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How to Choose and Use Liquid Zeolite to Remove Toxic Chemicals From Your Body

My guest is Eddie Stone, Founder and CEO of Touchstone Essentials. I’ve been using and recommending Touchstone Essentials’ zeolite detox products and wholefood supplements since the company began in February 2012. Eddie created Touchstone Essentials with the vision that only real farm-fresh food offers real improvement in body, mind and personal well-being. On this show we’ll focus on their PureBody liquid zeolite product and talk in detail about why everybody needs to take zeolite, their two zeolite products, how their zeolite is different from others, and how you can get your zeolite and supplements FREE (I do!). We’ll also talk about how their wholefood supplements complement liquid zeolite to help your cells detox every day. debralynndadd.mytouchstoneessentials.com

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TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
How to Choose & Use Liquid Zeolite to Remove Toxic Chemicals from Your Body

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Eddie Stone

Date of Broadcast: June 20, 2013

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world. There are toxic chemicals all around us unfortunately in consumer products, in the environment, in the air we breathe and the food we eat. There’s a lot we can do about it so that we don’t have to be exposed to them or suffer the ill effects of those exposures if we are. We can remove toxic chemicals from our homes. We can remove toxic chemicals from our bodies. And we can live a healthy, happy, productive life despite the dangers all around us. That’s what the show is about, is how to do that, the practical things that we can do every day.

And today, my guest is Eddie Stone. He’s the founder and CEO of Touchstone Essentials. And Touchstone Essentials makes some wonderful products that help your body detox, and also take the nutrition that your body needs in order to be healthy in an easy and affordable way. Very effective products!

But before we talk about the products themselves, before I introduce Eddie, I just want to talk about traveling. Summer time is the time when everybody wants to travel. And I love to travel. I travel as much as I can. And I know our guests travels a lot.

Eddie travels a lot talking about the products all over the United States. And as far as I know, he’s a very healthy person. I’ve never heard of him being sick.

But the thing about travel is that you’re exposed to so many toxic chemicals that you aren’t exposed to at home. You might be able to find a toxic-free hotel room or an organic restaurant. But these are few and far between. And if you’re just traveling around staying in ordinary hotels, eating in ordinary restaurants, flying on airplanes, riding around in taxi cabs with deodorizers, you’re being exposed to toxic chemicals that you probably wouldn’t be exposed to when you’re at home.

And one of the things that you can do about this is to take Pure Body Liquid Zeolite which is actually the subject of our show today.

Eddie, thank you so much for being with us. Are you there?

EDDIE STONE: Yes, I am, Debra. And thank you so much for the opportunity to speak to everybody.

DEBRA: You’re welcome.

I’ve had Eddie on as a guest before. So he’s told his story. But would you tell us again because I’m sure we have lots more listeners who haven’t heard you.

EDDIE STONE: Well, I guess I’m somewhat here by accident, although that accident is some 20 years ago. Fairly traditional background, just in business. But all of a sudden, for a variety of reasons—one being my mom’s personal health, and then my own health concerns—I became intrigued about food, where it came from, what it was grown with, fungicides, pesticides, the air that we breathe. I just had this realization.

Although it’s one of those things that didn’t happen over time. I guess I’m a little slow. Over time, I just began to appreciate where our food comes from, how it’s grown, the chemicals that are used, the chemical in the air that we breathe in our home, outside of the house.

All of these things have a great impact, not only the obvious, which is our vulnerability to degenerative diseases (which you talk about all the time on this show), but also the quality of life—how you feel when you get up in the morning, how you feel about yourself when you look at the mirror because these things affect your skin and how the skin looks and accelerate the aging process.

So, all of that conspired in the last 20 some years, meeting people like yourself. It caused me to not only pursue my interest personally and professionally as a health advocate, but I’m also an entrepreneur. And so, I see that there’s an opportunity for those that are willing to work hard and create solutions for people.

DEBRA: Yes. So, what you offer in Touchstone Essentials, tell us about the package or products that you offer. And then, we’ll talk specifically about the Pure Body Zeolite throughout the show today because it’s a very special product that does very special things. But tell us about the whole, big picture.

EDDIE STONE: And you mentioned travel which is probably the right place to start. By the way, on my drive in to work today, on the news was a tour guide in Singapore complaining to the radio interviewer that they weren’t able to do tours right now, they weren’t able really to make money because the pollution was so bad that nobody wanted to tour the city. I just had a friend return from Shanghai in China talking about how her family was so desperate to spend the summer away because of the pollution. And so it’s really a global issue that’s out there every day for us.

For me, what I realized is that the role that food plays in our life is really life or death. We don’t tend to think of it that way, but it’s really a life or death issue. When you break it down and look at it from a day to day basis, I think most people realize what they should be eating and what they shouldn’t be eating. If they’re eating something that was passed to them through a driveway window or that type of thing, I think they realize it’s just a fuel stop and not their primary choice.

And so, I see this gap or gulf that exist between where people are with their habits, what they wind up eating day in and day out, and where they want to be. They know all the answers. It’s just a question of access and quality and affordability.

DEBRA: Yes, yes. I think that’s exactly right.

EDDIE STONE: Right! You experienced this yourself. If you travel, there’s nothing you can do about this.

DEBRA: Actually, I want to interrupt you for a minute because I want to tell you something out of my own experience about that moment of deciding that you have to eat better food and the difference between having made the decision and then being able to actually implement in your life.

I remember I really grew up on fast food and pizza and Jack in a Box and McDonald’s. Everything was out of a package and TV dinners. But I remember when I realized—I don’t remember the year. But I remember the moment when I realized that I needed to eat more fresh vegetables. It was as an adult.

I went to the supermarket. And the fresh fruits and vegetables looked so unappetizing. I bought some and they tasted so terrible that I didn’t want to eat them. I thought, “How could this be good for me?”

And here we are now, fast forward all these years later, and we have your wonderful supplements that I take every day. And the difference between the quality of fruits and vegetables that go into your supplements and the quality of food in the supermarket is night and day. It’s like not even the same food.

And so, I think that you’ve done a public service by making the foods that we should be eating available in these capsules. I often think of when I was a child and we started having astronauts going out into outer space. They were eating food capsules.

I thought, “People should be eating food, not capsules.” But I’ve changed my mind about that. I know that when I take my Touchstone Essentials supplements in the morning, and I get those vibrant foods that have only had the water and fiber removed from them, that I’m actually getting all these nutrition that I’m not getting from the foods that I buy in the store.

And that was just a huge thing for me, to go to the store and see, “Well, fruits and vegetables, what’s in these fruits and vegetables that tastes terrible and have pesticides all over them?” Well, I eat these, and it was amazing.

EDDIE STONE: Well, I think you’ve summed it up brilliantly just in terms of who we are. We basically recognize these challenges that you’re describing because they’re faced by all of us every day. And so what we’ve gone out and done is procure whole fruits and vegetables, pick them at their peak of nutrition. These are things that have grown with organic practices. We’ve used technology to process them with really no heat. And so we’ve provided to the consumer portable nutrition.

I don’t know of another way to say it. I know it doesn’t sound very fancy, but this is a chance for a person to bridge the gap.

DEBRA: But that’s what it is.

EDDIE STONE: That’s right, that’s right. It bridges that gap. That’s right. It bridges that gap between where they are and where they want to be every day with their health choices because it does matter, what you put in your body.

DEBRA: It absolutely does. And especially, I know when I travel—and of course you know this because I know you’re traveling all the time—it’s really hard. Often, it’s really hard to get good food to eat. And I’m going to just admit something—actually, we’re going to go to break, and then I’m going to admit something.

EDDIE STONE: Okay!

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And we’re here with Eddie Stone who’s the founder and CEO of Touchstone Essentials. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Eddie Stone, founder and CEO of Touchstone Essentials. And since I just had a Touchstone Essentials commercial on during the break, I want to mention that Eddie’s offering a discount for the summer starting now through August 31st. And if you go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and it said in the commercial, look for the broccoli, and click there, it’ll take you to a page where it describes all the Touchstone Essentials product. But it also has a link to the gift certificate. So, this is a time where you can save as well as get some great supplements.

The thing that I wanted to admit before the break is that I hardly ever watch TV, but I do like watching two channel—the Food Channel and the Cooking Channel because I love to eat, I love food, and I learn things about different kinds of food and how to prepare them or how not to prepare them. And one show, I like to watch for fun, strictly for fun, is Guy Fieri going to diners, drive-ins and dives. I never eat in those kinds of restaurants, but he’s very entertaining to watch.

But the reason that I bring it up is because they show you how they prepare the food. And oh, my God, just watch this show some time and just see what they put in food in restaurants. There’s sugar in everything—white sugar in everything. A lot of what gets put in is packaged foods that are already processed foods.

So, if you think that you’re eating fresh foods in most restaurants, you aren’t. They’re cooked in microwaves and all these kinds of things.

So when you’re traveling, and you’re eating in restaurants, this is what you’re eating.

A couple of days ago, I went to a restaurant that was organic, raw and vegan. But you don’t find those very often, especially if you’re traveling.

And so, what you want to be able to do is get that nutrition in your body, especially when you’re traveling, especially when you’re under stress being away from home. Wouldn’t you agree?

EDDIE STONE: Absolutely! And one of the things people don’t realize as they’re shopping in a conventional grocery store, and they’re going to the butcher or the meat counter in that store, they look at that meat and it looks untouched or unprocessed. What they don’t realize is most of those meats have 20 to 40 different chemicals and preservatives that were injected, applied, utilized even after that meat was butchered—not including how it was conventionally grown.

So, it’s very difficult to eat clean.

DEBRA: Wow! Yes, it is very, very difficult. This is why it’s so important to me personally that I take these supplements because it is clean food, it is good nutrition. And so no matter what else I eat during the day or I don’t eat during the day, I’ve got the nutrients. I know when I take those capsules in the morning, I’ve got the nutrients. And it’s made a huge difference in my health, it really has.

So, now we’ve talked about the supplements, I want to spend the rest of the show actually talking about Pure Body. Pure Body Liquid Zeolite is a unique product in and of itself. There are other zeolite products on the market. But the way this one is prepared and the effectiveness is just so far above anything else that I’ve seen. It’s really amazing!

Before we actually talk about the product, Eddie, would you tell us why it’s important for people to take it? What’s going on in the world that they should take those?

EDDIE STONE: Well, let’s just think about all the things that you have been talking about and that I’ve been talking about here in the first part of this show. I just think it’s just an overwhelming amount of evidence that’s all around us just in terms of chemical exposure either through pollutants or household products in your home, automobiles, just living from the food supply.

There really shouldn’t be any denial by anybody—and I guess there’s a few people that’s got their head proverbially stuck in the sand. But we just live in a toxic world.

Just the title of your book and your show and everything that you do in your blood, it’s a toxic world, and we need to take a defensive posture. If you don’t, it’s going to cost you in terms of your health.

It’s hard to quantify it. I can’t say for the listener what does it cost in terms of longevity or quality of health, but we know it has an impact. It makes you more vulnerable to degenerative disease. It shortens your life. It makes you age faster. So you need to do something about it. And it needs to be a daily strategy almost like getting fresh servings of whole fruits and vegetables and supplements.

DEBRA: I agree, it does need to be a daily strategy because our bodies—

Well, first, I want to say that, a lot of times, people think that if they’re not having symptoms, that they’re not being affected. But that’s not true.

What happens with a lot of toxic chemicals is that they build up in your body. And when they get to a certain amount, then there’s a long-term effect. It’s very similar to smoking cigarettes. You could smoke cigarettes, and it takes 30 years to get cancer, or you could be cleaning your kitchen with toxic chemicals, and it takes 30 years to get cancer, or children are being born deformed.

If women who are not even pregnant are exposed to toxic chemicals, and then get pregnant—or the fathers also being exposed to toxic chemicals, then conception occurs—the toxic exposure of both parents are already affecting the child who is not even conceived of yet. And when that conception occurs, it sets up a lifetime of poor health if the parents are exposed to these toxic chemicals.

So there’s all kinds of reasons why we need to be concerned about this. And what ends up happening generally is that when people actually start taking the steps that they need to take to reduce the toxic chemical exposure and remove toxic chemicals from their bodies, then they start experiencing a change in their health and well-being which is really astonishing.

And we’re going to talk about that more after the break which is going to happen in about 10 seconds. I’m a little early.

EDDIE STONE: Thanks, Debra.

DEBRA: Five, four, three, two, one…

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And I’m here today with Eddie Stone, founder and CEO of Touchstone Essentials. And Eddie makes fabulous whole food, organic nutrition and zeolite products that remove toxic chemicals from your body.

Okay! Eddie, let’s just start with the zeolite itself. Why zeolite? Why does it remove toxic chemicals?

EDDIE STONE: Zeolite, it’s an actual mineral. The mineral comes from an environment where a lava collides with lakes or salt water. We know a lot about them. They’ve been around a long time. Any time you have clay soil, it usually has a content of zeolite. There are multiple kinds of zeolites.

