By Ian Blair Hamilton, IonLife, Australia
It's a rhetorical question. We all know the answer - but in my
experience the only time such a question seems to become important is
when people don't actually have five years of life left.
It's
often said that people spend more money on their health in the last two
years of their life than the total of the rest of their life. In my
experience this is so very true.
I don't want to waste time
telling you how wrong you've been to not learn about your own health.
God knows we are all so "busy" just surviving in this crazy world that
often health takes a backstage position until it fails. It's like my
son's car. He simply doesn't change the oil. He believes everything
lasts forever. At age 26, so did I.
Acid/ Alkaline Balance
I have been asked many times to write down my understanding of acid
and alkaline balance and its effects on health. This has usually been
asked after I have spent an hour explaining it to someone, for the
umpteenth time! So I'm going to give you my grand theory of everything
about acid/alkaline balance now. If you hear what I am saying, I feel
confident you will act upon this most fundamental of all health secrets.
Why
is acid/alkaline balance 'fundamental'? Because this is about what
happens at the microscopic level within our bodies; beyond the cellular
level - at the atomic level. It's all about electricity, and about what
happens to create energy in your body at the atomic level.
It's
about what doesn't happen, what should happen, and what will happen if
you follow what I am suggesting. Most people I talk to already know that
we are too acidic, because of acidic foods, drinks, pollution,
lifestyle, stress ... almost everything is acidifying including watching
the news at six.
We are told we need to alkalize, but what does
that really mean? Many of us think that acidic water is just water with
lots of acidic minerals in it, and alkaline water is water with lots of
alkaline minerals in it - calcium, magnesium, potassium etc. But you can
have acidic water with both acid and alkaline minerals in it; just more
acids than alkalis, so it's not quite as simple as you may have
thought.
Why am I explaining all this? Because if you can really
understand this, you can begin a new way of thinking about your own and
your loved one's health. The conventional approach to alkalizing
something like water has been to take tap water, with its mix of acids
and alkalis, then add more alkalis.
What's wrong with that? You're drinking a chemical cocktail - just to get your alkaline water.
Let's assume that we have water with no minerals at all; distilled for instance. Then we add some calcium. Now we have
alkaline water.
The pH of this water may have gone from a neutral pH 7 to an alkaline
pH 8; ten times more alkaline that pH 7. Many of us learned all this in
chemistry class - as long as you weren't looking out the window like me!
Do
you know what pH stands for? It comes from French, and means "per
Hydrogen", which is a measure of the amount of Hydrogen in a liquid.
Note; we're not talking about the amount of alkalizing or acidifying
chemicals in a liquid. No, we're talking about the amount of hydrogen
atoms. The chemicals or minerals just react with the water to create
hydrogen atoms.
Why is this so important? Hydrogen fuels us.
Hydrogen heals us. Hydrogen is our most essential nutrient. Hydrogen
provides our life force! And pH equals amount of hydrogen in liquid, so
it's a measure, if you like, of available life force in a liquid.
Reverse Aging
Sang Whang, that wonderful Korean American scientist and inventor,
explains it beautifully in his ground-breaking book Reverse Aging.
He
says water has memory (we've seen this in Dr Masaru Emoto's amazing
crystal images and in the early works of homoeopaths) but he goes
further. He says this memory is expressed as a measurable electrical
energy. This energy can be measured in volts (or millivolts, because
it's always very small) and can be lost over time. When water has this
electrical potential, it has the ability to cause the hydrogen atoms in
it to assume two different forms.
(Sang Whang's book describes
his discovery of ionized, alkaline water - and at age 78 is looking and
sounding as good as I would hope to look at that age!)
Stay with me, this is about as technical as I'm going to get!
When
water has electrical energy, it causes the hydrogen within it to assume
one of two forms. One is hydrogen that has a positive electrical
charge. This water is 'acidic'. The other is hydrogen that bonds with an
oxygen atom and becomes negatively charged. This is the building block
of life itself, and chemically, it is in the form of OH-.
One
oxygen atom, one hydrogen atom with this negative electrical charge.
That's ionized water. It now has energy it wants to donate to any
compatible atom in your body. And it is called 'alkaline'.
