COMPARED to most head and neck malignancies, the rate of throat cancer in the United States and around the globe has not declined. The statistics are also true when extrapolated, for other countries, like the Philippines, since most Filipinos are Westernized in their lifestyle, habits, and behaviors, etc.

The most logical explanation for why the cancer of the throat has not diminished has been attributed to the human papillomavirus (HPV), a bug that causes a sexually transmitted disease. HPV is popularly (70 percent) known to cause genital warts and most cancers of the cervix (mouth of the womb). Scientists have discovered and identified HPV transmission through oral sex as an etiology of throat cancer.

The American Cancer Society reports that the greatest risk factors in head and neck cancers are smoking and drinking alcoholic beverages, 90% of them are either smokers or tobacco chewers and about 80% of them also imbibe a lot of alcohol.

The good news is that a trend analysis in head and neck cancers in the United States shows a decline in the past 20 years, trailing a decrease in smoking prevalence, which started in the 1970s, by 10 to 15 years.

The bad news is that oropharyngeal cancers (which include the tonsils, base of the tongue and soft palate, and side and back of the throat) have been up in some populations in the United States, and probably also among people in other parts of the world who practice oral sex, where HPV takes its toll.

“The findings underscore the importance of research aimed at determining if the newly available HPV vaccine is effective in males,” said researcher Erich Sturgis, MD, MPH, to WebMD, as reported by Salynn Boyles.

A sample of the vaccine referred to is Gardasil, which is genetically engineered, and Gardasil 9 which blocks infection caused by nine of the more than 100 types of human papillomavirus (HPV), strains 6, 11, 16, 18, 31, 33, 45, 52, and 58. These sexually transmitted viruses are responsible for about 70% of cervical cancers. HPV, in one form or the other, afflicts about 20 million Americans. The other strains of the virus cause painful genital warts, and sometimes, cervical cancers too.

How prevalent is cervical cancer?

In the Philippines, there are almost 8,000 new cases of cervical cancer each year, with a death rate of about 4,052. Annually, more than 13,000 cervical cancer cases are diagnosed in the USA and around 4,250 of them die. Around the world, there are 660,000 cases each year, and 350,000 died in 2022 alone.

However, more alarming than that is the fact that there are between 10,000 and 25,000 women in the United States walking around (not seen by physicians) who have undiagnosed pre-invasive lesions in their cervix. If diagnosed early, these women could be saved. For every four survivors of breast cancer, there are less than three women who survive cervical cancer, which shows how virulent cervical cancer is.

What causes cervical cancer?

 Human papillomavirus (HPV, also known as genital herpes virus) accounts for most cervical cancers. At least 50% of sexually active men and women around the world are infected with genital HPV, especially those with multiple partners. There are about 20 million American men and women infected with HPV, many linked with abnormal pap tests, genital warts and cervical cancer. Between half a million to a million Americans and around five million (4.87 percent) Filipinos have genital warts, transmitted through sexual contact.

What is the cure for cervical cancer?

Better than the cure; it’s preventive! A vaccine (Gardasil 9) that prevents cervical cancer, vulvar, and vaginal cancer that was approved by the US-FDA in 2006 was found to be “effective almost 100%, in the short term, at blocking the cancer and lesions likely to turn to cancer” (like the pre-invasive lesions), according to Gardasil manufacturer, Merck & Co. The UK’s version of the vaccine is known as Cervarix.

How early should the vaccine be given?

Students in grammar school, middle school and high school should be vaccinated before they become sexually active because once they catch HPV infection, there is no cure; herpes is for life.  As a joke goes: “Unlike love, herpes is forever.” Prophylaxis Gardasil 9 vaccination comprehensively eliminates 9 HPV strains associated with non-invasive and invasive cervical cancer. The vaccine also cuts down infection with HPV 6 and 11, the causes of 90% of genital warts, and 7 other strains.

How about throat cancers?

 Of the 45,000 head and neck cancers in the US each year, about 10,000 of them are oropharyngeal cancers, and tongue cancers among young adults have also increased. The evident conclusion is that the cause is the HP virus. “Over the last five years, 35% of the throat cancer patients treated at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center had no history of smoking, and that close to 90% of patients who had never smoked showed evidence of oral infection with HPV,” says Dr. Sturgis on Web MD.