But the type of zeolite we use, it’s called clinoptilolite. It’s a sheet-like zeolite. And we know a great deal about it which is important. In fact, it actually enjoys a GRAS status—which is generally recognized—safe category from the FDA. And so the consumer can consume it with confidence.

And in fact, there’s history of it being used by the Romans, the Chinese some 5000 years ago to stop dysentery. Now, they didn’t necessarily know scientifically what they were using. They just knew that if they added clay to their diet, their dysentery would go away partly because if you look at it under a microscope, it has a sponge-like quality. And it looks almost like Swiss cheese. And inside of these little tunnels or channels or little holes that you think of in a sponge or Swiss cheese, these natural mineral maintains a negative charge which means it has a perfect natural affinity for positively charged heavy metals, voltaorganics, cadmium, lead, mercury, things like these, things you don’t want in your body, things that in quantity in your body are detrimental to your health and can even lead to death. It has this natural affinity.

And here’s what’s great about it. Unlike something like an herbal cleanse which can dislodge something from the tissue, in this case, it’s almost like the north end and the south end of a magnet when the zeolite comes in contact with the pollution. They snap together like the north end and south end of a magnet would. And once they’re connected, it won’t released it. So now, it’s sequestered, for lack of a better word, until it discharges out of your body assuming normal renal function in about a four to six hour period of time. So it’s a brilliant answer to these complicated modern issues that’s found in nature.

But as we find it in nature, as we mine it in nature, it is not prepared or going to be effective in the body. There’s zeolites that are sold all over the globe. And I think most of us are pretty leery on a lot of these things that we see. There’s a lot of over-promising and under-delivering that consumers have to navigate through or fight through. What’s important with the zeolite is that the consumer know has it been processed and do they know those end results.

So, for example, on our website, we publish freely lab results, third-party lab results, to show what it looked like before and what it looks like after. We’ve got to clean it. Think about wiping your counter off in your kitchen and using the same sponge over and over. Eventually, all you’re doing is moving the dirty around. I’ve got a 17-year old son, so I know about watching that activity. They’ll just move that dirt around instead of rinsing that sponge off.

But he’d go over to the sink, and he’d clean that sponge off, and you wring it out, now you go back to the counter, and it’s much more effective at picking up whatever you’re trying to clean.

It’s the same thing with the zeolite. So it’s important that it’s clean.

But here’s one more component, Debra, not just that it’s clean, that we mill it to a size that’s preferred in the body. You might think of it simply just being too large to be effective. And in this case, it’s all about surface area. The more you create, the better off that you are. And as we get down to the smaller sizes, we exponentially increase surface area.

So, most of what consumers see out there are anywhere from two microns to four microns in size. You need it to be at least 0.3 microns in size because you can have that really in a substantive way get into soft tissue and the bloodstream. Otherwise, it’s going to take a cup of powdered zeolite—and most do not want to deal with that on a daily basis—to even be remotely effective. You’d just like to deal with a few simple drops, not a disruption to your day.

And so, we clean it. We put that out there. We verify it with third-party labs. We mill it to a fine point, a strategic point.

And then, I don’t know if there’s going to be time here after the break, we also offer it in an exceptional version, an advanced version where we actually get down to nano-sized particles that fit inside water clusters (and hopefully, we’ll have a chance to speak about that).

But it’s important that it be clean, it’s important that it be small to increase surface area so that it can be effective, and the good dollars that you’re spending on the program actually are efficacious and work for you as a consumer.

DEBRA: Well, let’s wait until after the break to talk about the super extra strength ones. There’ll be plenty of time for you to do that. But we still do have a couple of minutes. And I just want to comment that one of the things that I like so much about this product is that it really focuses on removing the heavy metals and chemicals from your body.

People hear this word, “cleanse,” all the time or “detox,” but there’s all kinds of different ways to do that. And if you do like an herbal cleanse or something, as you were talking about before, it can release some of these things. But the different cleanses are designed to do different things. And this is very much very chemical- and heavy metal-oriented.

So, what if you want to do is remove toxic chemicals and metals from your body, then taking liquid zeolite is perfect. And taking this one [unclear 23:47] that I know of because of all the reasons that Eddie has already said.

So, don’t think that if you’re doing a cleanse of any kind that you’re removing toxic chemicals. This is very, very specific.

And another point about this that I think is very important is that this is just going into your body. The zeolite is just going into your body, it’s going around in different parts of your body, and it’s picking up, like a magnet, the toxic chemicals and removing them. So they come out of your body in four to six hours.

The rest of your body could be not functional at all, as long as you have normal kidney function, and that this can go through that system, your body can remove toxic chemicals. And it doesn’t matter how sick your body is. Even if your liver isn’t functioning, you can still remove toxic chemicals.

And there have been some amazing stories about this. It’s pretty amazing how this works so well. And you don’t even have to be well or drink horrible-tasting stuff or anything. Just take these drops, you drink sufficient water, and it happens. You’re just removing toxic chemicals.

So, we are going to be back in a few minutes about the extra strength Pure Body and how special it is. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd.

This has been Toxic Free Talk Radio. We’re talking with Eddie Stone, the founder and CEO of Touchstone Essentials. And if you want to learn more about these products, just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and look for the magnet.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And I’m here today with my guest, Eddie Stone, who’s the founder and CEO of Touchstone Essentials. We’re talking about his very pure, whole food nutritional supplements and Pure Body Liquid Zeolite that removes toxic chemicals from your body.

Eddie, I want to make sure that we get this point across, that Pure Body will remove toxic chemicals and heavy metals that are in your body that you’ve just been exposed to, but it also removes what is called body burden, the accumulation of toxic substances in your body.

And some things like heavy metals are especially difficult for your body to process. And unless you do something, like take Pure Body, your body is just going to hold on to these things until they—well, it’ll hold on to them for the rest of your life until you get some illness that’s caused by accumulated toxic chemicals and you die.

That’s just the fact. That’s just the fact of living in today’s world. There’s nobody who is exempt from this. It’s an epidemic of toxic exposure that cuts across all classes. It doesn’t matter how much money you make or where you live, you’re going to be exposed to toxic chemicals.

And every single person needs to do something about it. And if they don’t, they’ll just get sick, period.

EDDIE STONE: Well, I couldn’t agree with you more. What’s at work here and what you’re describing, part of it is the body’s defensive system, or even let’s call it its brilliance. So when your body is exposed to heavy metals, environmental pollutants—I mean think of mercury, innocuous. You think you’re getting amalgam filling when you’re a child from your dentist, no big deal.

The offgassing from that will—

You know, mercury is an example of something that your body does not recognize, doesn’t know how to use. And so your immune system immediately sees something like that. And all it wants to do is to deal with it so that it can’t continue to cause inflammation and harm in the body. And so it sequesters it.

And it generally sequesters things like mercury or other heavy metals or voltaorganics into fat cells. It’s one of the easiest places for the body’s defensive systems to stuff stuff away. You see people that struggle to lose weight. Very often, there’s a toxicity issue involved because the body is just being defensive.

And so if you don’t do something about it, this body burden that you’re talking about builds up over time. And everybody, they’re all caught up in “Well, if there’s no acute issues, I don’t have to worry about it.” Hey, we don’t know. Your doctor doesn’t know where that tipping point is where, all of a sudden, these things create a calamitous type of event at some point in life.

And maybe it’s not in fat directly that the toxicity caused the problem. It’s the accumulation of the fat or other things that resulted in trying to deal with the toxicity.

DEBRA: Yes, exactly.

EDDIE STONE: Yeah, it’s one of the dog chasing the tail type of issues.

That’s why our Pure Body Extra Strength is critical in this regard because we mill it to a size that’s small enough. If people can visualize this, we can use proprietary frequencies, sound waves, to put it inside water clusters. Most people don’t realize that water is made up of a series of clusters. A single cluster of water can exist. It’s got to be in a grouping. We stretch those and use those soundwaves in a stretching process by bombarding the purified water to flip those or put those nano-sized milled zeolite particles inside that water. When you let go of the soundwaves, it’s basically trapped in there. Now, when you consume it, basically, any way that water goes in your body—which is everywhere—now you’ve got a chance to detoxify everywhere which is really not something that we’ve seen before.

It is brilliant in its application. It’s just a utilization of what we find in nature. And the results that people have seen have just been staggering.

So we are very proud to be able to offer this. I’ve seen people talk about these things before. No one has ever gone out there and used third-party verification for what we’re doing. And we truly think that this is one of those products that has a unique place in a day-to-day habits that people have in terms of thinking about their health today, tomorrow, their longevity, quality of health. It’s just a great tool.

DEBRA: Well, I came to Raleigh and visited your headquarters in April to attend a conference. And I heard people talking about cellular health which is a big topic today in the health world. And literally, everything that happens in our body happens in our cells. And the toxic chemicals, the pollutants that we’re being exposed to get into our cells.

And as far as I know, Pure Body Extra Strength is the only thing that will actually go in the cell and remove the toxic chemicals so that you have clean cells. And I think that that is pretty amazing. Did I get that right?

EDDIE STONE: You got that exactly right. It’s a complement to all of these other things we’re doing. It just takes it to its logical conclusion that you talk about on your book and on this show about being conscious of the toxicity in your environment, in your house, where you live, in your food supply. This is just a logical extension of that effort, to take it down to that cellular level which is truly where health is found.

So, our philosophy in our company is cellular health. We want to detoxify the cell. We want to put the good nutrients back in.

We’re very proud of the complementary farmers and people that we work with and people like yourself that are willing to go out there and help share this story.

I said earlier in the call, and I say it all the time if you’ve spent time with me. We’re talking about life or death issues. And it’s pretty exciting to be able to do so.

DEBRA: I think it’s exciting too.

I was talking to a doctor the other day who said to me, “Let’s do this”—and it wasn’t detox because I already am detoxing, but he suggested that I do something. And he said, “Let’s just do this, and then be able to see what’s left after you’ve handled that,” what then needs to be handled. And I thought that that was such a good way to look at things because it totally applies to toxic chemicals.

There’s just amazing numbers of health problems that people have that healthcare cost are sky high now. And people are sick in ways that we never used to see at younger and younger ages.

And my viewpoint is—and I think yours is as well—why not just take the toxic chemicals out of your body and then see how you feel.

I mean, for me, I would suggest—well, I’m not a doctor, and so I probably shouldn’t say this. But I’ll say it this way. Any treatment that you went to for any kind of health problem would be better if you were to first remove the toxic chemicals for your body. And you may find that if you remove the toxic chemicals from your body, you may not need a lot of other health treatments because the toxic chemicals may be causing more problems than you think.

And even if your doctor is unaware of these things—this is something that anyone could do. A lot of doctors who know about liquid zeolite are just putting all their patients on it because why go through expensive, long-term health problems if they can just be handled by removing the toxic chemicals in your body?

And I’ve seen it happen over and over and over. When people remove toxic chemicals from their body, amazing things happen.

And we’re not talking about thousands of dollars here. You can buy a bottle of just the regular Pure Body for as long as $25 a month and just get started with that. Everybody in your family can be on it. It’s an affordable thing.

We only have a couple of minutes left, but I do want to say—what should I say? Okay, here. Go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, click on the broccoli or click on the magnet, it’ll take you to a page where I have a lot more information about the two kinds of Pure Body, the regular and extra strength. There’s a link there for the discount gift certificate you can get between now and August 31st. You can get a significant discount when you become a member and buy these products.

Also, I want to just toss in that you can also solve these products and help other people and make money at the same time. In fact, you only need to have three other people take what you’re taking in order to get your products for free.

I don’t pay for my products. It’s been a long time since I’ve actually paid for my Touchstone products because other people are buying them through me. And the commissions that I get pay for my products. That can happen for you too.

So it’s something that everybody should be doing. It’s something everybody can do. And Eddie, if you have anything else you’d like to say, as I’m sure you do, I can give you another minute.

EDDIE STONE: Well, I’ll just say this.

DEBRA: Oh, 20 seconds!

EDDIE STONE: Okay, really quickly, what happens if you don’t change the air filters in your home? In 90 days, they’re dirty.

You’re breathing that very same air every day, yet you don’t get the chance to pull your lungs out and change them. Every 90 days, your body has to process all of that gunk. What do you do then to aid the body in processing all of that? And that’s just one simple example.

DEBRA: Yes, yes, absolutely. Thank you so much, Eddie, for being on with us.

EDDIE STONE: Thank you, Debra.

DEBRA: And thank you so much for coming up with these products. They changed my life. And I think that they’ll change the world […]

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd.

