The culprit
UPDATE: I’ve totally given up on Brita. I had more “gastrointestinal problems” after writing the blog post. We’re now just buying huge jugs of water from the grocery store.
If you use a Brita water filter you need to be very careful with it. I pretty much lost a week of my life recently because there was stuff growing in it and I didn’t realize it.
I drink a lot of iced tea – probably a half gallon a day. Back in the day I was drinking Coke and Dan wanted to get me off that onto something that was more healthy, so we bought some tea bags and sugar and started making our own tea. Thing was the water in our building isn’t all that clean, so we bought the Brita filter/jug you see to the right.
Because it’s easier to make the tea and dissolve the sugar when the water is warm, we just kept the Brita jug on the counter. Sometimes I’d put it in the sun if I was about to make a batch of tea. BAD idea… I didn’t think about the fact that sun and warmth would let things grow.
About a week and a half ago I started getting sick. Stomach felt really bad, I was lethargic and there were bouts of diarrhea. I’m a bit prone to gastrointestinal stuff, so I just put up with it and thought it would go away in a day or two. Well, it didn’t go away. And when the diarrhea was worst I didn’t want to get dehydrated, so I’d drink more iced tea. What I didn’t know was that was making things worse.
Finally after 5 or 6 days I figured it out. I replaced the filter, cleaned the pitcher with hot water, and within 24 hours I was back to normal. Lesson learned.
I’m still using the Brita pitcher, but now it’s in the fridge. If you have a Britta or go to someone’s home who has one – make sure it’s kept in the refrigerator… Just changing the filters when they tell you to isn’t enough.
