Get The Most Out of Your Drinking Water

There is a lot of confusion out there regarding the best drinking water. The basic waters available are tap water, spring water, purified water, distilled water, alkaline (bubbly or carbonated) water, and water with increased oxygen.

Tap water is the least pure of all drinking water. It’s up to you to decide if you want to put impure water into your body. Spring water is usually weakly purified, but may have the added benefit of minerals. When you drink any water, the water will generally carry minerals, vitamins, and other nutrients out from your body along with waste. Spring water contains many of the minerals you lose when you drink water, so it is a good idea to drink spring water for its ability to replace lost minerals. These minerals may or may not be worth the impurities, but personally, I prefer to take a high quality multivitamin to replace any minerals I lose daily from drinking non-mineral water.

Purified water has many toxic substances removed via a filtering system. This is much healthier water with fewer impurities. Distilled water is water in a chamber that is heated to steam, which is then moved into an adjacent chamber where it is condensed and turned back into water. This distillation process leaves the water almost totally pure. This is the most pure of waters and almost any toxic substances are left behind in the first chamber when the water is turned into steam and rises into the final chamber. The main argument people make about distilled water is that you lose a lot of minerals when you drink it. Once again, I suggest a mineral supplement to replace those lost minerals, rather than drinking less pure water that contains minerals, such as spring water.

Alkaline water, such as Perrier, club soda, and other waters that are advertised as high alkaline, may or may not be filtered. The common denominator between these beverages is the presence of carbonation. Usually the process that makes the water alkaline also kills germs, although it would still need purification from toxic chemicals and the like. Regrettably, there is a large drawback in that alkaline water can interfere with digestion. Your digestion requires stomach acid and the alkaline quality of the water can interfere with stomach acid, thereby preventing it from properly breaking down food. People who drink alkaline waters and even bicarbonate sodas right before meals or during meals are interfering with their digestion. An easy rule to remember (which I’ve mentioned in a prior post), is to always drink these beverages at least 20 minutes after meals in order to allow your stomach acid time to work on your food. Do not drink them before or during meals if you care about proper digestion.

You may remember a previous post wherein I discussed Anemia, a disease which results when a person is too alkaline. It is important that a person know if they are too alkaline before drinking alkaline drinks. If your body’s pH is alkaline, stay away from carbonated beverages and alkaline water. Refer to my post on acid/alkaline balance to learn how to test your alkaline level at home.

My daughter’s boyfriend, who drinks Perrier constantly throughout the day, recently began complaining about fatigue. I gave him a pH strip (discussed in my acid/alkaline balance post) and we were surprised to discover that his pH was close to 7.5, almost anemic in measurement. I suggested that his over consumption of Perrier may be influencing his body to the degree that it could be part of the reason for his fatigue.

A recent trend in the bottled water industry is the marketing of water that is said to possess higher oxygen content than competitors. The jury is still out on this one. I don’t drink these waters because extra oxygen most likely means more free radicals. We discussed in another post that there is almost universal consensus over the past several decades that free radical damage is the main reason for disease, degeneration, and aging. I am cautious about drinking water that may increase my free radical production.

Everyone: Realize that the type of water you drink can influence your health a great deal. You drink water everyday. Take extra care to choose wisely, as this is an important area of healthy living.

Remember that any drinking water carries some minerals out of your body through urine, regardless of its mineral content or method of filtration. All waters being equal in this regard, I find it most beneficial to drink distilled water for its purity and lack of toxicity, and take supplements to replace the minerals I lose from regular water drinking.

The Diabetic Formula

In 1999, I started a company that focused on fighting diabetes using a blend of supplements and herbs to control blood sugar. Since then, many other products have appeared and advertised their help for diabetic blood sugar control.