The researchers felt that “vaccinating only females against HPV, which is currently the policy in the United States (starting at 9 to 12-year-old girls and boys, and for women up to age 26 who have not received it), could result in a missed opportunity to prevent throat cancers.”

Studies on the vaccine among males are underway, aimed at protecting both populations. The use of kitchen cling plastic wrap placed over the woman’s private area has been advocated by some as a practical option to prevent HPV transmission via oro-lingual infection.

Unprotect oral sex is dangerous! Oro-pharyngeal malignancies are a miserable cancer and could be fatal.

Philip S. Chua, MD, FACS, FPCS, a cardiac surgeon emeritus based in Northwest Indiana and Las Vegas, Nevada, is an international medical lecturer/author, health advocate, newspaper columnist, and chairman of the Filipino United Network-USA, a 501(c)3 humanitarian foundation in the United States. He is a decorated recipient of the Indiana Sagamore of the Wabash Award in 1995, presented by then Indiana Governor, US senator, and later presidential candidate, Evan Bayh. Other Sagamore past awardees include President Harry S. Truman, President George HW Bush, Muhammad Ali, Astronaut Gus Grissom, scientists, and educators. (Wikipedia). Websites: FUN8888.com, Today.SPSAtoday.com, and philipSchua.com, Amazon.com: “Where is My America?”  Email: scalpelpen@gmail.com

‘With the new mRNA technology, vaccines can now be developed within a few months, a giant leap for mankind.’

THE Nobel Prize in Physiology-Medicine has been awarded to two scientists for their discovery of micro-RNA (mRNA), which “helps determine how cells develop and function, and malfunction.”

A sample of the benefits to mankind of mRNA was the mind-boggling speed at which COVID-19 vaccines were developed. The uninformed members of society even suspected “dangerous short-cuts” were taken to develop the COVID-19 vaccines, which was used as the reason for rejecting the vaccines.

Vaccines used to take five to 10 years or more to develop. With the new mRNA technology, vaccines can now be developed within a few months, a giant leap for mankind. The “new understanding of how diseases occur opens the possibilities for reversing them.”

The recipients of the Nobel Prize at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm last Monday were Doctor Victor Ambros of Hanover, N.H., the Silverman professor of natural science at the University of Massachusetts, and Gary Ruvkun, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and a member of the Mass Gen Research Institute.

Since its discovery in the 1960s and its first introduction in 1993 by Ambros and his group, it was in 2010 when the first human trial for an mRNA vaccine was conducted (for rabies) in 2013. Since then, mRNA technology has already saved billions of lives around the world, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and quadrillions and more in the future.

Indeed, the Nobel Prize award to Ambros and Ruvkun is overwhelmingly well-deserved!

Denton A. Cooley: An icon

Another iconic giant medical contribution: One of the world’s megastars and internationally famous pioneer-innovators in cardiac surgery is Denton Arthur Cooley, MD, FACS, the Houston surgeon who performed the first successful human heart transplant in the world in 1968, and also the world’s first (1969) and second (1981) total artificial heart transplants.

In 1978, he implanted the first left ventricular assist device to help the failing heart as a bridge (while the patient waited for a suitable donor) to heart transplantation. Dr. Cooley was a trailblazer on the cutting edge of cardiac surgery. He died in his home in Houston on November 18, 2016, at the age of 96.

In 1972, I was blessed to be appointed by Dr. Cooley as a Fellow in Cardiac Surgery at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, the world-renowned hospital he founded in 1962. This was where he performed those groundbreaking historical surgeries. His patients, a few of them international dignitaries, came all over from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, etc. besides the United States.

On June 2, 1972, as the president of the Denton A. Cooley Cardiovascular Surgery Society, an exclusive assembly of more than 800 cardiac surgeons from 54 countries who trained under Dr. Cooley at the Texas Heart Institute, I had the honor to present to Dr. and Mrs. Cooley the Charter of Foundation of the Society at the special annual gala of the Texas Heart Institute at the Warwick.

