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Does Your Water Need More Ions? The latest health fad is even more ridiculous than most health fads.
Slate ^ | March 22, 2013 | Kent Sepkowitz

Posted on 03/23/2013 8:49:17 PM PDT by neverdem

After so many years of neglect, water appears ready to emerge as a cutting-edge health food. Perhaps it’s the fault of Gatorade, that Technicolor concoction of salt, sugar, and water people guzzle to “replenish their electrolytes.” The Gatorade inventors, some dweeby physiologists, were just trying to keep football players from collapsing in the Florida heat. They could not have foreseen what was to transpire in the decades ahead as the concept of the “sports drink” took hold, and then, more bizarrely yet, water itself became a symbol of health and status. 

With each iteration, beginning with bottled waters derived from glaciers (tres European) to the recent “enhanced water,” H2O has moved closer to the first-class cabin. But the latest version is a real head-scratcher: ionized, alkalinized water. Companies such as Chanson, Kangen, and many others are in the game to sell you a gizmo for $1,000 (or $2,000 or $3,000) to run your tap water through. The devices contain electrodes that purport to realign your water, split off some hydrogen atoms along the way, and rid it of various pesky problems so that it will taste better and be healthier and your arthritis will go away. In a week. Maybe two.  

In every way, water, at least American water, is a strange target for an expensive course in self-improvement. The number of Americans sickened by tap water, leaving aside the flood-induced Milwaukee cryptosporidiosis outbreak of 1993, is minuscule. Top-notch municipal plumbing remains perhaps our greatest achievement. We confront many ubiquitous environmental risks daily, but water is not among them. It is safe and unobjectionable. Plus it’s cheap—and yet...

(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: alkalinizedwater; health; ionizedwater; water
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To: Kickass Conservative

I love your mother’s saying. Just hadn’t heard it in a while.

So sorry for your illness. We will add you to our Care Group prayer list. There often doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to life sometime. But God says when we get to Heaven it will all make sense.

I’m reminded of a story about two angels who visited a poor farm couple who shared what little food they had and their humble surroundings with them. Their cow who gave them milk and provided a small income to them died during the night. One angel asked another how that could have been allowed to happen. The angel responded that the angel of death had come during the night for the wife but was convinced to take the cow instead. Life is not always what it seems.

May God watch over you.


41 posted on 03/24/2013 5:05:29 AM PDT by Grams A (The Sun will rise in the East in the morning and God is still on his throne.)
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To: BunnySlippers
Remember the machines that used to be sold that would charge the air in your home with negative ions?

There are many scams out there. About the only one I know, that really works, is that shrinking garden water hose. Much to my amazement, it really does work.

42 posted on 03/24/2013 5:36:47 AM PDT by Mark17 (My body is in California, but my heart is in the Philippines)
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To: BunnySlippers

Yeah, what a joke they were. Overpriced air filters with “space age technology”!

If I was callous enough, I’d wait about 10 years and re-introduce the world the wonders of “Negative Ion Air Filtration”!


43 posted on 03/24/2013 5:40:09 AM PDT by Shadow44
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To: Kickass Conservative

I am also one of those never drink/smoke/drugs types and I have had off and on bouts of problems all my life. I am in line to see a neurologist about the latest unexplainable things that put me in the ER a couple weeks back. A mind is a terrible thing to waste except in my case, maybe not so much.....


44 posted on 03/24/2013 5:55:04 AM PDT by wally_bert (There are no winners in a game of losers. I'm Tommy Joyce, welcome to the Oriental Lounge.)
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To: Grams A

Two points:

1.Good health is merely the slowest possible rate
at which one can die.

2.Someday Health Nuts are going to feel stupid,
lying in the hospitals dying of nothing.


45 posted on 03/24/2013 6:06:13 AM PDT by csmusaret (America is more divided today , not because of the problems we face but because of Obama's solutions)
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To: Grams A
I have a client that I used to meet with once a month during the dinner hour. Had to quit because we couldn’t agree on a restaurant which had exactly the kind of food she thought she needed to survive. She will not eat anything that is not only organically grown but gluten, carbohydrate, fat, salt, sodium, sugar, and who knows what else free. Drank bottled water without ice cubes or lemon because she wasn’t sure how/where the lemon had been grown, whether it had been properly washed and, of course, the ice cubes were probably made with water which wasn’t filtered.

People like her just wear me out.

It sounds like she has orthorexia. It is an eating disorder characterized by an obsession with eating nothing but "healthy" foods. People with the disorder tend to cut whole food groups out. They do not have a working definition of "healthy", either.

I do not think the disorder is officially recognized, yet, but a definition is fairly well developed. When I first read about it, my reaction was, "Aha!" Because I was raised by a woman with this disorder. When I read expert opinions that orthorexia is not a disorder, but is just anorexia, I want to yell at them--go spend time with my mother and tell me orthorexia is nothing but anorexia! It is not!

There is a danger with orthorexia. It can be deadly, since people cut out so many "unhealthy" foods that they cannot get adequate nutrition. Orthorexic mothers have killed their babies by imposing their pathological food beliefs on them.

46 posted on 03/24/2013 6:35:03 AM PDT by exDemMom (Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)
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To: Rightwing Conspiratr1

I think you can actually buy mock bottles of that online. An underrated movie.


47 posted on 03/24/2013 6:42:52 AM PDT by P.O.E. (Pray for America)
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To: neverdem

If you wants some serious levels of ions in your water drink pond water.

