I opened my browser and the latests news headline was this: Bottled Water Has Contaminants Too, Studies Find. Just great, I say. Every week, I buy a case of bottled water– and press the kids to take a bottle to sports practice and use it to fill up during the day… Ok, the Erin Brockovich in me decided a little web research was in order. Get a load of this - not only is tap water and some bottled water filled with more chlorine, fluoride, pesticides, fertizlier and pharmaceutical material than I can imagine, but this stuff is flowing into our homes, schools, hospitals … So what’s a Mom to do?
Ok, I’m a biomedical engineer – I can figure this out. (disclaimer here – I am not a water expert – I encourage YOU to do your own research.) Depending on what you read, apparently as babies we are approximately 75 to 80% water and as we grow older this percentage decreases until the percentage is reduced to approximately 50-70%. The human brain is about 85% water. The right amount of must be present in our brains for any of our "thoughts" to take place.
Water is without a doubt one of the very best diet aids and fat reducers: look at what it does . . . Suppresses your appetite. Reduces sodium buildup and helps maintain muscle tone. It helps the body eliminate waste and toxins which often produce acne and rashes and swelling when retained in the body. Water is one of the best cures for our most common ailments. Doctors almost never write a prescription for water and yet look what all it can treat: allergies, asthma, depression, high blood pressure, diabetes, headaches, chronic fatigue syndrome, colitis, alcohol dependency, lower back pain, neck pain, and on and on. Now don’t be fooled by considering the coffee, tea or soda pop that you drink as part of your water intake – MOST have just the opposite effect on our bodies.
Most of you are aware that If you put either of distilled or de-ionized waters into a bowl for gold fish they will die …. you see there is no longer any oxygen in the water. Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t like drinking something that kills anything.
So – here are my suggestions –
1) Do your own research – and see what you would want your children and your family to be drinking daily.
2) Get the water in your home and your bottle water tested (maybe you can talk your kid’s chemistry teacher in to helping – ours did!)
3) Put a system in place in your home to provide the best possible water to your family – I put a $300 water system in my home which purifies and enlivens the water – living water? - check out www.nikken.com/beinspiredby
4) Have a conversation with your teens about what you did – a little at a time and start with taste testing – you should notice a difference in the taste – and your health.
Grace Lanni is a hi-tech entrepreneur in Austin, Texas raising her children as a single mom. Be Inspired By Your Teen is an invitation to parents and teachers of teenagers to engage in connected conversations which will shape their future.
Ms. Lanni wasn’t exactly planning to become an author. She was searching for resources and tools to support the changing teenage environment in her home, and was sorely disappointed by the online and written materials available. “People are reluctant to voice their teen parenting challenges. I learned to maintain my sanity as a single mom I had to reach out to my community, whether local or online, to support me in whatever problem I was facing. When my children were young, there were countless useful resources available. The challenges of raising and mentoring teenagers are much more complex, yet there is less published material. My wish is that more and more parents become vocal to insure they and their teenagers are as happy and healthy as possible.”
“Executives can also be parents”, Ms. Lanni states, “in the world of web2.0, online communities such as secondlife.com and facebook.com simply reflect the teenage conversations in our homes. Parents must engage in life-defining conversations with their teens if they intend to be their primary role models. I’ve invested my personal time in Be Inspired to ask parents and teachers to join me in developing the resources to lead these necessary talks.”