 Welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. You know, people are always asking me, Dr. G, should I be filtering my water? Well, the short answer is yes, absolutely. That's why this week I brought on one of the early developers of reverse osmosis technology to help you sort out fact from fiction and help you make the best decision for your health. He's Robert Slovak. Robert is a degreed mechanical and aeronautical and astronautical engineer who has been in the water treatment game since the 1970s when he co-founded the company Water Factory Systems. Since then, Robert's been on the cutting edge of water filtration technology and he's taking his knowledge all around the world. On today's episode, he and I are going to discuss why you should start filtering your water as soon as possible. What's wrong with plain old tap water and whether alkaline water is really worth the hype? Robert, welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. Thank you. Happy to be here. And it's certainly very special to be with a celebrity. So, yeah, I'm sorry I'm not a millennial who would be interviewing you, but you know, we'll make up for it. All right. So, you've been... Let's talk about deuterium. You've been interested in deuterium for a really long time. What the heck is it? People may have heard about it. It's a buzzword right now. Why should we care about deuterium? Well, perhaps the first, and I'll try to lead this off with a little humor, but deuterium was a favorite buzzword of mine when I was in the Cub Scouts. And unlike everyone else, I called my Cub Scout patrol the Atom Patrol. So, I was a fanatic about the Atom and it was, you know, in the late 40s and early 50s when I was in the Cub Scouts, the Atom was one of the more fascinating things and deuterium was part of that. But I became fascinated with deuterium when I looked at it very differently than everyone else. I realized that it was like another contaminant in the water. And we're going to have to explain to your audience what it is so it makes sense because here we had something that's part of water that's one of the most egregious contaminants and has a, as yet undiscovered impact on human and animal and plant health. So, it just caught me off guard. It stunned me. I'm going, water is a contaminant in water. So, should I describe what deuterium is? Yeah, bring everybody up to date because like I say, it's now kind of a buzzword, but I think sometimes the problem with buzzwords is that nobody even knows what the word is. Yeah, and I think that's maybe helpful, but I'm going to hold this up. It's not going to mean much to everybody, but it is a periodic table of the elements, okay? Yep. And the whole universe is made out of 92 of these things and to oversimplify it. And the first one and the lightest one is hydrogen. But rarely do I find, you know, whether they're just consumers or professional people realize that many of the elements have more than one version or form and those forms are called isotopes. Hydrogen happens to have, even though we just think, oh, it's hydrogen, hydrogen, hydrogen, it has three very distinct forms. And the first one, which scientists call proteum, is the one we all think of, one electron, one proton. That's it, the simplest atom in the universe. And also, by far, the most abundant. About 74% of the mass of the universe is hydrogen and 24% happens to be the second lightest element, helium. And together, it doesn't take long to figure out that the rest of the 2% of the universe is all the other elements. And it's a striking, you know, it's a striking realization. And so, in the hydrogen element, these three isotopes, the first one, which, as I said, scientists call proteum. Now, when that somewhere along the line, that hydrogen in the, let's call it the big bang experience, somewhere along the line, that proton that's in the nucleus of the hydrogen took on a neutron, okay? And there is a natural atomic affinity for protons and neutrons. They don't mind sticking together. And then, at another point, that nucleus took on another neutron. So, we have now the three isotopes. The proteum is the light one. The one with an extra neutron, we call deuterium. And the one that we're never going to talk about again for the rest of the show, or perhaps ever, is called tritium. And that has two neutrons along with the proton. And it is slightly radioactive and has almost no uses except once it was used, you and I may recall this. It was used on the faces of some watches to illuminate a phosphorous that, because of its radioactivity, would activate them and it would glow. So, but tritium is so rare now, only exists maybe in some reactors, et cetera, et cetera. We don't think about it. The two that are on the main stage are light hydrogen, the one with just one proton and the nucleus. And the deuterium, which is often called heavy hydrogen, with the two neutrons, those are the two that have captured a lot of health scientists and researchers in the last, well, I could say here in the west in the last 10 years, but the Russians were the first to pay attention to it in the late 50s. They saw something strange going on with deuterium in life. But because deuterium uniquely enables, enabled man to make a nuclear reactor and deuterium was discovered in 1931, all hands were on deck to pay attention to deuterium for its uses, not to get rid of it like we're about to do, but to use it to make a reactor. And remember, 31, 41, what was even more on everybody's mind was the fact that if you can make a nuclear reactor, you can make something called an atomic bomb. And we lived through the atomic bomb era, and so deuterium was the most in-demand thing on the planet. Every country, Germany, England, Japan, America, Russia, every country, major country