I’m guessing here a bit, but this marketing stragety is born out of using ion exchange units to clean the water they sell. One problem with deionizers is they tend to make water taste like crap. So water bottlers started added ions back into the water to make it taste normal. At some time they figure this was a good marketing strategy to differentailte their products.


48 posted on 03/24/2013 6:49:35 AM PDT by Fzob (In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. Jefferson)
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To: KarlInOhio

49 posted on 03/24/2013 6:53:43 AM PDT by Fzob (In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. Jefferson)
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To: S.O.S121.500

“No politician ever lost an election understimating the intelligence of the American voter.”

fnord


50 posted on 03/24/2013 7:10:46 AM PDT by fnord (My life is like the movie Willard, except with hummingbirds)
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To: neverdem

Which just shows ‘highly edumacated’ people can still be pretty stoopid, too.


51 posted on 03/24/2013 7:29:50 AM PDT by Sir Napsalot (Pravda + Useful Idiots = CCCP; JournOList + Useful Idiots = DopeyChangey!)
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To: Sir Napsalot; All
Um, by the way, I can sell you Homeopathy Water with a great discount, since ya’ll are my great FReeper friends.
52 posted on 03/24/2013 7:35:49 AM PDT by Sir Napsalot (Pravda + Useful Idiots = CCCP; JournOList + Useful Idiots = DopeyChangey!)
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To: bigbob
"Oh noes, Ionic Change!"

Its due to "climate cooling", "climate warming" or "climate change".

Bank on it.

53 posted on 03/24/2013 8:24:48 AM PDT by hummingbird
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To: Myrddin
"I get very sick from gluten exposure. The initial reaction (minutes) is a gurgling in my lungs that initiates throat clearing, gagging and coughing. The hours to days follow-on changes to the inside surfaces of my GI tract is something akin to a skinned knee oozing serum with lots of bleeding."

I know exactly what you mean. We are just not made for gluten or cows' milk!

My doctor said to try gluten and cows' milk free and see what happens. It hasn't been a week yet but I don't blow up like a beach ball after eating like I do regular food with gluten or milk.

Mr. hummingbird could eat a gluten sandwich with cows' milk with a beer or two and not think anything at all about it because it doesn't bother him. hummingbird, here, is like a hot-house flower. If I followed Mr. hummingbird's diet, I'd probably be in a state of painful perpetual bloat all the time.

I'll give gluten free a chance. Maybe okay for me, maybe not. We'll see!

Best of luck to you, friend, let's keep in touch!

54 posted on 03/24/2013 8:38:14 AM PDT by hummingbird
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To: Grams A
"But God says when we get to Heaven it will all make sense."

Yes.....

55 posted on 03/24/2013 8:54:56 AM PDT by hummingbird
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To: Mark17
"There are many scams out there. About the only one I know, that really works, is that shrinking garden water hose. Much to my amazement, it really does work. "

I got one of those from the "As Seen on TV" aisle at Walgreens and it works for me. Very lightweight and curls up well so you don't have trip-able hoses all over the place.

I like it and I like Walgreens "As seen on TV" aisle!

56 posted on 03/24/2013 8:58:49 AM PDT by hummingbird
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To: exDemMom

It sounds like she has orthorexia.”

Actually what’s wrong with her is that she is a very, very liberal psychologist.

She continually complains because her insurance rates are going up but wants the state to pay her more for seeing people who have Medicaid insurance. Thinks she should be able to deduct the cost of stockings she wears to professional meetings as a business expense because otherwise she wouldn’t buy them.

If she has a pain or discomfort she goes on the internet and finds an exotic disease that fits those symptoms.

I could write volumes but you get the idea.


57 posted on 03/24/2013 9:14:02 AM PDT by Grams A (The Sun will rise in the East in the morning and God is still on his throne.)
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To: Grams A

Thank you for the kind thoughts.

I am doing OK, no complaints. It is what it is.

Another one of my Late Mother’s sayings was, There will always be someone better off than you, and there will always be someone worse off than you, that’s Life.

Once you accept that premise there is no envy. Too bad Democrats don’t think that way, huh? All they exist to do is blame others for their circumstances and to use Envy as a road to gaining power over Men. That is why I will never Vote for a Democrat, ever.

Oh yeah, one from my Father. “Nobody owes you a living, so get back to work”. I heard that one when I was a whining 12 year old working at my Dad’s Gas Station to make some money.

My Parents didn’t believe in giving their kids an “ALLOWANCE”. If you needed money, you asked for it. Then there was a Grand Bargain, money for labor. I spent my youth negotiating for wages. I should have run a Union.


58 posted on 03/24/2013 10:42:42 AM PDT by Kickass Conservative (Compliance with Tyranny is Treason...)
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To: Kickass Conservative

Glad you’re at least doing okay. Yes, it is what it is.

My daddy always used to tell me that I was worth what someone would pay me. Seems like our parents had a lot of wise sayings.

Be well my FR friend. Prayers up for you.


59 posted on 03/24/2013 10:53:01 AM PDT by Grams A (The Sun will rise in the East in the morning and God is still on his throne.)
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To: Fzob
If you wants some serious levels of ions in your water drink pond water.

When I was a kid, I tagged along with a neighbor friend to stay a week at his relative's farm in the countryside. We had great fun playing at a nearby pond, where frogs were jumping around. The drinking water from their kitchen tap was cloudy and discolored, but I didn't care and drank up. Then one time a tadpole spilled into my glass from the tap. "Where is the water from?". My friend said "It's pumped from the pond!". Being a kid, I said "Cool!". Yup, serious levels of ions there.

60 posted on 03/24/2013 12:18:14 PM PDT by roadcat
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