Better Water For Less

Anyone that pursues a business or a hobby with passion is bound to learn as they go. My education in the area of water ionization has been both interesting and frustrating. The frustration came from my inability to find anything “real” about how and why electric water ionizers worked.

I knew water ionizers worked from personal experience and from talking to hundreds of others who had received the health benefits themselves. However, not knowing why they worked bugged me. The lack of a viable explanation from any of the water ionizer companies seemed ridiculous. No wonder the public has remained skeptical, especially in light of the prices that they charge for what appears to be a simple product.

How Water Ionization Works

Contrary to what you will read on the internet from the sellers of electric water ionizer, the secret to the benefits from the machines is not pH or ORP. They are just numbers that can be easily measured and as such became the focus of the industry. The real answer to where the source of the health benefits comes from is found in the creation of free hydrogen. Free hydrogen eliminates free oxygen (aka free radicals) and the free hydrogen helps in the formation of energy in the mitochondria of cells.

How Do You Create Free Hydrogen In Water?

Free hydrogen is created when an alkali base metal such as Sodium, Magnesium, Calcium, or Potassium interacts with water. The oxygen in the water molecule has a stronger attraction to the alkali metal and forms a bond with the metal. In the process, the Hydrogen bond between the Oxygen and Hydrogen is broken thereby creating free hydrogen.

How do electric water ionizers create free hydrogen?

Electric water ionizers run an electrical current through platinum covered titanium plates contained in an ionization chamber. The plates have a cathode (negatively charged node) and an anode (positively charged node). When water is run across the plates in the chamber, the minerals in the source water are attracted to either the cathode or anode depending upon the electrical orientation of the minerals. For example, the aforementioned alkali metals, which are known as cations because they have electrons to donate, are attracted to the negatively charged cathode nodule. The negatively charged anions such as chloride, fluoride, and sulphide are attracted to the positively charged anode.

The water that runs through the ionization chambers of electric water ionizers is separated at the cathode and anode. The water near the cathode has a high concentration of cations enters the drinking rod which makes the water alkaline. The positively charged anode attracts negatively charged anions (sulfates, chlorides) which get discharged through the line that goes down the drain.

It is the reaction of the water molecules to the minerals in the drinking water that cause the formation of hydrogen as described above. The alkali minerals are also very healthy for your body despite what the Reverse Osmosis industry has been telling the public for years.

How do Antioxidant Filters Create Free Hydrogen?

Unlike electric water ionizers that rely upon concentrating alkali minerals found in the source water, antioxidant filters simply put lots of alkali minerals such as magnesium in the filter. The water reacts as described above. The water produced by an antioxidant filter will typically have a much higher concentration of alkali minerals in the water than any electric water ionizer. It is important to remember that it is the mineral content of the water that determines the stable long term ionization.

Why Electric Water Ionizers Produce Hydrogen Bubbles and Anitoxidant Filters Don’t

When an electrical charge interacts with the water, there is a rapid and massive creation of free hydrogen. The free hydrogen atoms are essentially forced together in the process to form hydrogen gas. You will see the hydrogen bubbles form into what appears to be a cloud in your glass in the first few seconds after an electric water ionizer produces the water. As you continue to watch the bubbles, you will notice that they accumulate in the middle to upper part of the glass in 15 to 30 seconds and then rise to the surface and disappear. It is important to “Drink Your Bubbles” from an electric water ionizer before they dissipate. If you don’t drink your bubbles in the first minute or so, there will still be free hydrogen atoms in the water, but you will have lost a significant percentage of the hydrogen. What is left in the water after the hydrogen bubbles disappear is the free hydrogen atoms that are naturally created by the mineral content of the source water.

Why Antioxidant Filters Work Better Than Electric Water Ionizers

You have already learned that the amount of free hydrogen created in water depends upon the concentration of alkali minerals in the water.

Electric water ionizers put on a good show in the initial minute with the bubbles and the low ORP numbers. However, the bubbles dissipate and the ORP numbers quickly stabilize at whatever the mineral concentration in the water dictates unless you subject the water to unnatural conditions such as no movement, no light, and no access to air. Free hydrogen will continue to be produced as long as there are alkaline minerals in the water.

Unlike electric water ionizers, antioxidant filters are full of alkali minerals. As such, they keep on working like the Energizer Bunny over time.

While much has been written about the value of ORP, the readings that the measurement is not particularly useful. It is easy to create low ORP numbers for a short period of time by simply generating a higher concentration of hydroxide ions (OH-) than hydrogen ions (H+). The electric water ionizer companies have used this fact in promoting “more plates” and “more power” instead of explaining how and why the machines work. Either they are too lazy to do their homework, or more likely, they don’t want you to know how the machines work…..well now you do!

The electric water ionizer companies have realized in the past couple of years that they need to add alkali minerals in their filters in order to achieve advertised pH and ORP numbers over longer periods of time. Most of the companies add coral calcium in the form of ceramic balls to their filters, but unfortunately, they skimp on the quantity. If the electric companies added magnesium to their filters, they would achieve much better sustainable free hydrogen.

Other Considerations

Leading electric water ionizers cost 5 to 10 times as much as natural water ionizers.

Natural water ionizers provide superior health benefits to electric water ionizers unless you drink the water from an electric machine in the first minute.

Natural water ionizers remove more contaminants from the source water than most electric water ionizers.

