Chloramine in the Water Supply Worsens IBS

IBS Significantly Improved by Removing Chloramine from Tap Drinking Water
 
I strongly urge those with IBS to try this simple approach to dramatically improving their IBS symptoms.
 
Countries such as the US, UK, Canada and Australia use chlorine as the main disinfectant in drinking water supplies (as opposed to continental Europe, which uses ozone as the tap water disinfectant).
 
However, many water suppliers in the US, UK, Canada and Australia also add a secondary disinfectant called chloramine to the drinking water supply, in addition to chlorine.   
 
I found that once I removed this chloramine from my tap water, my IBS-D symptoms improved dramatically. 
 
Chlorine is easily removed from water just by boiling, which means that there will be no chlorine in hot drinks like tea or coffee, nor in cooked food. However, unlike chlorine, chloramine is not removed by boiling water, and carbon filters are not good at removing chloramine either.
 
 
Fortunately, there is a very simple method to remove chloramine from drinking water: just by adding vitamin C. Reference: here.
 
You only need a very small amount of vitamin C to completely neutralize the chloramine in your drinking water: around 10 mg (0.01 grams) of vitamin C will neutralize all the chloramine in one liter of water.
 
What I do is use these fizzy 1 gram vitamin C tablets that you can buy in most supermarkets and pharmacies, and break one tablet into tiny dozens and dozens of little pieces. I then just place one tiny piece of the vitamin C tablet into the water each time I boil a kettle, and into the tap water each time I use some for cooking or drinking.
 
That way, all the chloramine in the water will be completely neutralized before you drink it.
 
Note that not all water companies put chloramine into the tap water they supply: check on the web site of your water supplier to see whether your supplier uses chloramine or not. In the US, chloramine is added to about 20% of the drinking water supply. For the UK, here is a list of water suppliers that use chloramine. 
 
Taking the chloramine out of my tap water greatly improved by IBS-D.
 
Hopefully removing chloramine from drinking water will benefit others with IBS too.

Post Edited (hippocrates) : 12/26/2012 8:52:45 PM (GMT-7)

Hi Subzeromambo

This is certainly my personal anecdotal account — but by removing chloramines from my drinking and cooking water, my IBS symptoms rapidly and significantly improved, in a matter of a day or two.

Since it is very easy to remove chloramines from water just by adding vitamin C as described in my original post, I am hoping that others with IBS will try this very simple approach, and report back on their IBS symptom improvements/changes.

That way, I will be able to gather some more information on a possible connection between chloramines and IBS.

I have also been looking for published studies that connect chloramines to IBS (or to causing some damage in the body that might exacerbate IBS), but have not yet found any.

This page of information on the damage caused by chloramines is interesting. It seems that some by-products of chloramines can cause nervous system damage, and perhaps this nerve damage may conceivably worse IBS.

Post Edited (hippocrates) : 12/30/2012 3:12:06 AM (GMT-7)