During my Fellowship in 1972, Dr. Cooley and the fellows in his team were doing between 12-14 coronary bypass and heart valve surgeries in 4 surgical suites each day. Dr. Cooley “oversaw as many as 30 open-heart surgeries a day during his peak of surgical career,” doing his last operation in 2007.

Dr. Cooley authored volumes of cardiovascular papers and books. Among his countless awards are The Presidential Medal of Freedom presented by President Ronal Reagan in 1984; the National Medal of Technology presented by President Bill Clinton in 1998; Rene Leriche Award, the highest honor of the International Surgical Society in 1967; Theodore Roosevelt Award, Golden Plate Award, Grand Hamdan International Award for Medical Science, etc.

The contribution of Dr. Cooley and his now countless cardiac surgeon-proteges around the world will be a part of his grand legacy of service to mankind in the field of cardiac surgery. 

Dr. Cooley was gracious enough to write the Foreword for my first book, “Let’s Stop ‘Killing’ Our Children,” pre-emptive and pro-active strategies in healthy lifestyle and disease prevention (2011, Xlibris: Amazon.com).

To be chosen by Dr. Cooley and accepted “as one of few” as his Cardiac Surgery Fellows at the prestigious Texas Heart Institute, be mentored by him, and be that personally close to him as a friend, was a blessing and an inspiring privilege for me.

Dr. Cooley and his contributions will be permanently etched in history and his greatness will forever warm the hearts of those whose lives he had touched.

The whole world, mankind, is better because of great thinkers, intellectual minds, and inventors like Dr. Cooley, whose wisdom and love of fellowmen have transformed them into “builders for eternity.”

Today, at the lobby of the Texas Heart Institute, there stands a giant golden heart symbol of the Texas Heart Institute, and not far from it a plaque with a poem by Robert Lee Sharpe:

A Bag of Tools

Isn’t it strange

That princes and kings

And clowns that caper

In sawdust rings

And common people

Like you and me

Are builders for eternity?

Each is given a bag of tools,

A shapeless mass,

A book of rules,

And each must make —

ere life is flown —

A stumbling block

Or a stepping stone.

Philip S. Chua, MD, FACS, FPCS, a cardiac surgeon emeritus based in Northwest Indiana and Las Vegas, Nevada, is an international medical lecturer/author, health advocate, newspaper columnist, and chairman of the Filipino United Network-USA, a 501(c)3 humanitarian foundation in the United States. He is a decorated recipient of the Indiana Sagamore of the Wabash Award in 1995, presented by then Indiana Governor, US senator, and later presidential candidate, Evan Bayh. Other Sagamore past awardees include President Harry S. Truman, President George HW Bush, Muhammad Ali, Astronaut Gus Grissom, scientists, and educators. (Wikipedia). Websites: FUN8888.com, Today.SPSAtoday.com, and philipSchua.com, Amazon.com: “Where is My America?”  Email: scalpelpen@gmail.com

‘The risk of death from a serious infectious disease without the vaccines is much higher than the risk of dying from the vaccines.’

THE world, humankind, is safer because we have vaccines against fatal infectious diseases. The Black Death, the plague in Europe from 1347 to 1351, killed between 25-50 million (about half of the population) because there were no vaccines. This is just like saying we are blessed and safer for having the most efficacious antibiotics today. Before antibiotics were discovered, people died even from the simplest infection.

Alexander Flemming discovered penicillin in 1928 while working at St. Mary’s Hospital in London. Before that, 50 percent of all post-birth deaths and burns were caused by Streptococcus pyogenes, and 80 percent of infectious wounds were caused by Staphylococcus aureus. Tuberculosis and pneumonia were very popular killers during the pre-antibiotic era. Indeed, like vaccines, antibiotics, especially today, with all the sophisticated versions, are lifesavers.

People around the world have accepted antibiotics as a blessing, in spite of the fact that occasionally a shot of penicillin could cause deaths from violent allergic reactions. Individuals could be super-sensitive to other drugs too.

Somehow, people look at vaccines differently. Vaccine hesitancy is dangerous and more common than we think. And this mindset has maimed and killed millions. Most of this comes from misinformation, disinformation, and fake news from social media.

