Snake Oil On Tap. The Ionized Water Scam.

by

Bob McCauley, CNC, MH

“Beware of false knowledge.  It is more dangerous than ignorance.”

~ George Bernard Shaw

My Video on the Quack Watchers.

I have been hearing for years what a scam Ionized Water is.  I have heard it called “snake oil on tap”, yet no one has ever called for them to be removed from the market.  Alkaline Water, Alkalized Water, Kangen Water, Miracle Water, Micro Water, Ion Water, Ionic Water, Electron Water, Electrolyzed Water: It’s all the same.  Water that has been electrolyzed is most commonly called Ionized Water.  And for some reason there is a great deal of opposition to it.  Recently Dr. J. Mercola denounced Ionized Water.  Dr. Andrew Weil has also found some excuse to dismiss ionized water.  In fact, he did it twice.  I am not a “believer” in Ionized Water anymore than I am a believer that the world is round and not flat.  To have a belief Ionized Water and its positive effects on the health of those who consume it is a fact and not a “belief”.  It is a fact what ionization does to the pH, ORP and structure of water it ionizes.  I don’t have faith that raw fruits and vegetables are healthy for us, I understand it as a fact.  The same is true for Ionized Water.  I wrote the book on it.

To be perfectly honest with you it boils my blood to hear http://watershed.net/Water-Ionizers/, the healthiest substance we can possible consume, described as snake oil and a scam.  The main reason is because this kind of thinking plants doubt into the minds of so many people that it leads them to the decision never to purchase a Water Ionizer, never to drink Ionized Water, and never to make a part of their daily lives.  To me, Ionized Water is the bread of life.  I thrive on it.  As you will see below, none of the detractors of Ionized Water have ever consumed it or bothered to measure it’s pH or ORP.  If they did, they would find Ionized Water to be the healthiest substance we can consume.

I am considered a “crank” by some, which is aptly defined by Mark Twain as “a person with a new idea until it succeeds.” Without fail, there are those who attempt to debunk great advances in every scientific field and Ionized Water is no exception.  Continental plate tectonics was ridiculed when it was proposed by Alfred Wegene in 1912.  Now it’s established fact.  The same will be with Ionized Water.  It too will one day become established fact taught in every school. Debunkers suggest that the ionization of water simply isn’t possible.  One debunker states that Ionized Water should be dismissed simply because it is too good to be true.  Others state that ionization is impossible to verify when in fact its properties are demonstrated using scientific measuring devices such as pH and ORP meters because the changes that ionization produce are radical, immediate and measurable.

Debunkers contend that most new health technologies developed outside of the traditional medical establishment are worthless and have no value beyond their hype.  They claim that nearly every unusual invention that doesn’t easily fit into the framework of conventional thinking turns out to be yet another urban myth that needs to be debunked.  And if something that they have denounced turns out to have merit, not another word is ever said about it and the debunker’s web page is quietly removed.

What health debunkers do best is plant doubt in our minds when we are trying to search out the truth about breakthrough health devices.  It’s easy to be a skeptic.  It’s difficult to blaze trails and fly in the face of every conventional thought and precept science has established.  It’s hard to believe in something that you discover and want to be true when someone with a scientific background who claims to be an expert is soundly denouncing it.  It is even harder to believe in things that others are ridiculing.  Debunkers have a chilling effect on open debate because of the way they often scoff at the technologies they are challenging.  Their attack on new health technologies that have not been conducted, sanitized and approved by the medical establishment often extends to the promoter of the new invention.  They become the focus of derision much the way Galileo was when he claimed the Sun was the center of the Solar System, not the Earth.  Debunkers ridicule those who have found a new path, uncovered a new truth and consequentially have surpassed an old belief system.  The water ionizer is a prime example of this kind of attack that stifles progress.

We tend to accept the denunciations of the debunkers because we want to believe that we can’t be so easily fooled.  We want to deem ourselves too savvy to be deceived by promises that sound too good to be true.   We enjoy hearing that ideas and inventions that may sound a little weird, or too good to be true, could not possibly be true.  Debunkers want us to believe that life is too harsh for good things to be true.  Life is too difficult for something like Ionized Water to be healthy for us and possess the miraculous health properties it is said to have.  And since someone with a scientific background has claimed it to be a hoax, it must be one.  Thus, we doubt and dismiss it, exactly what debunkers want us to do.

Debunkers tend to be heavy on opinion and light on the facts.  And they often present their opinion as fact.  They are sometimes chemists or chemistry professors who understand book chemistry, but don’t seem to comprehend the simple chemistry of Ionized Water, that of charging water by creating negative ions       (-OH) and positive ions (+H).  Nor do they understand how these ions are created by the simple process of electrolysis then separated through a membrane.  It is not difficult to understand Ionized Water, but it is difficult for some to accept that something so simple can have such a profoundly beneficial effect on everything it comes in contact with, especially our health.

