Fluoride is terrible

Don’t believe all of the government bullshit. Here are some of the dangers and extremely unhealthy qualities of fluoride via

  1. Fluoridation is a violation of the individual’s right to informed consent to medication.
  2. Fluoride is not an essential nutrient. No biological process in animals or humans has been shown to depend on it. On the contrary, it is known that fluoride can interfere with many important biological processes and vital cellular constituents, such as enzymes and G-proteins. This makes fluoride potentially toxic even at low doses.
  3. Children in fluoridated countries are greatly over-exposed to fluoride. When fluoridation began in 1940s, 10% of children were expected to develop dental fluorosis (damage to the enamel involving discoloration and/or mottling) in its very mild form. Today, the prevalence in fluoridated countries is much higher—41% of all American children aged 12-15 are now impacted with some form of dental fluorosis (CDC, 2010), with over 10% in categories (mild, moderate and severe) that may need expensive treatment.
  4. The chemicals used to fluoridate water supplies are largely hazardous by-products of the fertilizer industry. These chemicals cannot be disposed of into the sea by international law, and have never been required to undergo randomized clinical trials for safety or effectiveness by any regulatory agency in the world. The U.S. FDA classifies fluoride as an “unapproved drug.”
  5. There is mounting evidence that swallowing fluoride causes harm. Fluoride has been found to damage soft tissues (brain, kidneys, and endocrine system), as well as teeth (dental fluorosis) and bones (skeletal fluorosis). There are now 24 studies that show a relationship between fairly modest exposure to fluoride and reduced IQ in children. Two of these studies suggest that the threshold for damage may be reached at fluoride levels similar to those used in water fluoridation.
  6. Swallowing fluoride provides little or no benefit to the teeth. Even promoters of fluoridation agree that fluoride works topically (on the outer surface of the teeth), and not via some internal biological mechanism (CDC, 1999). A recent U.S. study found no relationship between the amount of fluoride a child ingested and level of tooth decay (Warren et al., 2009). Topical treatment in the form of fluoridated toothpaste is universally available, so it is a mistake to swallow fluoride and expose all the tissues of the body to its harmful effects.
  7. Human breast milk is very low in fluoride. Breast milk averages only 0.007 ppm F (NRC, 2006). Even in areas with high fluoride levels, nursing children receive only a small fraction of the mother’s fluoride intake, ensuring that the sensitive brains and bodies of breast-fed infants are protected from the developmental effects of this toxin. In contrast, a bottle-fed baby in a fluoridated area (0.7-1.2 ppm F) gets up to 200 times more fluoride than a breast-fed baby, resulting in an increased risk of dental fluorosis and other adverse effects.
  8. Once fluoride is added to water, there is no way to control who gets the drug or how much is ingested. No medical follow-up or monitoring of fluoride levels in citizens’ urine or bones is being carried-out by health agencies and so no record is being kept of adverse effects or daily or accumulated exposures.
  9. Certain subgroups are particularly affected by fluoridation. People vary considerably in their sensitivity to any toxic substance, including fluoride. Infants, the elderly, diabetics, those with poor nutrition (e.g. low calcium and low iodine), and those with kidney disease are especially vulnerable to specific adverse effects of fluoride. Black and Mexican-Americans have a higher prevalence of the more severe forms of dental fluorosis (see Table 23, CDC, 2005).
  10. Fluoridation discriminates against those with low incomes. People on low incomes are least able to afford avoidance measures (reverse osmosis or bottled water), or treatment of dental fluorosis (see Point 3) and other fluoride-related ailments (see Point 5).

More information can be found here, herehere, here, here, and is your water fluoridated?