The existential question should always be: Which is more dangerous, the infection or the vaccines? Which of the two is a greater threat to health and life? What are the statistics? How many percent of unvaccinated people died from infectious diseases like smallpox, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, Ebola, HIV, Flu, RSV, or COVID-19, and how many died from the vaccines for those grave diseases? Why have governments around the world mandated preschool vaccinations for children since the 19th century? To save lives. A no-brainer!

For COVID-19, for instance, the risk of getting an adverse reaction from the vaccines, much less dying from them, is a fraction of one percent, while the risk of dying from COVID-19, especially during the first year of the pandemic, was as high as 25-30 percent for adults.

In dealing with our health and well-being, it is best to do it scientifically, since the advances in science, medicine, technology, engineering, various other fields, and now, artificial intelligence, have attained sophisticated heights by leaps and bounds.

As a cardiac surgeon, I often encountered patients with extreme fear of surgery, especially of open-heart procedures in general. To make them see the scientific reality of their situation, I always explain to them that when the finding is severe blockage of the left main coronary artery, or its equivalent lesion (2 arteries for the left ventricles are blocked), the risk of death within a year is at least 50 percent. One foot in the grave!  This lesion is infamously called “the widow-maker,” a serious killer of men.

Then, I compared the statistics of a 50 percent risk of the disease to the risk of death from coronary bypass surgery today, which is 1-2 percent. That is a staggering difference of 48 to 49 percent safer to have surgery than not having it. Medical statistics usually make patients understand their situation more clearly, feel reassured, and make their decisions more rational and realistic.

We must apply the same scientific approach when making decisions about vaccines or other modes of treatment for our ailments. All these therapies we have today are heaven-sent blessings. Let us take full advantage of them. Not using them is a great waste and a grave threat to our life.

As of September 17, 2024, “the SARS-CoV2 (COVID-19) Omicron variants KP.2, KP 2.3, KP.3, and KP 3.1.1, as well as LB.1, have a high prevalence in the United States.”

The CDC recommends those six months and older to have the new 2024-2025 COVID-19 vaccines. In the Philippines, the public is advised to have the new COVID-19 vaccines.

The take-away: The risk of death from a serious infectious disease without the vaccines is much higher than the risk of dying from the vaccines. Vaccines have saved billions of lives around the world the past two centuries.

Grilling and cancer

Grilling meats of any kind, even fish, especially under high heat, increases the cancer risk in people. Cooking at high temperatures makes the meats drip oil on the charcoal. When the oil hits the superhot charcoal, fumes result, and the smoke contains carcinogenic substances that “vaporizes” upwards to the meat. These harmful fumes are absorbed by the meats.

Charring meats under high heat creates heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), both of which change human DNA and cause cancer. Even frying over high heat also has the same carcinogenic effect. Marinating meats and fish (your choice: vinegar, light cooking olive oil, lemon juices, and spices) lowers the HCAs and PAHs but does not totally prevent the risk. Do not eat the charred, blackened, portion of meats.

Besides colorectal cancers and stomach cancers, using high heat for grilling and frying also causes other diseases. Using gas, instead of charcoal, using lower temperatures, and shortening the cooking time, appear to lessen the risk for cancers, but do not totally eliminate the risk. Boiling is not associated with this phenomenon.

Even without grilling, frying, or cooking, processed meats, like deli meat, are likewise associated with stomach and colorectal cancers, among other harmful effects on our bodies. Not only is red meat associated with cancer and cardiovascular diseases, but processed meats are carcinogenic. Grilling vegetables and fruits does not pose the same problem.

Indoor grilling also contaminates the entire home with the fumes of PAHs and HCAs, so it is not recommended.

Let’s use science and wisdom to protect our health, maximize our potential longevity, and make the world a better place for all too.