was trying to make and get deuterium concentrated because there was a very little bit in water. And they got this deuterium from water because like other hydrogen, like the light hydrogen, two light hydrogen plus oxygen is a water molecule. Well, you can have a light hydrogen or proteam and a deuterium hydrogen combined together with oxygen, and there you have what we technically call semi-heavy water. And there there's a third water molecule that has two deuterium hydrogen or heavy hydrogen plus a water molecule, and that's called heavy water. So there's light water with light hydrogen plus oxygen. There's semi-heavy water with a light hydrogen and a heavy hydrogen plus oxygen, and then there's heavy water. Now, because there's so little, just not to confuse people, because there's so little of the water molecules that have two deuterium hydrogen, we call anything, any water molecule that has hydrogen in it, the common usage heavy water. And heavy water was in demand and it was a rush to make the atomic bomb that drove it. No one even thought one thing about the health implications of deuterium at all until the Russians said who lost the race to make heavy water enough to make a bomb. America won that race, as we all know. But the Russians went off and said, what else is about this deuterium stuff? And they started to look at its biological implications. And I think what caught me off guard and said, I have to go into this. I mean, I spent my whole career in water and now I'd already been in water as a career for 50 years. I said, I have to take the reins of this and see where it goes. And so I went on a search for water that was, or I was on a search for information about the biological implications. I'm gonna cut to the chase on that because in all water supplies on Earth and I'm going to do a lot of like averaging and hand waving because to be scientifically accurate about all these things takes too much time and will be too confusing. But all water on Earth has deuterium hydrogen in it. In other words, there's HD, as we call it, H for regular hydrogen or light hydrogen, which I told you earlier was also referred to as proteam. We have light hydrogen, two atoms plus oxygen and we have a light hydrogen plus a deuterium hydrogen plus oxygen. Now those, if you put the molecules or you count the molecules that contain deuterium in the liter of water, you will get about six drops worth in the liter of water. This is stuff that you can take to the bank. This is easy information and very palatable. So in the world of Dr. Gundry and I, we also call that 150 parts per million. Okay? And not everybody is familiar with that, but there's 150 atoms of deuterium in every million atoms of hydrogen. Okay? Not a lot. Not a lot, but why does it do a lot? And the Russians said, okay, so there's only six drops in the liter of water. And by the way, I hope you don't mind. I'm drinking, my water today is going to be some, it's the lowest deuterium water made on the planet. Imagine that. I drink that water. And I wonder where you got that. I wonder, yes, I got it from the people who were talking about the Russians, okay? So the Russians said, okay, well, what if you have more than six drops? What if we just had a bottle of water made with deuterium as the hydrogen or one of the atoms in the water molecule? What happens if you do that? Well, frankly it looks like water. It tastes like water. But if you and I, if Dr. Gundry and I were sipping on a glass as we started this, we would both be dead on the floor from that, okay? And this was very striking. In fact, they found, well, how much does it take for almost every life species, plant and animal, hardly any can survive more than 20 to 25% heavy water in drinking water? In other words, if this were 25%, not just six drops, but 25% of the drops in here, and I think there's about, well, this is a half a liter, there's about 20,000 drops of water in a liter. So if 25% of them, which is 5,000 drops, if 5,000 drops were in a glass of water, look the same, taste the same, but no life form, including seeds, plants, laboratory animals, primates, nothing could live for more than five days. All right, dumb question for our listeners. How come? Deuterium is a wrecking ball for mitochondria. Oh, and I love my mitochondria. I love my mitochondria. I know you do, and so do I. I've learned to love it even more. So it's a wrecking ball, and this was put together, really, or figured out by the Russian scientists and researchers, starting in the early 60s, late 50s, early 60s, and they didn't do it from a research perspective. They simply knew, and that there wasn't, it was discovered because there was a group of people in the mountains of Siberia that had an uncanny number percentage of people that were centenarians. This is how it all began, in terms of its biological effect. Anyway, to make a long story short, in 10 years of failing to figure out what made these people's world so special, I mean, they analyzed everything, social, psychological, religious, et cetera, but nothing panned out until someone said, hey, you guys have exhausted everything, but one thing, did you ever look at the isotopes that are in their water, the isotopes of hydrogen? And they go, no? What's that supposed to do, or mean? And they did look at it, and they noticed that their deuterium was not 150 parts per million, it was 130, okay? And they just kind of said, as I probably would have, oh, I mean, big deal. Yeah, big deal. But they didn't, then they said, well, let's see, you know, let's see other aspects. Well, these people were outrageously healthy, these people had outrageous lifespans, and for those of you, our website happens to be drinklightwater, L-I-T-E, water.com, and you can download a beautiful digital four-color