Ian Blair Hamilton's HealtheMail
Alkaline Ionized water, its benefits and science and its stories
Some clever little bee has found a new use for Coke. its high acidity and sugary sweetnedssworks wonders in compost heaps for accelerating breakdown.
So all those billions of dollars spent by CocaCola shareholders really does has some value after all!
The Easiest Way to Eat Enough Healing Vegetables Every Day Ask any natural health practitioner and he or she will tell you that you need as many as nine serves of fruit and vegetables every day. And yet I’m sure that one in a hundred people reading this actually does get sufficient.
There are very serious reasons why we should get enough vegetables. (fruit is another subject I’ll come back to later). Lack of green vegetables in particular deprives us of vital alkaline minerals, and all fresh fruit and vegetables give us a whole range of live enzymes. Enzymes are the catalysts of a myriad of chemical reactions in the body and without a regular supply, functions we think of and accept as automatic health functions slow down and even stop.
Let’s talk about how we can get enough without actually preparing and cooking nine servings per day. It seems to be difficult – otherwise we’d be doing it. We all know that some foods – especially vegetables – taste like well…cut grass. But look at the alternative and we have to admit that continued health – the health we accept as our birthright – is no-one else’s choice. So keeping up our fruit and vegetables – however we do it – is our ’bank’ of health, our guarantee of a good day tomorrow and every day thereafter.
How can we get enough in this busy life? There are ways and they are very practical.
What we need is a way to increase our intake that preserves live enzymes, that is fast, and that is economical. That’s where juicing comes in.. because only juicing ‘compresses’ all the benefits of raw fruit and vegetables into one glass.
Bypassing cooking also means that all of those heat-sensitive micronutrients will be immediately available. Juicing makes this infinitely easier.
Most of us think we know what a juicer looks like. Most of us have owned some sort of juicer in the past.. but most of us have it gathering dust in the rear of a kitchen cupboard. Why is that? Well, the vast majority of juicers sold to people are high speed models that run so fast that they kill much of those same sensitive and vital micronutrients through the generation of heat right at the cutting face of the juicer blade, whirling at hundreds of revolutions per minute.
So even if we haven’t understood it, our body hasn’t responded in the way we thought it should and juicing has been shuffled off the daily agenda.
I mentioned earlier that fruit juice isn’t so good as vegetable juice. Fruit is loaded with fructose and fructans – sugars. We have somehow decided that fruit sugar is OK whereas ordinary sugar is bad. Sorry folks, but all sugars are bad, and unnecessary, and juicing fruit concentrates all the fruits’ sugars into one glass. One glass of orange juice, for instance, has as much sugar in it as a glass of Coca Cola *
I suggest avoiding fruit completely if you have any issues with weight, cardiovascular disease, or diabetes. I’m a paleolithic diet convert, and our ancestors never had access to the unlimited volume of fresh fruits we have today. So eating the amount of fruit we do today is not natural – in the sense that it doesn’t correlate with our genetic blueprint.
Freshly juiced ‘green drinks’ provide us with an instant boost in terms of nutrients, enzymes, vitamins and alkaline minerals in a highly digestible form. Although you can juice with red, yellow and orange vegetables — I recommend that the majority of your juice intake comes from green vegetables.
Here’s my nine reasons to juice:
1. Green foods contain high amounts of chlorophyll, a very effective detoxifier. It gives you strength, detoxifies your liver, removes mould, parasites, mycotoxins and excitotoxins from your body. If you have an odour problem, I guarantee it will solve it.
The structure of chlorophyll is very similar to the hemoglobin in your blood that transports oxygen, it purifies and rebuilds your blood cells.
Some studies even claim that chlorophyll can help prevent and remove cancer cells.
2. Green juicing is a powerful cellular detoxifier at the cellular level.
3. Fresh raw vegetable juice is a concentrated alkaline supercharge. We need our body to be slightly alkaline. In my experience, an acidic body is a leading underlying cause of disease and illness.
4. As I said earlier, raw vegetable juices and green drinks supply you with a concentrated source of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, nutrients, and trace elements that we all require for healing, cell regeneration, and overall wellness. These are embedded in a complex of nutrients, fibre and carbohydrates that’s digested and absorbed better – and benefits us far more – than a pill that contains just one nutrient. There are dozens, perhaps thousands, of undiscovered nutrients present in plants.
5. Many vegetables and their juices contain natural medicines and even natural antibiotics. For instance, the natural hormones and antibiotic substances in cucumber, onion and garlic, radish and tomatoes contribute to a healthy pancreas.
