The Best Berkey Hack on the Planet

January 22, 2015By Katie GuyAt Home, Family, Wellness No Comments

OK people, if you have a Berkey water filter you’ll know what I am talking about (if you don’t know about Berkey’s read my post All About Berkey Water Filters here) when I say it is such a drag when you go to get some water and it dribbles out. You tilt it just to get that last bit out.

However, being out of water isn’t the biggest part of the drag. It’s the fact that you NOW have to REFILL the Berkey!!!

UGH!!!!!

Cut to an image of me or one of the kids walking back and forth from the sink to the Berkey with a pitcher full of water. If you have the Big Berkey or Travel Berkey this isn’t such a daunting task, but think about that Crown Berkey.

A whopping SIX GALLONS!!! Who even has a pitcher that is a gallon. Most are maybe 64 ounces. So we are talking about going back and forth 12 times with that pitcher. And who is agile enough to carry a 64 ounce pitcher all the way full without spilling it? NOT ME!! Nor my kids. 🙂 So we do it an extra time for all the water we spilled and couldn’t fill to the top.

Then there is the clean up. Yep, mopping up all of that spilled water, which we use precious towels to do. Towels that are then needed to dry hands or dishes on later.

“Mom there are no more towels in the drawer.” Then we are off to do another load of laundry. All because of this Berkey.

It does make DELICIOUS water though!!! This is why we go through all of this….for the delicious water and the knowledge that we are not putting toxic chemicals and pathogens in ours and our children’s bodies.

So after owning a Berkey for many years now and trying out several hacks:

•the dreaded pitcher

•the dreaded larger pitcher

•filling when emptey

•trying to remember to fill a few pitchers throughout the day

•running a hose from the hose faucet in the garage to the Berkey (without a sprayer handle) making sure someone was near by to turn it off before it overflowed or trying to kink the hose so no water would come out as you run back to the faucet to turn it off

•the hose thing with a sprayer, said sprayer that always leaked and sprayed all over the breakfast nook.

•making sure you kept a tall chair near by so children could do any of the above

•moving to new house with no hose hook up near by and back to the pitcher thing!!

I decided to get creative.

Basically I ran an ice maker hose from a nearby water heater that already had a T valve on it. Then I hacked my way through some faucets with shut off valves. After many trips to Lowe’s then finally Home Depot, as the plumbing department at Lowe’s is subpar, I finally got all the required parts (of which I made up as I went along). I probably couldn’t tell you what all they are, so hopefully you can just see them in the video if you want to try to do this yourself. If you get really stuck and need more details comment below and I will try to figure out what they all are!!

This is yet another example of Swell Living!!!

All About Berkey Water Filters

June 24, 2014By Katie GuyAt Home, Wellness 1 Comment

We love our Berkey Water Filter. I firmly believe that we need to be drinking pure water whenever possible. See this for why. I don’t sell Berkey’s, but I want to get the information out about them. I’m constantly getting questions about them, especially “How do I know when to change my filterers?”

How Berkey® Natural Water Purifiers Operate

To use, water is poured into the upper chamber. Gravity draws this water through the exclusive purification elements where contaminates are captured on and within theses micro-porous elements and are separated from the water. The purified water then collects in the lower chamber where it can be drawn through the spigot. What’s more, Berkey® elements are cleanable and can be used over and over again.
When I clean my filters, I make a point of cleaning out the inside with Thieves Household Cleaner. I don’t rinse it out all the way. I spray it in, scrub, rinse, then spray again and wipe with a dry paper towel.

FEATURES AND BENEFITS

Healthy

Berkey® systems are far superior to other filtration systems because they remove viruses, harmful pathogenic bacteria, cysts and parasites as well as unhealthy chemical contaminates and impurities while leaving in the essential minerals your body needs. Berkey® systems produce virtually the most healthful, clean and delicious water available.

Convenient

Berkey® systems assemble in minutes without tools, electricity, water pressure, or plumbing. What’s more, they are simple to operate and maintain.

Economical

Berkey® systems are easily the most economical water purification system you can own. Their unique design allows you to easily remove and clean the purification elements over and over again.

Powerful

Berkey® systems can easily purify ordinary tap water, yet are so powerful, they efficiently purify raw, untreated water from such sources as remote lakes and streams. What’s more, Berkey® systems are the ideal water purification systems to have on hand in the event of natural disasters such as blackouts, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes as well as local or national emergencies when treated tap water may not be available.