booklet on the history of this discovery, okay? It really is cool, and it will give you a perspective. So the Russians owned this science until probably the late 70s, and didn't talk much about it, but they became so, they did so much research on every species, et cetera, that they made the connection that deuterium had a profound effect on biological species, et cetera, plants and animals. And so the question was, well, how? What are the mechanics of this? And the true biology of it. And ultimately, it took a brilliant... They knew it impaired the mitochondria. I mean, impaired, as in, did away with them, okay? And it's like, well, how did it do it? I mean, you know, in the 70s, I'm not even sure we knew much about the structure of mitochondria, I mean, the interior structure. No, I mean, remember Peter Mitchell and his theory was completely poo-pooed. Yes. And it was, you know, the analysis of it and the understanding of it escaped virtually everything but the Russians. But the man who came forward was, of all things, a Turkish scientist, Abdullah Algun that no one knew. Like, where did this guy come from? And he was a pharmacologist and he's simply brilliant and one of the finest gentlemen I know. He discovered what the mechanism was. And we're going to go as light into this as possible because it will escape most of the audience. But in the... I think most of your audience knows that the mitochondria produce our energy currency or ATP or genus triphosphate and so on. And it does it in the most bizarre way that you wouldn't believe it. You know, you'd have to make a cartoon and everybody would think you made it up. But in the process of making ATP, protons from hydrogen, because the hydrogen nucleus is a proton, protons from water molecules, the hydrogen in water molecules is generated in some of the processes in the mitochondria that I'll just say this lightly called the electron transport chain. And they're driven in this little tiny mitochondria and there's about, I think, 1,000 to 10,000 mitochondria per cell depending upon what its cells function as. So the cells in the heart muscle are very rich in mitochondria and maybe the cells somewhere else in your appendix aren't so important and they don't have many and don't need a lot of energy. So he discovered that in this little process called the ADP ATP synthase that actually spitting out into your body massive amounts of this chemical ATP that this process involves a mechanical thing and that mechanical thing is a, I mean it's commonly referred to as a nanomotor. I could call it a microscopic Porsche turbo, okay? Because it spins at about the same rotational velocity of 9,000 RPMs. And it spins and that spinning indexes the hydrogen protons and they enter into this synthase that then produces, we won't go any more deep than this, produces the ATP. So all as well sucks in a hydrogen proton, blah, blah, blah. But we just discussed, you and I, that not all water just has a hydrogen with a proton in it. What happens if it draws upon a hydrogen whose nucleus contains a neutron that's kind of stuck to the proton? Because that's what happens. You're not gonna tell me it gums up the works, are you? I'm not, I would not tell you that. But you are educated enough to know that that's what it just exactly does. And sometimes I tell my consumer audiences who get this in a second, it'd be like throwing a half dollar into a Porsche turbo while the engine is running and it would destroy it. And that's exactly what happens to the nanomotor. Now there is a massive amount of nanomotors in each mitochondria. It is estimated in the hundreds of thousands. But when you consider that the body is, by weight is, whatever, 60 to 70% water and by molecular species, it's almost 99% water molecules, you realize there is a lot of water and in that water there is, even though it's maybe not so concentrated because it's only about six drops per liter or 150 parts per million, that there's a lot of deuterium in the body. In fact, if you were to do a serum test of some of the primary constituents and electrolytes of blood plasma, you would see that it contains like 12 to 14 millimoles of deuterium, which is more than most of the other constituents, like glucose and other things. So it's abundant. And it's simply running around the body and it's very accessible to your energy-making mitochondria and so you're losing them constantly. And I'm pretty sure and please correct me if I'm not, or you can even add to this or I'm not totally correct, that we increase in our mitochondria up until about 25 years old and then it's pretty much a straight line dive down to the time you die. And there's more than a handful of scientists to say that deuterium is a major factor in how long humans live. Okay? Okay. So, you know... Okay, so how am I going to get deuterium out of my water? Great question. Deuterium, and I should have said this in the beginning, that deuterium hydrogen or heavy hydrogen and this, this eluded, like people missed this in the beginning, this is and most of the elements of the periodic table have their own isotopes, but only hydrogen has an isotope within its hydrogen element that's twice as heavy as the basic hydrogen with the proton and an electron. If you add a proton, you double the weight of that hydrogen. Imagine, there's no other element like this. When people realize this, they said, holy mackerel, because isotopes can replace each other in chemical reactions, as you well know, anywhere in the body, pretty much, you're going to imagine replacing anything that's twice as heavy in your world. Like if you go to the gym the next day and I replace all your weights with ones that are the same size but twice as heavy, it's going to change your world and your workout. And that's really how