Wellbeing Workshop » Water

Water Question

admin — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:38:13 +0000

I received a comment last week that has sort of turned into a long letter so I will post it here.

Hi,

I am looking for a water purifier for my mother (who has osteoporosis) as they have just begun flouridating the water where she lives. I've checked into both Nikken (of which I have a PiMag system) and Zazen (which appears to be a little cheaper) and there are a couple of things that concern me on the Zazen site.

"High in Antioxidants - eliminates free radicals" - How is this possible?

"It also helps increase the amount of oxygen (a natural antioxidant) in the water – oxygen is actually absorbed 10 x faster in water than from breathing!" How on earth is oxygen an antioxidant? This sounds like an oxymoron to me.

I know you don't represent Zazen, but as you recommned both I wondered if you knew anything further about this?

Kind regards,
--------------------------------------------------
Hi XXXX.
Sorry for the delay on this reply. Have you found a filter yet?

There are a number of issues in your short post. Thanks for the opportunity to answer them.

Osteoporosis is a fairly well understood disease in terms of nutrition although most people find it difficult to understand.
Firstly, osteoporosis is rarely caused by an inadequate intake of calcium. It is most often the amount of calcium we excrete that is the issue. Taking excess calcium can slow down the progress of the problem but usually does not address the causal issues. There was a chinese study recently of several hundred vegan buddhist nuns that found not one single case of osteoporosis and their average intake of calcium was less than 400mg per day.

Most often the issues are to do with a diet with high levels of inflammatory agents. There are a couple of posts on my site that address some of these issues. Osteoporosis can also be a disease symptom but that is not very often the case. If you want more information feel free to get in touch.

Regarding the Zazen system. The owners of the business are friends of mine and while I have nothing to do with their business I am quite happy with the Zazen system.

The comment about the antioxidants, well! That can actually be a rather long story, however the short version is. Vitamins are not the only antioxidants. Quite a number of minerals are too, and some of those minerals are too. Some of those antioxidants are the electrolyte chemicals that the systems replace in the water. So yes the Zazen and Pimag systems produce water with the ability to neutralize free radicals.

I will leave the oxygen question alone for now. Suffice it to say they are correct but the answer is long and complicated and rather boring for anyone who has not got an interest in the minutiae of biochemistry.

Anyway, the outcome is that I do support the Zazen and the Nikken systems. As a distributor of Nikken I naturally lean that way but I certainly do not believe that one is 'better' than the other.

Regarding fluoride.

Do not get me wrong. I am, do and always have absolutely opposed adding fluoride to drinking water. I think it is a dangerous and rather stupid thing to do. There is, in my opinion, no reasonable scientific proof to support adding it to water supplies.

However, (Taking a deep breath here) I believe that for most people, fluoride in the water is a dangerous mis-focus from real issues. Fluoride fears come mainly from the marketing arms of filtration companies.

Fluoride is a natural and necessary nutrient for our bodies. We require is for a number of chemical process including bone and tooth health. Mind you we normally get it in the form of calcium fluoride in plants. And I believe that if it needs supplementing we should be doing that through fertilizer in gardens not in water supply. (Besides the point.)

Now the point at which fluoride becomes toxic (several grams for the average person, not milligrams) would require that you drink several hundred litres of water a day on an ongoing basis to have a negative effect. If you do the research you will see that town water supplies do put a low level in. There are many locations around the world that have much higher naturally occurring fluoride levels than ours.

In Australia, our government has done research and found that the filtration methods that remove fluoride are often unreliable so have created codes about claims to remove fluoride. The most reliable (cheap) filtration method to remove fluoride uses aluminium as a base. It is this that companies use for normal filters. This is because we can get an accurate estimate of the fluoride removed over the life of the filter. This is not possible with other filters.

So while many filters, including the Nikken and Zazen filters, will remove a large portion of fluoride in the water there is no way to give reliable estimates of the life of the filter or of the levels of fluoride removed. This is why Australian standards do not allow these claims to be made.

However is is not commercially viable to make small numbers of filters to remove fluoride. Very expensive to produce small numbers of anything.

My personal opinion is that this is the reason behind the fluoridation scares. (Please, remember that I do not support water fluoridation)

Now, having said all of that, there are a small number of people for whom even these low levels are toxic, hence the change in laws so that you cannot sue the government for damage caused. These people do need to find a water source that does not have sodium fluoride or to find a way of removing it. This is where a fluoride filtration system comes in.

There are many types of these but a small under sink filter will suit most people. Try ringing Byron at Water Filter world at Graceville. However doing all of that still does not address any of the issues addressed by the Nikken PiMag and the Zazen system so I would still consider that one of these is needed after any other system....