Honey, Health, and Honeybees

My guest is Zeke Freeman, CEO of Bee Raw, a leading brand of raw varietal honeys. Zeke gained an appreciation for both home-grown produce and for the rich heritage of artisanal food production on his family’s farm in Northwestern Pennsylvania. Zeke turned this passion into a full-time pursuit of the culinary arts at the University of Montana’s School of Food Management & Culinary Arts in 1989. After earning his degree, he relocated to France to continue his education at the Hotel School of Grenoble and began working under the direction of acclaimed chef, Alain Ducasse. In 1995, following two years in France working with, and learning from, accomplished international chefs, Zeke moved back to the United States where he became a buyer for Dean & Deluca in New York City. Always in pursuit of fine edibles for the upscale food, wine and kitchenware retailer, Zeke discovered the company that has become Bee Raw Honey. Today, Zeke partners with family owned beekeepers around the country to bring high-quality, raw, unadulterated honey to the American table. Zeke also actively promotes the importance of American family-owned apiaries and works to educate the public about the importance of beekeeping and its value in agriculture, so we’ll be talking about toxic pesticides affecting the bees, colony collapse disorder, toxic chemicals you shouldn’t be using in your garden, how to help save the bees, and the process of making and benefits of raw honey as well as ways to enjoy honey. www.debralynndadd.com/debras-list/bee-raw

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TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Honey, Health & Honeybees

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Zeke Freeman

Date of Broadcast: June 19, 2013

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world even though there are toxic chemicals around us in consumer products and in the environment. Sometimes, it seems like every time we listen to the radio, or read the newspaper, or watch TV, they’re talking about yet another toxic chemical that is dangerous to our health. But there are many things we can do to protect our health and the environment from toxic chemical exposures. We can remove them from our homes, remove them from our bodies, and in general, do things that support our own health instead of having our health be damaged by toxic chemicals.

Today is Wednesday, June 19th 2013. Yesterday was my birthday. So today is the first day of the next year of my life. And I’m looking forward to having a great year.

Today, my guest is Zeke Freeman. He’s the CEO of Bee Raw, a company that sells varietal honeys—raw varietal honeys, I should say. And they also have a great interest in saving the bees. And you probably heard that our honeybees are—actually, all bees are in danger of extinction. We’re going to talk about that today and what you can do.

But first, I want to tell you that this is actually National Pollinator Week according to the US Fish & Wildlife Service. So this is an appropriate thing for us to be talking about.

And what I didn’t know is that not only do bees colonate, but also birds, butterflies, beetles. And that’s our pollinators.

There’s this very interesting website put together by the US Fish and Wildlife Service called Pollinators. It’s at FWS.gov/pollinators. And it shows all the different kinds of animals that pollinates and how we can help them.

Today, we’re going to talk specifically about the bees.

So, welcome, Zeke. Thanks for being with me.

ZEKE FREEMAN: Thanks so much. And happy birthday.

DEBRA: Thank you. I had a great birthday. I went out and I had a raw, organic vegan lunch which was fabulous! I’m not a vegan, but I can tell that my body is, as time goes by, and I eat more raw vegetables, it actually wants more raw vegetables.

I wouldn’t even say that I’m in transition. I noticed that at different times in my life, my body needs different types of food. And right now, what my body wants to eat is raw vegetables. I had a wonderful experience yesterday with that.

ZEKE FREEMAN: That’s fantastic! I’m very much the same. I grew up a corn and potatoes and meat eater. As I’ve grown and learned and eat more, the more vegetables I want in my plate and the less of the others.

DEBRA: That’s exactly right. That’s exactly how I am too, yeah.

ZEKE FREEMAN: It makes me feel better, it really does.

DEBRA: It does for me too. And I’m a person who grew up on a lot of fast food and a lot of sugar. I used to eat sugar in every meal and in between. I used to eat like only chocolate cake for dinner, but that is not the case anymore.

ZEKE FREEMAN: You should not be embarrassed about that.

DEBRA: I have been known to eat a whole gallon of ice cream and a whole coconut cream pie. Not anymore!

ZEKE FREEMAN: We may have been separated at birth then because my wife knows just not to buy ice cream because if it’s in the freezer, then I eat it. And that’s just the way it goes.

DEBRA: Yes!

ZEKE FREEMAN: She tried getting mad at me for years. And now, she’s just given up. There’s no hope for keeping sweets in my house because I will eat them.

DEBRA: Yes. Tell us how you got interested in doing what you do, to be selling raw varietal honeys.

ZEKE FREEMAN: I’m very fortunate that I grew up on my family farm in Pennsylvania—spending summers there anyway. And we’re exposed forever to great vegetables and our own meat and our own corn. So I really started my life with great food in my life.

And when I went to college, I decided I wanted to go to culinary school and cook. And after that, I worked around France with a number of famous chefs, as well as in New York.

And when I decided to leave cooking, I knew I wanted to be completely involved in food still. And I worked for Dylan DeLuca for quite a period of time. And while I have been in DeLuca, my job was to buy packaged foods from around the world. And I was in charge of olive oil and vinegar and pea and coffee and everything else that’s in a jar, can or a box. And one of the things that fell under my purview fortunately was honey.

Very much like olive oil and vinegar, there are many different types of honey. And that’s one of the things. When you work in a very high-end retailer whose focus is on the individual providence of a product, you start getting really geeky about it. You start really getting into the individual nuances of where the coffee was grown or how it was processed. And the same was true with honey.

And what I found is we were importing all of these great honeys from around the world—chestnut honey from Italy and lavender honey from France and manuka honey from New Zealand. But we really didn’t have a focus on American honey. We had this one local guy. And he had wildflower honey. And that was it! That’s all we really had for American honey.

And maybe we had another one from California. So maybe we had two or three varietals from the US.

And I went, “There’s got to be all these varietals. For as many flowers as there are, there has to be all these American honeys.”

And that was the beginning of my interest in honey. And 10 years later, here we are.

DEBRA: That’s great! I’m so glad that you “brought it home” so to speak because America does have a lot of great resources, and we should be eating—as you probably agree—as close to home as possible.

I want to ask you a question because I don’t know the answer to this. I noticed on your website that you have a big focus on raw. And I want you to explain later to us, after the break, what that means.

But my most immediate question is it doesn’t say that your honeys are organic. And it’s been my impression for a long time—I haven’t really paid attention. And this is not a criticism, just a question. I have always assumed that whether honey was labeled organic or not, but I was that particularly concerned about pesticides. If there were pesticides, then it would probably kill the bills, and they wouldn’t be coming back to make honey.

So, could you just comment on that, so that people can understand and I can understand? Is there such thing as organic honey? What would that constitute? Should we be concerned about pesticides in honey.

ZEKE FREEMAN: So, organic, as you know just in general, is a fairly convoluted and touchy subject. In some places, it means a whole lot. And in some places, it doesn’t mean so much. When we’re talking about organic dish soaps, how much does that really mean to you?

But in a lot of places—and it has to do with your vegetables and your fruits—it really means something important. There’s no question about the toxic load that you’re consuming into your body.

The problem with honey, generally speaking, is that there are very few places in the world where there is enough land mass that we can get a guarantee that bees won’t pollinate somewhere where pesticides are being used. And this will apply up to three miles in any direction to collect pollen and nectar.

DEBRA: Wait! I’m going to just interrupt you right there because we have to go to the break. It sounds like you have a lot more to say which is great. So let’s just take a break there.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. We’re here with Zeke Freeman from Bee Raw. And we’re talking about bees, honeys and what you can do to help the bees and eat healthy sweets.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Zeke Freeman, CEO of Bee Raw, a leading brand for raw varietal honeys.

So, Zeke, before the break, you were telling us about organic. Go on with that please.

ZEKE FREEMAN: Sure! Bees fly in three miles in any direction to collect nectar and pollen to make honey. And the problem is that there are very few places in the world where bees can fly and do that without running into some sort of pesticide. And the USDA or the USDA organic honey won’t certify anything in the United States as of this point

So there’s a little bit of Canadian organic honey. And there is some organic honey from South America, but very little. And so that’s the reason why we don’t have any certified organic honey (because all of our honey is from the continental US).

That being said, what we do is we work with beekeepers who place their bee either on wild […] flowers, tracks the flowers that are completely wild (which is wild sage or wild raspberries). And we also work—when we have a varietal bit of a crop that is agriculturally grown, we try to work with beekeepers who place the bees on organic [unclear 11:44] such as organic orange blossoms.

So, that’s what we do to try to keep the pesticides low down as much as possible. And we expose the bees to insecticides as little as possible.

DEBRA: That’s great. So, I know from past experience in other fields having to do with organic that, just because it doesn’t say organic, doesn’t mean that it has pesticides on it or that there’s a lot of pesticides in it. I know that when I moved in California, and I was talking to California wine makers, some of them were making organic wine, and still they were not certified organic because they couldn’t afford the certification process or whatever it was, and that there were actually reasons why some farmers didn’t want to be certified which is a whole different story. But that didn’t mean that the wine wasn’t organic.

So, would you agree that with honey, we really don’t need to be concerned about excessive exposure to pesticides, especially if it’s a honey like your honey where care is taken to isolate where the bees are flying and putting them in particular places? I personally have never been concerned about that.

ZEKE FREEMAN: Yeah, I think that you hit it right on the nose there. You want to be buying your honey from a reputable source, whether it’s a beekeeper at your local farmer’s market, whether it’s a company like ours who really focuses on the beekeeper and working with small family apiaries whose interest is to make honey as opposed to some of the plastic honey bear producers who are producing mass quantity honey. You might have more of a concern there honestly. There’s just less care in the process of making honey.

And so I would say that that’s an important distinction to make. Look for someone who is a reputable producer.

DEBRA: Would you talk about the difference between raw and what you’re going to find in the honey bear and how, typically, honey is processed if you’re not looking for specifically raw honey?

ZEKE FREEMAN: Sure! The fact that honey that is not raw exists is really a shame because there’s really no reason to put honey through any sort of processing. The reasoning for putting honey through any processing is simply a matter of large producers believe that the consumer want that clear, liquid, amber color that you find in the honey bear. And the only thing that processing does is strips all of the good beneficial stuff out of the honey.

They heat it up to a high temperature which kills all the good stuff. and they microfilter it which pulls out the pollen and everything that tastes good. And then they blend it, a darker honey with a lighter honey to get that clear, amber color.

And in the meantime, they’re stripping out everything that’s good about the honey—the flavor, the health benefits—and then, giving us a product that we don’t really need. It’s really a shame that the processing happens at all.

So, raw honey is such a simple thing. It has so many good health benefits. It’s such a great sweeteners because it’s low on the scale of how it affects your body. It’s just silly that raw honey is processed at all.

DEBRA: Well, I agree with you. And I think that this gets back to—I talk a lot on the show about industrialization and how there’s an industrial mindset that says everything has to be the same. And in nature, everything is different.

And so, I think it’s so great that you are focusing on the varietal honeys because then we get to have these different nuances and flavors that we could put in the dishes that we’re eating every day.

And I personally have at least half a dozen different flavors of honey. I buy a lot of my honey at—I actually bought your honey at the natural food store. And I buy a lot of honey at farmer’s markets. And so they tell me, “Oh, here, our hives are in this location,” ten miles from my house. I really enjoy that. And I enjoy having different flavors.

You talk on your website about pairing different flavors of honey. We can talk about that later too. But I just think that honey is such an interesting sweetener. It’s a shame to take away those differences. And then they get all the same flavor in the honey bear.

So, after the break, we’re going to talk about what’s going on with the bees, what is the problem and what we can do to help the honey bees survive.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And we’re here with Zeke Freeman, CEO of Bee Raw. that’s BeeRaw.com. We’ll come back and talk more about honey.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Zeke Freeman, CEO of Bee Raw. And his website is BeeRaw.com. My website is ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com where you can go and learn about upcoming guests. And you can also listen to this and other past shows in the archives. So they’re there for you anywhere in the world 24/7. Just listen, listen, listen as much as you’d like,

So Zeke, now I’d like you to talk to us about what’s going on with the honey bee crisis—or I guess it’s all the bees—the colony collapse disorder. And what can we do to help save the bees.

ZEKE FREEMAN: Well, I’m just going to go ahead and plug what we’re doing right now. And hopefully, it will help your listeners get a very quick understanding of what they can do.

We just launched the Bee Raw Save the Bees Fund. People can find out more about it at BeeRaw.com/SavetheBees. And there are some very simple things that the listeners can do.

One, if they’re so inclined and want to keep it simple, they can donate to the Save the Bees Fund. And we, in turn, work with institutions like Viserys Institute which works for researching and protecting invertebrates, specifically honey bees.

They can sign our Pesticide-Free Pledge to pledge to not use pesticides and insecticides in their yard, and hopefully work with their municipalities to do the same in parks and so on and so forth.

And then, we’re also offering bee-friendly seeds, which we are selling. And the proceeds from those seed sales go to the Save the Bees Funds.

And planting flowers, both perennials and annuals, as well as flowering trees and shrubs, are one of the easiest things we can do all over the country to really help save the bees.

One of the problems with both urban and agricultural [sprawl] is that there are less and less places where bees have good, healthy storage. And nutrition is one of the cornerstones of colony collapse disorders in addition to pesticides and things like the [unclear 20:40]. We can talk about those things as well.