dramatic it is with deuterium. That deuterium has incredible effects on the biochemistry and biological reaction and DNA and protein folding and ad infinitum, all the cellular functions that hydrogen that is twice as heavy impacts that incredibly. And we are just beginning to learn how vast that impact is. But how do I get it out of my water? Okay, so what not to do? Because being the... I mean, do I move to Siberia, I guess is my first question. No, I think we would be both run out of Siberia because they know they have a good thing. But where did they get it? That's a good place to start. And thank you for leading me there. Where did they get it? So those Siberians in the mountains, because of this difference in weight, meteorological phenomenon, like cycles of the hydrologic cycle, freezing, thawing, snowing, sleeting, these processes, and we can talk all day just about this, naturally separate deuterium from light water. They remove some of it and shuttle it off somewhere else. As more heavy water. So, for instance, one of the mechanisms is the fact that deuterium water, or heavy water, freezes at about two degrees higher. So you can see in the meteorological cycles of the world, what a big deal just two degrees is, right? Right. And so that's why it slightly varies around the Earth. It's actually more concentrated at the equator, both in the seawater there and in the freshwater that ends up from the ocean water through the hydrologic cycle. And as you get closer to the poles or higher in altitudes where there's more radical changes in temperature, these effects are greater. And you may have a separation of the deuterium from the light water. But it's not very dramatic. As I said, one of the most dramatic places is Siberia, and it only went from 150 to 130. But the key here, and I want everybody to realize this, these people got this from birth till death. They got 130. And the benefits to them, health, longevity, women didn't have a problem having children in their 60s, for instance. This effect, the low deuterium water was in their mother's breast milk, in the yak butter, in the yak meat, in the Siberian broccoli and lettuce they grew, it was everything. So their whole diet was deuterium depleted, something very difficult for us to achieve. All we can do is get deuterium depleted water. So now to get to the question you were kind of pushing me to, how do we make it? How the hell do we make this stuff? Now, where I said that the Siberians had 130, just for comparison, this water, which I said is the lightest available, this is only five parts per million of deuterium. And it is made in, maybe there's four processes, most of them are only geared, really, the processes, really, where they were originally geared to make water, okay? That's what's left over. Exactly. But now the modern method, and the Russians once again lead this whole thing, and the Russians have the most modern facility to make this light water, and they use a process called vacuum assisted fractional distillation rectification. And it's pretty much a wildly complex version of distillation in which the distiller is three stories high, and water is gently heated through a lot of trick proprietary secret technology stuff in these big columns. And as you slowly heat this and vacuum, pull it up, only the light water molecules, ones without deuterium, make it to the top. And this painstakingly slow, maybe an entire day for one column, and the columns, as I said, they're like a foot in diameter and three stories high. Maybe they will make 20 liters in 24 hours. So the expense, both in energy and time, is enormous. So this bottle, this bottle would typically sell for in the $25 range, okay? And when it's in bigger size, it's less. Our company produces light water in two containers. One is the lowest in the world, 5 ppm. It's kind of our way of saying, we make the lowest in the world, we have the hottest technology and all that stuff. But this one, which is 10 parts per million, is the workhorse. This is the one most people buy on a regular basis to replace the water that they normally would consume as drinking water, as beverage water. Okay, do you drink almond milk? Well, now you're going to start making your almond milk at home with deuterium-depleted water. You're going to make your coffee with it, you're going to make your tea with it. And also, if you're making food, like, you know, you want to make bone broth or something, you would want to use this water. If you're interested in depleting your own endogenous deuterium. The places that have mastered the making of deuterium-depleted water are, of course, Russia, but also Hungary and also Romania. And part of the reason why is that these, the reason Hungary and Romania are in it is that early on, they were really interested in researching heavy water. And they ended up converting the stuff they used to make heavy water as you can figure out easily and make light water instead. All right, so I know a lot of our listeners are going, okay, I've heard of this biohacking thing and it's the latest biohacking craze. But what do you say to your critics and skeptics? And I know there are those people. What do you say? Come on, just changing a little deuterium in water is the fountain of youth that's going to turn back my mitochondria? I mean, come on, Robert, help us out here. Well, I would say that I have only scratched the surface. I and colleagues in the industry of deuterium-depleted water have only scratched the surface of its impact on biological species. Plant, Adam, I mean, plants hasn't even started yet, okay? I mean, no one's really, maybe a few researchers. But people who are examining its role in the effects on human physiology, I mean, everyone knows this is profound. And I personally believe this