Are you spending cash on anti-oxidant supplements like selenium? Alkaline water is rich in anti-oxidants!
In fact, its “reduction potential” — the way it scavenges free radicals — is the best reason to drink alkaline water, writes Dr. Hidemitsu Hayashi, M.D., head (or former head?) of the Water Institute of Japan. Dr. Hayashi reports that it’s more critical than buffering the acids.
Test the ORP of Your Water
The scientific fact is, you can measure the ORP (oxygen reduction potential) of alkaline water with a simple ORP meter.
The ORP indicates how good your water is at quenching free radicals. You want a negative ORP reading of -300 to -800.
If you invest in a water alkalizer, then definitely buy an ORP meter at the same time. It’s the only way to be sure you’re drinking alkaline water.
I no longer recommend an expensive electric Ionizer. They’re too environmentally unfriendly. Check out cheaper options such as the Ionpod at amazon.
Drink Your Anti-Oxidants
Alkaline water — with its billions of hydroxyl ions (OH–) — has surplus electrons that will calm free radicals before they tear into your cells. The free radical is missing electrons. Alkaline water gives it electrons, it’s stable and happy.
Chemically this is labeled negative ORP. Regular tap and bottled water have a positive ORP — molecules that oxidize your tissues and and accelerate aging. Only alkaline water has a negative ORP — the anti-oxidant molecules we need.
A glass of fresh orange juice has a negative ORP of -250, that’s billions of anti-oxidants. A glass of alkaline water will give you this same ORP, and more. It’s so easy to carry a water bottle to work!
Alkaline water will halt the chain reaction of free radicals. For instance, say you eat chips, the fried oil molecule is short one electron so it grabs an electron from a lipid in your cell membrane. The “oxidized” lipid then steals an electron from the next lipid in the membrane, leaving it unpaired and desperate. And so the stealing is repeated down the line, in a chain reaction.
When free radicals do this — grab electrons from your body molecules — the molecules are oxidized and left with an “electron hole.” Alkaline water comes along with its spare electrons and donates electrons, bringing your tissues back into balance, e.g. restoring integrity to your cell membranes.
Holes in your cell membranes allow unwanted elements in, like leaving your car door unlocked in a high-crime area. Extra anti-oxidants are essential to staying healthy.
Most raw fooders turn away from supplements because they create excesses and deficiencies in our metabolic pathways. With one glass of alkaline water, you get billions of anti-oxidants with none of the imbalance of supplements.
Alkaline Minerals Zap Free Radicals
You’ve heard that free radicals damage cell structures and cell processes. They are the first cause of all disease and early aging because we are the totality of our cells.
You know that free radicals are out to grab electrons, they’re electrophilic (electron-lovers). And the phospholipids in our cell membranes are the easy prey of free radicals. These lipids are unsaturated fats who beg to give their electrons away. In fact, they’re so attractive to oxygen, that it’s the cell’s main way of keeping infectious organisms out, like bacteria, fungi, viruses.
With oxygen stuck to its membrane, the cell is safe. I’m an oxygen advocate. You can’t OD (overdose) on oxygen and green juices. The more you get, the healthier you are. Oxygen = Energy.
The problem comes with junk foods and saturated fats — all fish, bird and animal fats are saturated. These carcinogens are all free radicals. They punch holes in our cell membranes and whoops, we have a damaged cell, disease and early death.
What quenches a free radical? What stops it in its tracks? An atom that has electrons to give, that will satisfy the radical’s electrophilia.
Who decides whether an atom will steal electrons from other atoms, OR give its electrons away, OR like a good child will share its electrons?
It’s in the chemistry of the atom.
Electron Takers & Electron Donors
Picture an atom with its electrons orbiting round the nucleus, each in their own orbit, like planets orbiting the sun.
Now it’s the electrons in the outer orbit, the shell furthest away from the sun, that count in chemical reactions.
If an atom’s outer shell has more than half — but not all — the electrons it needs, then it’s a free radical. It will steal electrons from other atoms. Also called an oxidizer, oxidizing agent, electron acceptor, or Lewis acid.
Oxygen has 6 electrons in its outer shell, it needs 8, therefore it has more than half, and it’s out on the prowl, looking for 2 electrons to bring its outer fill to 8. It’s a virulent oxidizer!
If an atom’s outer shell has less than half the electrons it needs, then it’s a free radical quencher or scavenger. It will give electrons to other atoms. Also called a reductant, reducing agent, electron donor, or Lewis base. All alkaline minerals are reductants. They walk around freely handing out their outermost electrons. So they can enter into the chemistry of life.
For instance, calcium and magnesium have only 2 electrons in their outer shell, while sodium and potassium have one each. It’s far easier to give up their one or two electrons than prowl around for a whole bunch. Nature takes the path of least resistance, like water.
Do you see how alkaline water protects you? All free radicals, all acids, all carcinogens, are electron-loving, eager to gain electrons. Once in your blood, they strongly react with electron donors such as your cell membranes.
These villains stick to your cell membranes and smother the poor cell. They barricade the city-cell — no food can come in, no waste can go out. They also burn holes in cell and nuclear membranes and attack your DNA, causing mutations there.
Plus they neatly fit into protein receptors in your cell membranes, receptors that need to receive signals from your brain and endocrine glands (hormones) to tell your cell what to do. We all know pesticides are estrogen-mimickers.
