Podcast Episode 4 – Immunity – Water (Drinking and Bathing)

Shonda (00:01): Well, I stopped taking showers altogether.

Shonda (00:04): Hi, this is Shonda and yes, that was truly a statement of mine. This week Patryce and I are discussing water, Perhaps you've never truly thought about the importance of water and specifically water as being an important nutrient. We hope to encourage you to take a deeper look into the water you are drinking and bathing in.

Podcast Intro (with music) (00:37): Hi and hello. Welcome to the real food and drinks, lifestyle podcast. We're building a community to talk about nutrition, lifestyle choices, and just feeling better. This is Shonda and this is Patryce. Let's just be real.

Podcast Intro (with music) - continued (01:03): [Music continues] Here's our disclaimer. We do not professionally practice in any of the various subjects that we discuss. We are only sharing our personal experiences with you to healthier lifestyle. Please do your own research before taking part in any of these practices.

Shonda (01:24): I originally started researching water at least three years ago. You know, I just wasn't feeling my best or I wasn't feeling hydrated or what brought it on mostly was that I was having the stomach bloating from IBS. And along with that, I was having like bladder urgency with that. And I'm like, I'm drinking all this water. Why doesn't it stick? You know, why isn't it sticking in me? Um, I'm trying to, you know, get it in. And the first thing that I discovered was that of the two waters I was drinking, both were reverse osmosis water. One was a home system. I had a reverse osmosis system under my sink and I was drinking that water. And the other time it was bottled. And, you know, I mean, when we read the back of the bottle, it says, treated by reverse osmosis filtration. And so...

Patryce (02:24): Can you give a short description of what reverse osmosis means?

Shonda (02:30): What happens is through the filtration process? And it's filtered through a number of different processes. I mean, even this reverse osmosis system had like two or three stages to it, of filtration, but the end result is a water that no longer contains minerals.

Shonda (02:52): And that's where we get into problems because, you know, we don't want to drink water void of minerals. I mean, that's the purpose. I mean, the minerals in it help keep us hydrated. You know, the minerals have, have nutrients, water should be a nutrient. I really used to study the Gerson therapy and they don't recommend drinking water at all. And I think it's because of this reason is because you can't trust the water source or, you know, people may not be researching the water as fully to understand that that water is doing more damage than good because the Gerson therapy was all about getting the most nutrition you can in everything you eat and everything you drink. So if the water was empty of nutrients, you know, there's really no reason to drink it. So then I took that out. I was like, Oh my goodness, we've been drinking the wrong water, you know, and I started doing research.

Shonda (03:57): So there are systems that can filter water to make it more drinkable, like city, tap, water, more drinkable. There's so many water reports out there. And if you look at, I think it's the FDA and the EPA they both monitor water and make suggestions. Let's see, the EPA regulates public drinking water and the FDA regulates bottled drinking water. And they have reports out there. And I mean, when you're looking at the reports about what's in water...okay. So they have recommended safety standards or guidelines. And I mean, and so water is being tested for over 200 contaminants. Tap water is. There's two... there's... I mean, there's even more than that, but that was, I know I counted at least 200 on the report where, you know, if you have these contaminants in your water, here are the safe level supposedly. And it's really interesting.

Shonda (05:00): The show notes will have a link to an article and then the article will have a link to FDA and EPA to read and to better understand what's happening to our city tap water systems. But there are systems supposedly that do extract most of these things. So I would not, I don't drink city, tap water, not on a regular basis. So it is highly recommended that you get a really good system to filter your city, tap water if you plan on drinking it. Yeah. Cause there's even carcinogens in the city tap water.

Patryce (05:39): Wow. And I guess you can... Is that one of the reports you're talking about that you can get?

Shonda (05:44): Yeah. The report is it just lists all of the possible contaminants or the contaminants that they found in water. And I guess this is us US FDA and EPA. These are acceptable limits, but next to the next to the contaminant, it will say if it's a high carcinogen type, uh contaminant or things. So it was ranked, they, there are ranks on carcinogens. That was pretty interesting that, that they, right, that they decided to, or felt it was needed to show the different rankings of how this contaminant specifically ranked as a carcinogen. So that was very interesting.

