I have used bottle water at work for years because what comes out of the tap is often a strange brown color. I do have a filter at home. Recently I have been taking my home filtered water to work. Not as convenient as bottled, but this study gives me good reason to continue doing this.

Do the home faucet filters take out or reduce the medications that are now in our water?
Anne

> as well as environmental reasons (plastic bottles filling up dumpsites), I think it is becoming clearer and clearer that bottled water is something we should only use in a pinch, not habitually.

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well it depends what kind of water you have in your taps. I am used to thinking that - at least in my country - tap water in bigger cities is not very healthy (it is drawn from inferior sources and cleared somehow) and it can contain bacteria.
Some people use osmotic filters but then the water lacks minerals - so what should they drink?
Hmm, the subject of water is pretty *deep* once I've started to think of it. Next concern - minerals - is it OK if it has plenty of everything or there are some ideal compositions to aim for? Judging by commercials the ones that are low in sodium are best (but how credible is that advertisement if I watch it between a low-fat full-grain yogurt and "healthy" cholesterol-lowering margarine mix?). Should the same water be given to the middle-aged and to babies?

At last, about environmental concerns: recently I read an article saying that in order to produce one bottle of water, they use up two or three times more water!

best regards,

There are two problems with tap water:
1) It contains fluoride
2) It contains chlorine
And I don't want to overdose myself with either of those elements.

The fluoride can only be removed by distillation or reverse osmosis.

The chlorine can be removed by a charcoal filter, except that my water department has now switched to chloramine (ammonia + chorine), which CANNOT be removed easily by a charcoal filter.

The chlorine at least serves an important public health function (although ozonation can be used as a more environment-friendly alternative). The fluoride is forced medication. I believe that one day we will realize our folly in dumping tons of this garbage into our streams, lakes, oceans and bodies, when alternative are available.

So for me it's bottle water, until the water company cleans up its act.

A percentage of the bottles end up in the pacific ocean to float forever in the great Pacific Landfill, now the size of Texas

You've mentioned before about the medical communities bias toward procedural medicine. If hospitals were to change their position and embrace a preventive bias for heart disease treatment, (early detection, and then addressing with appropriate supplements, drugs, and diet.) any ideas on how much savings for the nation could be had?

Our analysis suggests $634 million per 100,000 people would be saved if they were to engage in a simple program of prevention using heart scans.

Our analysis and rationale can be found at http://trackyourplaque.com/library/fl_hh005bankrupt.asp.

Dr. Davis: I fully agree that legislation is not the answer to this unfortunate practice. I favor freedom for physicians, and an informed public. Government regulation can and will ruin the practice of health care and incentives for new medical techniques and approaches. For those who think the government can be helpful, take a look at Medicare.

I had a “drive-by” angioplasty done in 1999 and a “drive-by” angiogram done in 2000 by the same cardiologist. He told me that I had 90% blockage on one of my main arteries after he performed the first angioplasty. Few years later, a neurologist told me that I actually suffered from panic attacks, not heart attacks. I always wonder how an experienced cardiologist could mistake a panic attack as a heart attack, not once but twice.

"To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

It holds true in medicine, unfortunately. Especially when each swing of the hammer pays thousands of dollars.

I have often thought that one underlying force that drives this phenomenon might be the fear of lawsuits.  Being a lawyer, I hate to bash the legal profession, but I know that once the person is on the cath table and any blockage is found that some interventional cardiologist somewhere might choose to stent, some doctors may feel the need to practice defensive medicine.  Even before they get to the cath table this is probably an influence.  In other words, say this patient died of a heart attack soon after this hospital visit (which as we all know, could happen even if the symptoms were unrelated to his plaque burden).  If the hospital had not done the procedure (especially since they have an entire crew of people sitting around all day long just waiting to do these), it's possible that some other intervention-oriented cardiologist might be found who would testify that the standard of care these days is to do the angiogram, and that had this been done, it's quite possible, even likely, that the blockage could have been opened up and death avoided.  (Even though we know that this is speculative and depends on how close to this visit the heart attack occurs, as far as the likelihood that this might be a life-saving procedure.)  The further out the heart attack occurs, the less compelling the causation argument.  But I gotta believe that there is defensive medicine being practiced in some of these situations.  And the trouble is, it's the very state of the treatment attitude that contributes to this result, i.e., the fact that unexpected heart attacks are as common as they are, and the proliferation and ready availability of cath labs, so that they are viewed as routinely available.

Hi, Warren-

Yes. I agree absolutely.

In fact, I believe this is exceptionally common. So common that it's become acceptable standard of care.

Often the appearance of doing something is better than the appeareance of doing nothing, regardless of how ineffective the treatment is.