Philip S. Chua, MD, FACS, FPCS, a cardiac surgeon emeritus based in Northwest Indiana and Las Vegas, Nevada, is an international medical lecturer/author, health advocate, medical missionary, newspaper columnist, and chairman of the Filipino United Network-USA, a 501(c)3 humanitarian foundation in the United States. He is a decorated recipient of the Indiana Sagamore of the Wabash Award in 1995 presented by then Indiana Governor, US senator, and later presidential candidate Evan Bayh.  Other Sagamore past awardees include President Harry S. Truman, President George HW Bush, pugilist Muhammad Ali, TV talk show host David Letterman, Astronaut Gus Grissom, educators, scientists, etc. (Wikipedia). Websites: FUN8888.com, Today.SPSAtoday.com, and philipSchua.com Email: scalpelpen@gmail.com

‘For health and longevity, having a closely knit family where love is always home is a big psychological, emotional, spiritual, and physical support.’

IN the United States, about 4.7 percent of the population count of 337,141,658 (as of 9-20-24) are 90 years and older. This translates to about 15.8 million nonagenarians.

The life expectancy for American men in 2023 was 73, and for women, 79, and 67.3 years for men and around 74.5 for women in the Philippines. People have been more health-conscious over the past five decades, progress in medical science and healthcare skyrocketed, and overall societal mindset and environment tremendously improved. As a result, people are living longer.

Currently, there are about 90 percent of adults in the US who regularly take at least one prescription drug and 80 percent at least two.

Among non-drinkers and non-smokers, 33 percent of women will live to 95 or beyond, and only 20 percent of men will live 95 and older. Only 4.3 percent of them have no illness at all, like symptomatic arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol level, etc.

In the US annually, there are an estimated 400,000 deaths from tobacco-related illnesses and 100,000 deaths from alcoholism. These two risk factors alone account for 33.3 percent of all deaths in the country. Car crashes kill about 43,000 a year. Wearing seatbelts lowers the risk of death by 45 percent.

Actuarial tables show that for men, the probability of living to 100 is about 0.48 percent, and for women, 1.66 percent, about three and a half times greater. Indeed, women are tougher than men.

But how many people in the US are 96, active, of clear mind and memory, who do not have any symptoms of arthritis, etc., at all, and not on any medication whatsoever?

I have a good old friend, a namesake, “Ipe,” who is 96, a non-smoker, a teetotaler, with a memory clear as a bell, who still dances the cha-cha, has no pains of arthritis or any ills, and not even on a single pill at all. He and his wife of 91 have been married for 66 years. They have five loving children, 10 grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, and one great, great-grandchild. What a blessed couple and a wonderful family!

For health and longevity, having a closely-knit family where love is always home is a big psychological, emotional, spiritual, and physical support. This makes life more meaningful, easier to navigate, and more fulfilled.

In the Philippines, the government’s Centenarian Act of 2023 awards Filipino citizens and Filipino dual citizens an incentive cash of P10,000 every five years for those who live to 80, 85, 90, and 95, and P100,000 for centenarians. In 2019, there were 59 overseas Filipinos (in the USA, Canada, Australia, UK and Hong Kong) who got the award for reaching 100. Seniors in the Philippines also get a 20-percent discount card for medications, groceries, restaurants, movies, transportation, and transport pre-boarding privileges.

A healthy lifestyle maximizes longevity and can outweigh bad genes.

However, having good family genes does not guarantee good health and a longer life. An unhealthy diet, self-abuse with tobacco, alcohol, or illicit drugs, a toxic environment, recklessness, arrogance, braggadocio, and an anti-medical attitude, all significantly affect the health and lifespan of an individual. Indeed, the lifestyle is the elixir of our well-being, the key to Ponce de Leon’s elusive fountain of youth.

In this informational age, where Dr. Google is ubiquitous and on-call 24/7, with almost infinite data on any subject, it behooves everyone to constantly search, learn, and use the progress of medical science and healthcare for our own and our family’s well-being. All the information we need is now at our fingertips. Savor the info to be wiser, healthier, more productive, and happier.

The mind-boggling great strides in all sciences and technologies in various fields of human endeavors, including medicine, surgery, space exploration, and now Artificial Intelligence, are all blessings, thanks to man’s intelligence, wisdom, vision, ingenuity, and skills should be taken full advantage of. Not utilizing them to better our health and well-being is a grave waste, insane irresponsibility, and irreverence, not only to our own body and soul but also to the Almighty, for those who believe in God.