But we’re really trying to offer a very simple way for consumers to get answers and help in the solution by launching the Save the Bees Fund.

DEBRA: I really appreciate that you’re doing this because I like that you are, as a company, taking responsibility for the bees that are providing the product that you saw as well as selling a product. It really shows the consumer the whole cycle and connects the consumer to nature and responsibility for making sure that we continue to have the source of honey.

I just think that’s an admirable thing for you to do as a business. And I totally support and agree with what you’re doing.

I know that one of the things that I often think about and talk about is the loss of habit. And I happen to live in a place which is suburbia (I live in Florida). It’s suburbia, but I have a little piece of land. It’s a very small amount of land. I think it’s only a quarter acre. And it has a house on it. But I have a backyard, and I have a front yard. And I’m always thinking about how I can be making habitat as well as doing things like growing foods that I can eat. And I have a lot of birds and butterflies and bees in my yard.

I know that something that everybody can do that is listening is just go online and type in something like—what we do have them type in is “bee-friendly flowers” or something…

ZEKE FREEMAN: Absolutely!

DEBRA: And you can find the names of the plants that grow in your area that the bees want—in your area. Just plant the plants or toss the seeds on the ground and give your local bees a chance. Just anything that you can do to help in your backyard, or if you live in a high rise, in your community helping their bee […] This is all part of our responsibility as human beings.

So, tell us more specifically about the pesticides that are contributing to the plight of the bees.

ZEKE FREEMAN: Oh, I’d love to. So, we all know that agriculture uses pesticides and have for a very long time, since the industrial revolution—well, probably more specifically, since post-World War II. Many of the pesticides, in fact, were invented originally to be used in chemical warfare in World War II. And then, post-war, there wasn’t a use for them, right? And so they found other uses for them. And they began using them for pesticides.

So that’s kind of a scary thing if you think about just in our food supply before we even start talking about bees.

DEBRA: Yeah!

ZEKE FREEMAN: That’s where things have been since World War II. Industrialized agriculture has grown and grown. So that’s pretty scary.

In the past, 10 years or so, there have been some pesticides released by the large agricultural companies. And those are called neonicotinoids are based on nicotine. And they affect the nervous system of the insect.

The whole idea with the neonicotinoids is they were supposed to be more human-friendly because the half life of nicotine is much shorter prior pesticides and insecticides. And nicotine is not particularly bad for the human body.

Unfortunately, neonicotinoids, they’re actually putting them in the seed. So they’re becoming improving endemic. So, over time, while bees may not be effective the first time, they go to a crop that has a neonicotinoid in it. Over time, they actually build up this road of the chemical in their colony, in their honey. And there were times it actually completely destroyed the colony.

So they’re extremely dangerous. And that’s definitely another one of the cornerstones of why people are having such a hard time today.

DEBRA: Yeah! And what we can do just to make it simple is we should be using organic gardening methods and not use pesticides of any kind in our gardens at all.

Okay! So, we need to take another break. But after the break, we’re going to talk about something delicious, how we can use honey in various ways, particularly raw honey and keeping its raw characteristics.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And we’re here with Zeke Freeman, CEO of Bee Raw talking about honey.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest is Zeke Freeman, CEO of Bee Raw.

His website is BeeRaw.com. And we’ve been talking about how we can save the honey bees and how to choose good honey.

And now, let’s talk, Zeke, about what to do with your varietal honeys—or I guess varietal honeys or any combination honeys.

One of the things that I have recently had my attention on a lot earlier—and I mean earlier in life—I thought when I used to eat honey out of the honey bear, I just thought of honey as being honey. And so when I started being interested in natural sweeteners, I just thought, “Well, let’s make honey cake. And let’s make honey cookies.”

And I think there’s nothing wrong with that because people who are transitioning out of eating sugar only eat things that they’re familiar with.

But once I started understanding about raw honey, what I wanted to do is make desserts or other dishes that would preserve the health qualities, as you talked about earlier, of raw honey. And if you’re buying raw honey instead of heated honey, to cook it in something (bake it in a cookie or something) kind of defeats the purpose of it being raw.

And I know you have a lot of recipes on your site that have to do with cooking honey. But I also know, because I’ve looked at your site, that you do talk about preserving the rawness of the honey. I was reading a recipe about making iced tea. And you talked about making a simple syrup of the honey by combing it with warm water, not hot water (as you usually would making a simple syrup). So I appreciate…

ZEKE FREEMAN: That’s right. This is my favorite part of the conversation to have.

DEBRA: Mine too!

ZEKE FREEMAN: As a chef and a honey lover, I’d much rather be talking about this than talking about saving the bees. So I’m very excited to talk about this.

So, we like to cook with honey a lot because the individual characters of honey can be brought out in so many different ways.

We also try to cook with honey and offer ways to cook with honey that you grade the honey as little as possible. So we try to play a balancing act there.

One, people often don’t know where to go with honey past toast […] So we want to give them as many opportunities to use honey as possible because it’s a great replacement sweeteners no matter what because of its low glycemic index.

So, when you do a simple thing like glazed carrot which is a fantastic spring dish—some grazed carrots and pearl onion—and you replace what traditionally was sugar with a little bit of honey, the profile in terms of the sweetness and the glaze all remain the same. And you get a slightly different characteristic change. And it’s healthy for you.

DEBRA: It is! And I do want to say and I really want to stress this point. It’s not a black-and-white issue. It’s more of gradients.

If you’re putting sugar on your glazed carrots, and then you put honey on instead, that’s so much better than using sugar. But it’s not preserving the raw qualities of the honey.

I suppose you could cook your onions and carrots, and then put the honey on at the end, so that it would just warm up the honey and not cut everything out of it.

ZEKE FREEMAN: You just sprinkle it, you just drizzle it in the end with the liquids that are there, and it will glaze very quickly.

DEBRA: Yeah, that would be the way to do it.

ZEKE FREEMAN: And then, the other side of that coin is the negative effects that sugar has on the environment.

DEBRA: Oh, tremendously!

ZEKE FREEMAN: There’s that whole other side of the argument that we’re not even getting into.

DEBRA: Yeah, yeah.

ZEKE FREEMAN: So, replacing sugar with honey is beneficial both for the environment as well as your body.

DEBRA: And the point that I was wanting to make was that even if you did make some of these delicious recipes like honey pecan pie where it’s going to be cooking the honey at 350°, it’s still so much better than eating sugar. It’s not as healthful as eating the raw honey because you don’t have all the benefits of the raw honey because it’s now cooked. But still, it’s so much better than eating sugar. I’d much rather have you eat a pie or a cookie made with cooked honey than with sugar.

And that’s what we want to do. We want to move in the right direction.

ZEKE FREEMAN: I agree with that. I agree with that completely.

And the good news is this is not like trading in some vegetarian protein for meat. This isn’t half as good substitute. That honey pecan recipe is awesome! I mean that just is so good, it’s not a trade-off at all. If you look through my website, you’re going to see the cocktails we put together, some of the fish dishes, the barbecue dishes. I mean, these are not trade-offs. These are fantastic, fantastic…

DEBRA: No, they are. They are delicious. And for three years, I published a website where I took every natural sweetener I could find, and I made up recipes using them. And I’m bringing those recipes back. So I’ll be making recipes with your honeys for sure.

But what I found was that I actually preferred eating the desserts made with all these natural sweeteners honey and maple syrup and things because the flavors were so much better than just eating regular sugar. And I don’t even like the taste of white sugar anymore. I won’t eat a white sugar for dessert because it just takes like chemicals!

ZEKE FREEMAN: I couldn’t agree more.

DEBRA: So anything made from honey is an improvement of our eating processed food, of our cooking with sugar. It’s just a delight. And I can’t even describe how wonderful it is because it’s so wonderful.

I’m looking at a recipe for raspberry honey crème fresh with a little […] cookie. And I’ve been finding that as I’ve been exploring raw honey and what to do with it, that a lot of times, what I’m finding is to just put the honey in its raw state on top of something or mix it with something, and then it becomes a dessert.

For example, I love ricotta cheese. And so I’ll take ricotta cheese and just put it on a bowl. And I’ll drizzle the honey on top of it.

I’ll sprinkle some nuts on it or a few raspberries or whatever fruit is in season. And that’s a wonderful dessert.

And I’ve been thinking about how I could make things in a more savory version, and then just drizzle the honey on top.

Tell us some other ways that you think about this as a chef, about what to do with raw honey.

ZEKE FREEMAN: I have to say one of my favorite honeys for cooking is buckwheat honey. And buckwheat honey, we refer to it as the Guinness of honey. It’s like the block gets dark [unclear 34:43]. It’s a little bit tart and tangy. It has this molasses, kind of barnyard-y characteristic to it. So, it’s probably the honey I cook with most.

And to go to your idea about the ricotta, one of my favorite things in the spring when there’s fresh ricotta or really fresh goat cheeses is to take a nice, white platter or plate, pour the buckwheat honey (which is this beautiful black and white color going on), and then put white goat cheese or ricotta right in the middle of it. It’s just really beautiful.

So, it always inspires a lot of ooh’s and ah’s when you put it on the table as well as it’s just delicious.

But in terms of cooking, buckwheat is just fantastic because it really stands up to cooking. So whether you’re barbecuing with it or—I make a fantastic buckwheat honey barbecue braised short rib which really, really just infuses the buckwheat. It really just infuses into a whole dish. It’s just a really rich, hardy winter dish.

And to that end, I also make a miso-glazed salmon which you could probably do about any honey with. I like the buckwheat, I like the lighter honeys with it. I take a little bit of miso, some beer, some honey, mix those together. And then marinate the salmon (or another kind of fatty fish) for half an hour to two hours. You roast it really hot, and you just get this beautiful glaze on the fish. And you get this sweet/salty glaze that’s just really enjoyable. And it’s easy, just tremendously easy.

DEBRA: Yes! it is so easy. And you can just put a bit in your smoothie or in a salad dressing or just put it—like greens, for example, greens are so bitter that you need to have something that kind of sweetens it up. And just as we were talking about with the carrots, just right at the end, you could just add a little bit of honey, and you still have those raw characteristics.

Zeke, thank you so much for being with me today. This has really been a pleasure. And again, Zeke’s website is BeeRaw.com.

Go take a look. Every honey tells you the location of the apiary, the floral source, and different things you could do with it.

Our time is up for today! Go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and find out all about this show, upcoming guests and listen to the archives. If you enjoyed the show, tell your friends. I’ll be back tomorrow!

Bee Raw

A wonderful collection of raw American varietal honeys, with location of apiary, floral source, and food pairings given for each honey. They also sell complementary products such as well-paired organically-grown teas and seeds to plant in your garden to help save the bees. Also lots of recipes and information on how YOU can help save the bees.

Listen to my interview with Bee Raw CEO (and chef) Zeke Freeman..

Visit Website

Get Back to Nature Without Leaving Home

My guest Carol Venolia says, “There’s much more to ‘not toxic’ than the absence of toxic chemicals!” She and I agree there is a whole other world beyond the toxic industrial life: the nurturing, nourishing, healing world of nature. Founder of Come Home to Nature website, Carol is an architect with a passion for reconnecting humans with the rest of life. She wrote the e-book Get Back to Nature without Leaving Home; coauthored Natural Remodeling for the Not-So-Green House; wrote Healing Environments: Your Guide to Indoor Well-Being; penned the “Design for Life” column in Natural Home Magazine for 9 years; and has designed eco-homes, schools, healing centers, and eco-villages. Carol has been honored by The Green Economy Post as one of ten pioneering women in green design, and was named a Green Design Trailblazer by Natural Home Magazine. In this show we’ll be talking about how you can improve your general well-being by bringing elements of nature into your home. www.comehometonature.com

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TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Get Back to Nature Without Leaving Home

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Carol Venolia

Date of Broadcast: June 18, 2013

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world. And even though there are toxic chemicals all around us, we can do something about them. We can remove them from our homes, remove them from our bodies, remove them from the marketplace and live in a non-toxic world.

Today is June 18th—Tuesday, June 18th 2003. And I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. And it just happens to be my birthday. And we’re going to have a very special show today because we’re going to talk about something slightly different, but very, very related to our toxic chemical exposures. And that is we’re going to talk about what’s on the other side of being toxic. When you stop using toxic chemicals, there’s more to life than simply being not toxic.

And my guest and I today both hold that viewpoint. And we’ve both have gone through similar transformations in our lives where we’ve become aware of the world of nature and how that can benefit our well-being.

Before I introduce my guest, I want to tell you about my own personal website on this subject which is LivingasNature.com. I have a blog where I write about my personal insights about being part of the natural world as my viewpoint of life rather than living in the industrial world.

And as I’m sitting here saying this, my kittens are banging on the cat door wanting to come in from the outside world into the inside world.

But I do want to say I have this story that, since I’ve been thinking about this the last couple of days about my guest being on, and that we’re going to be discussing this subject, my kittens have been bringing nature indoors. They’ve been bringing me live grasshoppers in through the kitty door. And I have to kind of laugh at that this morning when I realized that, today, we’re going to be talking about coming home to nature and bringing nature into our lives.