In
both forms, these ions or atoms, now have the capability to precipitate
chemical reactions of other minerals in water. What has that got to do
with your health and longevity?
Nothing happens in our bodies without a chemical reaction.
And
every chemical reaction only happens when the 'electricity' between
just two atoms is compatible. So we can say that we are a chemical
organism - by courtesy of electricity.
At the molecular level,
way beyond the cells, trillions of electrically uniting and repelling is
going on every millisecond of your life. It's a veritable orgy of
unity, and it's happening right now in your body, it always has, and it
continues until the balance of acid and alkaline reactions - the battle
between them - is over.
And what wins this battle of the ions?
Acid - every time. We all know that our body acids take over after we
die to break down the body. Let me tell you, they've been doing just
that for many, many years before you die. They're doing it now! Rusting,
decaying, breaking down, burning, oxidizing - all a natural part of our
balanced metabolism.
So.. life as we know it is an internal
'battle' between positively charged atoms (ions) and negatively charged
atoms (ions). We can equally - but less accurately - say life is a
battle between acid and alkaline, because that's exactly what pH is all
about.
pH = acid/alkaline balance = ionizing = O.R.P.
Coming
back to water - when there are more H+ ions in the water than OH- ions,
it will read as acidic. When there are more OH- than H+, it's alkaline water.
I'd like to pause here a minute and review what we have discussed. I'll put it in point form:
- Acid or alkaline liquid is measured as pH.
- pH is a measure of hydrogen ions (atoms).
- The more H+ in a liquid, the more 'acidic'.
- The more OH-, the more alkaline.
- Acid and alkaline can be thought of electrically as ions of
Hydrogen carrying either a positive or negative charge of electricity.
- All chemical processes in your body are begun and completed when
the correct electrical charge is found to match the electrical charge of
another atom. Nothing happens without electricity. Electricity and
chemistry, therefore, are the same in the body.
Are we OK with that? If not, please spare another five precious
minutes and read it all again, because what comes next rests upon your
understanding so far and is the key to the secret of health and anti
ageing that I'm communicating.
Okay. So water can have hydrogen
ions in it. Are you OK with me using the word 'ion'? An ion is an atom
with an electrical charge.
We can measure pH using litmus paper
or an electronic pH meter. It will give us a reading of from 0 to 14,
with pH 7 being neutral; neither acid nor alkaline. Or we can use an ORP
meter which tells us a lot more. It tells us the O = Oxidizing or R =
reducing or donating Potential of a liquid. That's what O.R.P. means.
Oxidizing
means the ability to oxidize. To burn up. To rust. To break down, and
the example I used earlier of a cadaver breaking down is an excellent
one. It is oxidizing.
Reducing is not as easy to understand.
Scientifically, it means giving away, or donating, so if a liquid has
'reducing potential' it has the ability to donate energy to the body.
Measuring Electrical Charge in Water
The ORP meter actually measures the electrical charge of the water
and if it reads above zero, it's oxidizing (acidic and an ionic
'robber'). If the voltage is negative it's reducing (alkaline and a
giver)!
Now we can begin to see that we aren't simply talking
about choosing alkaline foods and drinks. We are choosing ways to
'alkalize' and 'energize', to add to our negative ion energy store and
to neutralize the acidic, positively charged atoms in our bodies.
Now we are getting very, very fundamental, and we are using water to carry this energy into the body.
Why
would this be so wonderful for you? Take a quick look at blood. As we
know, blood has lots of water in it, and so it also has a ratio of the
two types of water, the acidic and the alkaline as we discussed. When
there are more alkaline ions, in the form of OH-, there is more oxygen
in the blood, available to us as instantaneous fuel for life. In fact,
if your blood is just a tiny bit more alkaline (from 7.3 to 7.45), it
will be holding around 2/3 more oxygen!
I remember my first few
weeks on ionized, alkaline water; I was like a kid of Christmas day; up
at 3 am looking for presents! I had just so much energy! Of course, once
my system realized it had this new supply of oxygen, it put it to good
use, modifying my early hour 'high' into sustained energy throughout the
day,
Is it possible that the lethargy you may be feeling could
simply be the inability to carry oxygen in your blood? Can you also
imagine the effect of proper oxygen levels in an athlete or
sportsperson's blood?