The only significant advantage of electric water ionizers is that they produce acidic water. Acidic water can be used as an effective astringent for cleaning skin, or as an antiseptic in stronger concentrations. Natural water ionizers don’t provide this alternative because they don’t use a anode to attract anions during the process of electrolysis and then separate out the acidic water. While we hear all about the health benefits of the drinking water from electric water ionizers, they were originally created to produce acidic water. The health benefits of the alkaline water were later discovered by accident. If you want the useful benefits of acidic water, there are a number of effective “acidic water maker” products available that cost about $200.

This article may create a poop storm in the form of negative comments from electric water ionizer dealers. I would be happy to discuss their opinions and ideas, as long as they have done their homework. If they present the “same old same old” arguments that we have been hearing for years, which are not based upon the facts, I can’t be bothered. Those that are seekers of truth and who are really interested in helping others will figure it out.

11 Responses to Better Water For Less

  1. No ‘poop storm’ over here, Cap’n.

    In fact I am feeling so good, having just received another long term user’s email about her AlkaStream. She had an undersink electronic system and the AlkaStream (because she can! she said) and monitored performance of her AlkaStream and compared it to the known performance of her undersink.

    Results were great.. but what made me jump off my chair and whoop for joy was that she said she realised that she was choosing the AlkaStream water over the electronic unit’s familiar drink. She actually liked drinking it more!

    • Hi Ian:

      If I’m the Cap’n, you must be the admiral. Geez….can I still call you Ian?

      You and Kirk over at Revolutionizer must be loving the support I continue to throw towards the antioxidant filters. You guys deserve the attention because your machines really do work.

  2. Rob, here’s a video on water being sold in Australia. The maker simply added magnesium chlride to the water. It’s my understanding that the same effect comes from the AlkaStream, without the plastic trail of thousands of waterbottles.

    An electronic unit only has the minerals in the source water to work with so I’m doubtful that the same effect is possible from mineral-starved source waters and an electronic system.

    Here’s the video
    http://au.news.yahoo.com/today-tonight/health/article/-/10260408/wonder-water-test-results/#video

    • Hi Ian:

      Great video. I urge readers to check it out.

      I see that the company uses water and magnesium bicarbonate. It certainly looks like the same principle as your Alkastream in that you are using magnesium to form magnesium hydroxide. I’m not a chemist, so I will have to check it out. Either way, it appears the idea is to create free hydrogen in the water as the attraction of oxygen to magnesium is greater than the attraction to hydrogen.

  3. Hello. Something that you wrote above puzzles me. Excess free hydrogen (H+) in water would LOWER the pH of the solution, not raise it. The mineral hydroxide produced by the interaction of water and alkali minerals would, on the other hand, INCREASE the pH of the water (which is what you want), and would account for the alkalinity of the water.

    • Hi Danial:

      I understand what you are saying but free hydrogen is actually neutral as opposed to H+

      Many people refer to free hydrogen as H+ because a hydrogen atom will easily give up it’s electron so they think of it as H+

  4. Hi, Rob. Thanks for the reply. I just read your post on the RO ionizer and am excited to see your review of the product.

    As far as I know, neutral hydrogen must exist as H2(g) that is either in solution with the water (and eventually forms bubbles and escapes the solution) or as an ion (H+) as you pointed out. I believe the alkalinity of the solution comes from the presence of the the mineral hydroxides dissolved in the water. It might be worth double checking this point with a chemist as it is the foundation of the technology that you are promoting.

    Thanks again for this blog, I really appreciate all the work you’ve done to date.

    Best regards,

    Daniel

    • Hi Daniel:

      I have wrestled with this topic for a long time. For lack of a better explanation, I refer to Dr. Hayashi who has not only hypothesized about the existence of free hydrogen in naturally ionized watetr, but also says he can measure it.

      The alkalinity defitely comes from the presence of alkali metals interacting with the hydroxyl portion of a water molecule. The result of the interaction is the creation of a free hydrogen atom.

      I’m definitely a fan of natural water ionizers. My research and the fact that I have been drinking the water from a natural water ionizer for about 18 months give me the confidence to support the technology. As far as the chemistry goes, once again, I have to rely upon what I read. Imo, Dr. Hayashi is the leading researching in the world on water ionization, so I believe his literature.

      Ultimately, I don’t really care how it works anymore than I care about how my computer or my car works….as long as it works.

      What I have learned is that the non-electrics work as well or better than the electric machines at a fraction of the price.

  5. I don’t know. I got a non-electric to help with fibromyalgia. I know a woman who used to have fibro, along with her daughter. They used the Living Water electric ionizer. Her fibro was gone in three days. Her daughter’s took thirty. I’ve had a non-electric for over a month and a half now. Zip. NO pain change whatsoever. I even just recently got a new filter that adds more minerals for a higher PH (10.4 at the current time). So far, I think my pain is getting worse. Perhaps it has to do that to get better, but I’m not holding my breath. I wish I’d chosen the electric.

    • Hi Amy:

      Thanks for the feedback.

      When I was selling electric water ionizers a few years ago, I had a number of customers with Fibro that had great results (similar to what you mentioned) with electric water ionizers. I haven’t heard any feedback before your comment about Fibro sufferers who have used the natural water ionizers. I will definitely pass your comment on to anyone that contacts me about Fibro.

      If you email me directly, I will introduce you to a company that sells electric water ionizers to cancer patients. My intention would be to get the company to offer you the same deal. I would be very interested in finding out if an electric machine can provide better results for your Fibro and I think the company would be as well.

    • How much water do you drink each day? I know people who drink just a cup or two each day and think this will be sufficiant. Also diffrent bodies reacts very individual to healing. But it also would be intresting to see if you changed it up.. Cant you collect water from these people you know and try for a few days? But they maybe live far away.

Leave a Response to Daniel

Name

E-mail

Website

Comment