Water and its Importance in Your Diet

[Dana Lane (imported)]

I started eating right (for the most part) about 4 months ago and all I drink now is water.

Edit: Actually I drink about 2 to 3 cups of black coffee in the morning. No sodas, though!

[Bagoas (imported)]

I drink a gallon of bottled water a week. I drink bottled water because I oppose fluoridation of public water supplies. Many years ago, I asked my dentist "If fluoridation works, why are you still in business ?" His reply was interesting. "Very simple, it doesn't work" This is what I had suspected all along.

Before some genius decided to medicate us all involuntarily by putting the stuff in our drinking water, there were only two uses for sodium fluoride: as an etching agent for glass and as rat poison.

However, sodium fluoride is a major by-product of the aluminum refining industry. You can just etch so much glass and kill so many rats before this toxic by-product begins to pile up. Fluoridation of public water supplies is a brilliant way to get rid of it, especially if you can sell a credulous public on the notion that it is beneficial to children's teeth. Actually, it destroys the enamel.

Carbonated beverages, tea, and coffee are all over 90% water. Until modern times, wine was widely drunk in much of Europe instead of water because wine was free of pathogens and the public water supply wasn't. Tea and coffee, of course contain stimulants such as theobromin and caffeine. I for one cannot tolerate caffeine and must limit my intake of tea. Coffee and caffeine-bearing soft drinks are impossible.

In addition to bottled water, I do drink sugar-free and caffeine-free [must be BOTH] carbonated beverages and wine.

[moi621 (imported)]

Water, water and more water !

Mankind, yes and herkind too, have lousy kidneys compared to other critters. Ourkind requires lots of water. A good argument for descending from a semi aquatic or willing to troll water and swim for food - ape like critter who would have had lots of fresh water.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_ape_hypothesis

How much water?

Enough to keep the urine looking clear in the toilet bowl. Darker urine means the body is dehydrated and trying to conserve water. Not good. Leads to stones, thicker phlegm, constipation, more irritating stomach acid, etc. This trick will keep you adapted to changes in weather or activity as the body's water demands change.

How to drink water?

Sounds funny but, truly like walking, most people do not know how to do it - effectually. One cannot assimilate enough water sipping off a 1 inch diameter mouth of a water bottle that acts as a restrictor. Have a good 16 oz quaffing

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/quaffing , not queefing ,

glass, stein, cup or mug and let the water flow down with barely a swallow. That's how to assimilate, water.

What kind of water?

I hate mineral water. Minerals = Kidney Stones. Others may disagree. Moving on, I worry about Fluoride. Water is the natural nutritional source of fluoride. Fluoride is handy to keep the teeth and bones strong and hard as they are not static stones but, always reforming and replacing their component minerals. Municipal water or well water most often has near "fluoridated" levels, in the west. But, all those bottles of water people suck down are fluoride free.

I suspect after decades of near religious avoidance of fluoride, we are going to witness more osteoporosis as the yuppies age.

I drink Sparkletts, aka Alhambra Fluoridated Water because Arrowhead tastes salty to me and tap taste like a swimming pool.

Coffee, Tea, Soda, Juice, do not count as water, they cost water in their processing.

Water = Water.

Fluoride Friendly Moi

Micturate Clear, My Friends

[gareth19 (imported)]

Before some genius decided to medicate us all involuntarily by putting the stuff in our drinking water, there were only two uses for sodium fluoride: as an etching agent for glass and as rat poison.

Good Lord no! Glass is etched by hydrogen fluoride, a gas which when dissolved in water produces the highly toxic hydrofluoric acid; sodium fluoride is a greyish powder that is slightly soluble in water.

However, sodium fluoride is a major by-product of the aluminum refining industry.

Again, no! Cryolite is sodium aluminum fluoride, an altogether different compound, actually a clear, icy looking mineral, and rather than being a by-product of the Hall Processs, it is simply the electrolyte. It is melted and the bauxite (aluminum oxide) dissolves in the cryolite making it possible to run an electric current through it. The electricity separates the aluminum and the oxygen of the aluminum oxide; the by-product of this electrolysis is oxygen; the sodium aluminum fluoride is unaffected by the chemical reaction and just lies there waiting for the technician to dump more aluminum oxide into it and generate more aluminum and oxygen.

Actually, it destroys the enamel.

