Myth: Ionized alkaline water alkalizes the blood

What type of water to drink is a controversial topic. Everybody has their own theory on what's the best type of water to drink. At the end of the day, one who drinks the "best" water may still get diseased, while the one who drinks tap water may live to a hundred.

Many people seem to think that ionized alkaline water is the best. No doubt our body needs to be more alkaline than acidic, but alkalinity of the blood is best being hydrated by eating/drinking "alkaline-forming" foods. There is alkaline water, and there are alkaline-forming foods. They're different. Our digestive system needs to be acidic, but drinking alkaline water neutralizes the acidity in the stomach, not helping with digestion. This may cause digestive problems and can be dangerous in the long run.

On the other hand, fresh juices provide all the alkaline-forming minerals (e.g. potassium, calcium, magnesium, manganese and iron) that convert blood acidity into alkalinity.

When in doubt, always look to nature. Look back to the time of the cavemen. They never had an ionizer to ionize and alkalize their water. Nor any other water processor for that matter. But they had nature that provided them with fresh fruits and vegetables for hydration.

Likewise with the argument about drinking distilled water. Again, look to nature. The process of rain water is one of condensation/distillation. Water is being evaporated into the sky, forming clouds and they fall back to earth as rain water to water the earth. This is the type of water we drink, distilled water.

One may argue that spring water flows out of the ground, so that's nature and we should be drinking spring water. Yes, that's nature but the origin was still from condensed water from the clouds. Spring water is distilled water absorbing the minerals of the soil. So, depending on where you are, you get hard or soft water. Ditto with mountain or stream water. There may be minerals in these waters, but they are not made bio-available to our body. We get the minerals best from fresh fruits/vegetables.

Rain water is supposed to be the best drinking water. Think cavemen's time when there was no pollution, that would be the purest form of drinking water. Due to the air pollution in our modern world, a distiller is invented by those who understood the concept of drinking distilled water.

The pH level of distilled water is 7.0 because it's neutral. It's not true what a "renowned online doctor" says that distilled water can turn acidic by absorbing carbon dioxide from the air. The air is composed of 78.9% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon and only a very small 0.038% carbon dioxide and the balance is the other minor elements. If distilled water would absorb these elements, why not absorb oxygen and we can say we need the oxygen in our body. But he said that the distilled water absorbs CO2 that makes the water acidic. Not true! In any case, these elements have no pH value to them, so we cannot say that they would turn the water acidic.

I want to reiterate the danger of drinking alkaline water as many of my clients had asked me if they should buy a very expensive alkaline water processor. I see many of my clients receive healing through drinking many liters of fresh fruit/vegetable juices daily through juice fasting/feasting.

On the other hand, there are a few who reported being sickly after drinking many liters of alkaline water. This is an alkalosis condition.  Note that ionized alkaline water often measure about 9-10 on the pH value chart which is highly alkaline.  Some of the symptoms of alkalosis are: diarrhea, stomach cramps, vomiting and severe headache. In severe cases, brain chemistry is altered that leads to confusion, disorientation, hand tremor and muscles twitching.

Do your own research, think logically, and make your own informed decision about what's best for you.

Recently, a friend told me that she often drinks orange juice with Pellegrino natural sparkling mineral water and asked me if that was ok. I did some research and this is what I replied to her:

While drinking citrus fruit juices (lemons, oranges, grapefruits, etc.) may taste acidic, they are really alkaline-forming. By adding sparkling water, it makes the drink acidic. Sparkling water is a carbonated drink. Carbonated drinks are made by injecting carbon dioxide into the water under pressure. Pellegrino may have naturally-occurring carbonation but when bottling, more carbonation is added. The more carbon dioxide injected, the lower the pH, the more acidic it gets, the more fizzy it is.

We all know that carbon dioxide is a waste product exhaled by human. We don't need carbon dioxide, so why are we taking it by drinking carbonated drinks? Too much carbon dioxide kills healthy cells. Dead cells cause an acidic environment. In an acidic environment, some cells may survive by becoming abnormal malignant cells.