Flexible

Berkey® systems are so convenient and easy to use, you can take them anywhere: on vacations, hunting and camping trips, college dorms and they are ideal systems for RVs and pleasure craft.

Elegant

The elegant high-grade polished 304 stainless steel design makes Berkey® systems an attractive addition to any kitchen or home yet each system is both rugged and durable.

Proven History

The same high quality and effectiveness of the gravity filtration process, that is utilized in Berkey® systems, has stood the test of time. Gravity filtration has been used by relief organizations such as UNICEF, the Peace Corps, Red Cross Societies Internationally, missionaries and relief workers in over 140 countries throughout the world.

How often do the Black Berkey® purification elements need to be replaced?

Each element has an expected life of 3,000 gallons or 6,000 gallons for a set of two.

I have been using my system for about six months and the flow rate has slowed down considerably. Do I need to replace the elements?

No, unlike other filtration elements Black Berkey® purification elements are re-cleanable. What typically causes the filters to drip slowly is turbidity and sediment clogging the micro-pores of the purification elements. Simply remove the elements from your system, scrub the exterior of each element with preferably a white ScotchBrite pad or stiff toothbrush. Simply scrub a section of the filter until you see a bit of black on the white pad then move to the next section. It’s simple to do and takes less than a minute. Then re-prime each element and reinstall them. Your problem should now be fixed.

How do I know when it is time to replace the elements in my system?

The best way to gauge when to replace the filters is to do the following:

Multiply the number of filters in your system by 3,000 gallons to get Total Gallons For All Filters within the system.
Next keep a track of how many times you need to refill the upper chamber in one week.
Then multiply that figure times the capacity in gallons of your particular system (for example the Berkey Light™ system is 2.75 gallons) to determine Total Gallons Used Per Week.
Finally divide the Total Gallons Used Per Week into the Total Gallons For All Filters and that will tell you how many weeks before the filters should be replaced.

Next calculate the future date for replacement (52 weeks per year) and write that date on a sticker and attach it to the bottom of your system for future reference. By the way, if you have been using your system for some time now, you can still use the above formula to determine when to replace the elements. Just count forward from the date you purchased your system.

Baby’s First Food…Bone Broth

August 9, 2013By Katie GuyFamily, Wellness 1 Comment

Our little number six, Owen is six and a half months old now and I finally found some time to make him a batch of fresh bone broth. I have been making my own wonderfully, healthily delicious bone broth for several years now. In my research, I found out that cultures that still consume an indigenous diet often feed bone broth to their babies as their first food. This broth helps to seal the gut! It’s amazing that our ancient ancestors just seemed to know these things by instinct. God is so wonderful and faithful that he infused this knowledge into our ancestors to help sustain generations of people. Modern society thinks it is so smart and advanced, but really I have found that the industrialization of a culture tends to bring it further and further away from this infused knowledge. Industrialized nations spend generations trying to advance, then they spend generations trying to relearn all that was lost.

Anyhow, once I learned about bone broth as a first food, I just knew I HAD to do this if God blessed us with another little one. You see, my last two babies before Owen had allergies. I had hoped this baby would be different, but that has not been the case, I am currently gluten, dairy and peanut free, along with several other weird things for this adorable baby.

This is why starting him out on solids properly is so important. This could be the difference between lifelong allergies and outgrowing them before pre-school. How do I know he is ready for food? You may be asking yourself. Well, first of all he has started to grab at my cup and food when I am eating, he has seven teeth, he is huge, we made it past the six month mark and he has started to seem less satisfied with just breast milk. He seems to be hungry more frequently, wanting to nurse very often especially in the middle of the night, yaaaaaawn!!

Did I mention he is huge and has seven teeth? So we started bone broth a few weeks ago. The bone broth was going so well we started farm fresh egg yolk, you see above, about a week ago. I think the most fun is watching all of the funny faces the baby makes when experiencing new tastes. We’ll see what’s next. I’m really liking the idea of baby led feeding. You can read about that over here.

Caffeine is a Drug

November 10, 2012By Katie GuyWellness No Comments

A friend recently posted an article A Visual View of Caffeine from the Healthy Home Economist. The picture above is from her post. It is an actual picture of caffeine crystals. I had never heard of this blog before, but after perusing her site, she has lots of great information. I have to tell you caffeine is one of those subjects, right up there with sugar, that gets people very defensive. I find it very mind boggling that most people don’t truly realize that caffeine is a drug, a very powerful drug, a very addictive drug.

