Lisa Barger's Alternative Medicine

“Is ionized water a scam?”

In my opinion, “ionized water”—as it’s being marketed by the health food industry—is a scam.

In essence, “ionized water” is water that has been exposed to an electric current, supposedly to separate the positive ions from the negative ions. This is supposed to give you two types of water—one that is alkaline and one that is acidic. The alkaline water is the “good” water you’re supposed to drink and the “acidic” water is the “bad” stuff you’re supposed to avoid.

Unfortunately, what the hawkers of this miracle water won’t tell you is that pure water has very few ions in the first place so the entire process is pretty much useless. You can’t really ionize something that has few ions to begin with. They also don’t tell you that much of this country’s water is already alkaline—natually. If alkaline water was really the health panacea it’s claimed to be, wouldn’t people who live in areas where tap water tends toward the alkaline side be healthier than people whose drinking water tends more toward the acidic side?

And they also won’t tell you that your body has a very sophisticated system in place to maintain the pH of your body in a very narrow range. There’s simply no proof that you can manipulate this balance just by drinking water.

Regular readers of this will know that we’ve taken a lot of criticism for our opinion of “ionized” water but the truth is, in preparation for both this and our original article on ionized water, I could not find even one single legitimate, credentialed health professional—“natural” or mainstream—who thought you needed a $3000 machine to get good drinking water.

Regular readers will also remember that I challenged anyone with scientific proof to send it to me. I promised I would print legitimate, certified lab results and I meant it. To date, I’ve received none.

Look, alkaline water is nothing new and there’s nothing magical about it. Don’t let someone using fancy-sounding chemistry-doublespeak talk you into spending a fortune on something not supported by science. And you don’t have to take my word for it, either. Ask any legitimate medical professional if he (or she) thinks ionized water is a scam.