With mineral water, the minerals contained in the water are inactive and cannot be made bio-available to our cells, thus stay in our system. The inability to detoxify the excess minerals may cause deposits of the calcified materials in our blood vessels, joints and in our detox organs (liver, kidneys). The minerals that our bodies need must come from the raw plant foods we eat (i.e. fruits, vegetables, herbs, nuts and seeds) especially from fresh juices.

On the other hand, distilled water has its function of "leaching" inorganic minerals from our body cells and tissues to be eliminated from the body. The fluid in our blood is "distilled".

Fresh raw juices is the result of distillation by plant process. As a plant grows, the roots collect minerals from the earth, convert them into live organic elements and absorb them into the stem, the stalks, the leaves, the seeds, flowers and fruits. When we obtain our hydration from fresh fruit and vegetable juices, they are rich with enzymes, nutrients, minerals, and phytonutrients. It is LIVE food.

Rain water goes through a distillation process. It is how nature works. And it is the type of water that we should be drinking ... distilled water.

The foundation of a child's intestinal flora

As I was researching the Net about what causes colic in infants, most clinical sites gave various reasons BUT the real reasons.  Most say it's "unexplained" or "unclear". 

In one of his earlier books on "Tissue Cleansing Through Bowel Management" Dr Bernard Jensen on page 69 said ...

"Within the mother's milk is a substance known as colostrum. This substance produces a baby's first peristaltic action in the bowel.  Being the first nourishment ingested into the system, mother's milk produces an acid environment in the colon. This occurs due to the lactose or milk sugar that reaches the colon.

When a mother breastfeeds her baby, she gives it the best possible start in life and health.

The first bacteria to enter the child's digestive tract will establish itself within a matter of hours from birth. It is now that a very critical decision has been made that will influence the growth of the individual for its life's duration.

If the colon is found to be acid, promoted by mother's milk, then the acidophilus will take root and flourish. If the colon is found to be alkaline or neutral the chances of bacillus coli to flourish are encouraged.

The lactose of mother's milk has the unique quality of being slowly metabolized by the body. It reaches the colon still intact and provides nourishment for the acidophilus bacteria.

Formulas other than mother's milk deprive the colon of this food and, therefore, set the stage for coli inhabitation - the beginning of disease."

On page 73, he continued ...

"The lactobacillus bifidus predominates in the infant colon. It keeps the child from developing many infant diseases, and makes him also immune to many diseases, as long as he is fed on breast milk, for then the colon is normally acid in reaction."

Before I learned about nutrition, I decided not to breastfeed my baby but gave her formula milk instead, due to vanity reasons. By the time she was 8, she's had all sorts of stomach problems.  She used to break out in cold sweats after eating breakfast, sometimes she has fever for no reason.  Her food would not go down well and many times she would throw up after eating. Breaking wind was so common with her that we even gave up counting when she did more than 200 times by noon! One time she had a stomach flu that was so bad she ended up in hospital after vomiting more than 7 times in a day. Even her pediatrician had no clue how to begin to treat her for her stomach problems.

Fortunately, I met a nutritionist friend who introduced me to a high quality probiotics.  It contained bifidobacterium longum (10 billion) and lactobacillus acidophilus (1 billion) with prebiotics (fructo-oligosaccharides). From the moment my daughter took the first packet of that microflora foods, she stopped having stomach pains and could eat food and keep them down normally.  I put her on that pro/prebiotics food for about three months, and begin to learn more about nutrition.  Since then, my girl has hardly ever had any stomach problems.  If she did, I now know what caused them and what to do to alleviate the problems.

When a mother cannot breastfeed her baby for whatever reason, the next best milk would be raw goat's milk, never cow's milk. The reason being that goat's milk has much more finer molecules that are more easily assimilated by our cells, compared to cow's milk that is very mucus-forming.