is perhaps one of the most profound discoveries in our time for the improvement of human health, anti-aging and longevity, okay? And it works with animals. It does all the right stuff. There's lots, there's much more we don't know than we do know about this new, you can call it a craze. But there's only enough made in the world for less than 40,000 people. So it can't really get to be that much of a craze. The people who are into, I mean, 40,000 people, we couldn't even supply the first three blocks in New York City, of Manhattan Island, right? Right. I mean, that's it. Done. Your marketing is done. So it is a labor of love, and there's incredible amount of research. And every year, for the last five years, there has been a deuterium depletion conference in Budapest where, and it's in Budapest because one of the brainiacs of this technology, we might call him the Dr. Gundry of Budapest, the deuterium is Gabor Somalia. And he has made an incredibly selfless contribution to the science of deuterium depletion. He also, I think I can say this on your show. They also maintain a cancer clinic and have done for 15 years studies on the fact that deuterium has a profound effect in the progression of cancer. And so they have an entire clinic. And I think one of the best books, and it's been around for, I'm going to guess, maybe seven or 10 years, is written by Gabor Somalia. And it's called Defeating Cancer. And it's available, I don't know if you have it, but it not only gives you an education in the actual, the true physics and biology of deuterium depletion, but he goes through many cases in this book. And you can buy this, I don't know, I think it's less than $13 on Amazon.com. All right, okay, so it's rare. We can't supply Manhattan. So I'll tell you what, you're one of the fathers of reverse osmosis, which, okay, we can't deuterium deplete our water. Most of us could do reverse osmosis, though, couldn't we? Absolutely. And should we? Yes, but not only. You have some options, but let's go into the water contamination game. And I think I want to start out with this, because sometimes I forget about it, and it's one of the most important things. But seeking a solution to water contamination is like going to a doctor for a prescription. You just don't walk into the office and say, doctor, would you write me a prescription? And his jaw will drop, okay? And people ask me that, Robert, or some of our staff, what water purifier should I have? It seems so comfortable for them to ask that. And I'm going, do you realize what you're asking me? You're asking me as your water doctor to write a prescription, and I don't have any clue if you even need one, or what is wrong with you. So the first thing to do is find out what is the nature, the source, and the analysis of your water supply. And this is like really, this is so easy now. It wouldn't have been 30 years ago or 50 years ago when I was inventing all these RO products, but it is critical. So you can just go on, literally, Google Water Quality Report for Tallahassee or... Whatever. And the EPA, it's something that they have to do every year, and it tells you about your water. Now, for the nitty-gritty of that report, very few of your audience would be able to understand it. But there are some interesting things. It tells you what the sources are. Like, oh, it's from the mountains above Palm Springs and blah, blah, blah, and it's made from snowmelt and blah, blah, blah. Or it's water from 800 feet ground and it's absorbed a lot of minerals, et cetera. So there's a lot to know about that water that you need to know about the water to choose water treatment and water treatment for your guests, for your type of audience. Let's just say, we're just going to call them like biohacking level people who are interested enough to listen to this health science, that people typically need to not only protect what they consume in all the forms you consume water, but they also need to protect themselves and their family for what they are exposed to in showering and bathing. So you need something, ideally. Primary drinking water is the most important. And it's possible to you, I have people that go, I've looked at your water report and so on and so on and frankly, and I just did this for someone up near Jackson, Wyoming. You just really don't need anything. And you don't need anything to change the water for showering or bathing. It's very rare, but it's possible. So after you read the report and we look at the contaminants and we say, hey, you need to have something to protect you in the shower. Let's go for an example of probably the most egregious contaminant for showering and bathing. And most people have never even heard of it, and it's a group of chemicals called trihalomethane. Trihalomethane weren't even known 25 years ago and weren't regulated, et cetera, et cetera. And trihalomethane are formed when the traditional chlorination of water, which was first done in 1913. And I personally consider chlorination and chlorine one of the great medicines of our time simply because it probably saved more lives than any drug has. So it's a perspective of chlorine. But when you chlorinate, no one ever thought, yes, we don't like the taste of the water, so we got to get fixed that, and I can smell it in the shower, but no one realized for a long time that that chlorine chemically interacts with natural organic matter that you might call largely humic and folvic acids, piece molecules of leaves and twigs and maybe some dead frogs in there. But it reacts and forms these total trihalomethane, these four chemicals. And they are carcinogenic and they also are capable of causing miscarriage in women. And it's the most prevalent of contaminants in municipal water in, let's say, North America, probably in most