She states in her article, of which I highly recommend reading in its entirety, that:

Even folks who are seriously health conscious seem to have trouble shaking the caffeine habit which never ceases to surprise me. Those who eat low carb seem to be particularly devoted to caffeine perhaps because caffeine stimulates the liver to release sugar into the bloodstream – in essence, a way to get carbs without actually eating them.

I don’t drink caffeine and have not since I became pregnant with my first child 18 years ago. At the time I got pregnant I just knew that I needed to quit all drugs, including caffeine. I tried to go back to caffeine after he was born, but thankfully it made me sick. Perhaps since I had indulged in heavier drugs as a teenager along with a steady diet of Dr. Pepper my entire childhood, at least since I moved to Texas at 8, my body went into major repair mode once I quit everything. Then once I tried to drink caffeine again it severely rejected it. I will say that I have experienced this several times in my health journey. It happened again with high fructose corn syrup, MSG, and now even sugar. Having said all of that I can totally relate to the quote above. I do still indulge in chocolate and up until I gave up sugar for Lent this year, it was an almost daily consumption. I would get so tired around the middle of the day and craved chocolate. As soon as I ate it I would feel much better. SURPRISE!! Right? I knew exactly what it was doing to my body. I have been studying this stuff for years and yet I indulged regularly anyway.

Here is another interesting point from the Healthy Home Economists article:

If your diet is making you so tired that you need caffeine to indirectly boost your blood sugar and artificially stimulate your adrenals, you’ve got a problem and the diet you’re following is clearly not optimal for you…Frequent stimulation of the adrenal glands from caffeine eventually leads to adrenal exhaustion whether this be at age 20 or age 60. If you’ve been drinking coffee for years and think you are “just fine thank you”, think again.

With the several years of stress from my daughters condition, my adrenals were shot. Practiacally non functioning. I actually craved the chocolate because my body was so out of whack I needed something artificial to keep functioning. With the help of a wonderful naturopath and the motivation to get off of sugar for Lent, I was able to do several things to help my body heal and get my adrenals functioning again.

If you consume caffeine on a regular basis, the first step is to realize that you are probably an addict. Yes, that’s right, a drug addict. The next step is to realize that this drug is harming your God given body. This body that is supposed to be the temple of the Holy Spirit. Next, start cutting back your consumption. You’ll need to do this slowly as caffeine withdrawal symptoms can be debilitating!! Mental preparation is extremely important also. You need to mentally prepare yourself for the day when you will no longer look forward to that cup of morning joe. I had conditioned myself to expect something chocolately right after lunch, mostly because this is when I would be crashing, but it also became an emotional attachment. Sometimes I still find myself thinking about how nice it would be to eat a big piece of chocolate after lunch, even though I don’t physically “need” it anymore. As an interim you can switch to tea, as the caffeine in tea is not nearly as harmful as the caffeine in coffee. Chocolate is actually pretty healthy for you and has lots of antioxidants in its raw, organic form…not the yummy kind that’s been processed with lots of sugar added to it.

There are several essential oil products that can help support you in this process. Ocotea is a wonderful oil discovered for the general public by Young Living from their research with the indigenous people of Ecuador. If you already have some on hand at home, Thieves vitality essential oil blend is great to take a few drops of internally during the day. A great tea to switch to to get off of coffee is Slique Tea, formulated by Gary Young of Young Living. Young Living is the only company to be blessed with being able to purchase this rare oolong tea, usually sold to tea connoisseurs in Thailand only. It has the highest antioxidant levels.

I know some of you may be feeling quite angry at my assertion that you could be a drug addict. Take a few deep breaths and try to let go of those emotions. Remember the first emotional stage of addiction is denial, followed by anger. You can read more about that here. Having grown up in a drug culture around many people addicted to illegal drugs, I guess it was just a complete shock to me to see all of these straight laced people completely addicted to a drug, coffee. The most bizarre thing to see is that they somehow have fooled themselves into thinking they are not consuming a drug and their daily dependance on it is nothing more than normal. In reality, I see the exact same behavior exhibited in these very sophisticated, productive, sometimes elderly members of society that I saw in my illegal drug addict friends growing up. Granted coffee isn’t as rapid of a demise as illegal drug addiction, but lets just be honest with ourselves. If you drink coffee every day and can’t just stop without being sick, you are a drug addict. I’m not telling you that you have to stop, even though your body will thank you, I’m simply asking that people stop lying to themselves about the reality of what they are doing.

