Water & Health Attendee Notes
For the Body Ecology Teleseminar

Select scientific terminology for navigating the role of water in health:

Solvent and solute
The solvent is the water and the solutes are the minerals and most anything else that dissolves in the water, good and bad.

Total Dissolved Solids (TDS)
This refers to all the dissolved minerals in water. When you boil all the liquid away from a pot full of water the whitish-gray residue left is mostly TDS.

Milligrams per liter (mg/l)
A measurement for all things dissolved in water, both good nutrients and bad contaminants.

Micrograms per liter (ug/l)
A smaller unit of measurement for dissolved substances. This is 1/1000th of a mg/l.

Parts per million (ppm)
If you dissolve one liter of salt or minerals (or anything!) in a million liters of water then you have a solution that is "one ppm of that substance".
Note - Since there are a million milligrams of water in one liter, "ppm" is often used in place of "mg/l".

Parts per billion (ppb)
Dissolve one liter of a substance in a billion liters of water and you have "one ppb". This is equivalent to "one ug/l". As minute an amount as this may seem both mineral and trace element nutrients as well as contaminants are functional in human physiology at ppb levels.

Electrical conductivity (EC)
This is often uses because it is the minerals that give water its electrical conductivity and this conductivity plays a critical role in the physiological function of minerals.

pH (Potential for Hydrogen)
A measure of the activity of hydrogen ions (H+) in a solution (actually the negative logarithm of the hydrogen ion concentration for you math wizards). The more hydrogen ions the more acid the solution is. The fewer hydrogen ions the less acid the solution is.
pH can be likened to the measurement of temperature which gives the degree of heat but not its quantity. Therefore, when it comes to determining the capacity of a solution to neutralize acid, pH is not a meaningful parameter. Alkalinity is.

Acid solution
Having a pH less than 7.

Alkaline solution
Having a pH higher than 7. Also referred to as "basic". The important thing to realize is that it is not a meaningful measure of the ability to neutralize acid.

Alkalinity
Alkalinity is a measure of the capacity of a solution to neutralize acids - sometimes referred to as its buffering capacity.

REDOX
Describes Reduction - Oxidation reactions. In reduction reactions electrons are donated while in oxidation reactions electrons are taken.

ORP (Oxidation-Reduction Potential)
The measurement of a solution's capacity to donate (-ORP) or take (+ORP) electrons for chemical reactions.

Point of Entry (POE)
Water treatment for all the incoming water in a home, especially for bathing and showering.

Point of Use (POU)
Water treatment for drinking and cooking water only at specific locations.

Tap water
Let's talk US only for the sake of simplicity. First, tap water can come from most any source - rivers, and lakes (surface water); wells (which draw water up from underground source called an aquifer); desalinated water from the ocean - or some combination of them.
If you are on a public water supply serving more than 25 people its quality is regulated by the EPA, which developed standards of purity under the SDWA. This is an ever evolving standard that limits contaminants of all categories in drinking water - both aesthetic and health-related. Consider that less than 2% of water supplied under these standards is actually consumed for drinking and food preparation. That is why it is not economically feasible to remove the growing list of contaminants - society can't afford it. This makes Point of Use (POU) treatment a most logical approach for high quality drinking and bathing water. For detailed information go to www.epa.gov/drink/

Let's talk a little about nutrients vs. contaminants
Especially regarding minerals and trace elements, there is often a fine line between essential nutrients and unwanted contaminants - this is why the subject is so complex. Physiologically you need elements like chromium, copper, fluoride and selenium but if they are in your water at certain levels or in certain forms then they can be toxic.

Of special concern healthwise, are substances that are put in public water supplies during the process of treating it. These include aluminum, fluoride and disinfectants. You don't want any of them if you are concerned about optimizing health. Of special concern are the disinfectants which form disinfectant byproducts, DBP's, which can be a serious health risk both for drinking AND bathing. This contaminant category should be removed from all of the water in your home using a Point of Entry (POE) water treatment system.

Well water
Well water is just a very general term for water that flows or is pumped from the ground. In future discussions, when we talk of well water we will be referring to private residential wells which are often a real challenge to make suitable for drinking, bathing and other uses. While the earth can act as a great filter for many contaminants, it can also yield some of the worst contaminants in terms of water quality. Each well is so individual in the problems it presents there are no general rules for treating the water.

Spring water, Artesian Water
To be legally considered spring or artesian water in the US, the source must flow naturally from a natural underground reservoir (called an aquifer) to the surface. Artesian wells have a special configuration that distinguishes them.

