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Drugs In Our Drinking Water
MikeURL alerts to a AP story just published after a months-long investigation on the vast array of pharmaceuticals present in US drinking water. These include antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers, and sex hormones, as well as over-the-counter drugs. Quoting: "To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe. But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health."
Hello everyone. This is a simple solution for "fixing" this problem - Move upstream!
I have 3000 acres of pure wilderness located at the head of a major river. If you are interested I am selling it off at 1 dollar per square foot.
Have a nice drug-free life there!
Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
He does not make her wet enough?
I'd suggest that it would be a disadvantage.
As a case of one, I cannot represent conclusive scientific evidence, but I think it's fairly well accepted that when antibiotics are introduced into the body, the body decreases its own antibody production. So having foreign antibodies in your system would likely lead to a decrease in your own body's production and therefore a weakening of the immune system should occur.
It has been over 10 years since I stopped drinking milk. I once consumed milk as made available in grocery stores in the U.S. in qualities that meet or exceed the average consumer. That is to say I often had some sort of breakfast cereal for breakfast with milk on it every day and often drank milk, with or without additional flavorings such as chocolate, almost every day. Further, other similar intake would come in the form of ice cream.
The most commonly available milk products are drawn from bovine which are given hormones to stimulate milk production beyond natural levels. Further, the bovine are also given massive doses of antibiotics to prevent infection from over-use of the milking machines. These hormones and antibiotics are found in the resulting products which are consumed by the public. Both the hormones and the antibiotics survive the pasteurization process.
The result is that the consuming public is taking in significant quantities of female hormones and antibiotics when consuming bovine milk products.
As I stated, over 10 years ago, I stopped taking in milk products such as these (unless they are indicated as organic and even in very small and infrequent quantities) and since that time, my seasonal allergies (hay fever and the like) have all but stopped. Further, I have not suffered from any form of infection or from a 'common cold' and only one case of the flu that had circulated this year. (Even then, when it affected my wife, she was put down for about 48 hours, and I suffered symptoms for only 8 hours.)
In short, since I stopped drinking milk, I stopped getting sick.
I have enjoyed a much more healthy lifestyle since giving up milk. I did not give up anything else at the time I first noticed the change, but I did also ween myself of excessive sugar intake within 3 years of ceasing milk consumption. I have also given up a variety of other needless food substances and have never taken any "diet" foods with sugar substitutes. But among all of the things I have weened from my own dietary habits, milk has shown the to be the most significant contributing factor in the decline of my personal health and removing milk from my diet has restored and improved my health in ways I had never experienced before in my life.
Our bodies have the ability to tolerate a wide variety of things without much in the way of noticeable ill effects. But with the tremendous amount of garbage in our air, our food, our water and on the surfaces we touch, it would be nearly impossible to trace down a single culprit for any set of problems we, as a public body, may experience. The best we can hope to do is be mindful of what we're eating and drinking and to pay attention to how we feel.
But I would advise without hesitation to cease any and all unnecessary consumption of milk here in the U.S. Dairy producers have been pushing to relax the definition of "organic" so that they can place this attractive word on the labels of milk products that aren't currently considered to be "organic." I am not the first and am certainly not the only person to have experienced phenomenal improvements in health from ceasing milk intake and I know I will not be the last. Other people I know have done this in the past and have experienced improvements similar to my own. I know of no studies made of this phenomenon, but the connection I feel between the cease of milk consumption and health improvement is undeniable.