You really don't know what you're talking about. Tooth enamel is basically biologically modified calcium fluoride. The "destruction" that you are talking about is a process called mottling in which the enamel is unevenly deposited. It was noticed that in communities with unusually high natural concentrations of fluoride ion (sodium fluoride is the choice for fluoridation simply because its slight solubility allows for the presence of slight concentrations of the fluoride ion upon which the body can manufacture its calcium fluoride; high concentrations of fluoride are toxic, but then so are high concentrations of chlorine, but without chlorine there is no stomach acid and so no nutrition resulting in the condition known as pernicious anemia; similarly, high concentrations of iodide ion are also toxic, but without some iodide, your thyroid will not work properly) develop irregular deposition of enamel resulting in yellowish stains in the tooth enamel. Though cosmetically unattractive, the mottled teeth were actually quite sound because calcium fluoride is hard and resistant to acid decomposition (tooth decay). Oh and your dentist was lying to you or just plain stupid. Fluoridation provides a sufficiently low regular concentration of fluoride ion for the body to produce a steady supply of tooth enamel which has been proven in many double blind studies to reduce the incidence of tooth decay, and in consequence, the number of filled cavities has decreased, so why are dentists still in business? Because there are other issues in dental health besides tooth decay. As you grow older, bacteria collects under the gums and your irritated gums will recede causing all those strong, decay resistant teeth to loosen in their sockets. Nothing fluoridation can do to stop that process. Despite fluoridation, daily wear from chewing slowing reduces the thickness of the tooth enamel. It is still resistant to tooth decay and you see fewer and fewer cavities to be filled, but the thin enamel allows the orangy-yellow dentine underneath the enamel to show through resulting in dark, yellowish teeth. Now dentists are selling people on "tooth whitening" treatments that again have nothing to do with cavities in enamel but are designed to bleach out the stains from smoking and coffee and tea that collect in the microscopic pores and crevices of the enamel layers. There are enough other processes of dental mechanics to keep dentists going, but since fluoridation was introduced into community drinking supplies, the incidence of dental caries has declined until the penchant for filtered water took over. Your Britta charcoal filter that takes away the chlorine in the water will also eliminate fluorine in the water supply and tooth decay once again began to rise resulting in a new wave of in dentist fluoride treatments and a wave of fluoridated tooth pastes; it is now hard to find a tooth paste that doesn't have some fluoridation ingredient in it. Look at the labels sometime.

[Paolo]

When I was a kid, back in the early 70's, we lived in a rural area. No fluoride in the water. Not that many dental issues either, because we got our butts blistered if we didn't brush our teeth!

There weren't any kidney or urination issues either, because we either drank well water or Kool-Aid. Again, no teeth issues from the sugar because we brushed our teeth and we were active all day, thus no obesity either.

The main ingredient? Water. No chlorine, fluoride, softener salts, only the trace minerals from it coming up out of the ground.

[devi (imported)]

Generally I drink lots of tap water and swish it in my mouth. I'll also do that with drinks of alcohol. Usually we don't need to mix alcohol or anything else in the tap water here and let it set in order to kill off germs so I don't. I am over fifty years old and have never had a cavity (although I did split my tooth stripping some speaker wire). I do not normally brush my teeth but I do regularly use toothpicks or pine twigs every day, and chew piñon sap occasionally. I cannot stand having stuff on my teeth or gums and they have to feel smooth as I run my tounge over them. But I do think that the reason I've never had any cavities is mostly due to the tap water that I drink.

[gareth19 (imported)]

When I was a kid, back in the early 70's, we lived in a rural area. No fluoride in the water. Not that many dental issues either, because we got our butts blistered if we didn't brush our teeth! ... Main ingredient? Water. No chlorine, fluoride, softener salts, only the trace minerals from it coming up out of the ground.

And was there any feldspar or apatite or other such mineral in the neighborhood? Fluorine is the 13th most common element in crustal rocks, so your well water probably had some in it. It was by examining the different amounts of fluorine in the various bones of Piltdown Man that it was determined that the discovery was a fake, because if the bones had been from one source fossilized together, they would have absorbed the same amount of fluorine from the ground water. The whole idea of artificial fluoridation came from the observation that kids exposed to irregular amounts of fluoride (because of seasonal differences in the water supply had mottled but healthy teeth but those with a low, regular amount of fluorine had unmottled teeth and fewer cavities, so fluoridation was intended to give everyone that natural advantage. It's not at all comparable to, say, a certain inept California governor with a gap in his teeth from an unnatural exposure to artificial steroids.

[punkypink (imported)]

I'm a coke addict. No, not the white powdery kind. ;D