My guest today is Carol Venolia. And she is the author of two books, one is Healing Environments and the other is Natural Remodeling for the Not So Green House. But she also now has a website called Come Home to Nature which is at ComeHometoNature.com. And she has a wonderful ebook called Get Back to Nature Without Leaving Home.

And that’s what we’re going to be discussing today, how you can get back to nature without leaving home.

Carol, are you there?

CAROL VENOLIA: Hi, I’m here. I’m delighted to be on your birthday show. Happy birthday.

DEBRA: Thank you. And I’m delighted that you’re here. Carol and I have known each other for 26 years. We met in 1987 on the same week, I think it was, that I met Larry who I ended up marrying and who’s been my friend for 26 years, same length of time. She had just written her book, Healing Environments and sent me the manuscript, asking me if I would write the foreword—which I did, and that’s how we met. And we’ve been friends ever since.

We used to both live in Northern California. So we were close enough that we could each drive about an hour and meet in the middle and have dinners together and talk. We’ve had many discussions over the years about nature and had a lot of agreement on this subject.

So Carol, let’s start with your story about how you went from being an average industrialized person into having your incredible viewpoint about being part of nature.

CAROL VENOLIA: Well, it all started way back in the early ‘70s (I’ve just dated myself) when I decided I wanted to be an architect. But it also happened to be, I believe, the year of the first Earth Day. And there was a growing awareness of life all over the globe being interconnected and of our role in that wonderful dance. And I began to wonder, “Okay, we’ve got this wonderful web of life, seizing, pulsing dance of being life. What do buildings have to do with that?” I didn’t want to just populate the world with more buildings. I wanted to understand how do these fairly static things, these buildings and towns and cities that we create relate to the living world.

And so that was beginning of the journey that have lasted 40+ years, exploring that question.

And what I found very early on was that the subject of how do life and buildings relate divided itself into two topics—one being human indoor health, and the other being the impact of buildings on the ecosphere. And that division itself says something about our experience, because we get cut off from the natural world by these wonderful places we’ve created to live in.

I shouldn’t say “cut off” from the natural world. We are nature. And that is the biggest insight we’ve kind of lost track of.

DEBRA: Yeah, let’s just talk about that for a couple of minutes. I think that that for me was a huge thing. And it came out of my experience of finding myself being sensitive to toxic chemicals and having them make me sick and having to put attention in my home environment in a way that was beyond say interior decorating.

I mean how many people look at what’s going on in their home except for what color do I want my sofa to be. And I really had to look and see that my home environment was making me sick. And when I got to a point where I have examined every single thing in my home to see what was toxic and what wasn’t, I walked out my front door one day and suddenly realized that there was another environment out there. I know we’re laughing, but when you have that realization, it’s kind of stunning.

CAROL VENOLIA: Right!

Well, yes, it is funny that we’ve come to use the word “environment.” And when we say that word, we sort of immediately think of all the big scale problems—pollution and deforestation and so on. But environment is what surrounds you. And that can be right next to your skin or all the way to the whole planet.

DEBRA: Yes, I actually now think of my body as part of the environment because I don’t think of myself as being my body, I think of myself as a spiritual being. So my first environment is my body, and then there’s my home, and then there’s the rest of the world. But it’s all layers of environment. And it took me a long time to get to that viewpoint. I just remember that day when I walked out the door, and I went, “Oh, well here’s another environment that I now have to look at and see is it toxic or is it not toxic or what’s going on with it.” And even though I have been to summer camp a lot as a girl scout, I still haven’t really seen the environment. I thought of it as being separate.

We need to take a break. But we’ll talk about this more when we come back.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Carol Venolia.and we’re talking about nature and being part of it and how to reconnect with it, et cetera, et cetera. We’ll be back in a moment.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: Hello again. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And it’s my birthday. And I’m here with architect, Carol Venolia. And we’re talking about nature and awareness of nature (or the lack thereof) in our culture today.

So, before the break, we were talking about how most people living in our industrialized world don’t consider themselves to be part of nature. So Carol, talk to us more about that.

CAROL VENOLIA: Okay! Well, let’s start with a simple statistic that a lot of people may have heard which is that, on average, Americans spend 91% or more of our time indoors. What that means is about half of the people spend more than 91% of their time indoors. And when we’re indoors, this is not necessarily a bad thing. We’ve created our homes so that we don’t have to be constantly subject to changes in weather and predators and all that kind of stuff. But we get this strange notion that life is about a thermostat and being able to completely control our environment which, in turns out, isn’t all that good for us (and we can come back to that). But it’s like buildings give us both a physical and a psychological message that we are separate from the rest of life and we get to control it. And we’ve seen some serious problems come out of that set of beliefs.

But maybe more importantly, let’s go back to this notion of toxics. When you look at what the human organism needs in order to thrive—you talked about that in your intro, we want to thrive in this world—not being poisoned is a really good first step.

DEBRA: It is!

CAROL VENOLIA: You want to deal with that. But there is so much more, as you’ve said, to being really alive, to feeling your vitality than not being poisoned. And it turns out, as I was doing the research for that first book that you participated in, Healing Environments, you look at light, color, sound, yes, indoor air quality, presence or absence of plants, symbolism, all kinds of factors affect our well-being. And we pretty much lost that sensibility.

And we are intimately connected with everything around us. There’s that famous quote from Winston Churchill, “We create our…”

DEBRA: “We create our houses, and then they create us,” or something like that.

CAROL VENOLIA: Yeah, they affect us, whatever. The idea is we create these environments and then they work on us. And it’s really helpful to start to become aware of that.

And even for people who are dealing with a really dangerous combination of their level of sensitivity and the level of toxicity around them, to begin looking at a lot of these other factors, what kind of light, what kind of color, what kind of sound, what kind of space, what kind of connection with the outdoors, what can kind of greenery would be good for them, that supports the healing process. All of that feeds our vitality and allows us to deal better with the challenges that are not so good for us.

DEBRA: I’ve really found in my life that the more I can recognize in various different ways—and remember, all of you listening, as you’re listening to Carol and I, we’ve been exploring this subject for 30 years, each of us, or more. And so it wasn’t like we just woke up one day and we know everything that we know today. And you can learn a lot about what we know by visiting each of our webistes—ComeHometoNature.com for Carol and LivingasNature.com for me.

But one of the things I want to make sure that I mention is that a large part of becoming aware that we’re part of nature is simply observing nature. And I remember a moment that was one of those defining moments of change where I had started to become aware that there was time beyond clocks and calendars and that there was a time in nature that was governed by the sun, moon and stars and the changing positions of them and that our year, the seasons, is because the earth is moving around the sun, and the sun is at different angles and changes, and the different weather are all governed by the sun.

But the moon establishes the month, the “moon-th.” And I thought, “Oh, I’m going to start knowing when it’s the new moon and the first quarter moon and the full moon and the last quarter moon. And my first thought after I decided I wanted to do that was I better get a book that tells me when it’s the new moon and the full moon.

And that was so indicative of what my mindset was like, that if I wanted to know something about nature, I better go get a book about it and get somebody else’s second-hand information instead of me looking at the sky and seeing where the moon is.

And that was actually one of the first things that I did, was to just look at the sky every night and see where the moon is. And I found out that, sometimes, you have to look in the sky during the day because sometimes the moon is visible at night, and sometimes it’s visible during the day. And that helps you know where it is in the cycle.

And so, just that act of observing something or going for a walk and looking around every day and seeing how your environment is different from day to day—

I read something once about a man who took a picture of the same spot outside in nature at the same time and could see them how it was changing throughout the year.

But we don’t even look at nature. And that’s, I think, one of the most amazing things, is how out of touch we are.

CAROL VENOLIA: And I’d like to add a piece to that, which is, given that we are nature, yes, absolutely, the powers of observation of what’s around us is something that many of us have lost. And it’s profound when you start to just take a moment and tune in.

But also, at the same time, tune in to what’s going on with your body, especially your senses. If you just sit down or stand for a minute from time to time and tune in—close your eyes first. It’s helpful because we tend to be very visual—tune in to what you’re hearing, tune in to what you’re smelling, and tune in to what you feel on your skin, and then you could open your eyes and instead of looking for information, just kind of look around and see what are the colors, how is the light falling, and what’s the shape of the space you’re in, you will probably be very surprised and profoundly effective.

And then, you very naturally start to make that connection between what your body is feeling and perceiving and what’s around you. And then, that sense of separation just disappears.

DEBRA: I totally agree. There’s so much more to talk about here. We need to take a break. But we’ll be right back after these messages. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And we’re talking with architect Carol Venolia. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest today is Carol Venolia, architect, and creator of the website, ComeHometoNature.com. She has a wonderful book, an ebook called Get Back to Nature Without Leaving Home. And it’s about bringing nature into your home experience.

She was talking earlier about how buildings put a separation between us and the natural world and that that’s a good thing in that it protects us from things like weather and predators and, in our world today, burglars and other “dangers” of the outside world, but it also separates us from the experience of being in nature.

And before we hear more from Carol, I just want to comment that, in my own personal process about feeling more like I’m part of nature, I know that I went through a time when I just became more aware of nature in my every day surroundings, such as I’m sitting at a desk made from an oak tree, and it also has, along the edges, a wood called purple heart which is purple. And so instead of just looking at the desk and seeing “I’m sitting at a desk,” I look at the desk and see a tree. This is a tree that went into making this desk and maybe several trees and the skill of a human being that cared about making this piece of furniture.

I can look around at my house and see that what everything is made of here is—here’s a pencil holder made of stone. I have to look around and sometimes acknowledge, well, there’s plastic, and that’s made from petroleum. But most of the time—you know, like I’m feeling the cotton, the soft cotton against my skin and tasting the peppermint oil in my toothpaste.

You can just become aware of all these plants and animals and minerals that are right here in your own home. And then, that wall that separates us from nature starts falling apart.

That was such a special thing when I went through that. I wanted to share that with you.

CAROL VENOLIA: That’s lovely. I feel like I’m right there with you.

DEBRA: Oh, thank you.

CAROL VENOLIA: And I’d like to say something about your desk and your pencil holder. If you touch that desk, even if it’s got—I don’t know what kind of finish is on the wood—you’re feeling something very different than if you were touching a laminate desk, for example. And the same with that pencil holder.

But even without touching, just looking at the grain of the wood, the two different kinds of wood, your eye—whether you’re conscious of it or not—are getting to explore. Your eyes are getting to move around and follow and say, “Hmmm… oh, look at how that goes.”

That is what I call sensory nutrition. Imagine, instead, you had that laminate desk, and maybe it’s black plastic or something, not a lot for your eye to engage. That might seem like an aesthetic difference, but it’s actually a deep biological soul-felt difference. You extend that to your other senses, and you realize that many of our indoor environments and the objects that we have around us are not very nourishing on the sensory level.

And that then becomes part of the way we become a little more dead all the time. Whereas if we can have things around us that engage us, patterns that let the eye follow and go somewhere and wonder, whether we’re conscious of it or not, changes in air movement, in temperature, gentle changes in sounds, rich textures of sounds, all those things are sensory nutrition that’s every bit as important as the nutrition that we take in through our mouth.

DEBRA: I totally agree with that. And one of the things that I discovered early on about nature is that, in nature, everything is different. There’s variation and variety. No two snowflakes are alie. And no two fingerprints are alike. Everything is different. No two apples are alike.

And so if I eat a processed food, it always tastes the same, tastes the same, tastes the same. And that’s what industrialism is about, everything being exactly the same. And in nature, you find very quickly that everything is different.

Even when I started to look at time—I followed a sundial one day against the clock. I found that the hours as they showed up against the sundial were not 60 minutes. They all average out to 60 minutes. But when the sun is moving, it’s dividing the day in these other kinds of parts.

And I just found that continuously throughout nature. It’s this incredibly rich variety, yet it all comes together.

And so it really is a world that is almost the exact opposite of industrialism. And so when we live in the industrial world, and all of our attention is on the industrial world, we start acting like machines instead of human beings.

We really are human beings born of the natural world. That’s part of our make-up and what makes us healthy physically, mentally and spirituality. We’ve lost so much of that. We just don’t even have a clue as a culture. We’re totally oriented now—almost totally oriented—to the industrial ways of doing things.

And I think that’s a great loss and something that I personally want to be doing things to reverse. I’m not saying that we should eliminate industrialism entirely, but we need to remember who we are, what we are.

CAROL VENOLIA: And one of the ways to remember is if you ask someone where are you when you feel at your best, when you feel truly alive, they will almost always describe some place far from buildings and cities, some place as wild as possible.

And what does that tell us?

But part of my point with Get Back to Nature Without Leaving Home is that the wilderness and living in a building is just different. You don’t have to sacrifice all of that. But you can, through some really simple measures, bring a lot of that experience of variety that you were just talking about, complexity, gentle change. These are all attributes of the living world.