I have had quite a few people asking me why
they get such a boost from oxygen supplements (Hydrogen Peroxide). It
isn't hard to identify them as an acidic person, and without fail, those
people who tell me that they get a boost from the supplements are all,
in my estimation, trapped in an acid cycle lifestyle.
I get no
boost at all from any of the oxygen boost supplements, so I have
concluded that I have the oxygen already available in my alkaline
balanced bloodstream, and the people who get a boost are deficient, or
acidic. It just makes sense!
Isn't this fabulous information? I
am so grateful to have learned about acid/alkaline! We've all
concentrated on finding the latest supplement or miracle cure to
'improve our wellness when the real support work can be done using what
we are primarily and overwhelmingly composed of.
What's that? Water!
Alkaline, Ionized Water - the Essential Supplement
We
are about 70% water - yet we've basically ignored it! So now we are
going to look at how water can change us fundamentally. But to do this I
need to let you see what happens in an acidic body - bearing in mind
that unless you are the one in 100 who is naturally alkaline, this means
YOU!
Let's just imagine we've wolfed down a Super sized burger
along with a giant sugary soft drink. Even while it's still in your
mouth - your nerves are already sending signals to your belly. The
chemicals in your mouth have sampled the pH of the food, and (don't ask
me how), your nervous system has told your stomach how much of this
monster meal is 'coming on".
Most people still think the stomach is a bagful of acid into which the burger is going to just 'ker-splosh'. It's just not true.
Your
stomach is a vessel that is used to hold just the right amount of acid;
not too much, not too little - as calculated by the mouth (and I
suspect, the eyes - we've all heard the old saying, his eyes are bigger
than his stomach!)
You won't see a big bag of acid down there.
You'll see a precisely controlled mish mash, evolutionarily trained to
work with just the right amount to break down the food and pass it into
the lower gut for absorption. What you also won't see is the bicarbonate
of soda that is also exuded from the bloodstream, and now coats the
lining of the stomach to protect it from the acid. The acid, by the way,
is also delivered to the stomach from reserves in the blood, known as
the 'acid buffer'. If I have time, I'll talk about why older people are
short on acids, but let's keep on track.
Now you've swallowed
this humungous McMess, your body has had ample chance to understand that
it just swallowed something with the potential to kill. It knows that
if the pH of your blood falls to neutral 7 instead of its normal pH
7.35, you will go into a coma and die. Right now, courtesy of Fast Food
and Drink Corporations, you body is being flooded with acids and your
blood pH is beginning to fall. Your adrenals are screaming! They are
telling you things are dire; but guess what?
You've interpreted the message as the 'hit' you always get when you gulp a Coke. You've actually learned to love it!!
The
adrenals are our early warning system. They are telling all of our
systems to drop everything and source some alkaline minerals or negative
hydrogen to neutralize this acid flood. Our major organ systems are
hard wired to respond because this is a survival imperative. It's been
with you since Paleolithic times. You don't digest dinner when a
dinosaur is chasing you - you never have, because you've learned that
death is the result of both scenarios.
So what happens down
there? Well, the 'all systems alert' firstly calls on the pancreas,
because one of the pancreas's jobs is to secrete alkaline chyle to
neutralize the acids now mixed up with the food you have now tossed
around in your stomach.
The real problem is that you've been
making a habit of this. Not only have you eaten a Burger, Fries and Soft
Drinks for lunch, you've been downing beers, eating lots of sugar in
fruit because someone told you you should eat more fruit, and you've
been stressed out at work. You've been robbing the pancreas so long that
it's just exhausted. It has nothing more to give.
So the next
port of call is body tissues. "Alkalis? Alkalis? Anyone?" "Sorry. None
here." Next stop is bones and teeth, and yes, we actually erode our own
skeleton to feed our acid habit.
Acid Overload
In the meantime, because our blood pH
is plunging dangerously, the stomach has been told to stop what it's
doing and let the body use its limited available energy to work on
alkalizing this deadly acid flood, so what does it do? It dumps its half
processed McLoad into the lower intestine.
It's acidic, it's
lumpy, it's half digested, and the poor old pancreas, the gate keeper to
the lower intestine, can't do a thing to change it and fulfill its
purpose of protecting the lower gut. It's like a lorry load of toxic
waste sneaking past a helpless sentry.