(11/09/18 UPDATE: Shortly after I wrote this we had our 6th child, who was planned and we can’t imagine life without, but he was a terrible sleeper, I became severely sleep deprived and my adrenals tanked again. I have yet to recover, with many other life issues and still consume sugar pretty regularly with occasional fasts. I have even started to consume a bit of caffeine in Ning Nitro and NingXia Zyng, both of which are very mild levels of caffeine and naturally occurring from green & white tea. They also both contain fantastic essential oils that help support the body…two other products that could be great to switch to if you are trying to wean off of coffee. I on the other hand, do not consume coffee and have been slowly cutting back on my consumption of both of these!

My husband is a coffee drinker and two things he has found to help curb his coffee habit is drinking our homemade bone broth first thing in the morning and drinking bullet proof coffee.)

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Fluoride Filters and Clean Water

October 3, 2012By Katie GuyAt Home, Wellness 2 Comments

“The use of the public water supply to deliver medicine is pretty bizzare when you think about it. Once you put a medicine in the drinking water you can’t control the dose.”

I’m so excited about this new movie, “The Great Culling”. It is a documentary about fluoride. I firmly believe that no one on this earth was meant to drink, brush with or ingest this toxin and it is a TOXIN. Check your toothpaste tube, if it says “Call Poison Control if Swallowed”, it contains fluoride and you should throw it out!!!

Excerpts from The Great Culling’s website:

Fluoride is a generic term to indicate a wide variety of substances containing the element fluorine. Slightly less toxic than arsenic, but more toxic than lead, fluorine is the most negatively charged and most chemically active of all elements on earth, which means it loves to combine and recombine with other elements in its path, ever looking for the strongest bond, and reeking havoc all along the way by creating even more toxic combinations.

Fluoride is not just one of forty chemicals used to treat water. It is the only chemical added to public drinking water to treat individuals, rather than the water. It is mass medication. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) states that fluoride is not a mineral nutrient; it is a prescription drug. Every prescription drug has side effects, including fluoride.

Fluoride has never received FDA approval and does not meet the legal requirements of safety and effectiveness necessary for such approval. Once this drug is put in the water there is no control over individual dosage.

The Great Culling of the human race already has begun. It is being done through chemicals added to our drinking water, food, medicines, and the air we breathe – chemicals that have the known effect of reducing fertility and shortening lifespan. This message can no longer be dismissed as conspiracy theory. The facts are in plain view.

This documentary is the first of a three-part series. It shows how additives to our drinking water, such as fluoride, supposedly to combat tooth decay, in reality are covert doses of death. It also shows how you can protect yourself and your family.

Fluoride that is added to our city’s drinking water is not a natural mineral to help our bodies or teeth. It is the byproduct of the chemical phosphate fertilizer process and the scrubbing of the coal plants. These corporations would normally have to PAY to dispose of this poison. Instead, our cities decided to PURCHASE it and add it to our water. The fluoride in your drinking water is really called “sodium fluoride” or “hydrofluorosilicic Acid”. In order to add this chemical to your drinking water the poor person that has this job must put on a full hazmat suit and respirator. If he touches it he will die.

There is hope though. There are ways to filter this poison out of your water. We have been using a Big Berkey for sometime now and I just recently became a dealer. I wholeheartedly believe in the Berkey’s efficacy to remove this toxin from our water. You can literally taste the difference. The Berkey is just one of many ways to filter out this poison from your water. There are whole house systems, including the RO filters, but the RO also takes out all of the minerals. The Berkey leaves in the minerals making the water taste super sweet!

Reprehensibly, Delicious Refined Sugar

October 26, 2011By Katie GuyFamily, Wellness No Comments

Well I posted:

“Every time you eat a teaspoon of sugar your immune system is compromised for hours” on my Facebook page the other day and someone asked for more information. I liked what I found in my research so much I didn’t even put it in my own words and I wanted to put it up here.

I remember when I first started to research refined white sugar many years ago there are several facts I learned that really stuck with me, even though I still consume it sometimes!! The first is that originally the FDA classified refined white sugar as a drug, but the plantation owners knew this would hurt their profits so they bribed them to classify it as a food. The second was a study done on the plantation workers and the children of the plantation owners. The workers chewed on the sugar cane all day at work while the privileged children ate the refined white sugar. Guess who had more tooth decay? Yep, the children who ate the refined white sugar. So without further delay…

Sugar

“Sugar is without question one of the most dangerous substances on the food market today.