You can have those in your daily lives—whether it’s indoors or by just stepping out the door. You can have it in your garden.

Maybe there’s a nice park down the road that you just don’t think to give yourself time to go to. There are a lot of ways to experience being nature and loving nature in day to day life. And the first step is to believe that a) it’s powerful and b) you deserve it and you have to do it, you need it.

And then, after that, there are some very simple habit changes that don’t even require money or changing your environment—one of which is (unless you’re living in one of the most hostile places in the world) just to get outdoors more often.

DEBRA: Or just open your window.

CAROL VENOLIA: Yeah, yeah, that too, for sure. But I had a client who, once I started asking her, “What’s around you that could be supporting of you?”, it turns out she has this great yard that feels like a nature paradise, and she never spent time there. So, my big job was to get out there every day.

DEBRA: Yeah.

CAROL VENOLIA: And it really helped.

DEBRA: We need to take another break, but we’ll be back. And after this, we’ll talk about Carol’s book, Get Back to Nature Without Leaving Home.

I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. And my guest today is Carol Venolia. And her website is ComeHometoNature.com. We’ll be back in a minute.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m here with my guest, Carol Venolia. She’s the founder of Come Home to Nature, ComeHometoNature.com, and the author of Get Back to Nature Without Leaving Home.

Carol, let’s tell everybody about this book because I find it delightful. I found it to be right in alignment with ideas that I came to myself in my life. But you’ve arranged it in a way that is really wonderful because you’re not just telling people what’s going on or telling the reader what’s going on. You’re also asking them to look and see what their own personal experience is.

So, tell us more about the book.

CAROL VENOLIA: Okay. Well, really, the book is a workbook. It’s got information, but it also takes the reader by the hand and says, “Now try this. Now ask yourself this. Now reflect on this. Now notice how you feel.” And there are places for them to fill in stuff.

And the whole idea is that another thing about this industrialized culture is we tend to think there’s one right answer and there’s one right thing to do. “Just tell me and I’ll do it.” And in fact, the whole world of getting in touch with your own complex nature and what you need from your surroundings and getting it for yourself can be very individual.

And so, I can’t just tell somebody, “Here’s what to do,” whether I’m working with a client or it’s someone reading this book and working through it. The first step is for them to tune into their uniqueness, their own body, how their body responds to a place, what their body longs for, the experiences that they’ve had in wilder environment, what kind of nature gets to you the most. Are you just wild and crazy about birds, or is it more plants, or all of the above?

So, this book really guides people through the process first of finding out who are you as a natural being in your surroundings.

And then, the main point of this book, Get Back to Nature Without Leaving Home is to introduce these very simple steps.

These are the things anybody should be able to do fairly easily with little or no expense. There are more complicated steps later if you want to remodel your home or your yard. But these are the ones you can just do.

So they include things like, I mean the impact of being able to see greenery is huge! There have been studies that show that green views from a hospital room allow people to heal faster, get out of the hospital faster, use fewer painkillers and just generally feel better about the healing process. Workers with greenery are more efficient and have fewer errors and even have lower blood pressure. So hey, that can help in your daily life at home too, especially if you have a home office.

DEBRA: I can’t live in a house where I can’t see the green outside. And in fact, I do work at home. And so whenever I’m looking for a place to live, I’m always looking for expansive greenery. And where I live right now have about 20 feet of windows that open onto my backyard where I have a whole oak. I actually live in an oak grove of old oak trees. And so I have all these under-story azaleas and under-story trees. I can look out the window and see cardinals and blue jays and mocking birds. I saw a snake the other day climbing up one of my plants. I’ve got orchids and all kinds of things.

And so, all I have to do is look up from my computer and I’ve got this whole, as you were talking about, variety of stuff to look at and natural light coming in.

And if I just had a wall here and I couldn’t look outside and have this window on nature, I just wouldn’t be able to be in the house. I’d have to go outside.

CAROL VENOLIA: Well, and let’s say there are probably readers who are thinking, “Well, nice for you, girl. I live in a city.” Window plants, if you can open the window, you can put a window box there. You can grow stuff that’s just right there on the window. And then, house plants, a single potted plant in a windowless office has been found to make a huge difference in satisfaction and worker effectiveness.

DEBRA: But I need to tell you, talking about living in a city, I realized just as you were saying this, it’s not that I need to look at the greenery, it’s that I need to have there a window so that I can see what’s going on outside. And I had the pleasure of living for three months at the top of Nob Hill in San Francisco right under Coit Tower. And there was no greenery outside my window, but there were clouds. There was sunlight and there were clouds. I was up in the sky. And birds would fly by.

And my bed faced that window. And I could just lie in bed! I’d wake up in the morning, and I’d just watch the clouds. It was the connection with nature that was important.

CAROL VENOLIA: Absolutely! And actually, there are a number of things in what you just said. If we can be awakened by the morning sun—it doesn’t have to be at sunrise—that’s actually very good for setting all of our biological cycles into harmony with each other. And that’s a huge subject… but just looking out the window.

See, there’s this classic thing about students looking out the windows in classrooms, that this is a bad thing. They even created windowless schools. It turns out there’s studies that show that gazing out the window improves student performance.

You and I are not surprised by this.

DEBRA: No, we are not.

CAROL VENOLIA: And just relying more on what architects call “daylighting,” which means sunshine coming through the window actually has tremendous effects on health and productivity. One of the simple solutions I recommend to people is look at where the sun is shining into your house and consider just moving your furniture, so you don’t need electric lighting as much and your body is essentially getting massaged by the changing sunlight throughout the day.

You may have to deal with glare issues. That’s just a little thing you can cope with. But if you can just get your desk, your reading chair, whatever, closer to the window, so that you’re getting more sunlight indoors, it’s affecting you directly, that can make a profound difference in your life as well as what you see by looking out the window.

DEBRA: You know, having cats in the house—I haven’t had a cat in a few years, but now I have these two kittens—I was noticing again as I’ve noticed before that cats sit in the sun. They’ll go find that one spot where the sun is shining in the window, and that’s where they’ll go sit. As uncomfortable as it might be, that’s where they sit.

And we need that connection with the sun. We have this industrial idea that sunlight will cause cancer. And so we stay out of the sun. But we need sun. We need wind. We need rain. We need all these things to be part of our lives. And they can be a part of our homes.

So, tell us more so that the listeners get an idea of what’s in the book. Let’s just take one item.

You talk about being more in tune with the seasons. And I have my attention on the fact that Saturday is summer solstice. And I always celebrate summer solstice and winter’s solstice and the spring equinox and the fall equinox because they’re very, very different seasons and different things are going on in the natural world.

I think a lot of people celebrate winter solstice now—not as many as could. But summer solstice doesn’t get the same kind of attention. And yet I think that summer solstice, that’s when the earth is most alive (at least in our hemisphere, in the northern hemisphere, I know. In the southern hemisphere, it’s opposite). Here in the northern hemisphere, this is the peak of the sun’s energy and the peak of plants flourishing and all these different kinds of things.

And I just think that we should take time when these points occur, like summer solstice, to celebrate, remember to celebrate the powers of nature and the resources of nature and what nature is giving to us, what is the sun contributing to our lives.

I know for myself, I have a friend, Linda, and on the solstices and the equinoxes, we always go and do something together outdoors. We’re going to the botanical gardens and having lunch on Saturday. And our botanical gardens, they have a edible plants exhibit. And we’re going to go see what edible plants we can put in our gardens right here where we live.

And I just really encourage people to do something to acknowledge the change of seasons. What do you think about that, Carol?

CAROL VENOLIA: Well, I think acknowledging season changes is fabulous! There are a lot of wonderful ways to do it. In addition, there’s a very tangible, biological effect. Light is a stimulant. We don’t always think about that. Sunlight stimulates our bodies and our body’s system. It gives us energy. So, what do we have at the summer solstice? We have the greatest amount of sunlight in a day that we have for the entire year.

Summer is about being physical, about being out in that sun, about being active. And the sun seeds that activity by giving us energy.

In fact, people who live in more northern latitudes like Alaska, Scandinavia and so on, can be almost manic during the summer. They’re so keyed up by all that sun.

And for us to feel in our bodies and honor the changes the seasons bring is also really crucial to our vitality. We love being active. We’re a very yang culture. And so this summer energy is great. But then to also let go off it when fall and winter come and let ourselves rest.

That cycle of the year happens in our bodies as much as around the planet. And it’s crucial to our well-being to honor all parts of that cycle.

DEBRA: Yes, I found that too.

Well, unfortunately, we actually only have a few seconds left. So I’ll say thank you, Carol, so much for being with me. And I hope to have you on again. There’s so much more that we could talk about.

And again, Carol’s website is ComeHometoNature.com. And my website for this show is ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com.

If you have enjoyed this show, please tell your friends. Please join me again. And please listen to all the shows on the archives. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio.

Proposition 65 Warning Label on Washing Machines

Question from Andie

Hi, need a new washer and all of them have the CA Prop 65 (toxic chemical exposures to consumer). Is there ANY way to avoid these chemicals, while doing laundry? Thank you!!

Debra’s Answer

This is the second question about Prop 65 this week! First read Q&A: Breville Glass Kettle and California Proposition 65 Warning about Proposition 65.

I found some posts online that said that products can be required to display the warning if there is lead in the power cord, even if there is no other toxic exposure.

There was one post where a reader asked specifically about what part of the Kenmore clothes water is a concern under Proposition 65

The answer from the manufacturer was “lead (contained in the solder used to attach electronic parts to the printed circuit boards), brass, PVC and a multitude of other everyday materials that contain trace levels of chemicals on the list.”

Lead in the solder and PVC in the drain system of the washer will not come in contact with your laundry. So the Proposition 65 label probably does not contain any toxic chemicals you or your laundry would be exposed to while washing your clothes.

This is a perfect example of how Proposition 65 is not helpful. If we are going to have toxic products on the market we need correct warning labels. Better yet is no toxic chemicals, no warning labels.

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Breville Glass Kettle and California Proposition 65 Warning

Question from Lyn

I had been looking for an electric glass kettle and finally found the Breville the Crystal Clear 1800W Schott Glass Kettle. When I opened the box it had the following warning: “California Proposition 65 Applicable to California Residents Only This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.” I called Breville to find out what chemicals in this glass kettle could possibly cause cancer, etc. The answer I received is that they put this notice on all their packaging for all their products to meet California standards, whether or not the product contains any of the hazardous chemicals. The person I spoke with didn’t know whether any part of the kettle contained any hazardous chemicals but it should be OK. I got the same response from William Sonoma where I purchased the kettle. Is there any way that you know of to find out more specifically the possible chemicals this individual kettle may have? Or should I just return it?

Debra’s Answer

This is one of the problems with Proposition 65. It’s not correctly applied. It’s supposed to give you a warning on individual products that contain chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.

I don’t know of a database that lists all the products that contain the warning and the chemical that prompts requiring the warning. Wouldn’t that be useful? To me “it should be OK” is an insufficient answer.

I’ll tell you though that I used to live in California and these warnings are so common that you get to a point where you don’t even look at them. And that’s partially because they don’t say what the chemical is so you can’t evaluate for yourself.

Here’s an article about the pros and cons of Proposition 65. Los Angeles Times: Are Proposition 65 warning healthful or hurtful?

Here’s a great article about Proposition 65 that includes what steps to take to find out what the chemicals are that make the product require the warning label. American Cancer Society: Cancer Warning Labels Based on California’s Proposition 65

To answer your question, I would just visually inspect the item and see if any part of it looks like it might contain toxic chemicals. Just looking at the photo, there is a metal heating element, and is the base inside the pitcher metal or glass? The heating element might release metals, the stainless steel can release metals.

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Nontoxic Glue for Window Screens

Question from Bonnie Johnson

I have old wrought iron crank windows with sceens all over my house. I am getting ready to sell hopefully next year so relacing them would not be cost affective. This year I have carpenter ants in different locations. I have sealed any spot I find them with Elmers glue and it works well. However the screens on my iron windows are not sealed tight in some areas. That is where they are coming in. I was looking for a glue to use around the iron screen from the inside that is not toxic. Last year I had a closet that was sealed by a handy man with a silicone calk and I still can not go in that room. I am trying to avoid that mistake again. Any ideas on what to use?

Debra’s Answer

I don’t have any experience with this. Readers?

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Carrageenan Food Additive

Question from Joan

I just found out that CARRAGEENAN is in a lot of the organic foods I buy. My daughter was so excited because she found Applegate turkey w/no hormones and antibiotics but I saw that it has carrageenan. When I researched it on line, it is confusing if it is actually harmful. Do you have any info on this? thanks so much

Debra’s Answer

I’ve not been concerned about carrageenan since years ago I found out it is a seaweed extract. Seaweed is simply boiled to extract the carrageenan. When I was in grade school, as a science project we boiled seaweed we collected at the beach and the water turned gummy. That’s about what happens with carrageenan.