Shonda (06:34): When I originally started looking about three years ago, and this was, I think rather kind of new, a new chemical, it was called chloramine. So I started, when I wrote (rewrote), this article, I wrote about chloramine because I had noticed that when taking a shower, my eyes just would hurt. They would be red after. And even sometimes it felt like I couldn't breathe when I was in the shower. Cause I take really hot showers. I like hot water. And so how water makes the chlorine and chloramine more volatile, I guess it opens it up and it separates it from the water, I guess. And, and you know, when we're breathing in it, it causes more issues. Chloramine is a combination of chlorine and ammonia.

Patryce (07:26): What a? Ooph, that sounds volatile. Just those two.

Shonda (07:29): Yes. We know how volatile ammoonia is. So if we're taking baths in city, hot, hot city, tap water, you know, I guess if you're, if you... Hey, if you do cold showers and that's good, but I can't do a cold shower. So...

Patryce (07:45): I may start though.

Shonda (07:48): Well, I stopped taking showers altogether because of this. It was that it affected me that much. So I would take a bath or use a bath ball and I wouldn't even use that many. Yeah. I still cleaned!

Patryce (08:02): Just wanted to clarify that for everyone.

Shonda (08:06): Yes. But I just used a bath tub. (Patryce: Okay.) And try to filter it as best as I can. And I am hopefully planning on putting more of a filter on the house to get a cleaner source of, of bathing water. I think that's important too, when we expose our skin to water, it's taking in the water and all the things that are in the water. So we want to be careful of that.

Patryce (08:31): And because we want to be careful of that. I'm sorry. Did you mention something that before you get that whole house filtration, is there something we can put into our bath water to help with?

Shonda (08:41): Well, Okay...So, you can, if you're running bath water, or even a shower head, there are filters that I'm not sure about the chloramine. Maybe now there are, but I think the chloramine is... A more expensive type filter needed to remove chloramine. And also recently I don't, I believe it's effective, but I don't know how effective this process would be for a whole bathtub of water is to ozonate your water. Now that's something really new. It's called ozone to ozonate - to infuse the water with ozone to remove the contaminants. Yes. So that's new. That's something that I have not tried yet, but of course, naturally I'm looking forward to trying. So I'm trying, I'm in the process of researching a system right now. I think of water as a nutrient. You know, like I said, we don't just want to take in any kind of water because it's not going to benefit us.

Shonda (09:43): I think my next research led me to just start looking at bottled water. So the most common that we find in the grocery store is, uh, called purified water. According to USDA that is produced by distillation, De-ionization, reverse osmosis and something like that. But it also, and the FDA even says this, can be called de mineralized water. (Patryce: Wow.) Yeah. So that doesn't sound like a good thing, you know? Um, so it's highly likely that most of the bottled water labeled purified water is also labeled drinking water or filtered water. These waters have been, uh, treated by these systems. And normally they're just city tap water, that's been treated, you know. They demineralize it to get everything out - the contaminants and the nutrients come right along with it. And so my belief that it's not ideal for drinking on a regular basis. Now, you know, if that's all that's available for you that day drink the water, you know, but, um, but try on a regular basis when you decide what water you're going to drink. Um, we just need to look further into the choices that we're making.

Patryce (11:08): Now, there are other bottled waters that when I, if I'm at a grocery store, I want to choose spring water is one of them or artesian water. Spring water is derived from an underground formation from which water flows naturally to the surface. So there's something, you know, at some point it is underground, but it comes back up to the surface. Spring water may be collected at the spring or through a borehole, you know, by tapping into the underground formation. So that's the definition of spring water. I think we still have to be careful when we're looking into bottled waters, no matter what it is, because even though the source may have more natural minerals and things, because it's been underground and it's coming up naturally from a water source, the way that the company treats it, once they gather it can have detrimental effects on it.