Unfortunately, flak from doctors made it difficult for me to succeed. I developed a formula called DK50, which caused improvements in the condition of many diabetes sufferers, only to have their doctors command them to stop the treatment. At the time, supplements meant to help diabetics were not main stream and many doctors stood firmly against something they considered unscientific, even if it helped their patients. Though supplements are widely available today to help diabetics, my ideas were a bit too far ahead of their time and after 4 years of struggle, my partner and I were forced to give it up.

I was saddened because I knew I had a formula that addressed the one issue that all such formulas to date do not address, which is the hepatic sugar released by the liver. The alternative formulas today simply attempt to balance the blood sugar that goes up when diabetics eat too many carbohydrates. This works well enough, but when the liver starts adding sugar to the bloodstream this can send blood sugar levels soaring, even with the best of care.

Additionally, in the book Harrison’s “Principles of Internal Medicine,” a medical book used in med school (a gift from a friend), I discovered a section on diabetes that presented a possible cure for diabetic neuropathy! I was amazed that this medical book had a simple possible cure, yet I had never seen it anywhere, leaving amputation as the basic treatment for neuropathy once it had progressed too far. Why are the doctors not using their own cure for neuropathy listed in their own textbooks, which might lead to the avoidance of amputation?

I added this supplement from the medical textbook to my protocol, as well as another supplement that addressed nerve conditions of the eyes that diabetics are susceptible to and a supplement for the shooting nerve pains that diabetics get in their legs. Considering the new discoveries up to now, I would also add another supplement to help combat heart disease in diabetics if I were to start DK50 again.

I have decided to use this blog to disseminate the DK50 formula to the public. I hope and pray that this will benefit diabetics. I know first hand many of the horrors of diabetes and the DK50 formula was meant to address them. I couldn’t make it a successful endeavor in 1999, but maybe in the year 2009 the Internet can get it out to the public. To date I have not seen any formulas that address the stress release of blood sugar from the liver nor the side effects of diabetes. Through this blog I hope to do both.

A Parkinson's Miracle

My older brother is 65 years old. 5 years ago he was diagnosed with stage 1 Parkinson’s and Parkinson’s Dementia. He was suffering from shaking in his left arm and tremors in his right. He walked with a shuffle. He also had slight slurring of speech and his face had begun to take on characteristics common to those with Parkinson’s; a big deal to someone who made a living as a salesperson.

His brain was X-Rayed and showed genetic defects that could explain Parkinson’s disease. I asked my brother if he wanted me to devise a supplement protocol to help combat his Parkinson’s, and he happily agreed.

Shortly after we began his protocol for Parkinson’s, he started to stabilize. His slur disappeared. He began to take normal steps and his shuffle abated. His face returned to normal. The shakes in his left arm drastically diminished, to the point where they only occurred in the evening, if at all. His right arm still retains a slight tremor. Keep in mind that this is nearly 5 years from the date of his diagnosis of stage 1 Parkinson’s (with all signs of deteriorating to stage 2).
In mid 2008, I added a high ORAC juice supplement to his protocol, which he would take in 2-4 ounce servings morning and night. This supplement seemed to buffer him daily. It allowed him to deal with more stress before finding his shakes and tremors acting up. He commented that it helped him feel better and he seems almost dependent on his ORAC drink these days.

The final stage in this 5 year period was the recent introduction of a new supplement to his protocol that research shows can raise Glutathione levels. I will discuss the importance of Glutathione further in a later post, but the point is that research has shown that injection of Glutathione has made rapid and enormous improvement in Parkinson’s. To date, there haven’t been any effective super Glutathione supplements, because oral supplements have not been able to get inside cells effectively.

He started this new supplement and in less than four weeks reported that his shakes and tremors were 75% improved! Now for the first time in 5 years, he is showing actual improvement, rather than simply staying stable! In addition, his dementia has not progressed in 5 years. As long as he takes notes to aid his short term memory, his dementia does not handicap him in any way. I will be blogging on all the supplements that my older brother has been taking the past 5 years and the ideas behind them, as well as at least one very effective drug that is considered low toxic.

Keep checking Restore Unity Blog if you’re interested in learning more about how to combat Parkinson’s, because more articles will be appearing soon!