cities around the world. And you can, these trihalomethanes are very low in molecular weight. So in the shower, you are inhaling them as well as having them being soluble in the water and touching your skin. You're not going to be drinking it in the shower. And most responsible water purification systems drinking water will remove trihalomethanes, but many, for the whole house water, many people don't think of this. And so I'm just pointing this out to you. I, and I think this story might be interesting. I was actually in Florida, in Orlando, Florida, giving lectures and so on. And a woman came up to me and said, hey, what should I do for my house? And I said, okay, okay, okay. Hold it, hold it. You didn't listen to me. I have to know what's wrong with you first. So she said, I live in Jacksonville, Florida. I said, okay, let's get it on my computer and let's see. I want to show you how I do it. We go on there, we get the water quality report and I'm going, hey, it's better than I actually expected. And then I go, oops. And I go, you have the highest level methane level I have ever personally seen in a municipal water supply, except in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Okay. Which was five times higher than that. And I'm going, she goes, and I said, also there's a note here that you should have gotten four letters, service letters from the municipal water department saying they violated the maximum allowed. Okay. They can't control it. I mean, it's not something that you couldn't afford the water if they controlled it totally. Now, when trihalomethane were first evaluated by the EPA and so on, it was allowed to be 150 parts per million, I'm sorry, parts per billion. And then it went fairly recently to 80. And then they introduced another column like it's called not the maximum contaminant level, but the maximum contaminant level goal. Like what would it be if we could, if we lived in the perfect world? Well, that goal for trihalomethane, it's often called THMs, is zero. So it's something that can't be controlled practically unless you wanted to probably pay five times more for your water. And not many people will do that. True. So this woman continuing on with that woman, she goes, well, what's wrong with trihalomethane? I said, do you have any filters before your house? She goes, no, not yet, and that's why I'm asking you. I said, well, it's a carcinogen and it's also can cause miscarriage in women. And you really have a high level. Do you have any daughters of childbearing age, blah, blah, blah? And she said like she turned white and I'm going, what's the matter? And she said, while the years during the years I have lived in this house, I have had five miscarriages. So Wow. And no doctor is this interesting, especially you because you know so many, so many subjects about medicine and health. I mean, no, but no doctor would have even thought that and none of them did. And none of them said, hey, we got to look if you're being subjected to trihalomethane and she suffered through five miscarriages and still didn't know. So anyway, I thought that story would be interesting for your audience. So what'd you tell her to do? Oh, I know. I showed her what it takes to remove trihalomethane from water and it takes for now this is for the whole house water which she's bathing in. And so I told her that there is a newer technology and it uses activated carbon in a very special form. And I think you know that of course you've heard carbon filters for a long time, but there's two forms of carbon. One is in little particles or granules called granular activated carbon and one is that's much newer and when I say newer maybe the last 30 years that they take that carbon and turn it into a powder and then they stick and mold that powder together with a binder so you have much finer carbon and much more complex flow paths. That's called a carbon block. That is the most effective technology just for removing trihalomethane. And so I I recommended to her she get this particular product that is you know a large size carbon block to treat her whole house water and that was that. But when you look at the range of contaminants that are in water and it's over a hundred not that they're in every municipal supply but among these hundred and fifty contaminants you've got some of them okay and it really takes a lot of expertise and they change and etc. But for your audience who is very who may spend a thousand dollars a month or more on supplements okay and exotic new things NAD and AMPK and things to improve their activator mitochondria your audience needs to know like hey you shouldn't have any contaminants they're more serious than you understand and so I tell them look there's point of entry refers to doing your whole house water that's the term POE point of entry your whole house to protect you while you and your family while bathing and shower. And then there's point of use that is to make your drinking water the water for beverages the water for cooking you need both for your audience and almost almost every point of use just them out there that's well accepted is capable of removing trihalomethane but not necessarily all the other ones like not many can remove fluoride from the water and most of your audience probably wants fluoride out of the water that's a very tough one so of these hundred and plus contaminants I tell them there are two technology categories capable there's only two technologies capable of removing every category of contaminant and those contaminants everything from arsenic to heavy metals to synthetic organic chemicals like glyphosate to volatile organic chemicals like benzene to pharmaceuticals that find their way into the water supply to disinfection byproducts like trihalomethane and I can go on but