By: Dr. Jesse Stoff
According to the Beatles, all you need is love. But as a physician, I find that it takes more than that to have a healthy life and lifestyle, such as good quality food and good quality clean water. Today, we're going to discuss the quality of the water that you drink.
The quality of the water that we drink is very, very important.
Places like New Jersey have made national headlines because of the lead in the
water that they found in some of their schools. So that even if we pump clean
water out of the ground, if the infrastructure that gets it from the well to
your tap is aged and contaminated breaking down lead pipes etc.,
you can still get sick over a period of time as a result of it. Water serves
many, many important purposes in our body. Of course, we need it for a normal
hydration for the enzymes in our body and every cell of our body to work
normally to allow for all the different biochemical reactions that keep us
above ground. Water helps with detoxification, and helps your kidney to wash
toxins, things your body doesn't need anymore, from normal metabolism or from
things that we've been exposed to that it doesn't want, washes them out of your
system. Water for a lot of people, such as myself, just tastes good; I enjoy
drinking it.
So we want to drink
good quality clean water. Unfortunately, it's not so easy as just turning
on your tap. In many places of the country, because of the reasons I said with
the infrastructure issues, local mining operations, toxins that were dumped
into the area such as here in Long Island and New York, there was a big
contamination in our aquifer from the aerospace industry in the '50s, and there
are problems like this all over our country. So we have to take a little bit of
personal responsibility and filter the water. If you filter the water with a
decent quality, multi-stage filter, you can vastly improve its quality by
removing dissolved solvents and dissolved solids, and other chemicals that can
lead to toxic effects in our body. There are many multi-stage water filters on
the market today. The one I steer my patients towards is one that has many
stages to it. It also has a little meter, where you can measure the quality of
the water that comes out of the filter and measure the quality of the water of
any other water source that you wish to drink from as well.
Bottled water is
often a good source too. There are many good bottled water companies that we
can find. And it's always prudent and safe to look for some third-party
analysis of these bottled waters if you're going to be drinking a lot of it over
a period of time. Detoxification's particularly important if somebody's trying
to fight a severe or chronic disease. Because as a result of medications that
they take, or therapies that they're given, or just the disease process, new
toxins will accumulate in the body at a very alarming and fast rate if we're
not drinking enough water to help wash these toxins out of our body. As a
ballpark range, we often look to drink about half an ounce to an ounce per
pound of body weight. Half an ounce is usually enough for most people. But if
somebody's particularly ill or exposed to a lot of toxic materials, such as
chemotherapy for example, you may want to drink a little bit more and wash the
stuff out a little bit faster, have a few fewer side effects, and have a little
higher quality of life. Water is all around us, but having the kind of water
that keeps us above ground can sometimes be a challenge to find. Getting a good
quality filter for your use and the use of your family is an important,
prudent, and responsible thing that each of us should do.
This is Dr. Jesse
Stoff. Have a great day.
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PART 1: MY PERSONAL FILTER TEST - By: Karyn Anderesen
You can go nuts trying to shop for the perfect water filter for the kitchen. For months, I have explored just about every kind of filtration system and clean-water solution from a $3000 ionizer, a $2800 reverse osmosis system, a commercial water delivery to one of those $10 attachments to your faucet. The health concerns of what's in the water and metals in our pipes plus the whole 'Long Island Cancer Cluster' scare tells me it's time to take this water thing seriously.
COMPARATIVE STUDY VS. THE THE ZERO DIFFERENCE
So I asked Dr. Jesse Stoff (onco-immunologist) what filter he uses at home. I was SHOCKED when he told me he's using a $40 product... the ZERO WATER FILTER. Because I was prepared to spend thousands on my family's safety, my first thought was that he was giving me the economical solution - but when he explained the Zero system, it made complete sense. No plumbing, no big contraption- just a simple filter in a pitcher. The difference is that the Zero filter has a 5-stage filtration system (where others only have 2) and that it's the ONLY filter certified to remove 100% of LEAD, CHROMIUM as well as other contaminants like fluoride, chloride, mercury, pcb, arsenic and DDT. Also, Zero is the only filter on the market that comes with its own TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) Tester to detect how many particulates and contaminants are in the water. This tool is crucial in letting you know just how safe (or not) your drinking water truly is- and when it's time to replace the filter.
CONTAMINANTS
Toxins, impurities and contaminants found in tap water are all known to make you sick - when taken for a long enough period of time. Municipal water works in most or all counties bring their water through an involved disinfecting process, then filtering it to remove pathogens while testing for bacteria such as cryptosporidium, giardia viruses and other organic chemicals. In suburban and rural areas, a common threat is from pesticide runoffs and lawncare chemicals seeping directly into the aquifer. This is known to weaken our immune system and could cause cancer if taken over a long period of time.
Water and air contamination causes serious health effects. Tap water is exposed to environmental toxins and despite the municipal treatment standards, it is essential to take proactive measures to purify the drinking water. We can obtain clean drinking water and high-quality indoor air through purification filters. Read on to know about the filtration systems that can be used in domestic applications.
