It never ceases to amaze me how angry people get when you take a shot at their favorite placebo. When I talked about water ionizers in my last blog, I clearly didn’t make many friends. Look folks, don’t shoot the messenger. I didn’t write the science; I just read it and passed it on. I’m very sorry if you bought one of these water ionizers. They don’t work, they don’t help, and the basic premise behind them is nonsense. You should indeed feel angry if you purchased one, not at me, but at the science-challenged nincompoop who sold it to you.

Believe me, I sympathize. The science here gets murky and it’s easy for perfectly intelligent people to be taken in by this sort of thing. Especially when any online search for water ionizers turns up so very many sites shouting how effective it is and brimming with “testimonials” from happy customers. That’s why I’m going to dedicate this blog to examining some of these claims under the light of some basic science, starting with those pesky ionizers.

The first, and probably biggest, problem with water ionizers is simply that water doesn’t ionize. Last time I told you an ion is just an atom or molecule that has picked up an electric charge. Essentially, if you add or remove an electron, leaving a system with more or fewer electrons than protons, we call the resulting atom or molecule an ion.

Water is a fairly unique substance and is what we call a polar molecule, which is just a fancy way of saying it already has a positive charge on one side and a negative charge on the other. That’s why it makes such a versatile solvent. But when you try to add or remove an electron from a molecule of water, the whole thing tends to fall apart, leaving you with Hydrogen and Oxygen gas. If you manage to make ions, they’ll be ionized Hydrogen or ionized Oxygen. In either case you no longer have water but its base elements. I rather thought the point of these things was to purify the water, not destroy it. Moreover, if liberating Hydrogen and Oxygen from water is the point, you can accomplish it with a 12-volt battery and some wire.When people talk about ionizing water, what they usually mean is ionizing the salts and impurities in the water. Personally I’m not willing to pay $12.00 for the privilege of giving the dirt in my water an electric charge, let alone $1,200.

The next problem the proponents of ionizers fail to mention is that ions are, by their very nature, unstable. Ions might have a decent shelf life in a vacuum, but here on planet Earth they will always find a way to pick up or drop off the electrons needed to return to a state of electric neutrality. So after you’ve bought your ionizer and applied a static charge to the salt or calcium deposits in your water, chances are excellent they are no longer ionized by the time you get around to drinking it.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that they do somehow retain their electric charge. What exactly is the reasoning that water with electrically charged salt dissolved in it is somehow healthy? Water with electrical potential will not somehow magically transfer that energetic property to you. That makes as much sense as saying scuffing your feet in shag carpet is good for your health, so long as you avoid doorknobs. Electricity will not kill bacteria or viruses, it won’t remove cancer causing disinfection byproducts, and it does nothing for the taste of chlorine or fluoride.

People want easy answers, some magic remedy that will make them healthy. The hard truth is if you want to get healthy, the best first step you can take is to simply stop hurting yourself. Put down the burger, avoid the candy, and whenever possible drink clean, uncontaminated water. To that end, filters are good, reverse osmosis is better, distillation is best. For myself, I tend to go for the best, and try to offer the best to my friends and patients. That’s why I own a distiller, and why I sell them for as reasonable an amount as I can.Stick around. Next time I’m planning to write a bit on the alkaline water craze. It’s a doozy too!

Waterwise