From May 30, 2021 to September 3, 2022, there were a quarter of a million deaths among unvaccinated persons in the US. Sadly, misinformation and fake news led to their fear of this life-saving vaccine, like the three anti-vax misinformed radio talk show hosts who warned their audiences against the vaccines, who later got infected and died from COVID-19 themselves, apologizing to their listeners before their deaths.

Those were unfortunate incidents of wasting a wonderful vaccine, a marvelous invention of man since physician Edward Jenner invented the first vaccine against mass-killer smallpox in 1796. There were an “estimated 400 million people around the globe who were killed by smallpox in the 20th century alone. Jenner’s vaccine saved the world from almost total annihilation. His invention has inspired the manufacture of other vaccines similar to what we have today. The most recent discovery is a more efficient system of producing vaccines, called mRNA, which happened during this pandemic, and has revolutionized and expedited vaccine creation from 10 years or longer down to about months. What a leap of progress for mankind!

Anyway, since diet is fundamental to attain good health, and quantity, besides quality of food, is vital, allow me to share with you a strategy my wife and I learned from our medical school mentor, the world-famous Philippine pediatrician, the first woman accepted to study at Harvard in 1936, Dr. Fe del Mundo, who died in 2011 at almost 100. She was practicing at The Children’s Medical Center in Quezon City, which she founded in 1957, the first pediatric hospital in the country, till she was 94. Her advice to us was: “Push yourself away from the table less than full.”

Indeed, simple words of golden wisdom, a sage, practical, and effective strategy for health and longevity!

Let’s always aim for the stars in whatever we do.

Philip S. Chua, MD, FACS, FPCS, a cardiac surgeon emeritus based in Northwest Indiana and Las Vegas, Nevada, is an international medical lecturer/author, health advocate, medical missionary, newspaper columnist, and chairman of the Filipino United Network-USA, a 501(c)3 humanitarian foundation in the United States. He is a decorated recipient of the Indiana Sagamore of the Wabash Award in 1995 presented by then Indiana Governor, US senator, and later presidential candidate Evan Bayh.  Other Sagamore past awardees include President Harry S. Truman, President George HW Bush, pugilist Muhammad Ali, TV talk show host David Letterman, Astronaut Gus Grissom, educators, scientists, etc. (Wikipedia). Websites: FUN8888.com,Today.SPSAtoday.com, and philipSchua.com Email: scalpelpen@gmail.com

‘Contaminated water kills more people each year than war and all forms of violence combined.’

THE First industrial Revolution (1760) and the Second (1870), when machines took over countless jobs originally performed by man, severely contaminated our water supplies because factories directly dumped untreated waste into rivers and streams, resulting in widespread water pollution.

While machines boosted productivity, these advances came with substantial ecological and societal costs. They have contributed significantly to countless diseases, respiratory, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, metabolic, cancer, etc. Contaminated water kills more people each year than war and all forms of violence combined.

Today, the pollution continues. Our source of water is not bottomless; only less than one percent of the earth’s freshwater is accessible to us. Four billion people around the globe, out of our current 8.2 billion population, experience severe water scarcity for at least one month each year, and 25 percent of them do not have access to clean drinking water.

We are blessed to live in a country, like the United States, the Philippines, and many others, to have almost unlimited clean water supply. But does this mean our drinking water is safe?

Las Vegas has one of the most contaminated waters in the United States. Its hard water contains lead, PFAS, arsenic, disinfectant byproducts, uranium, chromium, and two-non-toxic minerals causing hard water: calcium, and magnesium

I have tested Las Vegas tap water, under-sink filtered water, bottled water, distilled water, and Zero-filtered water, and found the following Total Dissolved Solids PPM counts: Tap water has 305 TDS level; Under-sink filtered water: 56; bottled water: 50; distilled water: 0; commercial Zero-filtered water: 0.

I also tested the water in our ancestral home in San Francisco del Monte, Quezon City, and discovered, to my surprise, that its city tap water (supplied by the city government’s water filtration plants) had a lower TDS level than the water in Munster, Indiana, and even a lot lower than the water in Las Vegas. The FDA considers bottled water with a TDS level of 50-150 PPM safe for drinking.

