MJoTAtalks:
Drinking water
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Drinking water. SJ Dodgson. MJoTA 2012 v6n1 p0629
Right,
I took this picture from my seat in Turkish Airlines on Feb 28, taking
off at sunset from New York on my way to Nigeria. It has all the
elements I want to talk about: masses amounts of water, flying towards
the rising sun as darkness descends.
Stories on Biafra and the reasons for my trip to Nigeria, click here.
I
have recently been reading and hearing about the need to only drink
water that is a friendly temperature, a friendly acidity. That if water
is not perfect, our blood will turn to sludge. Aaaaggghhh.
Think of a bathtub filled with salt water at room temperature.
Add a teaspoon of fresh cold water. The bathtub water stays the same temperature, and stays salt water.
To
the bathtub of salt water, add a bathtub of fresh cold water. The
bathtub water spills out, and by the time the waters are mixed, you have
water all over the floor, dripping through the ceiling to the kitchen
below, and the water in the tub is cooler and less salty.
In the
third scenario, start once again with a bathtub of salt water at room
temperature. Dump an ocean on the bathtub, which is what happens in a
tsunami. The bathtub is now part of the ocean, whatever was in there
before is irrelevant.
So that is what happens in our bodies when
we drink cold water, alkaline water. We drink a little bit, too small
to change our body fluids: nothing happens. We drink a lot: we can
change our temperatures, pH, salt concentration. And if we drink too
much water too quickly, we can die because sodium has been washed away. Sodium, Na+, is the other atom in NaCl, dosium chlroide, which is the main salt in the sea and in our blood. We need it. If we have too much, our blood pressure goes up and up and can kill us.
Not enough sodium stops the traffic of atoms and molecules across membranes in our bodies, and that can kill us.
My most dramatic personal illustration of changing temperature by drinking something was on Jan 20, 2009, when I got up
at 3am to drive to Washington DC to be in the crowds when Barack Obama
was sworn in as president by Supreme Court Justice John Roberts.
I
arrived at a train station in Maryland, parked my car, and waited in the
sub-freezing cold for an empty train while filled trains passed by.
After an hour I got on the train heading the wrong way, and when it
turned around and headed into Washington, I had a seat. But my camera
stopped working, it was too cold.
After I arrived near the Mall where
masses of people had gathered to witness the inauguration, I walked
around and was given a seat by police. Nice of them.
And I got colder
and colder, and was so cold my head started shaking. After the parade
had started and I decided to head off to a Kenyan Embassy event, even
sitting in a warm subway train was not warming me. My head was still
shaking, my body temperature had dropped and I could not warm. I found a
coffee shop and bought the largest hot coffee they sold, about a liter,
and started sipping. That warmed me, I could feel heat returning to my
face, to my body, to my arms, legs, hands, feet.
I was fine when I arrived at the Kenyan Embassy bash, and later that evening danced with a packed crowd of Africans celebrating the start of a new era. The first time a man of obvious African descent became leader of a country outside Africa.
And yesterday, when the Supreme Court ruled his Healthcare Reform Act is constitutional, our American president has given us all access to health care.
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The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) is the main federal law that
ensures the quality of Americans' drinking water.
The EPA sets
standards for drinking water quality and oversees the states,
localities, and water suppliers who implement those standards.
The Act was passed by Congress in 1974 to protect public
health by regulating the nation's public drinking water supply.
The law
was amended in 1986 and 1996 and requires many actions to protect
drinking water and its sources: rivers, lakes, reservoirs, springs, and
ground water wells.
This act does not regulate private wells which serve
fewer than 25 individuals.
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Coca Cola. SJ Dodgson. MJoTA 2012 v6n1 p0624
I
love Coca Cola bottles, I love looking at a tall glass of coke with ice
swimming around, I love ads for Coca Cola, and I loved seeing the Coca
Cola sign on the top of a hill in Enogu, Nigeria, when I was there with
Captain Okpe during the Nigerian state burial of the President of the
defunct nation of Biafra, General Ojukwu. Look closely at the picture
above, zoom in. You will see the Coca Cola sign.
However, drink it? Oh no. Only if I absolutely have to, which is only if I cannot get clean water.
Coke is a fake drink sold on the concept of having fun, and probably these fake drinks are the
main cause of obesity and diabetes. Because the most efficient way of
becoming obese and diabetic is by drinking water with dissolved sugar.
When I was in Sierra Leone, a bottle of coke was more available and cost less than a bottle
of water: Coke is not only good at marketing, they are geniuses in
manufacturing, bottling and distributing.
I want Coca Cola to
make a soy drink that is cheaper than water and makes you feel you are
in a party when you drink it. Coca Cola employs a lot of workers all
throughout Africa, I want Coca Cola to continue creating jobs and good
health, but not at the price of killing our communities with sugar
drinks.
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Daily teaspoon of cinnamon lowers blood sugar, blood cholesterol in most studies, click here. So does steel-cut oats, rye, oatmeal, click here. Will white bread and white rice give you diabetes? click here.
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HIV/AIDS: prevent it, learn about it, treat it: click here.
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