But as carrageenan is now used in thousands and thousands of food products, it has become an industrialized ingredient–not hardly in it’s natural state, more like refined salt and refined sugar. Salt in it natural state is essential to life, but refined it becomes something else altogether.

Here are some articles about the potential health effects of carrageenan:

This brings up an important point I made in my book Toxic Free

Things can come from a “natural” animal-vegetable-mineral source (not petroleum), however, once it has gone through an industrial process, it is no longer in it’s natural state.

And then these industrialized natural ingredients are usually harmful to health.

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Are You Drinking Enough Water for the Sweaty Days of Summer?

Drinking enough water for your body to be properly hydrated is essential to health. In fact, many body conditions we think of as “disease” are actually simply dehydration. But every glass or bottle of water you drink may be adding more toxic chemicals to your body. My guest Igor Milevskiy runs Pure Effect Advanced Water Filters, a small, family-owned company that makes exceptional water filters which remove fluoride, radiation, and pharmaceuticals as well as chlorine, chloramine, lead, and other common pollutants…at an affordable price. We’ll talk about how much water you actually need to drink during the summer to keep your body hydrated and healthy, and how to choose a filter that will give you pure, clean water right in your home. www.debralynndadd.com/debras-list/pureeffect-filters

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transcript

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Are You Drinking Enough Water for the Sweaty Days of Summer?

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Igor Milevskiy

Date of Broadcast: July 13, 2013

DEBRA: Hi. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world even though there are toxic chemicals all around us in consumer products, in the environment, in the air we breathe, in whatever we eat, et cetera.

There are things that we can do to choose less toxic products and to remove toxic chemicals from our homes, from our bodies. Yes, there are toxic chemicals in our bodies unless you’ve done something to remove them. Every one of us has toxic chemicals in our bodies unless we’ve done something to remove them. We can, in general, greatly reduce the toxic exposure and the negative health effects that happen from them.

That’s what this show is about, how to thrive in the world that’s toxic.

Today is Thursday, June 13th, 2013. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. Right now, the sun is shining, which is actually unusual for summer time here because we have thunderstorms almost every day. But around the edges of those thunderstorms, the sun shines and it’s hot every day for months.

The average temperature is about 88 degrees during the day and about 82 degrees at night. It’s often humid here in the south.

So we go for not just weeks and weeks, but months and months of being hot and sweaty. What happens during those hot and sweaty months here and every place else is that your body loses a lot of water to dehydration. We sweat and sweat and sweat.

If you think that you’re not losing water because you’re inside an air conditioned building, you might be losing even more water because air conditioning pulls water out of everything, out of your body, out of plants, anything that you’ve got in the house, every place it will start pulling water out of. So you can get even more dehydrated by sitting in an air conditioned building.

Now I’m really concerned about dehydration because water is essential to life. Your body is mostly water. Our bodies can only two or three days without water. So if we start losing water, what happens is that not only does it affect all the functions in our body. But as your body gets dehydrated, it tends to hold on to toxic chemicals rather than reducing them. And toxic chemicals become more easily embedded in your body.

So if you’re only going to do one thing to help your body be less toxic, the number one thing really is to drink water, drink water, drink water because it will help flush the toxic chemicals out. When you don’t drink enough water, then your body will more easily hold on to those toxic chemicals.

Today, we’re going to talk more about water. We’re going to talk about getting enough water. We’re going to talk about what kind of water to drink.

My guest today is Igor Milevskiy. He runs Pure Effect Advanced Water Filters, a small family-owned company that makes exceptional water filters that remove fluoride radiation and pharmaceuticals, as well as chlorine, chloramine, lead and other common pollutants.

These are extremely affordable filters. They do an amazing amount for the amount of money they cost. I installed one about six months ago in my house. It’s better than the filter that I used to have that cost thousands and thousands of dollars. This one only costs hundreds of dollars, very few hundreds of dollars.

We’re going to be to talking about all of this today. Igor, are you there?

IGOR MILEVSKIY: Yes. Hi Debra. It’s nice to be with you.

DEBRA: Thank you. I’m pleased to have you here as well. Igor earlier was on another show. In case people didn’t listen to that one, Igor why don’t you tell us again your story about how you became interested in making water filters?

IGOR MILEVSKIY: Sure! Well, it started when I was younger. I always had an interest in nature and biology.

As a consequence, I have an aquarium. I always had different types of fish. As some people may know, fishes are very sensitive. Water is like air for them. It’s like air for us as water is to the fish. If something is not right with the water, they get sick and they die or they don’t breathe. They need specific conditions.

So I learned about making sure that the water is clean and that it’s properly adjusted with respect to the pH, how alkaline or acidic it is. It’s quite interesting because that led me into cleaning my own water and learning about that and then turning it into a business to help other people, making sure that their drinking water is safe and pleasant to drink.

DEBRA: I’m certainly glad that you did because in all of 30 years of looking at water filters, I can honestly say that I think that your filter does a better job at removing out a wide variety of pollutants. You’re removing them to very high degree better than any water filter I have ever seen at any price.

I have been recommending your filter for the last six months, since I’ve been using it. I’m happy to continue to recommend it.

Just to tell you listeners just right off, you can to go to my website, ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. And I now have a blog, which has all the radio shows on it. You can just go to the blog post for this show and have all the information about how you can go to Igor’s website.

The name of the company is Pure Effect Advanced Water Filtration. I guess it’s the whole title. You can just go to that blog post and it will have all information about how you can order.

Igor’s offering $15 off any filtering tools. That starts today and that’s good through the June 18th. All the links will be there and you can read more about why I chose it for my water filter and that’s the place to connect. So just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and look for Igor’s show on the blog.

Before we start talking about filters, I just like to say a little bit more about some of the reasons why we need to be drinking water. There’s a fabulous book called Your Body’s Many Cries For Water: You Are Not Sick, You Are Thirsty. Do you know that book, Igor?

IGOR MILEVSKIY: No, but I think I understand the point that it may be making. There are a lot of symptoms people experience that are related to dehydration, but they get misdiagnosed. Is that what you’re talking about?

DEBRA: That is exactly what this book is talking about. It’s written by a doctor. And he says virtually that almost any symptom you can name can be associated with dehydration, headaches, muscle aches or pain, muscle cramps, blood pressure problems, fatigue, anxiety, even blood sugar. It just goes on and on.

He addresses frankly every illness that you can think of in this book. And he basically says you need to drink more water.

Now there are some people who say that we’re drinking too much water. But one of the things that this book says is that other beverages don’t count in the same way that water counts in your body.

Your body is a part of nature. It’s developed by natural even though we live in an industrial world. Our bodies follow what nature [instilled] in them many, many thousands of years ago when the human body was developed.

So our bodies are looking for water, not soda, not milk, not beer, not any other beverages. It’s looking for water and it needs water in order to do its functions. It’s okay to drink anything else you want after you drink enough water.

So I’m actually sitting here all day long, sipping on water, water from your filter in a glass bottle. And I’m not getting dehydrated even though I’m sitting in an air conditioned house or I’m out in the sun. I don’t wait until I get thirsty to drink water. I’m just drinking water all day long. I think that you totally agree with that.

IGOR MILEVSKIY: Yes. Water is the best substance to quench the thirst and to hydrate the body.

Many people drink other things so they may not feel as thirsty throughout the day. But they’re really not getting that clean water that’s used for most, if not all the processes in the body.

I was looking at some researches. Up to 65% in the human body is water. If you’re a child or just a baby, it’s even more. It’s up to 80%. So it’s quite significant to have clean water in the body.

DEBRA: We’ll talk more about this after the break. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and I’m here with Igor Milevskiy from Pure Effect Advanced Water Filters.

You can find out more about his filters on what we’re talking about today at ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Igor Milevskiy from Pure Effect Advanced Water Filters.

Now here’s the big issue. We could be drinking water all day long. But if you’re drinking tap water, you’re polluting your body. In some ways, you’re doing more harm than good because you’re putting toxic chemicals into your body in addition to the beneficial water.

Igor, could you tell us something about what pollutants people are putting in their body when they drink tap water and what some of the health effects might be?

IGOR MILEVSKIY: Certainly. Generally, there are two categories of tap water. It’s either well water or city water.

City water tends to have more chemicals that they add like fluoride. That’s a big one because fluoride or fluorosilicic acid has various different chemical forms. But its main ingredient is fluoride.

That has been very controversial. There’s a lot of research showing that it’s actually having more negative effect than benefits that they claim it has. So that’s the first contaminant that I would be concerned about with city water.

DEBRA: And most filters don’t remove fluoride. Most filters don’t.

IGOR MILEVSKIY: Most don’t. Most mainstream companies believe that fluoride is good for you. But nature didn’t put it in there in the form that they have it in the tap water.

And it’s actually a by-product. It’s a waste of aluminum industry and pesticide manufacturing. They just found a way to get rid of this waste by selling it to the municipalities that treat the water because it’s very expensive to get rid of it as a waste. So they actually found a way to make money on it.

But if somebody does research, there are some videos they could find on my site that showed that fluoride is actually a drug and it doesn’t belong in the drinking water. So that’s a big one.

Another chemical that’s very common these days is chloramine. Chloramine is a combination of ammonia and chlorine. It’s a more potent disinfectant, but it’s also much more difficult to remove. It lasts longer in the water.

Chlorine evaporates quicker. But with chloramine, that’s not the story. So our filters address that as well with a special catalytic carbon, which is an advanced type of activated carbon designed for this type of chemicals.

Of course we have drug residues, which aren’t even regulated. There are drug residues in the water. The laws for the treatment are outdated. They’re not factoring in that.

These new contaminants, these new drugs are being found. But the law says they don’t have to do anything about it because it’s outdated. So just because your water is legal to drink, it doesn’t mean that it’s safe. So those are the emerging contaminants.

Also there are all types of different by-products forming when all these chemicals combine because they’re all mixing and mingling in the water. Chloramine, fluoride, drug residues, heavy metals, radiation in some areas as well because we have old leaking power plants in this country and across the world actually.

I mean if you’re concerned about Japan radiation, you don’t have to go far from home. Right here in the United States, we have aging nuclear power plants that have leaks quite often if you’re following the news. Some of it gets out into the nature, into the rivers and into the soils.

That’s another contaminant our filters address. That’s actually one of the innovations we did with our filtration systems. It’s radiation removal. Modern day contaminants include that.

DEBRA: They do. And another thing about pollutants is we tend to think of pollutants as being isolated. When they test for the danger of a pollutant such as say fluoride for example, what they’re doing is that they’re testing to see about fluoride just all by itself, like [inaudible 00:18:04] or whatever.

Studies have shown – there are few that have been done – that when we start mixing chemicals together, they become more and more toxic. And this has been around for many, many years.

In my very first book 30 years ago, I wrote about a study. If I’m remembering it correctly, they tested one chemical and then the rats got sick or something. And then they tested two and they got more sick. When they tested three, just three chemicals together, all the rats died.

So we don’t know we’re being exposed to so many chemicals from so many sources. The number of pollutants just in water, we have no idea what their combined effects are, of all those pollutants and how much toxic they can be than what the studies tell us for those individual chemicals.

And then you mix that with the air pollutants and the pollutants in food and also in perfume and everything. Any part of your body where you can remove toxic chemical exposure is worth doing because it lessens that overload.

IGOR MILEVSKIY: Yeah, definitely. Our bodies are chemical machines in one part. And they’re using chemistry like neurotransmitters, neuro chemicals that send signals from our brain to our body and back and forth. If you’re interfering with that process, it’s going to cause some disturbances in the system, some discords.

DEBRA: I totally agree. It’s pretty amazing what a toxic world we live in. So let’s see. What else can we talk about in a minute? That’s what I’m thinking.

I have a whole list of questions and things to talk to you about. But we have these commercials that come.

IGOR MILEVSKIY: No problem. I mean the filters are of very high quality units. They’re not made in China. They’re made to last. They’re really professional and great systems for the home. It’s something that people will really appreciate when they see the quality.

And the range of filtration is – I haven’t seen a comparable filter on the market. I’m always following the latest. This is one of the most comprehensive units that I could come up with after seeing what’s out there and what’s missing.

This filter fills that gap of people that want an all-in-one system that does it all, fluoride, radiation. It balances the pH, raises the pH. It addresses the modern day contaminants. It’s not made in China. And it makes the water pleasant to drink. It actually tastes great.

DEBRA: The water does taste great. And I can really tell the difference. In fact, my body feels the difference. It’s not just taste. It’s feeling good in my body. I noticed it right away.

I serve it to people who come to my house. And they were “Wow. What is this water?” And people are e-mailing me. A lot of people now have purchased this filter, a lot of my readers. I have many e-mails saying, “Thank you” and none saying, “This is a horrible filter.” Nobody had said, “This is bad.”

IGOR MILEVSKIY: That’s wonderful. That’s great to hear.

DEBRA: We’ll talk about this more after the break. I’m here with Igor Milevskiy from Pure Effect Advanced Water Filtration Systems. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. I’m here today with my guest, Igor Milevskiy from Pure Effect Advanced Water Filters.