Shonda (12:11): One company that I researched, which is very popular, I know here in Texas where I am, they actually bring it from a spring, but during transport, while there, after they gather it, they treat it with chlorine. (Patryce: Oh wow.) They treat it with chlorine during the transport. And right before bottling, they remove the chlorine. I choose not to drink that one because of that. And you can find all this information on websites, go to the company's website and look up their water reports and their processes. If they aren't open enough to tell you about all those. And I wouldn't even drink their water.

Patryce (12:51): Good point...good point.

Shonda (12:55): I mean, I would drink their water over the regular purified water that comes from the city tap, but on a longterm basis, that's not the one that I chose. Before I get there though. I want to say, I guess this is in both cases though, we want to choose spring water or artesian water that has only undergone like, um, carbon filtration or sand filter. And, and one of the processes they use is ozone... Ozonating water. That's a process that some companies, uh, spring or artesian water ... or companies use or passing water through an ultraviolet light. I read that ultraviolet light can eliminate the chloramine in there. So that was interesting. Yeah. I mean, I wonder if there are ultra violet violet lights that we can get to purify our water. It's just also interesting, especially with technology today, the way that it can be created for, um, personal consumer use, you know, I'm sure some of these things, more of these things are available and becoming available.

Shonda (14:09): And it's a good thing because we're getting more contaminants in our environment. I drink artesian water it comes from an artesian. Well, I list a lot of them in the article that I wrote that will be available as a show note to this, I drink artesian water because they do have to go underground to get it. So it hasn't come up to the top yet and mix with other ground waters possibly that could contaminate it...things like that. Water from the artesian well comes deep within the different layers of the earth and the way it got there is mostly,uh, rainwater. When rainwater settles, you know, it'll go into the earth. Okay. That seems like the most natural process that God created. You know, even in the Bible, they drank from a well, they went deep down and got the water and there's just some I'm sure great filtration that happens in the earth that we probably just don't know about.

Shonda (15:16): I mean, they, I know that they've tried to duplicate those things in some systems with the carbon filter and with the sand filter and with these different things. But to just have it naturally happen... In the water that I chose, it just tastes so good to me that it was just no doubt about this was the water that I want to drink. Now it can get expensive, but in my mind, I was searching and searching and feeling ill. And so hospitals and doctors are expensive too. So I just choose to buy the water.

Patryce (15:49): I have to say that this water, most of the well waters, artesian, well, waters are labeled as alkaline. And I know for, you know, a while back, everything was trying to be labeled alkaline. It's alkaline... It's alkaline, but I want you to not be fooled by water just because it claims to be alkaline.

Patryce (16:11): This water... This artesian well is alkaline naturally from coming up from the deep, in the well of the earth. There are also companies that use the same purified, bottled water from the city tap, they reverse osmosis it and remove all the nutrients. And then they try to add nutrients back to make it alkaline. That reminds me of white rice. They've taken all the nutrients out, but they've enriched it with added vitamins because they know that food has nothing to offer. Yes, I am a proponent of whole grain brown rice versus white rice, especially on a regular basis. So the same thing with water, um, we want it to be natural. We want it in its natural state. We don't want to clean it all up and do all these things and remove it and then try to artificially add back minerals.

Patryce (17:11): Wow. That's very interesting. It seems as though there's a lot to learn about our water or just to be, make ourselves aware of and, and when we are, we're not sure we can ask for those reports or look at those reports, um, for our local water, just to, to know for ourselves, everything you just said. Um, and I'm, I'm just thankful that you have done a lot of this research for us so that we can go out there and take a look at that, um, document you created.

Shonda (17:43): Yeah. Yeah. Glad to share.

Patryce (17:45): I love that Shonda, this, the goal is to just make changes, even small changes towards a better lifestyle.

Shonda (17:58): Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy today's podcast. Remember you can catch show notes and additional details at realfoodanddrinks.com under the podcast menu. Also subscribe to our podcastt if you aren't already a member of our community. And if listening through Anchor, please send us a messenge of topics you would like to hear us have conversations about until next time. Let's just be real.