"Purified Water" (like Dasani, Aquafina, Pure Life)
To legally meet the "Purified Water" standard in the US, bottled water must be demineralized to less than 10 ppm (mg/l) dissolved solids (TDS) and adhere to certain microbiological standards. Purified Water can be made by a number of different technologies or a combination of them - Reverse Osmosis, Deionization and Distillation. If it were not for the plastic bottle, some purified waters might be an acceptable starting point as a contaminant-free water platform provided Deionization is not the primary treatment process (as in the highly TV-promoted Zero Water device).

Distilled water
To be legally considered distilled water, the source must be converted to steam (water vapor) and then re-condensed (leaving the impurities behind). This process removes virtually all impurities except for VOC's. Usually it is followed by activated carbon filtration to remove these. This process clears all water structures and memory and can be a good contaminant-free platform for remineralization and enhancement.

Reverse Osmosis water
Reverse Osmosis (RO) has made such a great name for itself in water treatment because it is highly effective in removing a broad range of contaminants and is energy efficient. RO does require extra water to process a specified amount of pure water but it is still the most cost-effective high-tech method.

Alkaline water
Alkaline water (typically drinking water with a pH greater than 8.5) has little meaning or health significance and can be confused with water having high alkalinity and capable of neutralizing acids. See discussion of alkaline ionizers below.

Mineral Water
To be legally considered mineral water it must contain more than 250 mg/l of TDS. Mineral waters around the world can contain more than 3000 mg/L of dissolved minerals.

Sparkling and carbonated water
This category can be naturally or artificially carbonated. If it is high in minerals, this category can be a good source of level of acid-neutralizing alkalinity. Many of the European sparkling waters in glass offer this benefit.

Structured water
The subject of water structures - identifiable unique configurations of water molecules within a volume of water - is vast and little understood. Attaching a biological significance to water structures might be premature except for the molecular organizing influence of minerals and trace elements which is well acknowledged. The medicine of Homeopathy, which uses such extreme dilutions of substances that only its memory exists as water structures and frequency, is also validated and well respected. An authoritative book on this subject is about to be released this month - it's called Dancing With Water by MJ Pangman and Melanie Evans. Also, the following commentary on this new science gives some idea of how controversial this science is.

Liquid water
Stanford researchers concluded from the X-ray data, has a structure totally at odds with what textbooks say and what scientists have believed for more than a century. Rather than being a sea of tetrahedrons - little pyramids with triangular bases, formed when each water molecule connects to four others - it seems to be an ocean of rings and chains, with most molecules hooking up with only two others via strong bonds.

As often happens when the conventional wisdom starts to collapse, on closer inspection there wasn't much holding it up in the first place. The notion that water molecules form pyramids actually had little empirical support, Dr. Nilsson says: "Experimental findings have been so sparse that theoretical work has dominated the field," and the theory is so inexact "that you can get almost any result you want just by tweaking" a few numbers.

Not everyone is sold on the rings and chain idea. Just months after the Stanford team concluded that the pyramid model was all wet, and in response to it, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, announced that water is too a bunch of tiny pyramids. That brought a testy response from the Stanford researchers, who disparaged their rivals' experiment as full of "fundamental shortcomings" and beset by a "lack of reproducibility."

Although the Berkeley team is sticking to its pyramids, many scientists are persuaded by the rings and chain. Overturning the pyramid notion is "an incredibly big deal," says chemist Giulia Galli of UC Davis, who wasn't involved in the experiment. She is using a supercomputer to crank through trillions of quantum calculations to determine what structure water should have according to basic principles.

This may seem like an esoteric question, "but different structures (of water) should behave differently," says Prof. Galli. Because life runs on water, fathoming its true structure could overturn key ideas in biology.

What is your opinion on bottled water? Do you have any you recommend?
" Use the bottled water book to guide you.
" Look for a considerable amount of magnesium - the higher the better compared to calcium.
" Always glass bottles
" Consider Gerolsteiner sparkling water or similar water for high alkalinity supplement to your daily 2+ liters of drinking water. It has more than 1800 mg/l of alkalinity.

