Cutting Out the Chlorine

For all the hemming and hawing that goes on about food - whether it's whole or processed, organically or conventionally grown, bio-diverse or genetically engineered - there's something even more important for achieving health and fitness. That thing is water.

Water is one of life's utmost essentials. Where there is poor access to good water, there is also poor health. Those of us in the West tend to conjure up images of the so-called 3rd world when we consider this issue, but the problem is, in fact, global. We might be able to walk a couple paces in our homes, turn a knob, and get an instant flow of H20, but that doesn't guarantee that the water is actually good.


Most municipalities in the U.S. treat public water with two things; fluoride & chlorine. The former supposedly makes our teeth stronger... that's a major CROCK, but I'll leave it at that (for now). The latter is used to clean the water of harmful pathogens. Seems like a fair enough reason, but the tissue of the human body doesn't really like chlorine. Think about when you go swimming in a pool: dry skin, stung eyes, crunchy hair < all related to the chlorine in the pool! There is, of course, significantly less chlorine in your tap water than there is in pool water, but when you shower daily - and many of us wash our faces twice a day or more - think about the cumulative effects of all that chlorine. It damages proteins and dries out skin and hair, thereby potentially causing pre-mature aging of the skin and hair loss.

So in my quest to maximize my health, and therefore my beauty, I'm taking steps to cut the chlorine & the fluoride out of my water. My first step was to switch to bottled water. Most filters (Brita, etc) will remove the large part of the chlorine from your water, but they don't remove the fluoride. I buy spring water by the gallon for now, though I don't really consider it a sustainable solution. My next step is to install a chlorine filter in my shower. I just got the New Wave Enviro Premium Shower Filter System this week. I've yet to install it, but I'm hype to find out if I notice a difference. The filter is suppose to last one year before the cartridge needs to be replaced. If it works, it's well worth the $28 I spent on it.