The other industry purifying method uses tap water that passes through multi-stage (at least 5), reversed osmosis filters plus UV-C light exposure, saving the beneficial minerals in it, and bottled for drinking.

The popular zero water filtration pitcher is a very convenient way to remove all total dissolved solid contaminants, practically like bottled distilled water.

Boiling tap water leaves sediments at the bottom of the pot and produces “almost distilled” water. This could be used in urgent temporary situations where no bottled water or filtered water is available. It may also be used safely for brewing beverages or for cooking.

The Zero Water filter does not get rid of bacteria, fungi, or parasites, which the city water filtration system removes anyway, so it is safe to use it for cooking, CPAP devices, cleaning wounds, iron, steamers, humidifiers, and other devices that require distilled water to prevent harmful calcium build-up. Bottled distilled water, manufactured through a condensation process is also free of bacteria, fungi, and parasites, besides removing those harmful chemicals.

Unhealthy to drink

However, distilled water and Zero-filtered water, are not healthy for daily drinking because they lack all the important minerals our body needs, like fluoride (for tooth health), especially for children. These beneficial minerals include calcium, magnesium, chloride, sodium, potassium, iron, zinc, and chloride. The harmful ones are pesticides, herbicides, chlorine, mercury, cadmium, benzene, asbestos, copper, particulates, copper, zinc, etc.

‘Absolute’ly untrue

While distilled water is ubiquitous in the Philippines, super cheap, and available even in tiny street stores in the most remote rural areas of the country, in the western world it is sold only in drug stores and big grocery stores. The brands Absolute (Asia Brewery) and Wilkins (Coca-Cola Beverages Philippines) are two popular brands of distilled water in the Philippines. Kroger’s Purified water manufactured in Ohio also tested 0 for TDS level, but was not labeled as distilled water.

Unfortunately, distilled water is advertised in many cities around the world as “cleanest or purest drinking water,” which is not true, a deceptive claim, and a public disservice, bordering on criminal false advertising practice endangering people’s health. The same thing is true with potentially harmful alkaline water; a healthy person does not need alkaline water!

***

Philip S. Chua, MD, FACS, FPCS, a cardiac surgeon emeritus based in Northwest Indiana and Las Vegas, Nevada, is an international medical lecturer/author, health advocate, medical missionary, newspaper columnist, and chairman of the Filipino United Network-USA, a 501(c)3 humanitarian foundation in the United States. He is a decorated recipient of the Indiana Sagamore of the Wabash Award in 1995 presented by then Indiana Governor, US senator, and later presidential candidate Evan Bayh.  Other Sagamore past awardees include President Harry S. Truman, President George HW Bush, pugilist Muhammad Ali, TV talk show host David Letterman, Astronaut Gus Grissom, educators, scientists, etc. (Wikipedia). Websites: FUN8888.com, Today.SPSAtoday.com, and philipSchua.com Email: scalpelpen@gmail.com

Bad side effects

Drinking distilled water for daily beverages is unhealthy. Imbibing distilled water occasionally when regular bottled or clean tap water is not available is fine but not for regular daily consumption. Distilled water is more for machines.

Bad side effects of drinking distilled water daily among adults, and more especially for children and those who are not eating a balanced diet are: the bland and flat taste causes people to drink less; chronic drinkers of distilled water have a high risk of having electrolyte deficiency, imbalance, causing fatigue, muscle cramps, dizziness, organ failure, etc.; when distilled water is in contact with the air, it can absorb carbon monoxide, a poison, similar to the colorless, odorless gas from car exhaust that kills people in a closed garage.

A warning: Distilled water is not safe to drink every day.  Bottled water from reputable water bottling companies is our best option today, anywhere in the world.

Let’s take advantage of modern scientific data to help us live a healthier lifestyle, for maximal longevity possible.

The main objective of this column is to educate and inspire people to live a healthier lifestyle, prevent illnesses and disabilities and achieve a happier and more productive life. Any diagnosis, recommendation, or treatment in our article is general medical information and not intended to be applicable to or appropriate for anyone. This column is not a substitute for your physician, who knows your condition well and who is your best ally when it comes to your health.