it's enough there's a lot of contaminants stuff in there what can you do to know you're going to get them all out only two distillation plus activated carbon and reverse osmosis plus activated carbon that's it and in the last week and a half I've given two not interviews etc like this but two water webinars because the interest in health is growing so rapidly I think you're very aware of this it's growing so rapidly I said you know what these people are lost in the world of water and frankly except for our company Water and Wellness where we sell special nutrients and mineralizing and one simple water purification device which happens to use RO called AquaTrue one of my favorite recommendations but not everybody maybe wants that because it fits on the counter but people do not have any idea how to source it how to read about it so I started to give water webinars to get into the nitty gritty and I was hoping that maybe 25 or 30 people would show up for this water webinar where we're going to roll up our sleeves but instead 250 showed up and it shocked us oh my god and we said well we didn't finish and people complained so we said well we'll give one in about a week and a half so there's a hunger and what's interesting is I'm really no longer in the water business okay I don't have that company that developed reverse osmosis anymore even though I have the expertise in it so I'm really I may make yet another not a career shift but a career addition to to providing products and that's something for a future announcement to promote anything but when I talked I talked to doctors I'd say mostly in the last 16 years of teaching water as it relates to health science in the last 16 years I would always go to a room full of doctors at the conventions that and conferences you and I would attend and I would ask them okay I'm going to go around the room I want to see what each of you have I mean you guys are smart guys have for water purifiers and water you know drinking water systems point of entry and I would have to say that easily 90% of those professionals have the wrong thing I believe you and I realize how dire it is and so I'm getting back in the game and I have to do something about this situation one of the things that makes it more difficult that perhaps doesn't exist so much maybe in the supplement in the supplement channel is that over the decades water is there's more hype more misinformation about water and it's treatment then and then anything I know about seriously I mean it's a minefield for a consumer and a professional and if you went and said oh I just talked to 10 companies and I'm picking this one they just gave me the best idea and they sounded the smartest and so on I would bet you 90% it would be the wrong thing for your water supply so it's much more to this and look what's happened look what's what's happening and I'm not going to get any stretch of the imagination with alkaline water okay thank you for saying that right I mean it's it's it's like you know what in fact I actually have a mantra that I teach doctors at the end of my course that they have to repeat along with me and it's like you don't get it either the pH of anything you eat or drink is irrelevant in human physiology okay the pH it's not that pH is irrelevant in your body it's very relevant but things that have the pH have a distinct pH like an avocado or whatever lettuce juice this is this is going to change in the body so that it's pH is irrelevant absolutely correct and thank you for saying that because because it's true because yes because it's true and you know that's it's actually basic physiology but it has been hyped even basic chemistry basic chemistry yeah you're right it's basic chemistry and you're right so you know I'm going to have to we're going to quit on that note because that's actually probably going to be the most controversial thing that we've said on this podcast and we may have to have you back so that we can dive into that because I got to talk to you about hydrogen water which is one of my favorite subjects as well but we're not going to do it today okay so how where do people find you find out about you get on a water webinar I'm connected okay so water webinars and a company that serves very unique products one that you had actually asked about is my absolute favorite and I had to ask you if you knew about this product because I brought it to the United States 16 years ago and it's this canton marine plasma this is a sea water that has been available exactly like this maybe not in this nice package and since 1897 it became it was in the French physician's desk reference from 1916 to 1999 as a medicine as a pharmaceutical and its history is I don't think there's another nutraceutical that has an illustrious history and what we do with this for people is this contains the entire product table in the balanced proportions in which life evolved I can talk about that for the whole day did you ever meet or know Dr. Professor August Dunning from Caltech that you run across that? No I'm not please look at this note it down and your viewers Professor August Dunning Superbrainiac one of the designers of the International Space Station kind of like me an astrophysicist of all things one day and he's like Professor Emeritus at Caltech one day this guy says you know what I'm having other thoughts why is chronic disease increasing so much blah blah blah and he just started to get into the biological thing and he wrote presentations called the Habitat Crisis he looked them up they're on YouTube they're brilliant beyond brilliant and he asked his students do me a favor would you plot the loss of minerals and trace elements from 1900 to 2020 and then would you just please plot the incidents of these 10 chronic diseases from 1900 