See: pseudoscience
See: snake oil
Ionized, or "
alkaline" water, often sold under brand names like
Evamor, is commonly found in your local
health food store, next to a million perfectly legitimate health products. It is marketed as an
antioxidant, because alkalines, having an excess of
OH- ions bind with
free radicals, or loose
oxygen atoms to produce harmless,
hydrogen-ion-free water.
That's right: eating
acidic foods is highly
dangerous, putting you at risk for
cancer and, according to some proponents of the substance, virtually every
illness known to man, including various
bacterial infections (because bacteria thrive in acidic
environments, like
unhealthy blood). Drinking electrolytically alkaline water puts the OH- ions back in your blood, creating a
buffer against dangerous blood
acids!
So put those
bananas away! Hey! Get away from that
grapefruit! Oranges cause cancer! So you're thinking, now... wait: isn't vitamin C, that's ascorbic acid, one of the most potent antioxidants on the market? The seed of doubt is planted in your mind, but--oh, look, over there!
"How do I know that Ionized Alkaline Water is Good For You? I Am A Diagnosed Terminal Cancer Survivor . . . Ionized Alkaline Water Played A Vital Role In My Recovery!!!!!"
-www.betterwayhealth.com
Cancer survivors all over have grown healthy by drinking ionized water! You wouldn't argue with a
CANCER SURVIVOR on an issue relating to
cancer... would you? I mean, sure, he followed his sentence with five
exclamation points, and
capitalized every word he wrote, but he's a
cancer survivor. He's
untouchable, man! If this guy says cancer is caused by
deadly moon rays, he's probably right.
This quote is, of course, part of an
advertisement for a line of
water ionizers that runs between $650 and $800 apiece (on sale, apparently--it ends tomorrow! hurry up, kids!). But what is a water ionizer?
Answers in this department are a little sketchy. First of all, they're
Japanese. That's good, right? Apparently water is forced through a chamber containing "five
platinum-coated
titanium plates", which electrify your water! That's right, they...
electrify your water. This is apparently supposed to make your water alkaline in pH. Let's go over this, shall we?
- You put water into the ionizer.
- You press the buttons, and "select the pH level of your choice".
- Through the magic of electricity, the water comes out alkaline!
Needless to say, electrolysis doesn't work this way any more than your
immune system becomes invincible when you put
magnets all over your body. First of all, electrolysis does
nothing to pure water. From a
chemist's perspective, ionized water is a nonsense term. Impure water, which is what normal people drink and which is not necessarily unhealthy, can be electrolyzed to a
very slight degree, one essentially imperceptible on the pH scale because of the very mild concentrations of mineral in
palatable water.
Let's put it this way: if your water has enough
mineral content to make the
pH change viewed through
electrolysis notable, it is almost certainly impure enough to be
poisonous.
In addition, electrolyzing water won't make it alkaline. It won't really do anything, in fact. Water "de-ionizers" on the market actually express similar effects through a similar process, though the only way to de-ionize water that I could imagine would be to add an oxygen molecule (through electrolysis, that is), turning it into
H202, a completely different and completely poisonous substance, when ingested.
Ionized water is also sometimes called "
micro-water", actually. This is because the process is supposed to make water molecules looser, or smaller, or whatever you can derive from the pseudoscientific
babble found on most proponent websites. The closest semi-logical statement that I can infer is that that these machines are supposed to reduce the
surface tension of your tap water by removing all those pesky hydrogen ions.
Virtually every aspect of water ionization reflects a serious inadequacy of knowledge on the part of its creators concerning the
charge duality of water, and screams "
hoax" at every turn.
Still more
mysteriously, it's not noted anywhere that any basic water you ingest is going to be neutralized immediately by the highly acidic conditions of a healthy human's stomach. If you want to make your stomach more alkaline, go right ahead! Take a
Tums, dummy. Hell, take five. You'll have the most alkaline stomach on the block. Of course, you won't be able to digest
protein...
Apparently, there are also companies that tout machines that will acidify your water. Gee, isn't that... useful? It is, however, supposed to resolve Hong Kong Foot. Whatever that is. (edit: Hong Kong Foot is the translation of the chinese phrase words for "athlete's foot", as I'm informed.)
Also, water can be purified through a process called deionization, which is totally different... also known as reverse osmosis, commonly used by large-scale water filtration plants. Thanks, yclept--knew I forgot to say something. Speaking of which, I should add that these ionizers aren't tooootally useless--some of them actually work like a $700 buzzing Brita filter, too. Nifty, huh?
Finally, whoever softlinked this to Your words are delicious and enticing, and I would save them all like love letters can join my fanclub for a nominal fee.