Hope all of that helps. Feel free to contact me direct if you have more questions.
--
Kindest Regards

Francis McGrath
OasisLiving.com.au
Email: androdynamics@gmail.com
Ph: 0409 670 218

What is Healthy Water II?

admin — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:33:44 +0000

Yesterday we started with the question, what is healthy water, and why is is healthy?

So today I am going to start with the great question about water, which is: How much water do I need to drink. We have all asked that question at one time or another "How much water do I need to drink."

Considering that after air, water is our second most important nutirent, this is a very important question.

Unfortunately tha question is much more complicated than it would first appear. There are a number of key factors involved in that. The key in this question is what is your caloric intake? You see the second largest factor in the amount of water is that your bodies uses water as a tool when digesting food and energy distribution.

The Primary use of water is for thermal management. So depending on the weather you may use or lose up to 3+ litres of water per day.

So a list of water usage in your body includes,

Food intake.
Climate.
Activity level.
Environmental toxic load.
Airconditioning (dries you out).
Length of day (believe it or not).
Lubrication.
Moisturising skin and lungs.
Shock absprbtion. (very active people use more for this)
Cleaning and toxin removal from cells.
Transport of energy, nutrients and toxins.
Etc etc....

But you start to get the idea.

This means that almost any advice that you get regarding amounts to drink is flawed advice as it takes none of the above into account.

In fact the original 8 glasses of water a day was an off the cuff comment by a doctor given in response to an interview question in north Eastern USA around 30 years ago. It has little relevance to most peoples water requirements. Especially if you are living in a temperate or tropical climate.

The simplest and best advice that you can be given regarding water, and this does not apply to people with kidney disease or other such issues, is:

Drink enough water to need to urinate every 2-3 hours during the day.

This will cover most situations. As your body flushes toxins it ramps up and down depending on load. Also this will bypass the amount of water that your body is using for cooling and keeping your lungs moist. If you continue to have enough foe your kidneys and liver to process toxins out of your system then the other issues are covered.

What is Healthy water?

admin — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:31:45 +0000

Healthy Water! What is it? and why is it healthy water?

For over 40 years I have wondered at the concept of healthy water.

It first started for me during an epidemic in Queensland of fever spread by mosquitoes from local water tanks. Became full blown when I started working as a water treatment plant operator for local government. And has continued during my profession as an health and nutrition educator.

Have you ever wondered, what is healthy drinking water? And why is it healthy water?

On the surface, it seems an easy question to answer.

We need water without toxins, such as flouride, mercury, cadmium.
We need water free of waterborne pathogens, such as giardia, dengue fever, and cryptosporidium.
We need water free of cholera, dysentry and schistamiosis.
We also need it to be free of human poisons such a Bisphenol A and pthalates.
And we want it to be relatively free of manganese, iron and chromiun so that it is tasty and easy to drink.

On the positive side

We need water that contains electrolytes such as potassium, magnesium and calcium so it is easy to absorb.
It needs to be delivered to us in an easily used form.
And it needs to be relatively expensive so that all can afford it.

Once all of these questions are answered we need to start looking at questions such as:

What is a healthy water bottle?
How do I store water safely?
Are there other issues?

I am going to spend some time over the next week or 2 answering some of these questions.

If you have any questions feel free to leave them in comments.

Francis

Water and Wellbeing!

admin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 10:36:14 +0000

About 30 years ago I started work with a local government here in Queensland working at a water treatment plant. It was a very interesting job. I trained for around 3 years studying chemistry and treatment techniques. We produced over 1,000,000 litres of water a day.

According to the training I had, we considered that water to be safe and drinkable. We regularly checked water quality around town and the state government also collected and checked the water quality.

You may not realize this, but Australia, and Queensland in particular, has some of the worlds most stringent standards for drinking water quality and has the least incidence of health issues. The water here is the safest drinking water on Earth.

While following this career and later in Ambulance and Nursing I also developed a healthy distrust of plastic containers and what the chemicals in thos plastics do to water. By the time I finally started studying Nutrition at university I was one of those who told everyone not to waste their time buying a water filter or buying bottled water.

I still say that in Australia, in most locations, bottled water is a crazy waste of money.

There are many issues to do with plastics. I will go into them later in detail.

But suffice it to say, that I do agree with the plastics industry, plastic is safe, if used in the right way.

But nobody does.

Do you keep plastic containers in a cool dark place away from sunlight.
Do you rinse them before use.
Do you never heat food in them.
Do you replace the water after 12 hours.
Etc ETC.