Reverse Osmosis Filters Reverse osmosis filters provide clean drinking water by desalinating water and removing certain types of chemicals. Reverse osmosis filters remove mercury, iron, lead, and calcium. Reverse osmosis is a process that helps in forcing water containing contaminants to pass through a semi-permeable membrane to a solution of weaker strength. The larger contaminant molecules will be left behind the other side of the membrane and you will be able to obtain clean drinking water at the other end. Reverse osmosis filter is a powerful technique for removing toxins from water without using electric energy. Since this technique takes the size of the contaminant molecules in consideration, it fails to remove ionized alpha particles like radon, organic chemicals like trihhalomethanes, and pesticides. Chlorine ions also cannot be removed by an RO filter.
Carbon Filters
Carbon filter are efficient at removing particles that are left untreated by simple RO filters. Pestocides, chlorine, radon, and trihalomethane s can be removed by carbon filters. Yet, these filters cannot remove minerals, salts, and soluble inorganic compounds from water. Carbon filters out odors and bad taste from water. These filters have a large surface area and works on the principle of absorption. Carbon helps in absorbing deleterious toxins from the domestic water supply. Carbon filters are also used as air purifiers with HEPA filters to clean air. Carbon filters consists of solid carbon as a bed, which work as a filtering agent. The carbon is in a granular, or blocks form. Water or air is made to run over carbon filters and the contaminants are absorbed by carbon.
Ionizing Filters
Ionizing filters have a charged wire that emits ionized molecules. These molecules interact with the dust particles and some air-bone contaminants. Based upon the type of the ionizing filter, the pollutants are either captured by a collector plate located close to the ionizing unit or forced to stick to the room surfaces like walls. There are both fan-less and fan-based ionizing filters available. These filters are ineffective at removing bigger contaminating particles, such as pollen, and other allergens.
HEPA Filters
HEPA filters are made up of glass fibers that are arranged in a way that form a sheet. Several sheets are placed together to increase the surface area of attraction. When air flows across these sheets, contaminants get stuck. These filters help in removing air-borne allergens from the environment that cause asthma. HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Air) filter forces the air entering the room to pass from a fine mesh of fibers, trapping the allergens.
How does Climate Change affect our Physical Health?
Climate change is having a serious impact on the air we breathe and the water we drink. The presence of environmental toxins in air and water are affecting our physical health. Health-associated deaths in the USA are expected to rise as our planet grows warmer. Contaminated toxic water can cause viral and bacterial health problems. Poor air quality can cause respiratory and cardiovascular problems. Collectively, the toxic substances, if consumed in large ratios, can cause cognitive issues and cancer. Therefore, it is important that we take action by installing filtration systems.
References
http://www.allaboutwater.org/reverse-osmosis.html
http://www.extension.umn.edu/environment/housing-technology/moisture-management/activated-carbon-filtration/
https://www.epa.gov/climate-impacts/climate-impacts-human-health
https://health2016.globalchange.gov/
PROLOGUE:
On the one hand, it can come from the infrastructure of piping that goes from the well to your tap. In many cases, in many of the older cities in the United States, we still find lead pipes, not just lead solder joints and copper pipes, but actually, lead pipes that are carrying the water to our faucet. Slowly, the lead can leach out of the pipe and into the water as it reacts with other substances that are dissolved in the water. Other places in the United States where there's mining operations, the Southwest where we're mining copper, gold, silver, etcetera, the mining operations will disturb the aquifer and can contaminate it. Other places in the United States where we have coal mining operations, for example, we're mining for iron, there's iron smelting industry, for example. There's often a lot of contaminants that wind up into the aquifer that then becomes our drinking water. So it behooves each of us to be aware to some extent of what's in our water, the quality of the water, and to take some personal responsibility to filter that water to help ensure a quality and quantity life.
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DR. JESSE A. STOFF is an internationally renowned physician with extensive credentials in clinical immunology and holistic medicine. A graduate of New York Medical College , he pursued extensive post-doctoral training including a fellow- ship at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital in London , England
This article is produced and written by the writing team at IMMUNOLOGY TODAY- The Official Newsletter of Integrative Medicine of N.Y. of Westbury NY-- Edited and co-published by Dr. Jesse A. Stoff exclusively for the purposes of this blogpost (Immunology Today) and rejuvenatesoliutions.com The publisher(s) hold all rights (c) to all elements, images and content herein. All distribution, sharing or re-posting of this article is only with the express permission from Dr. Stoff and Integrative Medicine of NY (formerly Linchitz Medical Wellness). 265 Post Ave. Suite 380 Westbury, NY 11590 | 516.759.4200 | www.StoffImmunology.com. Rejuvenate! is a registered trademark of Intermedia Communications Ltd. All written content in this newsletter is produced by the Stoff Institute for Medical Research (SIMR) exclusively for private distribution at the Integrative Medicine of NY ©2016- All Rights Reserved.
DISCLAIMER: Integrative Medicine of NY (formerly Linchitz Medical Wellness) and Dr. Jesse A. Stoff make no claims pertaining to any of the institutions or funding information listed, make no warranty or guarantee of funding, and bear no responsibility and disclaim any liability for the privacy of communications or the outcome of any applications for the listed resources. No further information about any of the institutions nor funding programs (other than the links and contact information listed here) is available. Written content provided in this article/blog is for informational purposes only; consult your physician before making any changes to your treatment plan.
