 The real reasons you should drink filtered water. Okay, it's the scary truth that the tap water provided to millions of Americans actually fails to meet federal health standards and violates limits for dangerous contaminants. Take fluoride, for example. Beginning in the early 20th century, scientists linked high levels of naturally occurring fluoride in certain community water supplies to low levels of tooth decay. Well, unfortunately, those studies were deeply flawed and are incredibly outdated. However, now roughly 73% of the US population with public water access is receiving water fortified with fluoride. Now, fluoride unfortunately is known to negatively impact many parts of the body, including the cardiovascular and immune systems. It's also been linked to serious illness and disease. And unfortunately, in my opinion, fluoride is doing way more harm than good. And it's in most of our water supplies. Not to mention, heavy metals are in most of our water supplies. Lead, cadmium, mercury, and arsenic are all on the World Health Organization list of chemicals of major public health concern, yet they can almost all be found in tap water. Now, the resulting health issues are almost too numerous to mention, but they include cardiovascular disorders, neuronal damage, kidney issues, and the risk of serious illness. But of course, water is essential to life. So what is the best filtration system for clean, safe drinking water? Well, that depends on where you live. Before you spend money on a good filtration system, it's best to find out what you're working with. So here, this is really easy. I recommend going online and actually checking out what's in your water. Simply Google water quality report for blank your city. And it'll come right up. You may have to check a couple of sites, but your city will post what's in their water. Now, once you find that, you may have a great drinking water that's pretty much devoid of what I've talked about so far. The chances are you're gonna be shocked with what that report shows. So what should you do? Well, one of the things to consider is drinking water from an underground spring that's been bottled. For instance, I've sung the praises of San Pellegrino water from Italy in a glass bottle. Now there's multiple reasons for that. And I'm not a spokesperson for the company. I'm a big fan. It has the highest sulfur content of any water that's been measured. It's been rated as the purest water that you can drink. It has no additives, no anything in it. And it's in glass. Now, why is glass important? Most people are aware of the scandal that involved BPA that's in almost all plastic bottles, plastic containers. And there was a huge move to ban BPA. And that move has pretty much been effective. The problem is the replacements for BPA, like BPS, look to be just as dangerous as endocrine disrupting chemicals as what they replace. So plastic is plastic is plastic. So you may have the best source of water. You may have the best filtrated water, but if you buy it in a plastic container, you're probably doing yourself no favors and probably harm. So there are other great waters out there, but please buy them in a glass container. Don't fall for the plastic trap. Now, there are many good reverse osmosis water systems that you can purchase, either a countertop unit or a whole house unit. Both of our houses in Palm Springs and Santa Barbara use reverse osmosis water filtration systems. The point is, get a system that you can afford that's easy to use that doesn't disrupt your life and use it not only for drinking, but use it for cooking. And that's an important distinction. Use it for making your coffee. Use it for whatever you're going to use water for. It's not just to have a glass of water. Now there are several good filtration pitchers that are quite reasonable, but when I've looked at the long-term costs of the filter replacements, oftentimes your initial investment, particularly in a countertop filtration system, will pay for itself over a fairly short period of time. But if that's not in your budget, do consider one of the pitcher filtration systems. And there's some pretty good ones out there. Now the second thing to consider is the hardness of your water. Now the simple definition of water hardness is the amount of dissolved calcium and magnesium in the water. Now many people get water softeners installed in their homes because soft water can make your water heater last longer, make soap lather easier, and can keep your dishware sparkly clean. It can also keep your sinks from clogging up, the spouts, your shower head clogging up. However, it's been shown that people who live in hard water areas actually have better heart health than people who have soft water. Now why might this be? Well it turns out that hard water in general has multiple beneficial minerals, like sulfur for instance, that may actually improve our heart health. The other problem with previous water softeners is that most water softeners used sodium chloride as the water softener. Now however, we can get potassium chloride as a water softener system. So if you're going to use a water softener, please use a potassium chloride water system. For two reasons. Number one, you're going to eliminate the sodium factor, but number two, potassium is very deficient in our diets and in our water. And potassium is one of those minerals that actually improves heart health and improves heart function and actually lowers blood pressure. So if you're going to invest in a soft water system, please get the potassium chloride based systems. And now potassium chloride big bags are really easy to find in most hardware stores right next to the sodium chloride bags. All right, should you buy spring water or purified water? Whenever you're looking at buying these products in the grocery store or at the big box stores, first of all, please keep in mind glass is vastly superior to any plastic that you're going to buy. Number two, you can take too much of a good thing out of water. And if you're going to buy reverse osmosis filtered waters or purified waters, look for waters that have had the minerals re-added back in. And some companies make a big point of assuring you that they have re-added the minerals that they've removed in the process of filtering the water. All right, so number one, find out your water quality in your town. You may be shocked with what you thought was healthy. Number two, if you're shocked, get yourself a water filtration system. We've gone through the whole list of what's a good idea. If you can afford it, buy bottled water in glass containers. Again, my favorite is San Pellegrino, which is sparkling. Their other company is called Pana P-A-N-N-A, which is non-sparkling, also in a glass bottle. There's several great American companies like Poland Spring, for example, that gives you everything that you're looking for. Buyer-beware in plastic bottles is the final takeaway. Make sure to check out the next one here. Walnuts have the highest plant protein content of all the nut choices. And if you're looking to get plant protein in your diet, look no further than walnuts.