Debunking a trend: Ionic Water

[CaptainChewbacca]

One of my friends swears up and down that specially filtered and treated 'ionic water' has greater health benefits than regular tap water. Now, I'm pretty sure that there is no truth to this, but I have no facts to back it up. Can anyone help me?

[Alferd Packer]

Yeah, demand that he prove it. He's the one making the claim, not you.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Yeah, demand that he prove it. He's the one making the claim, not you.

Its a she, and her 'proof' is "It made me feel better". I need info on anti-oxidant removal in the body and such.

[Napoleon the Clown]

"It made me feel better" isn't proof of anything. Tell her of placebos and ask for some actual proof. Sugar pills make people feel better so why can't water?

Though I will note that tap water often contains chemicals and microbes that could be filtered out. That's the only difference though. Water is water unless you add something to it. The only conceivable health benefits is that your kidneys won't need to flush as much out, and I find even that much dubious.

[Zixinus]

Ionized water as in chemically pure, 100% pure H2O without any trace materials? I recall my chemist teacher (two ones in fact) said that its not actually good to drink, because you need other stuff from water.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

I don't really get what Ionic water is. Isn't water a polar covalent bond molecule?


For the hell of it, I looked it up, since I hadn't a clue what it was. It sounded gimmicky. It is.

[URL=http://www.chem1.com/CQ/ionbunk.html[/URL]

That one seems ok. I will try to look for more. It deals with the myth behind ionic super water.

[Raesene]

Ionized water as in chemically pure, 100% pure H2O without any trace materials? I recall my chemist teacher (two ones in fact) said that its not actually good to drink, because you need other stuff from water.

100% pure water could upset your ion balance severely when ingested.

The pretty hexagonal structure shown in Boyish-Tigerlilly's link made me laugh, do they drink their water at close to absolute zero to maintain the structure ?

[CaptainChewbacca]

BT- That was exactly the sort of link I needed. Thank you.

[Elaro]

Wait. Isn't ionized water just water with ions in it? Or am I missing something?

[Darth Wong]

If ionic water is water with ions in it, I have a bottle of water and a salt shaker, ready to make some awesome ionic water right now.

[Darth Servo]

One of my friends swears up and down that specially filtered and treated 'ionic water' has greater health benefits than regular tap water. Now, I'm pretty sure that there is no truth to this, but I have no facts to back it up. Can anyone help me?

There is no such thing as non-ionic water. Even the most purified water has 10E-7 moles per liter of ions in it. Thats how many moles per liter of H2O dissociates into OH- ions and H+ ions (although the H+ goes and binds to another H2O molecule making H3O+). Thats where the whole pH scale comes from, why pH 7 is "neutral".

[Qwerty 42]

Ionized water as in chemically pure, 100% pure H2O without any trace materials? I recall my chemist teacher (two ones in fact) said that its not actually good to drink, because you need other stuff from water.

Not quite, iirc, but I wouldn't swear by this. Deionized water removes the ions, but leaves the non-ionic compounds alone. Sugar water would be completely unaffected by the deionization process, for instance, but again, I wouldn't swear by that.

[Qwerty 42]

FAKE EDIT: When we used to do chemistry labs the teacher told us that deionized water would work for things like titrations, where you only need to take out things for the titrant to react with, but had the potential to fubar things like percent water in hydrated crystals.

[PeZook]

Ah. One of the crazy diets my mother is/was pushing onto everyone in the family.

She went through them all. Atkins diet, alkalization, no-glueten diet...

Every one of them was supposed to be the next great thing. She bought (and still buys) various diet supplements that are supposed to balance the body's alkalization. I needed a link like that - it shows excellently why this particular fad is complete bullshit.

She also claims that blood type should determine the kind of diet a person should eat - so BT zero means you should eat meat (because hunters of old ate meat and were mostly BT zero) and so on. I'd love to see a proper debunking of that - some of the arguments I can think of is that blood type has nothing to do with digestion, and that blood antigens don't take part in distribution of nutrients, and that protein from meat and protein from, say, fruit are chemically the same, so it doesn't matter where you get them. Any others?