6. Minerals such as calcium, potassium, and silicon in fresh vegetable juice help your body restore its cellular mineral balance… which in turn prevents premature aging and disease.
7. Juicing lets you add a wider variety and larger amounts of vegetables to your daily diet than otherwise possible. Most important, it keeps the nutrients alive and absorbable.
8. Some studies have shown that vegetable drinks hit your bloodstream within 30 minutes of consumption, so they’re a quick way to flood your body with micronutrients.
9. Raw live juices may actually reverse disease, and have been used as a late-stage cancer treatment. The Gerson Therapy, one of the most famous anticancer protocols, is very largely based on juicing. Many, many other anticancer protocols now imitate Gerson and incorporate juicing into their systems.
You just won’t get juice like this is a supermarket.
When natural health specialists talk about “juicing” they are referring to real raw foods complete with their natural pigments, enzymes, vitamins, minerals and nutrients working to bring healing, energy and protection from disease to your body.
I don’t recommend packaged juices such as cartons and bottles of ‘fresh’ orange juice, pasteurised bottles of super fruits, or frozen juice concentrates! If you want to be healthy, leave them on the shelves and go home with fresh veggies.
Steve Jobs drank packaged carrot juice for many years, missing out on the micronutrients we talked about.. and by the way, flooding his body with sugar from the carrots. (Not all vegetables are good for juicing). Speaking of sugar, many prepackaged juices have added sugar; the very last thing a healthy body needs. They can be months old before we consume tham, kept ‘alive’ by radiation sterilisation.
Minerals such as magnesium and potassium are about the only nutrients you can be sure will survive all this. When it comes to enzymes, vitamins, other antioxidants and even proteins — good luck.
Once you decide to take on real juicing you may have a few questions about what foods to juice, what juicers to use… and (something people often forget) how to save juice’s top nutritional value if you don’t drink it right away.
As I mentioned earlier, I suggest that for the shortest distance from ‘woe’ to ‘go‘, skip the fruit. Sugar is what is keeping you at sub-par health, and fruit is loaded with it. Sugar is a drug and your way to health is in the opposite direction.
The Internet means you’ll get recommendations for all sorts of juices. There must be thousands of videos on the Youtube for people’s favourite juice. But we are all about health change, so my advice is to by all means look at the videos, but if they add fruit, they are juicing to support their sugar drug habit. Serious health means above-ground vegetables. They aren’t going to taste as good, but this isn’t the place for chic juice. This is the serious save your life juicer place.
Start slowly and let your body get juiced up slowly. One aspect of alkalizing I notice over and over again is the body’s resurgent ability to let you know what it wants. Listen! It knows!
I have heard many reports of people actually reversed their cancer by changing their diet. A healthy diet certainly supports your body to rebuild your immune system and rebalance your cells.
If your diet isn’t fighting cancer, it’s fueling it. Or to paraphrase what they used to say back in the Sixties, if the food you eat isn’t part of the solution, it’s part of the problem.
I am not an expert on the very best vegetables for a cancer fighting juice protocol, but one fabulous cancer fighter I do know about is wheatgrass juice. And.. if you’ve never done it, it’s actually fun to grow.
Wheatgrass juice contains alkaline chlorophyll, which boosts hemoglobin production – pushing more oxygen to your cancer. It also contains the cancer fighters selenium and laetrile. It’s also one of the most alkaline foods known to man. It cleanses the lymph system, restores pH balance, purifies your blood, and ushers toxic metals out of your body. It deserves a special place in your anti-cancer juicing protocol.
Although in the long term you probably need to consume healthy protein, many cancer patients use vegetable juice as their entire diet for weeks at a time, while trying to detoxify their system and kill the cancer cells. Many alternative cancer experts, that cancer patients should eat no animal protein at all. I challenge their view and would say that when you are on a low carb, medium protein and high fat paleo diet, the problems normally associated with high consumption of protein fades into irrelevance.
Fresh is EssentialVegetable juice is HIGHLY perishable. Drink it as soon as possible after you make it. Even the aromatics — the scents and gases given off by the produce — are packed with valuable nutrients. Other nutrients will lose their potency when exposed to oxygen.
You can store juice for up to 24 hours with only moderate nutritional loss if you expose it to air as little as possible. An airtight container is a must — preferably one made of glass. Storage is helpful if you’re taking your juice with you to work or school.
Like most products, you should base your equipment selection on quality, performance and price. It’s important that your juicer operate at slow speeds so it doesn’t pulverize or heat (oxidize) the food.