What we are talking about here is sucrose, the white crystalline sugar refined from cane or beet juice by stripping away all its vitamins, minerals, protein, fiber, water, and other synergists.

White sugar is an industrially processed chemical not found in nature, and it is not fit for human consumption.

Other sugars such as fructose (in fruit and honey), lactose (in milk), and maltose (in grains) are natural substances with nutritional value.

Raw sugar is a coarse, brown, sticky variety made by simply boiling down whole cane juice and it too is a wholesome food, but it is very difficult to find in the Western world.

The so called ‘brown sugar’ sold in supermarkets is nothing more than refined white sugar with some molasses spun back into it for color and flavor. It is not a ‘health food’.

Sugar suppresses the immune system by causing the pancreas to secrete abnormally large quantities of insulin, which is required to break it down.

Insulin remains in circulation in the bloodstream long after sugar has been metabolized, and one of its main side effects is to suppress the release of growth hormone in the pituitary gland.

Growth hormone is a primary regulator of the immune system, so anyone who eats a lot of sugar every day is going to experience critical growth hormone deficiency and consequent immune deficiency caused by the constant presence of insulin in the bloodstream.

Furthermore, refined white sugar is treated as a toxic foreign agent by the immune system, owing to its unnatural chemical structure as well as the industrial contaminants it retains from the refining process.

Sugar thus triggers an unnecessary immune response while simultaneously suppressing immune function, thereby debilitating the immune system with a double edged sword.

Sugar is the chief culprit in many diseases and degenerative conditions.

It can easily cause diabetes and is a major factor in candidacies, both of which are epidemic in the industrialized Western world.

Since sugar is ‘nutritionally naked’, the body must ‘borrow’ the missing vitamins, minerals and other synergistic nutrients required to metabolize sugar from its own tissues.

Heavy sugar consumption therefore causes a constant siphoning of nutrients from the body. Recent evidence suggests that sugar causes dental problems not so much by contact with the teeth but rather by leaching the teeth of calcium from within.

Sugar also depletes the body of potassium and magnesium, which are required for proper cardiac function, and is therefore a major factor in heart disease.

The nutritional leaching caused by sugar can give rise to intense food cravings and eating binges, as the body seeks to replenish the nutrients ‘stolen’ from it by sugar.

Most people consume far more sugar than their bodies can possibly use for energy. When this happens, the liver converts the extra sugar into molecules called triglycerides and stores it as fat, or else produces cholesterol from the by-products of sugar and deposits it in veins and arteries. Sugar is thus a major factor in obesity and arteriosclerosis as well.

Sugar is an addictive substance. In Sugar Blues, William Dufty writes; ‘The difference between sugar addiction and narcotic addiction is largely one of degree.’

Abruptly giving up sugar invariably brings on the sort of withdrawal symptoms associated with narcotic drugs- fatigue, lassitude, depression, moodiness, headaches, aching limbs.

Its addictive nature is also reflected in current per capita consumption in the USA- an average of 130 pounds of sugar per person per year, or about 1/3 pound daily. That qualifies as ‘substance abuse’. Most people don’t even realize how much sugar they’re taking every day because much of it is hidden in other foods.

A 12-ounce can of a typical soft drink, for example, contains about nine teaspoons of refined white sugar.

Sugar consumption in the USA is so high that it has also caused a social problem through its deleterious effects on behavior, especially in children, who are displaying increasingly severe behavioral disorders and learning disabilities.

In a recent study conducted by Dr. C. Keith Connors of the Children’s Hospital in Washington, DC, a ‘deadly’ link was established between the consumption of sugar with carbohydrates (such as breakfast cereal, cake, and biscuits) and violent behavior, hypertension, and learning impediments.

In other studies, chronic violence in prisons was remarkably reduced simply by eliminating refined sugar and starch from prison diets. Singapore in 1991 banned sugary soft drink sales from all schools and youth center’s, citing the danger that sugar poses to the mental and physical health of children.

If you or your children have a sweet tooth, you can easily satisfy it by concocting treats with honey, molasses, and barley malt, which are not only sweet but also nutritious and therapeutically beneficial.”

Source: Daniel Reid