Some tips to avoid fluoridated water

  • Buy yourself an ion exchange filter or a reverse osmosis filter. There’s a good and bad with both, but I feel that ion exchange filters are more versatile as they provide an opportunity to shift the water’s pH for various living purposes, are more reliable to filter, and are less [water] wasteful in comparison. IEF’s can be somewhat costly, but they’re worth the investment because they remove a great deal of pathogens, bacteria, heavy metals (fluoride), and chemicals, which contaminate many public water systems. Reverse Osmosis filters completely strip the water of everything it yields, which is good because you’re not getting the crap, but bad because it screws with the water’s molecular structure and also strips any nutrient-value it once yielded. I recommend RO’s as a decent house-filtering system but not-so-much for drinking water. Either way, do your research and always add a pinch high-quality salt to any water post-filter to provide yourself with trace minerals and the key factors in hydration.
  • Avoid tap water all together, purchase glass-bottled water or find yourself a filtered water dispenser to fill by-the-gallon jugs such as the one’s provided at whole foods.
  • Purchase non-fluoride-and-non-crap toothpaste.
  • Keep in mind that dining, eating, or drinking out may expose you to non-filtered fluoridated water: restaurant water, coffee, tea, lemonade, sodas, soups, oatmeal, etc.

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How to balance life’s priorities

Life can get crazy. It happens when we have to balance work, school, family, relationships, social events, exercise, diet, hydration, sleep, me time, and the list goes on. The best approach to prioritizing is to make your priorities… a priority.

  • Below you will find a wheel with 15 spokes and 5 circles
  • Each end of a spoke represents your priorities in life
  • Each wheel represents the attention that you provide each priority on a daily basis (some may be weekly or monthly)
  • Write a priority above each spoke
  • Rate the priority by the attention it receives with a dot at the intersection point of a specific spoke and affiliated circle
  • Inner Circle = Least attention, Outer Circle = Most attention
  • Draw a line to connect each dot – does it make a [somewhat] rounded circle?
  • A wheel cannot turn fluidly unless all of its spokes are well-taken care of, straight, and balanced
  • This will help put your current life into perspective
  • This will help you become aware of what needs more attention than others

The above diagram is a generalized example. Notice how all of the spokes are not balanced and the wheel cannot turn fluidly? Now you try…

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Hydration and its many faces

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I’ve written a previous blog on water intake and my recommendations via Paul Chek’s book How To Eat, Move, and Be Healthy. I’m here today to dispute those recommendations based off of some new perspectives

“Drink half of your body weight in ounces each day”

Holy crap that’s a lot of water! I’ve done it… 100 ounces? Sure, fill me up! Hell, there was a period where I was drinking a gallon of water a day. I peed every two hours, but at least I had clear pee and I was hydrated! Actually, I was overhydrated and, essentially, dehydrated. Make sense? Abs-probably not…

For those of you who’ve had experiences with “adult beverages” in excess – what color is your pee? CLEAR. Alcohol is a diuretic, meaning it dehydrates the body! And the clear pee is actually a sign of dehydration. Wild, huh?

Our cells only have so much room for water. Once they fill up they’re done, nothing else can come in until they have more room. When we continue to drink more water because of the Clear Pee Perspective, the CPP (I just made that up and am mentally copywriting it), there’s no where for it to go, so it just goes right through the body. There’s another piece to this puzzle, though… excess liquids can actually strip the cells of essential nutrients (minerals, to be specific). So not only does excess water intake waste your time, but it also wastes your nutrients. This can lead to many cause and effects including constipation, dry skin, cramps, spasms, vitamin/mineral deficiencies, etc.

You want me to add what to my water?

Water is essential to doo doo-ing and cleansing the body, but so are the trace minerals that should come naturally with water – sodium, potassium, magnesium, iodine, choline, iron, yadda, yadda, yaddaIdeally, water is collected in the clouds, falls to the ground, is “filtered” by the earth’s crust and picks up these essential trace minerals along the way before it deposits in a spring. Today, water is stripped, processed, packaged, and filled with chemicals that hinder our health. This can be avoided by filtering water (Reverse Osmosis being the best method), but I recommend that you add back the natural minerals to the water (and your food) with Morton’s Canning & Pickling Salt. I would not recommend drinking water without its essential trace minerals – either add them or purchase brands like Evian, Fiji, or a good-sourced Sparkling Water.

You can hydrate yourself through food, too!

All natural, “whole foods” contain some amount of water. Fruits and veggies yield the highest water content, and the major bonus is their natural trace minerals that come along for the ride! It’s easy to tell which fruits are more hydrating than others: melons, citrus, and seed fruits. As for veggies, I would recommend a potato-a-dayto. And we can’t forget animal sources such as unprocessed dairy, eggs, and meat!