I don’t expect that debunkers will ever disappear.  Ironically, debunkers’ websites are a good resource for groundbreaking technologies since they tend to dismiss anything that might possibly work.

The notion of having people around to challenge the traditional conventions and new inventions is a good one because there is plenty of fraud in the world.  Debunkers, on the other hand, are often something different than those who expose charlatans.  Debunkers stand in front of progress by denouncing and ridiculing any radical new concept.  However, armchair investigations and conclusions drawn from them will never replace field testing and something debunkers almost never do is conduct their own legitimate scientific investigations.

Debunkers often ply their trade in order to protect the status quo and the safety it provides to those who are afraid of the future and the change that it inevitably brings.  Debunkers sometimes serve no other purpose than to confuse us regarding complex issues, which is especially disappointing and destructive when it comes to natural health.

When a radical scientific concept is first introduced, there is commonly resistance to it by the prevailing scientific community.  New ideas are generally ridiculed and derided because they make people uncomfortable.  Scientists don’t want to accept new ones because their life’s work is based on the foundation of these old ideas.  They become particularly defensive and resistant when the new ideas destroy, override or completely supersede the old ones.  Often, the members of the established scientific community must die off so the next generation can be raised with the new concept and accept it from the beginning without any unnecessary bias and hand-wringing about what they once embraced as the truth that has now been superseded by the next wave of scientific discovery.  With the coming of the next generation, the new concept will no longer be regarded as radical, but rather another stepping stone to understanding the whole truth about health, nature and the very essence of human existence.   The acceptance of Ionized Water is yet another stepping stone that cannot be ignored because it is a critical component of health.

A considerable amount of research has been conducted on the effects of Ionized Water, most of it by Japanese researchers, which should be no surprise since they have embraced the concept of water ionization more than anyone else  (Appendix 5: Scientific Studies).  All of the research done on Ionized Water has arrived at the same conclusion: Ionized Water benefits everything it comes in contact with as long as it’s used correctly.[i] Physical scientific measurements, not conjecture, demonstrate the properties of Ionized Water. With this hard evidence in front of us, there is no other conclusion to reach than to claim that the properties of Ionized Water are best described as simply miraculous.

The strong detoxification effects of Ionized Water alone are enough to demonstrate that it is not like any other water you will ever consume.   This is due to the small water-molecule cluster size.  How water molecules group together is another thing that debunkers claim can not happen, thus it is so much more quackery.  This conclusion is reached despite the fact that a substantial amount of scientific research has been done on water molecule clusters.[ii] Water-molecule cluster size is measured by using a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance device.  We can also determine the change in the surface tension of Ionized Water, which is measured in dynes.[iii] A lower surface tension demonstrates the existence of smaller water molecule clusters.[iv]

Debunkers do not accept the basic concept of positive and negative ions and how they affect human health.  If they did, they would understand how important it is that we put alkaline substances in our body. Those who would attack Ionized Water and claim it is a hoax do not understand the value of consuming substances that are negatively charged and possess negative ions.  By their own admission, those who debunk Ionized Water have never consumed it, claiming there is no need to because the concept of ionizing water is impossible to begin with.

Debunkers are part of a faux-intelligentsia that does not believe in field testing before they arrive at conclusions.  The truth is that field testing often reveals many things that formulas and theories written on paper could never have predicted.  Examine debunkers and their methods closely for they are self-appointed watchdogs.  The methods of debunkers are never based on scientific evidence, but rather their own personal interpretation of the science they are debunking.  Debunkers, more often than not, need themselves to be debunked.  This has never been truer than when it comes to the debunkers of Ionized Water.  They don’t understand the simple truth that ionizing water takes it to a level of health many times above that of conventional water.

Here are my Seven Components of Great Health.

[i] For instance, never consume Acid Ionized Water because it is an oxidant that contains free radicals.

[ii] “Theoretical Study of the 6 (H₂O) Cluster,” C.J. Tsai and K.D. Jordan, Chemical Physics Letters 213, 181-88 (1993).

“Theoretical Study of Small Water Clusters: Low-Energy Fused Cubic Structures for (H₂O)n, n=8, 12, 16 and 20,” C.J. Tsai and K.D. Jordan, Journal of Physical Chemistry 97, 5208-10 (1993).

This research is supported and validated by the National Science Foundation.

[iii] A dyne is an extremely small measurement of force. 100,000 dynes= 0.224 lbs of force.

[iv] “Water molecular arrangement at air/water interfaces probed by atomic force microscopy”,  by O. Teschke and E. F. de Souza. Chem. Phys. Lett. 403 (2005) 95-101. (b)

“Water molecule clusters measured at water/air interfaces using atomic force microscopy”, O. Teschke and E. F. de Souza, Phys. Chem. 7 (2005) 3856-3865.