Always clean your machine right away. Don’t wait until the food dries and bonds to the surface of the machine. In most cases, you may be able to get by with a rinse-off if you act right away. If you put it off, you’ll have to scrub and scrape.
If you’re worried about what the clean-up is going to involve, shop carefully and ask lots of questions before buying. Some of the larger twin auger models actually need a clean-up between different juices in the same batch.
Centrifugal juicers spin at very high speeds. Both masticating and centrifugal juicers and blenders operate at high speed — from 1,000 to 24,000 RPM. These high speeds can heat your juice and can damage the more perishable nutrients.
The best option regardless of price is a twin gear unit that turns slowly, around 80 RPMs — to ensure that nutrients aren’t lost to heat, or to a destructive
high-speed chopping blade. Use of this type of machine reduces oxidation as well as heat and impact shock to nearly nothing. More of your food’s delicate nutrients survive to benefit your health. Be aware that many of the more popular single gear units use a plastic grinder/auger made of polycarbonate that contains Bisphenol-A. Many thousands of these units were sold before BP-A was discovered to be a carcinogen s powerful that even drinking water from a BPA -containing bottle was so bad it was banned.
Juicing is an investment in health so if you can afford the best you should buy it. Stainless steel is the best of all materials for juicers. Massive savings for a family that juices every day can be achieved by purchasing the more efficient systems.
Go HERE to see a real life efficiency comparison.
Go here to learn more about the only true stainless steel twin gear system on the market
Cassie and I just uploaded a video of our experience so far with my skateboard experience. It led to my discovery of terrible osteoporosis.
You’ll follow us through the discovery, the recommendation of calcium and exercise, the research, and the answers to osteoporosis from Dr Jack Kruse.
Here it is.
Scientist. Inventor. Author. Communicator. Thinker.Back in 2004 Cassie and had the privilege of hosting Sang Whang and his wife Josephine at Alkaway Headquarters here in Byron Bay.
Sang gave a lecture while he was here about alkaline water and it was the best and clearest explanation of ionized alkaline water I had ever heard – then and even now!
I had just bought my video camera so the quality isn’t as good as I do today, but the content is pure gold for anyone contemplating taking on our water or who just wants to know the science in an easily understandable format. Sang answers every question you could have on alkaline ionized water and he answers from experience as a long time user.
Sadly, Sang passed away last year. He was a good man and I was privileged to have been able to spend time with him.
I’m not releasing this video to everyone because in my experience people need to at last have an idea of the subject to understand what a gift this video is.
When Joyce Bippus tried alkaline ionized water she was ‘sold’ immediately.
So sold that she opened her own alkaline ionized water store. After all, she claims she was able to not have a $40,000 rotator cuff operation because of the water. Joyce was introduced by her herbalist. In an article in her local paper, I read:
“She said, ‘Joyce, just drink this water,’” Bippus said.
After Bippus’ pain (may have: Ian) disappeared within a week, she thought the ionized water should be shared with the community and opened the Holistic Water Store on Mangrove Avenue. The store offers a free 30-day trial of ionized alkaline water to anyone interested.
“It’s my passion,” Bippus said, “and I love my job.”
Ionized water is made by passing normal, unfiltered tap water through an ionizing machine. The machine splits the water into two streams by electrolysis – the application of an electrical current. The machine then recombines the streams differently, adding ions and producing an alkaline pH.
Various natural and alternative health proponents claim the water has very powerful health benefits.
Some Chico State students and athletes have come in and tried the water, Bippus said.
David Vogel of Paradise, a customer of the Holistic Water Store, has been drinking the water for a few months, he said. He suffers from joint pain in his knees and hips and wanted to try the water after hearing about it.
“I (may: Ian) have less joint pain,” Vogel said. “I don’t want to stop. I feel better.”
Others disagree, claiming the water does not have any medicinal benefits.
Stomach acid will instantly turn ionized water acidic, said Jeffrey Bell, chair of the biological sciences department.
“Water that you could drink that isn’t going to burn your mouth won’t change the pH in your stomach,” Bell said.
The amount of acid in your stomach makes everything you eat and drink acidic, he said.
“Water is water,” Bell said. “Having a few ions in it won’t help.”
Bippus offers promotional material with information about the ionizers. The statements in the material have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.
The machines range in price from $1,200 to $5,000 for those interested in ionizing their own water, but Bippus offers interest-free financing to those who can’t afford a lump sum payment.