With no signals, an isolated cell does not know what to do, and begins to multiply itself out of control. What is this? Cells dividing over and over into a big lump? It’s a tumor, benign or malignant.
Personally, I can’t imagine how the human race survived the last 70 years of trigger-happy humans shooting millions of synthetic chemicals into our world and into our body-minds.
But I know what will help us survive the next 60 years. Organic plant-strong high-raw foods, and union with our right brain, our breath… ????
Did you read My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor? Such an inspiring book. It’s all inside us… Infinity…
Alkaline Water is Light
Alkaline water is “light” water you can drink all day. It can go where ordinary water cannot. Your skin and hair grow noticeably softer. It’s easy for your cells to absorb because:
- it comes in micro-clusters, and
- it has a low molecular weight.
Drink Easy-to-Absorb Micro-Clustered Water
| Anti-oxidant | Molecular Weight |
|---|---|
| Alkaline Water | 18 |
| Beta-carotene | 150 |
| Vitamin E | 153 |
| Vitamin C | 176 |
In and around cells, alkaline water gives its spare electrons to free radicals and quenches them before they can damage the molecules of healthy cells. Your cells are protected and allowed to grow, function, and regenerate without interference from rogue, oddball radicals that steal their electrons.
Alkaline water may be the Fountain of Youth, along with raw foods. Alkaline water is energizing. A glass of alkaline water first thing in the morning helps you to wake up!
Drink at least half your weight in ounces daily. So if you’re 120 lbs, drink 60 ounces or 6 big cups a day. If you’re very toxic, begin at slightly alkaline, gradually increasing to a higher pH level.
Drink Your Oxygen
Destruction of the rain forests and modern-day pollution are lowering atmospheric oxygen to scary levels. Currently our atmosphere has about 20% oxygen depending on where you live. In some cities, it’s as low as 9-11%. When it falls to 7% we die. See Flood Your Body With Oxygen by Ed McCabe. A hundred million years ago when dinosaurs roamed, our atmosphere had 38-50% oxygen.
We desperately need to flood our body with oxygen! Green juices and alkaline water is the best way.
Alkaline water has extra oxygen — one oxygen atom for every one hydrogen (OH) whereas other water has two hydrogen atoms (H2O), the more hydrogen, the more acid.
A water Ionizer does not grab oxygen molecules from the air. Instead, when an alkaline mineral comes across the membrane into the alkaline chamber, it kicks out one hydrogen atom from a water molecule, and links itself to the remaining hydroxyl ion (OH–). [the membrane separates the alkaline and acid chambers in the Ionizer]
The left-over hydrogen ion (H+) receives an electron from a negative electrode, and becomes a hydrogen molecule (H2) that bubbles out of the water. You see these tiny hydrogen bubbles as you fill up your glass at the Ionizer.
In the acid chamber the reverse happens. The oxygen is kicked out as O2 gas, and the remaining acid water is oxygen deficient.
There’s two kinds of oxygen, the highly volatile O2 and the stable OH–, stable because it’s mated with an alkaline mineral. Our body needs both kinds of oxygen. The volatile one we use for burning food — oxidizing it in the Krebs energy cycle, see How We Oxidize Food.
The stable OH– oxygen in alkaline water neutralizes free radicals, kills pathogenic microbes inside us (eases the work of our immune system) and acts as a back-up for the energy cycle when we don’t breathe in enough fresh oxygen.
If you work in an oxygen-deficient building, it’s a good idea to carry alkaline water to work with you, or get a low-cost portable alkalizer. One day, will health insurance companies pay for this? I believe so. I have faith in a peaceful future.
Drink Squeaky Clean Water
The super-efficient water filter removes 99.5% chlorine, 93% lead and other heavy metals, excludes particles down to .01 microns (smaller than any bacteria or parasites) and lasts for 2,000 gallons. See details in Water Filter Specs.
More than 70% of our body weight is water. That’s about 10 gallons of water for a 120 lb person. We’re a bundle of water wrapped in skin. Blood is 90% water.
Are you making sure that the water inside you is pure and more alkaline? Blood pH needs to be 7.35 to 7.45.
Cook & Soak with Alkaline Water
Use only alkaline water in your coffee and tea because coffee acids rob your bones of calcium. Way back in the early 1990’s, it was reported:
- Heavy caffeine use linked to increased hip fractures — Am Jnl of Epid, 1990 Oct, 132(4):675-84, and
- Caffeine causes loss of calcium from bone — Calcified Tissue International, 1992 Dec, 51(6):424-8.
Enjoy extra ionized calcium in your alkaline water (ionized is easily absorbed). Read about the calcium additive port in How an Ionizer Works.
Vegetables simmered in alkaline water retain a natural texture and color, while rice and oats are fluffier when boiled in it — which I sincerely hope you’re not doing, white rice has no place in a healthy diet!
Rawfooders, always soak your nuts, seeds, grains, pulses and dried fruits in alkaline water. It’ll leech fewer minerals out of your food, because it’s not “empty” water like distilled. It’s already full of minerals!
Ionizers are Medically Approved in Japan — Alkaline Water works!
Discover More
- Reports from Medical Doctors — on the clinically proven effects of alkaline water.
- Water Links — see all info on Best Water to Drink.
- Site Map — see the whole feast 🙂