Do you know how to balance your Acid / Alkaline levels?

I Googled the heading Acid/Alkaline balance. 3,730,000 search listings appeared! There are literally tens of thousands of books written on the subject. Nowadays everyone talks about alkalizing their bodies, having too much acid in their systems and how cancer can not live in an alkaline environment, as well as tons of other claims about acid being bad and alkalizing your system being good.

However, how many of you really know whether you need to be more acid or alkaline? For example, the disease Anemia is the result of an alkaline pH balance of 7.5 or higher. Anemia arises from a lack of hydrogen in your body (hydrogen is acid). Red blood cells require hydrogen, and an alkaline pH balance is an indication that you may lack enough hydrogen in your body to produce adequate numbers of red blood cells. In this case, it would be beneficial to add more acid to your body to balance out your alkaline state. Adding more vinegar to your diet is a great way to add acid to an alkaline body. On the other hand, a person suffering from cancer would do best to reduce the acid in their body, as cancer cells thrive in an acidic environment.

The difficulty in balancing your pH is in knowing where to start. Most of us have no idea what our body’s pH balance is at any given time. A blood test is insufficient in that it records one moment in time, and given the relative infrequency of such tests and the constantly shifting nature of our body’s pH levels, it becomes necessary that we take additional steps to monitor our body’s health.

The easiest way to take control of your pH balance is to regularly test your pH using litmus paper. Litmus paper, also known as a pH strip, changes color to illustrate the pH level of any liquid it absorbs. Your urine’s pH is a measure of your muscle and blood acids, in roughly equal amounts. Upon exposure to the urine, the strip will change color to indicate a pH level ranging from 4.5 to 8.3 (the exact color of each level will depend on the particular brand of test you use).

pH Levels

4.5 - 5.9 Acid

6.0 – 6.9 Phosphorous Balance

7.0 – 7.4 Neutral

7.5 and beyond Alkaline

Due to the concentration of muscle acid (which is more acidic than blood acid), urine tends to report as slightly more acid than your actual level, therefore an optimal pH reading via litmus test would be somewhere around 6.8 – 7.0. A pH balance below 5.8 can lead to an environment that will break down the calcium in your system. Calcium is needed for many of your bodily functions, including the beating of your heart. When your body is lacking calcium it will begin to take what it needs from your bones, often leading to osteoporosis! While pH over 7.5 denotes a person who has too little acid, a pH balance of 6.0-6.9 indicates weak acid. It is phosphorous which tends to keep this level in check

Everyone: Test yourself several times a day (once you’ve got a feel for it, several times a week) and take note of the things that affect your pH! It’s important that you don’t let propaganda fool you into thinking that you are too acid. By measuring your own pH, you take control and can determine the right steps to keep your body in balance.

You will find it is quite a challenge to make long term changes to your pH. Exercise, diet, stress and other environmental factors are constantly influencing your body’s pH level and make it hard to make large changes successfully. Personally, I have always been skewed towards the acid side of the fence, but by eating a lot of green vegetables (for the phosphorous content), and drinking a solution of baking soda and water, I managed to get my pH close to 6.2. A ¼ teaspoon of baking soda mixed with water will almost instantly neutralize the pH of your body. This trick is most useful about 20 minutes after a meal. The baking soda solution neutralizes the acid produced for digestion; yet by waiting 20 minutes, you still allow the acid enough time to work on your food. In time, I discovered another useful weapon in the struggle for good pH balance: brown rice. Brown rice has a pH value near 7.0, which you will remember is the perfect pH for your body. Also I have a lot of iron in my blood (I discovered this because I take frequent blood tests to monitor myself). I started donating blood, to reduce my iron levels. The combination of donating blood (reducing my hydrogen levels) and eating brown rice has left me with near perfect pH balance of 6.9 almost 24 hours around the clock. My road to get perfect pH balance has been a long and experimental journey of many years. Through the use of the litmus paper, I have been able to guide my pH to its present stability.

