover many of the potential toxins that you can encounter, unless you are willing to spend literally thousands of dollars on such testing. Furthermore, a fairly distant farm could use pesticides at one time of the year and not at another, only getting into your aquifer intermittently. Don't pay a lot of money to give yourself a false sense of security just be­cause you tested your well water at the wrong time of the year.

Well water can also have a highly variable content of minerals, mostly in the nonbioavailable form discussed earlier. Well water may also be contaminated with toxic minerals and heavy metals, es­pecially near mountains and mining areas. However, such contam­ination is not limited to such areas. Drinking any unpurified well water over a prolonged period of time is just another slow version of Russian roulette. Don't do it.