Ok, so we know that too much water and alcohol can dehydrate the body, but what else can do that?

To name a few: Coffee, Tea, Energy Drinks, Processed foods such as white bread, white salt, and white sugar, and Highly Pasteurized drinks such as Juice and Milk.

Soooooo, how much water should I drink?

I don’t know. Really. The answer lies within your daily needs, your daily habits, and your perspective. I have been hydrating myself with about 1-2 liters of liquid a day, depending on my needs. I would recommend to listen to your body (not your ego) – it always has the answers.

The idea is to keep this all in perspective with your daily living habits. Take what you want from this and use it how you see fit. There isn’t a one size fits all answer to anything – it’s all about how you can use various perspectives to develop an answer for yourself… What will make you happy now AND at the end of the day.

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Supplement Question

Is there a multivitamin you would recommend for a woman in their early 20s? I know some brands are found to not have the amount of vitamins that they claim/do not release the chemicals in the right way. How do I avoid this?

Supplements are a touchy subject for me. I cannot tell you what you should or should not take because I don’t know what your body needs. My questions to you are… 

- Why do you think you need a multivitamin?

- Do you know what your body needs?

- What does your diet consist of?

- Are you eating enough fats and hydrating with clean water so your body can actually absorb the vitamins you’d hypothetically be taking on a daily basis?

For Vitamins to be useful they need the proper environment to actually be digested and assimilated. There are Fat-Soluble Vitamins and there are Water-Soluble Vitamins. For instance, you can pop all of the Vitamin D you want, but if you’re not eating a healthy majority of Saturated and Monounsaturated Fats then you’re wasting your money and cellular energy. The same can be said with Vitamin C – while you may be drinking 1/2 of your bodyweight in ounces each day of pure, clean water… what if you’re downing 2 cups of coffee and eating refined carbohydrates such as bread/pasta every day? Both of which actually dehydrate the body.

My point is to focus on an organically-abundant diet that’s full of nutrient-dense foods and, also, a stress-free lifestyle before you go spending copious amounts of money on supplements that may not actually “work.” Organics can yield up to 60% MORE nutritional value than commercially grown/raised foods. Plus, you eliminate any of those lovely toxins: Pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, growth hormones, antibiotics, and genetically modified organisms. Yes, I understand that it’s physically impossible to get all of your “daily recommended” vitamins from diet alone but that’s not a reason to focus less on whole, organic foods and more on life-fuel in pill-form.

I agree with you that the majority of supplements are not true to their marketing campaigns and labels as they often contains lead, aluminum, soy, corn (maltodextrin, dextrose), rice, and non-pharmaceutical grade vitamins. Don’t just buy a pack of Emer Gen C and think all will be well because chances are it’s 1/3 Cancer, 1/3 Fillers, and 1/3 Vitamin C from China. Now to somewhat answer your question, here are some of the companies that I back…

Designs For Health - 
http://www.designsforhealth.com/

Thorne Research - 
http://www.thorne.com/

Pure Encapsulations - 
http://www.pureencapsulations.com

Gaia Herbs - 
http://www.gaiaherbs.com/

Jarrow Formulas - 
http://www.jarrow.com

NutraBio - 
http://www.nutrabio.com/

And you can find these supplements for sale at…

Pure Forumlas - 
http://www.pureformulas.com/

iHerb - 
http://www.iherb.com

Rockwell Nutrition - 
http://www.rockwellnutrition.com

Hope this lands well. If you’d like to discuss yourself in detail and what you may or may not need, e-mail me at jdperryhealth@gmail.com

Liver Love

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The liver is the only organ that has the capacity to rebuild itself ONLY when the environment is suitable. Limiting the amount of toxic load on the body will promote a good environment for the liver to work properly and efficiently. This isn’t rocket science: Eating crap foods, drinking alcohol, drinking unfiltered water, and using chemical-laced substances (cosmetics, cleaners, plastics, etc.), to name a few, are not good for the liver. 

Go organic, go green, go natural, go holistic, go straight-edge, go whatever you want to call the process of creating a healthier environment for a healthier body.