If you would like an inexpensive blood test, visit the Life Extension Foundation at www.lef.com.

Background & Mission Statement

Most cutting edge health and medical technologies take years and sometimes decades to reach the public. With this blog, I hope to do more than just provide my readers with cutting edge, scientifically viable health knowledge (which I will do of course); with each article, I will provide my readers with specific tools they can use to change their lives that day. I have studied the health fields since 1983 under the tutelage of DR. Robert Gibson, a medical M.D. with 65 years of experience who became diabetic in his 50s yet managed to extend his age to 108 and lived to talk about it.

A few fields which I have studied over the past 25 years include:

Medicine

Environmental

Anti-Aging

Sports

Hormonal

Orthomolecular

Supplements and Nutrients

Diabetes & Parkinson’s

With my unique mentor and many fields of study, I know that my readers will come to appreciate the new viewpoint regarding health presented here at Restore Unity. It is my hope that I can clarify and debunk some of the unscientific claims being presented as facts in the health community, and I encourage my readers to comment on my articles and submit any information that can enrich the community, whether to agree or oppose.

Better than Antioxidants?

Would you rather repair the damage that causes aging, or prevent it from ever happening? According to scientists from the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, Oxygen Radical Absorption Capacity (ORAC) could be the REAL key to longer living.

ORAC is a measure of the antioxidant activity against the peroxyl radical, which is one of the most common reactive oxygen species (ROS) that cause damage to cell membranes. The standard was developed in a collaborated effort by the National Institute on Aging and the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging. The higher an item's ORAC, the better it is at combating the free radicals present in our environment.

Free radicals damage the body and there is almost a universal consensus over the past several decades that the main cause of damage and aging to our bodies is due to free radicals. Stable molecules contain electrons in pairs. When the molecule loses an electron, this molecule becomes a free radical. These unbalanced molecules bounce around and create damage. The body repairs the daily damage that happens to it using antioxidants. Unfortunately due to the constant barrage of free radicals, antioxidants are stuck playing catch up in a losing effort.

ORAC units help keep the body healthy in a different way. ORAC units lend electrons, preventing unbalanced molecules from creating havoc to the body. Many times ORAC units help stop damage to the body before it begins! This is a much more effective way to keep a person healthy, than to fix him after the fact (via antioxidant repair after the damage has occurred). This reduces the total number of molecules needed to be repaired, thereby increasing the effectiveness of antioxidants if taken in tandem.

The average human takes in about 1600 ORAC units. The scientists of Tufts University recommend that we increase our average intake to somewhere between 3000-5000 units per day. As it turns out, many antioxidant rich foods (blueberries, red wine, tomato paste) contain a high quantity of ORAC units, as well as black tea and many other fruit and vegetables.

Unfortunately, it would be very difficult to consume the optimum amount of ORAC units in a day without a major change in diet. A person would have to eat at least ten servings of high ORAC fruit and vegetables per day just to reach the minimum daily standard. When you combine that with the other demands of healthy eating habits, it’s obvious that a new focus is on the horizon for the health minded individual.

It’s essential that we make a conscious plan to add those extra ORAC units to our daily intake:

Women: Go out there and add an additional 1500 ORAC units per day!

Men: I want you to add around 3000!

Below you’ll find a link to a listing of ORAC values of many edible items. All values are listed in relation to 100 grams of the substance. If you’d like to know the value per gram simply divide the ORAC value by 100.

ORAC VALUE DATABASE

Personally, I usually have at least one cup of black tea daily for about 1000 ORAC units. Whenever possible, I eat Italian food for the tomato paste and supplement an unusually high amount of vitamin C (vitamin C supplements are high in ORAC value) . I also have two highly concentrated ORAC fruit drinks of between 2 to 4 ounces to supplement my ORAC intake. It’s up to you to make the effort and commit to hitting your ORAC quota each day, if you are truly serious about combating the effects of aging.