Many of us have been led to believe that bottled water is safer to drink than tap water. Yet municipal tap water is much more rigorously tested and monitored than bottled water. Fact is bottled water is no safer, or better, or cleaner, or healthier than tap water. Here are some reasons to break that bottled water habit.

1. Empty bottled water plastic bottles pile up in landfills emitting chemicals and choking the environment. Two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes - scroll down to the third set.

2. Bottled water may be bad for your teeth.

3. Bottled water is expensive - “two or three or four times the cost of gasoline”!

4. Bottled water is not safer than tap water as the safety levels of bottled water are scrutinized at lower standards than those of municipal drinking water.

5. The making of bottled water i.e. producing the plastic bottles uses non-renewable energy and emits toxic chemicals.

6. Transportation of bottled water from overseas e.g Fiji water emits carbon dioxide into the air and hence diminishes any efforts for global climate change.

7. Often times bottled water is made from your local municipal source. Fact is 40% of bottled water is bottled tap water!

Rising concerns over the environmental impact of drinking bottled water has led to more people making the shift to tap water. We made that switch 4yrs ago in my household with added help from a PUR water filter. Tap water unfortunately has its own contamination problems. One of them being a recent report that a vast array of pharmaceuticals were found in the drinking water supplies of 41 million americans.

According to Forbes.com, this contamination varies from city to city depending on where you live. Treatment plants do not necessarily remove all of the pollutants from our drinking water sources which means we consume what is left over. What to do? Invest in a carbon water filter to remove contaminants and impurities from your tap water and more importantly do not go back to drinking bottled water!

Here is the full list of the Best Cities for clean drinking water

Spring is officially here and with it allergy season. Watery eyes, runny noses, coughs and sneezes are part of the norm for this time of the year. This is a direct result of our bodies producing excess histamine to fight off the allergens. Available drugs and sprays unfortunately produce mixed results and are often plagued with side effects.

Here are 5 natural remedies to prevent allergies before their on-set and drug-free ways to treat them when they do prevail.

1. Drink lots of water to supress histamine production in your body.

2. Reduce consumption of foods that induce production of histamine in your body. These inlcude but not limited to eggs, milk, cheese, alcohol etc

3. Sweeten your morning tea with some honey**. Honey helps build antibodies to the allergens.

4. Add Garlic to your meals as it is known to slow inflamation down.

5. Use a neti pot or nosebidet to douche your nasal passages to drain sinuses and heal inflamation

**honey may trigger allergic episode for some people when using local honey because it contains the same allergens you have already been exposed to.