About now it's oozing into
the intestine. And because you've been acidic for so long - (a
byproduct of acidosis is constipation as the water from the stools is
sucked out into the abdominal cavity to help move garbage) - your bowel
is what doctors call "lazy". It moves slowly because it's full of hard
feces. And being acidic, it burns the sensitive absorbent villi on the
intestinal walls as it goes, even to the point of bursting though the
intestine wall, flooding the abdominal cavity with filthy, rotting,
acidic McGarbage that only a few hours ago was sitting on a shelf in a
fast food outlet.!
So now we come to where all of the effects of excess acid conspire against us and our future health.
But
first, do you know what a free radical really is? It's a positively
charged oxygen atom or ion. And as we have learned it is oxidative. It
breaks things down. It burns, it rusts.
So as always, in a
perfect body, things work perfectly. In this perfect body it has a
perfect purpose as the perfect little janitor, moving about and reacting
with garbage, toxins or putrefying matter to oxidize it and render it
down to its basic components.
Note that I said that's what it
does in a perfect system, but an acidic system isn't a perfect system.
As we have already discussed, virtually every system in an acidic body
is under siege and working at far less potential than it was designed
for. So things go wrong. They either over or under-perform, or they
perform in a way they shouldn't. So it is with our free radical system.
In a state of siege, or acidity, it produces too many free radicals, (ah
well, better more than not enough, folks!) and being eager little fully
active critters, they go forth and oxidize - anything! Not just putrid
food or waste, but healthy cells! That's why our scientists say it is
ageing us. They are acidic - positively charged, acting as a result of
acid, in an acidic system.
How could they possible work in the way they were designed?
So
what do we do about all this mess? We see the glossy advertisement for
anti-oxidant capsules, tablets, exotic juices and the like and we spend
six, seven, ten dollars a day gobbling them down.
What is it they
have in those little capsules? They have chemical cages holding
something we've now heard about; the H- hydrogen ion, the great donator,
the giver, the lifesaver! Instead of drinking negative hydrogen loaded
alkaline water at about two cents a liter, people are told they have to
get their antioxidants in pills! What a setup! Companies make millions
from the theory!
But does water really work? I was attending an
exhibition of health systems three years ago. I'd been on our stand for
three days. Three days of non-stop talking, and when someone told me
there was a stand where you could have your antioxidant ability tested,
my first reaction was that I couldn't possibly have a good reading. I
was just too tired. However, it was free, and things were quiet, so I
went to see what it was all about. Sure enough, there was the man, the
computer and the test report coming out of a printer. He was trying to
sell people on buying his brand of antioxidant pills, but he was quite
happy to test me. "I've been talking non stop for three days." I said.
"Will it still work?"
"That makes no difference," he replied.
"The probe measures the carotene in the skin, and that's the best
indicator of antioxidant ability."
"So what is a good score?" I
asked. He explained that the top score was thirty on the computer's
scale, and that very few people got anywhere near that.
I held out my wrist. He applied the probe and a minute later pulled the results from the printer, looking puzzled.
Nature's Anti-oxidant
"Are you sure you're not on some form of antioxidant supplement?" he asked with a slightly suspicious frown.
"None at all." I answered. "Why?"
"Because
your score is the highest I've done all week. You are over the scale.
You scored forty! What is it you do to get a score like that?"
I looked him in the eye to watch his reaction.
"I drink alkaline water."
In
the years since that test, I get calls from clients from all over. It
seems that wherever he goes with his machine, he finds one of our
clients.
"Guess what? I had my antioxidant ability tested! And." they say.
"And your reading went off the scale, right?"
"How did you know?" they ask, astounded.
So
I DO know the alkaline water works as a powerful antioxidant. All
alkaline foods will work to some degree, but it just makes so much sense
that if you are 70% water, and if water is everywhere in your body,
then - to my mind - water in an antioxidant form is a far more efficient
and economical mode of countering free radicals than food or pills.
I'll
stop talking about myself at this point; there are literally hundreds
of stories that we have received over the last seven years about the
effects and power of drinking IonLife water. These are all real stories
from real people just like you; athletes, housewives, businesspeople,
doctors, naturopaths, families young and old. You'll find just a few of
their stories on our brochures and on our website, but more come in
every week, and they are always amazing.
