We’ve been talking about toxins. Heavy metals, chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, and microplastics, and how tiny daily exposures to each of these bioaccumulate in your body to cause symptoms and diseases. I want you to be aware of these things so you can change your lifestyle and prevent illness. But being paranoid and freaked out over these things can also affect your health!! SO what is the balance that needs to be struck in order to protect your
health but not go crazy?
When I coach my clients it’s very important that we take a good look at what toxins may be coming into their bodies each day. I encourage them to look at their food, water, body care products, cookware and cleaning products to start with. But even just these can be overwhelming! Especially when you are sick with Lyme disease or an autoimmune disease, the LAST thing you need is a ton of stress over making changes to your lifestyle. So let’s try to make this as simple and stress free as possible!
The first thing that you should start with is your water. Water is critical to good health. It hydrates your cells and tissues. They just can’t do their job well if they are dehydrated. No amount of healing effort will pay off without the right amount of water in your cells. Your drinking water is also the place where you are most at risk for taking in chemicals, heavy metals and microplastics every time you drink it.
Your body needs half of your weight in ounces of water each day in order to be minimally hydrated. That means if you weight 150 pounds you will need 75 ounces of water each day. You want those 75 ounces to get the job done! People come in pretty regularly and tell me that they are drinking a lot of water each day but still struggling with some health issue or multiple health issues. So we have the whole conversation about what kind of water they are drinking. If its
filtered by a substandard system then toxins like microplastics, Glyphosate, 2,4,D and lead could still be coming into their body each day. When I do testing on people these things come up all the time.
So what is the best water filter? I ask People to buy the Berkey. It is simply the best water filter out there. It is the only one I know of that filters out not just chlorine and other toxins but all heavy metals and fluoride. Fluoride is very harmful to your thyroid so if you have thyroid illness in your family this is especially important for you. I don’t sell the Berkey or make any money from them – I recommend them because for our area it is simply the best option. It will be an
outlay of $250 – $300 but once you buy it – you have it forever. The filters last a very long time. The black main filters can last 4 years depending on how much water they are filtering each
day. The white fluoride filters last 9 months to a year. But once the initial purchase is made, the water is only costing you pennies each day. This is SO much more economical than buying a reverse osmosis water filter- by the way I do NOT recommend RO water- it is very acidifying to\ your body and that makes healing so much harder. There is a lot of science behind this and trust me I was heartbroken when I learned this because I had just paid $500 to install a reverse
osmosis water filter. Its all good now. I use that to wash my veggies and to cook with. But for drinking water I use my Berkey!
Ideally we want our water to be straight from a spring. There is a lot of science for why we want pure spring water, In fact if you have access to a pure water stream then take your jugs and go there to get your water, or have it delivered from there. But, most of us don’t have a natural spring down the road, so the Berkey is the next best option. The Berkey is also more affordable than bottled water and I highly discourage bottled water- even the expensive so called healthiest ones!! The microplastics that have been found in bottled water is simply not acceptable when trying to heal your body. A Study done on bottled water recently found that 93% of bottled waters contained micro-plastics in them. The science on microplastics is still emerging but even common sense tells us that artificial substances like microscopic levels of plastic in our bodies cannot be helping anything. Berkey is also more affordable in the end than the cheaper pitcher filters. When you think of how often you have to replace BRITA or PUR water filter cartridges to make sure they’re
filtering anything ( and they don’t even compare to what Berkey filters) you’re really not saving any money in the long run. The Zero water filter pitchers need to be changed every 2 weeks or else toxic chemicals will run out of the filter you have into your water! Not a good idea. Now if you just cannot come up with the $300 until Christmas time or until Black Friday sales come out, then go ahead and use your fridge filter or pitcher filter until that time that you can
get your Berkey. I don’t sell Berkey or have any financial connections to that company. I just care about your health!! Your Water is absolutely the most vital part of your daily health plan. So make this a first priority.
The next priority that you may not be able to get to for a few months after you buy your Berkey, is Organic food. Now this can be stressful as well. My generation grew up being told there is truly no benefit from organic food over conventional and who would even dream of
paying a dollar more on the pound for their produce, meat or dairy? This can be a huge hurdle for people to cross. But trust me I work with single Moms who work part time, college aged adults and disabled people who live on very little. Organic food to them is a real hardship but they all find a way!! They know that it just is not worth it to save the money by purchasing conventional produce meat and dairy, but then to risk their health from all the many pesticides
and herbicides, hormones and antibiotics that those items bring into their bodies. They find the clearance racks at Jungle Jims and Krogers, they find the organics at Aldi, they buy from ministries who do carry organic food, and from online distributors. They even grow their own organic food at home and learn to ferment the veggies in probiotic jars for winter. Our ancestors all did it. It’s not impossible. It may feel inconvenient and out of the norm at first but the norm is leading to illness. We want to break free from the norm. When there is a will there is a way! Do your homework and look for others in your community who are teaching and leading sustainable local farming practices. You can also use the Clean 15 and Dirty Dozen shopping list from Environmental Working Group. Go to EWG.org and look this list up. They publish their lab test data for free in order to help people save money. Some produce won’t test for all that many toxins and others test for a LOT and for very dangerous toxins. Strawberries almost always top the list and they are number one in 2019 as well. Spinach, kale and apples were next, also shown to have very high levels of nasties that you don’t want to take into your body. Melons, avacados and asparagus are far more acceptable to buy conventional. Check out the EWG.org dirty dozen and clean 15 list and this will guide your purchases and save you some money.
It may take you months to get your Berkey and then to start changing over your food from processed and conventional to organic, non GMO, unprocessed food. But these two things
alone can take you a long way in the recovery of your health and the prevention of autoimmune illness in your loved ones.
Next week we will explore changing over body care products, cleaning products, pots and pans and storage containers. These things you will address AFTER you have put the clean water and
cleaner food into place. Again, please don’t hear me saying that if you don’t get everything perfect right away that you will not be helping yourself. Every baby step forward will help. In fact, going at this slowly and at a pace your budget and your partner / family can handle will ensure that these changes are lasting. I don’t want you to feel stressed over this. One baby step at a time leads to better health for all.