Anyone interested in learning more about ionized alkaline water from Bippus and her colleagues can attend a weekly seminar held at 7 p.m. on Thursdays in the store.
“My goal is to get people educated on how they can help themselves,” Bippus said.
This is very typical. I’ve seen so many articles like this, and always with the old phurphy about the stomach neutralising the pH of the water. (I added the ‘may’ for legal reasons). And dear Jean will need to be careful about what she says because we are STILL not allowed to publish therapeutic effects of alkaline ionized water – there’s a million dollar fine for it. Even though the lists of scientific studies grows monthly.
The really weird aspect of this ‘prove it or lose it’ attitude is that we have done all we can to go legal. We contacted the top gun in our Therapeutic Items registration organisation and asked if we could have our water ionizers ‘listed’. No, you can’t came the reply, because we have already decided water filters can’t be listed. So.. although we are willing to register water ionizers, we can’t because someone somewhere at a desk with a stamp has decided tha water isn’t therapeutic.. no matter what.
OK… we asked. So if you won’t register us, then water ionizers are not a therapeutic device, right? Right. So because we aren’t a therapeutic device we can say anything we like, right?
No, came the answer. If you say it does anything we will take action against you.
But you just said we aren’t a therapeutic device.
Yes, we can say it but you can’t disagree with us.. even if we refuse to list you.
Harrumph. Bureacrats.
Once thought as infertility a “female problem,” now infertility is an equal opportunity problem.
One-third of infertility is attributed to the female, one-third to the male and one-third to combined factors from both male and female.
This post is for the guys. It comes from the US, but I’m quite sure we can learn from it here in Australia.
It’s so common that chains Walgreens and CVS have announced they would begin stocking a male infertility test as of April, marking the first time men can get an over-the-counter test of their sperm production. According to Bloomberg News, it’s a $440 million ‘new’ market.
Scientists such as Dr. Shanna Swan, Professor and Vice-Chair of Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, say chemicals play a role in the increase of male infertility in the population.
“There is no question that pesticides reduce sperm count,”
Dr. Swan recently told Global News Canada.
“The question is how much do you need to do the damage?”
We now know that chemicals in every day products can lead to low sperm counts, but we also know there are simple steps that men can take to avoid them.
These include:
Using safer pans: Teflon, the most common non-stick coating, is made from perfluorinated compounds (PFCs). Men with higher levels of PFCs had fewer normal sperm and lower sperm concentrations. (PFCs are also used in fast food packaging and microwave popcorn bags, so avoid those as well.)
Avoid contaminated fish: Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) were banned in the US in 1979, but they are so persistent, they are still contaminating our food today. Among other things, they have been linked to decreased sperm quality, sperm DNA damage, and lowered testosterone levels. The highest concentrations are found in animal fats, some farmed fish, and freshwater fish from contaminated waters.
Cut the fat: Because PCBs are also found in some animal fats, reducing meat consumption can help lower your exposure. If you do eat meat, opt for low-fat cuts, and cut off visible fat before cooking. Use lower-fat cooking methods such as broiling, grilling, roasting or pressure-cooking. Or, do as I do and buy organic grassfed meat exclusively.
Ban the can: Canned foods are often lined using a resin made from bisphenol-A (BPA). (see my earlier post) High levels of this hormone disruptor led to decreased sperm concentrations and mobility. The only good news is that BPA can be quickly eliminated from the body. The Natural Resources Defense Council reports that you can cut the amount of BPA in your body by as much as 50% in just three days, by following simple steps such as increasing fresh foods, storing food in glass or stainless steel and never microwaving in plastic.
Drink Pure Water: water is still the very best detoxifier and it costs next to nothing.
Gabe Hunninghake, our US distributor, answered a question better than I could to a common question. It demonstrates why we see the AlkaStream not as ‘another water water ionizer but actually a ‘better water ionizer.
Q. Why does the alkaStream’s antioxidant capability last longer, or act more stable, than when it’s created with electrolysis?
For those who may be reading this without a background in ionized, alkaline water, the antioxidant quality is typically gauged by a term called ORP. Oxidation Reduction Potential. Oxidation reduction = antioxidant. Same ability as you see with foods, just different terminology when it applies to liquids.
Electric ionizers typically produce water with a very negative ORP. This negative ORP provides our bodies a buffer used to fight free radicals. When those free radicals are scavaging for electrons to steal from our healthy cells, they instead find the negative hydroxyl ions when drink in the water. Those ions are created by electrically splitting the water molecule. Lots of negatively charged ions = more negative ORP.
