Fluoride in Water

So the issue of fluoride in water is something that a lot of people know about, but they only know what they've heard from someone, somewhere, sometime. What most people think is that fluoride is good for people's teeth - that it makes them stronger so they won't have as many dental problems. And they have never really questioned that.

But there is a fairly large, but scattered group of scientists and other people who have checked into it further and found that what most people believe is wrong. Fluoride is good for your teeth, as a topical chemical treatment (such as in toothpaste - and even that tells you not to swallow it). And that's only as long as you don't get too much fluoride on your teeth - because then it starts to cause pits and discoloration in your teeth. But ingesting fluoride does not do anything good for you, and in fact it is poisonous! Among other things, it can reduce the strength of your bones causing an increased risk of bone fractures, bone pain and tenderness. And recent studies show that it might cause hypothyroidism too which causes you to gain weight, have higher cholesterol, and all kinds of other health problems. Many of these people are trying to get the word out about this so that people will know the truth about fluoride.

Here are some pretty interesting articles and a documentary about fluoride:
http://documentaryheaven.com/an-inconvenient-tooth
http://www.fluoridealert.org
http://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/fact_sheets/cwf_qa.htm#5
http://www.naturalnews.com/030123_fluoride_babies.html
http://thyroid.about.com/cs/toxicchemicalsan/a/flouride.htm

Now I am not a scientist, but what these people are saying makes sense to me. And I haven't found anything that shows with scientific studies that fluoridated water has helped to decrease the rate of tooth decay and cavities in people in who drink that water, or anything else that shows that fluoride is good for you when ingested. I have on the other hand found scientific studies that show that fluoride is bad for you when ingested. That's not good...

The EPA, CDC, and other organizations even say themselves that getting too much fluoride is not good for your health. And they have lowered the amount of fluoride they recommend be the maximum allowed amount in drinking water recently because there is fluoride in toothpaste and other stuff now too. But that doesn't really do much to stop people from ingesting too much of it. They can't control how much water you drink. In fact, they keep telling us that we should be drinking more water because most of us don't drink enough to stay properly hydrated. So you can definitely get more than the recommended maximum amount by drinking too much water if your water is fluoridated, and not even know that you are basically over-medicating yourself. And to go one step further, if your water is fluoridated, your basically being medicated without your consent by your local government that has allowed or even mandated fluoridated water for your area. That just seems a little bit unethical to me...

The water where I live in Kentwood, MI is fluoridated. In fact, Grand Rapids, MI was the first artificially fluoridated city in the country, and I've lived here for almost my entire life... And unfortunately typical charcoal based home water filtration systems don't remove fluoride. Boiling water doesn't do anything either. The only way to get it out is to use a reverse osmosis or distillation filtration systems are needed to remove fluoride - and those are expensive. We recently bought a Zero Water Filter pitcher which does remove fluoride, and lots of other stuff from water that we try to use for all of our drinking water. That is an affordable solution I recommend to anyone and everyone. Heck, the water even tastes better after it's been filtered!

I'm not one of those super-activists that claim the government is trying to poison us on purpose, or that this is all part of a huge conspiracy by the New World Order to decrease the population of the world back down to however many millions of people (rather than the over 7 billion there are now, which is supposedly the ideal amount of people or something), or any other radical group. I'm just a normal, conscientiousness person who wants to do what I can to keep myself and my family and friends healthy. So that's what this blog post is intended to do, for anyone who reads it.

The Best Restaurant Ever

So from time to time Chrystal and I talk about how awesome it would be to own our own restaurant where we could choose the menu, recipes, atmosphere, hours, etc. We have a pretty wide-ranged list of favorite foods, and we're both pretty good cooks too. So if we had our own restaurant, it would be unlike any other I've ever been to. But it would be the best restaurant ever!

The menu would include things like:

• Pizza
• Fried Burritos (my own special recipe)
• Wet Burritos
• Pastas (Lasagna, Fettuccine Alfredo with Chicken or Seafood, Spaghetti, Tuna Casserole, etc.)
• Macaroni & Cheese
• Fried Chicken
• Mongolian Beef
• Kung Pal Chicken
• Sweet & Sour Chicken
• Crab Rangoons
• Vietnamese Pork Egg Rolls
• Pho
• Pad Thai
• Breakfast Egg Dishes (Scrambled eggs, over easy eggs, omelets)
• Breakfast meats (sausage, bacon)
• Biscuits and Gravy
• Pancakes
• French Toast
• Waffles
• Ribs
• Hamburgers
• Beef Stew
• Traditional Chili
• White Chicken Chili
• Chicken Noodle Soup
• Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
• Panini's
• Steaks
• Potatoes (scalloped, mashed, rosemary roasted red potatoes, etc.)

Plus we'd have another part of it that would be a coffee shop and bakery. We'd have doughnuts, cakes, cupcakes, pies, and all kinds of coffees too of course.

Doesn't that sound awesome!?!? I think so...

Maybe some day it'll be come a reality.  =)

Thinking About Words

Do you ever think about what words really mean compared to what they mean based on how we use them? Every once in a while, I do. I think it's because I like learning new languages, and when you learn new languages you have to think about what the words mean much more than you do in your own native language.

Take for instance the word return. We use it in every day language to mean something like "come back." But if you think about it re usually means "again" and turn means something like "change direction." So return should mean to "change direction again." If you imagine someone walking and they turned right, and then they turned right again - they would be coming back. So they would be returning. And that's pretty much how we think of meaning of the word return. But it doesn't really mean that does it? What if they turned right, and then turned left? The second turn would be changing direction again, which would be re-turning, but they wouldn't be going back the way they came, they'd be going the way they started in the first place.

Or while we're talking about turning, what about the word right? I already used it and you know what I meant by the context I used it in. But would you know what I mean by the sentence: "That's right."? I could mean that someone just said something that was correct. Or I could be referring to a particular direction. What if I said "That's his right?" I could still be referring to a particular direction. Or I could be saying that he is allowed to (or not to) do or say something. If I don't tell you more about the situation, you would have no idea which meaning is right.   =)  We call these words homonyms. We should call them confusowords!

I wonder if a language was invented that really had a different word for every meaning, what it would be like...or even if it would be possible to invent such a language. Is there any language like that? Wouldn't that be a better language to explain things since there would be no chance of ambiguity? Or would the types of sounds we can make with our mouths and voices so limited that we couldn't possibly create a totally new word for enough meanings to be able to communicate effectively?

Maybe rather than making a totally new language, we could just identify a few languages that give us enough different sounds and words that we could explain anything without ambiguity if we just use the right word from the right language to best suit the meaning we're trying to get across. Then if we all learned those languages, we could all communicate with everyone else in the world with no misunderstandings. That would be cool. Probably impossible, but still pretty cool.

Welcome to My Mind

You know,...there are a lot of times when I have something to say about something that happened to me during the day, something I watched on TV, or something else makes me think or gets me frustrated. So I decided I'm going to start a blog to ramble about those things and solicit comments from other people to see what they think.

Maybe you'll agree with me. If so, let me know so that I know it's not just me.

Maybe you'll disagree with me. Great! I'm always up for a good debate! Go ahead and leave your thoughts in a comment.