So my answer to people still is, Do not buy or drink PET bottled water or softdrink. Glass or cans only. Mind you cans are normally lined with plastic anyway.

As far as most water filters are concerned, most only change the taste slightly and have little effect on the quality of water. It does make it likely that you will drink a little more and that will help but what do you do if you really want access to good quality, healthy and safe water.

Strangely enough the answer may come from Eastern Asia. I have come across 2 systems that seem to have a different philosophy on water. Both of these systems started life looking at the question; What is the best quality of water that it is possible for us to drink? And they really went to town looking at the research from all over the world on water and water quality. They looked at magnetics and European spas. They studied the works of Masaru Emoto and they looked at the research in Korea and Japan. They come to some startling conclusions.

Water that does not make us ill is not always the best quality water available.
There are issues that western technology ignores.
Homeopathic theories have an impact on water quality.
Water has a molecular memory.
Even drinking enough of the wrong kind of water may leave us dehydrated.

Now with my background this was like waving a red flag at a bull. Obviously this was pseudo science at its worst. Sales and marketing under the guise of health information. So I started researching them.

After around 6 months, I too came to some startling conclusions. They are right. There are issues that we in the west have little or no understanding of. There are things about water quality that we do not take into account.

So what is my stance now?

I still recommend that you do not buy or drink water or softdrink in plastic containers. I still suggest that you buy a special container if you want to carry a water bottle, (and I suggest that you do carry a water bottle). Drinking water out of your tap is safer and cheaper than plastic bottled water or softdrink.

However if you want to do something to drink safer healthier water look at a ZAZEN or NIKKEN water system.

As far as I can see they are two of the best systems on the market.

More to come! and Have a great day!

Fluoride and drinking water

admin — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 20:42:55 +0000

I recently had an email from someone asking about fluoride in drinking water and its removal. I decided to post my response as well as email it.

Dear ________

I am a nutritionist, although I once worked for local government in QLD. In that capacity I operated water treatment plants and ran the laboratory's for them.

I have to say I understand your concerns about fluoride in the water. It is a rather nasty chemical and very difficult to get rid of. There is currently only one type of filter that is on the market that will remove fluoride from you water. That is an aluminum filter which is almost as bad, in my opinion.

The filter that Nikken uses removes some/most of the fluoride from the water but it is not designed to do so and it is not legally claimable that it will do so. I have had several tests done by labs and a large proportion of the fluoride was removed although there was some left. This will also shorten the life span of the water filter as some of the chemical filter components end up saturated faster. This is not a claim that the Nikken filter can remove fluoride and should not be taken as one. However, fluoride occurs naturally in pretty much all water supplies so it is natural for there to be some in all drinking water.

For me, one of the issues that you face is that the Nikken system does much more that just filter the water. For that reason I would not suggest replacing it with another system as you still need the magnetic and mineral stone properties of the system.

You have several options, some of them fairly expensive. "Water fi lter world" has small above and below bench systems that will remove fluoride. These are the aluminum filters that I was mentioning. They also have a small reverse osmosis system that will give you water that has everything removed, but you would definitely need to run it through the Nikken system and I would suggest putting it through an optimizer to remove the water memory of the treatment.

One of your main issues is that reverse osmosis and distillation systems give water that, to my mind, is worse for your body than what often comes out of the tap. For this reason I usually suggest that people do not use them, at least not on their own.

Beyond that it is very much price and personal opinion that will drive what sort of system you go for. Your options are fairly much, reverse osmosis, distillation, and condenser systems. The osmotic and distillation systems can be found at most good water filter stockists such as the link above. The condenser systems are relatively new. They are effectively a dehumidifier and a storage tank to collect the condensation. The only issue with these is that they also collect any impurities and toxins in the air such as lead or other car exhaust fumes or particulate matter such as well as pollens etc. However the water will almost certainly contain trace fluoride levels as there is fluoride in the atmosphere at trace levels. Depending on your location and the lab it may be so low as to remain effectively unmeasurable. In this case it may not have any affect on you.

At the very low end concentrations fluoride is normally considered harmless to most people but if you have had a condition that fluoride affects then you may wish to consult a medical practitioner as to whether the condensation system is what you want.

The outputs of all of these types of systems are still not aligned with natural water supply quality so I would suggest putting that into the Pimag system and then optimize it.

Regarding your question about distillation. Yes that would effectively remove all of the fluoride, how water stills are fairly expensive to purchase and run, as such it may not be your best long term option.

If you would like to talk more or ask any further questions feel free to email me.