Unfortunately, the commonality amongst electrically driven ionization is that this benefit doesn’t last very long. Most companies will say you have about 2 days at best to reap some of the benefit after bottling. The best thing to do is immediately drink the water after creation.
We are encouraged to slam a glass while it’s full of bubbles. It’s the best for our body, and it’s also a great selling point for ionizers. You can’t find this water on a store shelf. Fresh is best.
So when I first started seeing cases of the -ORP lasting longer I was confused. Having stable antioxidant qualities for up to (and if a few cases more than) a week was previously unheard of.
Why was it happening?
A process called Dissociation takes place in all water. There is a constant ebb and flow of H20 molecules breaking into H and oH ions and then rejoining into H20. In neutral water, this process typically maintains an even balance. In the presence of alkaline minerals like calcium and potassium, the split is able to last longer and we see a lingering effect.
Because the alkaStream utilizes real, naturally occurring minerals for the creation of its alkaline pH, what some call the Dissociation Dance lasts much longer. There are more minerals to cut in and partner up with.
Electric ionizers super charge the splitting of water molecules. Because there isn’t the same level of minerals in their water (all they have is what’s in the source water) the ions rapidly join back together and we then see a quick decrease in antioxidant capability.
So while the antioxidant levels of the alkaStream water are usually not as negative on the -ORP scale as electrically created, it seems to last much longer and provide a more natural and beneficial combination for the body.
Natural minerals for acid buffering, and Hydrogen for free radical/oxidant buffering.
My February HealtheMail is set to fly. If you’re registered, you’ll receive it in your inbox. It includes a contest for all of you storytellers and the chance to win a free Fill2Pure portable water filter bottle. If you haven’t registered yet, just click on the box to the left of this post.
In Italy they love their water. Every village has either its own town spring where people gather to fill up and gossip, or one of the newer filtered water dispensng machines that supply purified local alkaline water few a few cents a litre.
Italians believe in their water. Italians love their water. So imagine the shock they must have experienced this week when a patient at a dentist’s surgery died from Legionnaire’s disease from water that came ‘straight from the pipe’.
Most of us travelling understand the need for a good water filtration bottle in third world countries.. but.. Italy? Ouch.
Legionnaire’s bacteria is one of the most common found in drinking water. It’s found in old homes, shower heads, anywhere water has a chance to stagnate.
Here’s the news report
It just makes good sense to carry your own filter bottle when you travel anywhere – and at home, to have as basic survival equipment, a good water filter and a good shower filter AND a shower head that doesn’t hold water after use.
What do you think? Am I going overboard here?
There’s more reason to steer clear of Bisphenol A (BPA) than its now-notoriouslink to cancer and other health problems; and the risks it poses especially for children. Now, a recent study provides evidence that BPA also contributes to obesity and insulin resistance, which can lead to diabetes.
To some people, this may not sound like news, but the study, published in PLoS ONE, pinpoints just how this works, an understanding that was lacking before.
The study found that BPA triggers the release of insulin in nearly twice the amount as when glucose is ingested—and high insulin levels can lead to insulin resistance and potentially to weight gain and Type 2 diabetes.
HuffPost explains exactly how this works:
To achieve this feat, BPA fools a receptor into thinking it is the natural hormone estrogen, an insulin regulator. Nadal’s team found that even the tiniest amounts of BPA — a quarter of a billionth of a gram — did the trick. The effect disappeared when the researchers stripped the specific receptors from the study mice, evidence that they had in fact pinpointed BPA’s chemical mechanism, which had previously eluded scientists.
Found both in and outside of our food supply, BPA often seems like it’s everywhere and impossible to avoid. It’s important to remember that BPA is not the only problem we face—but it’s something that does present clear risks, and the link with obesity and diabetes is just another reason to avoid it when possible.
More background from HuffPost:
“When you eat something with BPA, it’s like telling your organs that you are eating more than you are really eating,” says Angel Nadal, a BPA expert at the Miguel Hernendez University in Spain…
An estimated 90 percent of people in developed countries have BPA circulating in their blood at levels often higher than the threshold for causing hormone disruption used in Nadal’s study. This high incidence is due not only to exposures from leeching food packages but also BPA-infused cash register receipts, dental sealants and toilet paper.
“People are seeing effects of BPA down to 1000-fold below [Nadal's threshold],” adds Frederick vom Saal, another expert in endocrine disruptors at the University of Missouri-Columbia. “It takes so little of this chemical to cause harm.”