As we’ve been saying, he has the most comprehensive water filter, affordable water filter that he has found. He created a water filter to fill the niche of people wanting a comprehensive, affordable water filter. I agree that he’s done a fabulous job. I have his filter in my own home.

Today, he’s offering all of his filters. He has filters that you can install under the sink all the way up to filtering all the water in your whole house.

He’s offering $15 off from today through June 18th, 2013 (for those of you who are listening far off in the future, we’re on 2013). You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com to find out how to get to his website and about how to get that $15 discount.

The next thing we’ll talk about is water bottles because a lot of people think that the solution to bad tap water or polluted tap water is to buy bottled water. So tell us what happens to the water when it’s in a water bottle and the quality of that water that they put in bottles and what the bottle can do to it.

IGOR MILEVSKIY: Yeah, the bottled water – you don’t know how long it’s been in that bottle. And also the plastic they use to make the water bottles is getting thinner and thinner.

They’re also using special chemicals to make it softer. And those chemicals include phthalates. These have been shown to be toxic.

Because bottles are made out of plastic, they’re releasing into the bottled water, especially now that it’s warmer out there and the plastic gets softer with the warm weather. It releases more chemicals. So oftentimes, you’ll even taste or smell like a plastic after-taste when you drink in bottled water.

DEBRA: Especially in the summer. You’ve probably gone to your local convenience store and found piles and piles of plastic bottled water sitting out in the sun or sitting on a truck. Into the sun, that bottle just breaks down and breaks down and breaks down and also plasticizers go into the water. That’s what you’re drinking in a bottle with plasticizer.

IGOR MILEVSKIY: Yeah. That’s what we know about. There may be other chemicals we’re not aware of that are put into the plastic they’re manufacturing. Not to mention it’s expensive compared to cost per gallon for example. My system is right around $0.19 a gallon to get filtered water.

DEBRA: Yes, I have a friend who does not yet have one of your water filters, but I’m working on him. I think he’s about [inaudible 00:30:10].

He gets his drinking water in five gallon plastic containers and we don’t have a delivery here. So he actually pays somebody to bring those five gallon bottles back to his house. It’s very difficult to get the water out of it because he doesn’t have a dispenser. You would turn it upside down. He’s got this little pump.

I keep saying, “Get a water filter. Get a water filter” because he’s spending so much money on those bottles of water and somebody to haul them around and he could just have the convenience of having a water filter and having the best possible water that’s right there 24-hours in his home.

IGOR MILEVSKIY: I hope he considers us.

DEBRA: He definitely will. Then he buys the filter, and he will, it will be yours. Yeah, I’m sure.

IGOR MILEVSKIY: That’s great.

DEBRA: Then there’s the issue of – especially in the summer time. You need to be having water with you as you go out in the hot sun. Everybody needs to be carrying water.

A lot of people carry water in plastic bottles. But again, you have the plastic going into the water from a plastic bottle. So the solution is to get glass bottles.

I have quite a number of glass bottles listed. If you go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, across the top, there are links to different products in my website. Just go to Debra’s List and then scroll down. Under Water, it says, “Reusable Bottles.”

A number of bottles are listed there that are made out of glass. But they also have various non-toxic covers on them. One of them is covered in bamboo, for example. So that protects the glass bottle from breaking if you should go out. So you can carry these glass bottles around with you full of Igor’s pure water. That’s what I do.

IGOR MILEVSKIY: You can’t filter the water and then put it in a bottle. That’s going to contaminate it definitely.

And I’ve seen that list you have on those bottles. I actually looked at them. It’s pretty good.

DEBRA: Thank you.

IGOR MILEVSKIY: I’m glad you found some great bottles out there.

DEBRA: There are some great bottles out there. I have a number of them in my house because what I do is I use the filter and then I fill up quart sized bottles. I just put them in the refrigerator so I have cold water.

I have one where the opening in the bottle is actually big enough that you can put ice cubes in. And then I know how much water I drink because I have all of them measured out.

Actually a lot of the bottles I have came from Ikea. They’re very inexpensive. You can just go to Ikea and get good glass bottles with tops on them. They’re $2 a piece.

So these are not difficult to find. They’re not expensive. You can have all the glass bottled water you want to take around with you. I really think that that’s the way to go with it.

IGOR MILEVSKIY: Yeah. Now that it’s getting hot out there, I also wanted to come [inaudible 00:33:45], the under sink filter, the same type that you have is called Ultra UC. What we can do also for people who would like is we can create two output connections on the filter. One can actually go to the dedicated faucet like you have and another connection can go to the fridge line.

DEBRA: Oh, wonderful. I’m so glad you mentioned that. Wow!

IGOR MILEVSKIY: Yeah. So you can get a cool. I mean, sometimes the cold water from the faucet is not so cold during the summer. Some people may want to have it go through their fridge or to make ice cubes directly so you don’t have to put – it’s a little adapter we provide. It doubles the output of the filter. So it’s a little change, but very beneficial.

DEBRA: That’s great. So we’ll come back after the break and talk more with Igor Milevskiy from Pure Effect Advanced Water Filters about water and getting enough water, especially in the summer time.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Igor Milevskiy of Pure Effect Advanced Water Filters.

I was just noticing that in other promotion for the show, the title of it is ‘Are you drinking enough water for the sweaty days in summer’? Well, we haven’t talked about how much water you need yet. So let’s talk about that.

The average adult loses about six 8 oz. glasses of water per day just through your own elimination of urine and an additional four glasses through breathing, sweating and bowel movements. So that’s 10 8 oz. glasses of water per day we’re losing.

If we don’t drink those 10 8 ounce glasses per day, then our body is getting more and more and more dehydrated. This is how important it is that we drink water. We need to replace that on a daily basis.

[inaudible 00:40:15] usually supplies about two glasses of water. A common recommendation is eight glasses of water per day to replace the amount of water your body has lost.

Now, it’s summer time. And how much more water are we releasing because we’re sitting in air conditioned buildings or we’re out in the sun and we’re perspiring sometimes profusely? Just think for a minute how much water you actually need in order to replace the water that’s being lost in the summer time. It’s more than you think.

Just take a look at what you’re drinking for beverages. Are you drinking cans of soda? Even if it’s something that doesn’t have sugar in it, it is still – or like I’m thinking of all those beverages even lined up in the cooler at the natural food store or different types of iced tea with different kinds of natural sweeteners in it and things. None of those things are water. And what you need is water, water, water, water, water. I can’t say that enough.

IGOR MILEVSKIY: Yeah.

DEBRA: Okay. So the general – yeah. Igor agrees.

IGOR MILEVSKIY: When you’re dehydrated, they don’t offer you a bottle of Coke or a cup of coffee. If you’re dehydrated, the medical – I think the approach is to give you water to hydrate you.

DEBRA: Yes, that is the medical approach. So if you weigh 150 lbs., the general rule of thumb is to drink half your weight in ounces of water. So if you weigh 150 lbs., 75 oz. divided by 8 oz. is nine 8 oz. glasses per day. So if you weigh 200 lbs., you would need about 12 glasses of water per day.

Just figure out your weight. Divide it by two. Find out the ounces. And then divide it by eight. Find out how many glasses that you need.

Now another thing is – oh if you’re doing a lot of exercise, you need to increase the water you drink. You might have a health condition that you might need to increase your water. If you are pregnant or breastfeeding, you need more water.

Don’t wait until you’re thirsty to drink water because thirst is an indicator that your body is already dehydrated. Let me say that again. Thirst is an indicator that your body is already dehydrated. By the time you feel thirsty, your body has lost more than 1% of its water. It’s better to drink water regularly throughout the day to replenish vital stores.

IGOR MILEVSKIY: Yes. We’re so busy. We don’t think about it. We don’t focus on it, so we get more dehydrated.

DEBRA: That’s exactly right. We are very busy and we’re not thinking about it. I’m sitting in a desk all day long, most of the day. On weekdays, I’m sitting at my desk unless I have to go to an appointment and when I go out. But I think a lot of people are sitting at their desk too.

So we really have an opportunity to just take those bottles, especially if you have a bottle that you know the measurement of and that you can just say, “Okay. This is a quart.” Or “This is how many ounces.” Or “I need to drink eight cups.” However it is that you measure it. If you’re sitting in one spot all day long, you can just put that bottle on your desk and make sure that you drink it.

Another way to do it is you could set a timer say every hour just to remind you to get up and stretch and drink your water. Just figure it out because water is so vital to life.

You’re doing the same, reading about how important this is.

IGOR MILEVSKIY: It’s used to cleaning the body. That’s what the body uses to discrete waste and to remove the impurities that we breathe in or eat.

People have been drinking alcohol more in the summer as well, being outdoors and having fun. Especially with alcohol, you get more dehydrated. The best thing for that is water. You drink a glass before you drink alcohol. And you drink maybe more after that and you may have less hang over too actually because water cleans out the toxins, the byproducts of alcohol and other things as well.

It’s pretty crucial. We evolved with it. Since the earth was created, water was the main ingredient in life. So I think that our bodies have a good resonance with clean water.

DEBRA: Absolutely. Now another thing that people should think about is electrolytes because adequate salt and potassium are critical to proper hydration.

Sometimes people are eating low-salt diets. But what you really need is those electrolytes in order for the water to move properly in your body so that it could be balanced.

I know for myself and in summer time. Especially because we live here in this hot humid environment, I know that people get heat exhaustion because they don’t have enough electrolytes. When they get heat exhaustion, they drink water and salt tablets and potassium tablets.

I know that in the summer time I need to make sure that I eat salt and sometimes I need to take potassium and magnesium and other minerals just so that I have enough minerals to balance out that water. So I think that that’s a really important thing to keep in mind too.

People will think that salt is a bad thing. Actually industrial salt is a bad thing. But something I think that everyone should do is go to the natural food store and get some sea salt or Himalayan salt that has the full spectrum of minerals in it because that will help your body assimilate water and help your body be hydrated.

IGOR MILEVSKIY: Yes. I’ve also read research that a natural sea salt is actually used to create hydrochloric acid, chloric being the salt part, which helps digestion.

I’m not a medical adviser or anything. This is just a research I have done. I have read that salt is crucial to creating the acid that digest our food. So a lot of times when you sweat a lot, you lose a lot of salt that may affect the production of that. So I just wanted to throw that in there.

DEBRA: Yeah, good. I’m glad you did because when you do sweat, you are losing salt as well. It’s not just about drinking more water, but it’s about replacing the water and replacing the salt. You want to replace the water with clean water and replace the salt with natural salts.

IGOR MILEVSKIY: Yeah. Our filters actually don’t remove the salt that’s naturally carried in the water.

There are other systems out there like reverse osmosis that takes out all the minerals and denatures the water completely. Whereas our filters target the contaminants, but they leave the electrolytes and the natural minerals that alkalize the water. They leave that in the water. So that’s another benefit.

DEBRA: I think that’s a really important point because water does – if you go out in the nature, water has its own characteristics. And then when it goes through the tap, it gets contaminated. Some of those characteristics do not go through the water filter and then it becomes more changed.

But tell us a little bit more about how your filters actually help the water stay in its natural state or restore its natural state.

IGOR MILEVSKIY: The bestselling system is our ultra units. The one that you have is the Ultra Under Counter.

It uses three chambers and each one has specific media in it. For example, the first one is a very fine half a micron catalytic carbon block. That’s the first step – to take out as many organic chemicals as possible and microbial cysts that may survive this infection. So that takes that out.

Now the water is free to go to the next stage where we have all natural non-aluminum fluoride removal cartridge. Also the company uses activated alumina for that, which is an oxidized form of aluminum.

We use all natural calcium bonded with carbon and it’s even better in performance, at least 20% more effective. So the fluoride gets removed in that stage.

Then the last stage is the third chamber. We have our Nuclear Grade Zeolite, which addresses radioisotopes that may be in the water, as well as ammonia. And we also have Heavy Metal Reduction Media in that cartridge. It’s pretty complicated.

DEBRA: Igor, I will need to [take] you up because we just ran out of time.

IGOR MILEVSKIY: Okay, no problem.

DEBRA: Thank you so much for being with me. We’ve been talking with Igor Milevskiy from Pure Effect Advanced Water Filters about water. You can find out more by going to the ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com.

I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. If you enjoyed this show, tell your friends.

Termite Treatment for Cement Slab?

Question from Susan

We want to pour a concrete slab for a lanai. What all do we need to be concerned about? Our building code requires pre-treating the ground under the slab for termites. I am highly sensitive to pesticides. Would Whitmire Microgen Advanced Compressed Termite Bait also known as Diflubenzuron Bait EPA #499-488 be a safer alternative? I am at a total loss and don’t know what to do. Thank you!

Debra’s Answer

I don’t have any experience with this, but I can tell you that putting a pesticide under a slab doesn’t prevent it from moving out into the surrounding environment through the soil.

Here’s some information on the toxicity of this pesticide. Extoxnet: Diflubenzuron.

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