What about the popular alkaline ionizer water systems like Kangan, Ion Life, Life Ionizer etc.
A better name for these devices would be "electrically reduced water (ERW) with negative ORP and elevated pH". We acknowledge and respect the development of this product category and the health awareness and benefits it provided to many users. However there are much better, simpler and less expensive alternatives to pure and enhanced water for drinking. In fact, from our perspective, alkaline ionizers fail to provide the true objective of optimum drinking - except in their ability to create negative ORP reducing water, a promising new water characteristic.
FIRST, ionizers do not perform the single most important function and that is to remove a very high degree of any contaminants present. Fluoride, heavy metals, pesticides, etc. can remain in the water. That's why so many users end up installing extra filters or a Reverse Osmosis system before their ionizers.
SECOND, ionizers claim that the elevated alkaline pH will alkalize the body through the process of neutralizing stomach acid. This is a deception because alkaline pH is no guarantee of neutralizing acid. Only water with high alkalinity can make such a claim. The performance of ionizers is entirely subject to the water supply they are attached to so the user must have just the right tap water chemistry to achieve the expected results. Few users realize this fact, however.
The subject of alkaline vs. alkalinity is very confusing to the non-chemist and the proponents of ionizers have taken advantage of it in our opinion. Here's how…The ionizer proponents speak in terms of the alkaline pH of their water only - not alkalinity, which is measured in a completely different way. Only the words sound similar! Some experts even consider high pH water a health risk. It is far better to drink lower pH high-alkalinity mineral water or add high alkalinity baking soda or other mineral combinations rather than depend on the performance of the ionizer. Even better is drinking several daily glasses of fresh high-alkalinity vegetable juices like spinach, carrot, watercress, cilantro etc.
THIRD, there IS something the ionizer does well and that is to impart a negative ORP to the water - transforming the water into a reducing antioxidant solution rather than an oxidative one. This factor, combined with the increased consumption of water, may be the biggest reason for the positive results claimed by its users. However, there are even better methods for achieving negative ORP. In conclusion, the alkaline ionizer disadvantages outweigh the advantages, especially when cost is factored in.

The Body Ecology approach
For the very health conscious followers of Body Ecology we have come up with a simple but effective approach. We call it the PURIST because we adopted a no-compromise design philosophy.

Our first and foremost responsibility to you is to provide contaminant-free water. The four-stage design incorporating Reverse Osmosis plus activated coconut-shell carbon accomplishes that. We refer to it as a platform of contaminant-free water. No matter what your water supply contains or doesn't contain the water from the PURIST is basically the same - pure, neutral H2O with its solvent, hydrating and cleansing capability. This water alone can be used for many applications

The PURIST is an attractive countertop appliance that connects to any typical faucet. As the PURIST name suggests, there are no conveniences or frills - all in the name of removing impurities but not introducing anything that might compromise the water. The idea is that as the water leaves the last filter it is collected in the user's container of choice - we highly recommend glass - and either used immediately or stored in the refrigerator. We intentionally eliminated any plastic storage tank to prevent chemical or microbiological recontamination of the pure water.

The PURIST's water can be used as is for drinking and especially cooking and preparation of health shakes and recipes. Other important applications include rinsing vegetables, cosmetic use, preparation of medical solutions, fasting and cleansing and colonic irrigation.

If the wellness minded user chooses to enhance their drinking water for health maintenance and to support the healing process we offer two unique options referred to as PURATIVE functional water additives.

The first, "QMP", is our raw, balanced, unheated ocean minerals and trace elements - from Laboratoires Quinton. Extracted from a plankton bloom, this marine plasma is the only one of its kind. It is supplied in a vacuum-sealed glass vial that uniquely preserves the entire Periodic Table of the elements in a living state. As identical as possible to the Primordial Ocean that gave rise to all life and its evolution for 3.5 billion years. This provides multiple levels of enhancement including cellular nutrition & communication, conductivity, alkalinity, molecular organization & structure, nutragenetics and ORMUS (Orbitally Rearranged Monatomic Elements).

The second, "Active H-minus" tablets and powders is the latest development in imparting the properties of active hydrogen - a rare form that is the most powerful antioxidant known with an extremely strong negative ORP (typically over -500 mV!). This is also the most mobile antioxidant known because hydrogen is the smallest atom known - so small that it will even slowly escape through a glass bottle.
Active H-minus is superior to ionizers for providing negative ORP active hydrogen because it does not depend on the source water and does not force the water to take on an elevated pH. It put the user in precise control of their drinking water properties.
The benefits of Active H-minus do not end there. Perhaps of equal significance to its function in drinking water is adding Active H-minus to any fruit and vegetable juices that have likely lost most or all of their natural negative ORP and using it in bath water, so that active hydrogen can be absorbed directly into the skin.