to 2020 and while one was going down the other one was going up you already know this but not doesn't know this and we've had warnings by brilliant people about the importance of trace elements and no one really it's like was too boring a subject and no one could make money at it but this is what we mineralize water with Believe it or not my new book the energy paradox one of my chapters starts with a senate document from 1936 says our soil is so depleted 1934 I know that senate document it's fantastic and I show it to all these doctors and everyone I speak to and I say guess when this document was made and they'll go oh you know 2000 or 1990 you know 1936 it's like we knew this and that's part of my water presentation that document perfect alright and so go look up Augustunning you will be so happy that you did very good alright where do we find you you can find me waterandwellness.com is my main thing about nutrition and water and I'm also part of drinklightwater.com that brings in deuterium depleted water I am also a part owner of a company I think you probably know of called silver scientific they make they make liposomal very advanced liposomal nutrients that go into the body through the through the oral cavity so those are my main things and for your audience they can reach me at robtslovac at waterandwellness.com and I'm happy to answer you know throw me some water questions and and please join and find out from waterandwellness.com when the next water webinar is I think you'll like it alright everybody sign up for it it'll be a goodie alright thanks a lot thanks for your knowledge keep doing what you're doing thank you very much Dr. Gundry it was a pleasure and an honor alright pleasure as well alright we'll sign off bye bye take care alright it's time for our audience question and this week's a real good one Julie Morrison on drgundry.com asks I have been a low fat vegan for 20 years and would love to hear you discuss the huge debate between Dr. Esselstyn and McDougal who are no fat proponents Dr. Esselstyn says that any drop of oil damages our epithelial cells and those of you who advocate olive and C-M-T oil not quite sure what C-M-T oil is but so you may know that recently I've had one of the big proponents of a no fat diet on my podcast Dr. Joel Furman famous for Eat to Live and even people like Dr. Furman and other of the ultimate low fat groups have at least come around to advocate taking long chain omega-3 fatty acids either in the form of algae derived omega-3s or even in the form of fish oil as probably an essential component of our diet more recently there's been exciting research primarily coming out of dolphin research and out of Sardinia that there's a newly discovered essential fatty acid which is called carbon 15 and essential means you have to have it and we don't manufacture it and it's in my next book and one of the things that's interesting is it can only be obtained at the moment from animal sources particularly milk from sheep and goats and from fish and it is a fat. Lastly I'll say this over and over again the two main trials against the American Heart Association low fat diet versus a diet high in fat one was olive oil, the other was alpha linoleic acid which is a major component of perilla oil, flaxseed oil or canola oil, organic canola oil the differences and these were people who had heart attacks in these studies, one's called the predimed study one's called the Leonhart diet study both of the high oil groups had so much better outcomes than the low fat groups that in the Leonhart diet trial which was supposed to go five years it was stopped at the end of three years for ethical reasons because that group did so much better that they could not continue the trial the same thing happened with the predimed trial in which these people had to use a liter of olive oil per week they had so much better heart outcome and neurologic outcome at the end of five years we can talk all we want about the evils of oil but in fact head to head low fat against a heavy olive oil diet or a heavy alpha linoleic acid diet guess which one the heavy fat diets one I have nothing against these gentlemen they're all fine people, fine researchers and human trials say something entirely different than what you're hearing and if you are a low fat vegan please please please do me a favor do your brain a favor and get some long chain omega 3 fats into your diet as soon as possible thanks that's a great question okay now it's time for the review of the week there are too many on iTunes who left a five star review and wrote I absolutely love listening to this podcast it is one of my favorites I appreciate Dr. Gundry and all the work he does for us I am currently following the plant paradox three day cleanse I am on day two and have totally felt the difference brain fog has cleared I didn't even realize I had more energy for sure I am happy to hear about your results with the plant paradox cleanse and thank you so much for your review your review loved too many you know all of your ratings and reviews help us grow our audience which is so key to spreading the word about good health and here's something else when you leave a review on iTunes I want you to also leave me your most pressing health question at the bottom I'll be sure to answer it in an upcoming episode of the podcast so there's another motivation just take a few seconds write us a review ask me a question I love your questions as you can tell and if I don't have the answer I better and if I don't I'll figure it out alright why do I do that because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you see you next week before you go I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes Google Play, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you