[PainRack]

She also claims that blood type should determine the kind of diet a person should eat - so BT zero means you should eat meat (because hunters of old ate meat and were mostly BT zero) and so on. I'd love to see a proper debunking of that - some of the arguments I can think of is that blood type has nothing to do with digestion, and that blood antigens don't take part in distribution of nutrients, and that protein from meat and protein from, say, fruit are chemically the same, so it doesn't matter where you get them. Any others?

The book claims that people of different blood types, tend to have different levels of acidity in their stomach, which affects their ability to eat meat.......

[PeZook]

The book claims that people of different blood types, tend to have different levels of acidity in their stomach, which affects their ability to eat meat.......

Yeah, I heard that, too. But I haven't seen a single study referenced to confirm that, and no mechanism is given to explain how on earth a change in diet could bring about a change in the blood type, as I've seen some websites claim (eg. before agriculture, everybody had BT "zero", then others appeared), and how the blood type influences stomach acidity. Besides, the digestive system is more complicated than the stomach, and this "theory" concentrates on stomach acids alone. Hence my skepticism.

It has most of the hallmarks of the typical "bullshit one-size-fits-all wonder cure for everything" explanation so typical for quacks. If there's a proper theory about that, great, I'd love to read the article.

[Dalton]

Ah, reminds me of that Penta water bullshit. I think James Randi has done a lot of work on this particular bit of snake oil.

[General Trelane (Retired)]

She also claims that blood type should determine the kind of diet a person should eat - so BT zero means you should eat meat (because hunters of old ate meat and were mostly BT zero) and so on. I'd love to see a proper debunking of that [. . .]

The Skeptic's Dictionary has done that (see here).

BTW, it's Type O (the letter), not Type 0 (the number).

[PeZook]

The Skeptic's Dictionary has done that (see here).

Thanks for the link

BTW, it's Type O (the letter), not Type 0 (the number).

It's called 0 (the number) in Poland, so there

[General Trelane (Retired)]

It's called 0 (the number) in Poland, so there

So what numbers do they use for Types A, B, and AB in Poland?

[PeZook]

It's called 0 (the number) in Poland, so there

So what numbers do they use for Types A, B, and AB in Poland?

They use letters for those, obviously

You act as if that's impossible

[darthbob88]

It's called 0 (the number) in Poland, so there

So what numbers do they use for Types A, B, and AB in Poland?

They use letters for those, obviously

You act as if that's impossible

Not necessarily impossible, but definitely illogical. To use a number for 0/O, and to use letters for A/B/AB causes confusion. Better to use letters for all, or numbers for all, but not numbers for one and letters for others.

[PeZook]

Not necessarily impossible, but definitely illogical. To use a number for 0/O, and to use letters for A/B/AB causes confusion. Better to use letters for all, or numbers for all, but not numbers for one and letters for others.

Uh...it's such a ridiculously simple sequence that only retards and the anal-retentive have any problem whatsoever with it. It would cause confusion if there were twenty blood types, but come on - there's a whooping total of four.

...and it's not like you westerners don't pronounce zero two ways, depending on context. One of these ways sounds almost exactly like O. Now that's what I call confusion-causing

[AMX]

Not necessarily impossible, but definitely illogical.

Nonsense.
In fact, it'd be illogical to use A-B-O, since there's no reason whatsoever to skip twelve letters in the sequence - except to leave room for possible not yet discovered antigen types; which works even better when the "none" sign is not a letter at all.

[PainRack]

Uh...it's such a ridiculously simple sequence that only retards and the anal-retentive have any problem whatsoever with it. It would cause confusion if there were twenty blood types, but come on - there's a whooping total of four.

Isn't there something like 4 or more multiple blood typing systems, in which the ABO and RH is the most popular, since they're the most significant for blood transfusion?