IonLIfe Water Ionizers
Do you know the really cool
thing for me? Yes, it's wonderful water and it has great effect on me
every day of my life. But it's also clever water. It splits into acid
water that I use to cleanse and remove bacteria from my food, my
kitchen, my bathroom, my skin and hair. It also provides the alkaline
water I have already described.
But here's the great thing. It costs me two cents a liter, and I NEVER have to buy another throwaway plastic bottle of water.
A Quick Comparison of Water Systems
Now that you know
what happens with ionized, alkaline water you will have a very good
idea about other so-called ionized water. There are many, many water
filters that frankly, wish they were ionizers.
The difference is
in the basic principle we have discussed about negative hydrogen ions;
the superior antioxidant ability of the water.
The only reason the water alkalizer works so well is that it actually splits water into two optimized forms:
1. The alkaline water we've talked about - ionized, negatively charged, oxygenated, microclustered superhydrating.
2. The 'other' water that is simultaneously separated from the alkaline water; acid, astringent, antimicrobial.
This
water is a wonderful addition to your home because it can be used as a
non-chemical cleanser for food, for greens, for work surfaces, for
windows, for hair and skin. This is the same water used instead of harsh
chemicals at the massive Tokyo Fish Market to clean up daily. It is
also used in many Japanese and Korean hospital and clinics.
Only a
true electronically controlled water ionizer splits the water this way.
The alternatives you may read about all use a magnet in the water
stream. Although this does create a little less positive ionization in
the water, (not enough to become negative) it will quickly re-associate
back to normal H2O when it leaves the magnet's field. So there's no
lasting stream of OH- molecules as we discussed earlier and there's no
alternative acid stream output.
Over the years of working with
the water alkalizer, I've heard so many stories invented by other
manufacturers about why their system is better, but it all boils down to
one simple fact. They can't alkalize like the systems we've been
talking about. End of story.
Water Ionizer Questions
However ... there are some questions I hear again and again which I'll share now.
Q: Does it remove fluoride?
A: Fluoride is an acid molecule and the majority of it passes out in
the acid stream. I am in possession of a test on a similar system from
Sequoia Labs USA showing full removal. Fluoride is a sneaky molecule
that can join with other molecules in the water, and so we can't promise
total effectiveness.
Q: Can I over-alkalize?
A: The alkaline water isn't loaded with alkaline minerals that will
keep on alkalizing when in your body. It is loaded with sacrificial
hydrogen ions that unites with positively charged molecules in your
body. Then their work is finished.
I've never seen anyone too
alkaline. Alkalinity, unlike acidity, is managed by the body by
immediate elimination. As always consult a health practitioner if you
have health issues.
Q: How does the filter in it compare to normal filters?
A: Most water filters are 1 micron exclusion rating. The Jupiter
BioStone water filter cartridge in the alkalizer is 0.1 or .01 micron;
ten or one hundred times more effective.
Q: Isn't Reverse Osmosis the most effective water filter?
A: Yes. It is so effective that it takes all minerals and everything
out, making the water so 'empty' that it will begin uniting with CO2 in
the air and turning acid. RO systems are not popular today because they
waste approximately 9 liters per liter supplied.
Q: What about a distiller? That doesn't waste water.
A: True. A distiller doesn't waste water, but it is very power-hungry
and has the same problem of RO. It is also so 'clean' that it also ends
up acidic. If you look at our own history, you'll realize we have never
had access to pure water and therefore our bodies are not made to
process it. We need mineralized alkaline water because that's what we
are made of; saline, mineralized, alkaline water! Drinking pure water -
remembering the fact that the body is always balancing everything -
means it has to find minerals from it's own reserves to mineralize the
water you paid so much to process and drink!
Q: Lots of systems say they alkalize.
A: Many do, but they do just by adding alkaline minerals - usually
calcium - to the water as it is filtered. You still get all the acids in
the water.
Ian Blair Hamilton is a Managing Director of IonLife
in Australia, the world's largest international distributor of alkaline
water health systems.
He is also a researcher, journalist, author and alternative health lecturer.
http://www.ionizers.org/alkaline-water.html