Real vs. fake water

In further adventures of friends and loyal readers of Skeptophilia trying to induce me to do a skull-fracture-inducing faceplant, today we have: "Real Water."

I bet you thought you were fine drinking regular old tap water.  I know that's what I thought.  But little did I know that tap water (and other sorts of water) are "damaged."  Here's a direct quote from their website:

Most of the drinking water is stripped of valuable electrons, making the water acidic and creating free radicals. 

Free radicals steal electrons from the body’s cells.  This is called Free Radical Damage and it is the cause of many serious health conditions.  They operate much like rust on a car, zapping people from their life force.

So the claim, apparently, is, "the more electrons, the better."  This comes as a bit of a surprise, because when large amounts of electrons are contributed to someone's body all at once, this is called "being struck by lightning."  The result is called "electrocution," and frequently, "death."

But that doesn't stop the "Real Water" people, who tell us that they somehow put the missing electrons back in:

E2: Electron Energized Technology adds trillions and trillions of electrons.  Thus producing stable negative ionization.  Negative ions along with antioxidants act to neutralize free radicals.  They are more accepted by the body’s aquaporins.  Channels the usher in water and cellular nutrients for increased cellular hydration.

Like many woo-woo claims, this one has a few grains of truth.  Antioxidants do exist, and they do neutralize free radicals that (left unchecked) would oxidize organic compounds.  One of the most common free radicals in living systems is the peroxide ion (O2-), and we actually make three enzymes to deal with it -- catalase, superoxide dismutase, and glutathione peroxidase.  Given that peroxide ions and other free radicals would build up and kill us without them, it's a little unlikely that we'd have evolved just to sit around until the Real Water company came along to provide us with "alkalinized water" to deal with the problem.

We also get antioxidants in our food, especially vitamins C and E, and selenium.  However -- and this is important -- extensive studies have shown that taking supplements of any or all of these has no effect on the incidence of either cancer (often attributed to free radical damage) or degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.  So the whole antioxidant craze is a conglomeration of small amounts of actual science mixed with a heaping helping of hype and outright falsehood.

Don't be fooled by how harmless this looks.  It could be hosting free radicals.  Or evil spirits.  Or something.  [Image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Then there's the aquaporin thing.  Those do exist, and in fact are critical for moving water into and out of cells (water can pass through cell membranes, but slowly).  However, there is absolutely no evidence that creating "stable negative ionization," or (as the site also claims) "structuring water," makes a difference with regards to how the body uses it.  If you don't believe me, humble biology teacher that I am, maybe you'll accept the word of Stephen Lower, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at Simon Fraser University:

Any uncertainty that the chemistry community may have about the nature and existence of water clusters is not apparently shared by the various "inventors" who have not only "discovered" these elusive creatures, but who claim findings that science has never even dreamed of!  These promoters have spun their half-baked crackpot chemistry into various watery nostrums that they say are essential to your health and able to cure whatever-ails-you.  These benificences are hawked to the more gullible of the general public, usually in the form of a "concentrate" that you can add to your drinking water— all for a $20-$50 charge on your credit card. 

Some of these hucksters claim to make the water into "clusters" that are larger, smaller, or hexagonal-shaped, allowing them to more readily promote "cellular hydration" and remove "toxins" from your body.

The fact is that none of these views has any significant support in the scientific communities of chemistry, biochemistry, or physiology, nor are they even considered worthy of debate.  The only places you are likely to see these views advocated are in literature (and on websites) intended to promote the sale of these products to consumers in the notoriously credulous "alternative" health and "dietary supplement" market.

And one last thing: "acid" doesn't mean "bad" and "alkaline," "good."  In fact, one of the major functions of your kidneys is to maintain your blood pH, and if that didn't work, you'd drop dead of blood acidosis every time you drank a glass of lemonade, which (at a pH of around 3) has 10,000 times the number of hydrogen ions per milliliter as tap water does.  If you are in any doubt as to how tightly this system is controlled, let me elaborate:

blood pH = 7.6: dead
blood pH = 7.5: blood alkalinosis -- lethargy, confusion, coma
blood pH = 7.4: healthy and happy
blood pH = 7.3: blood acidosis -- gasping for breath, rapid heartbeat, headache, nausea
blood pH = 7.2: dead

So even if "Real Water" could alkalinize your blood, the result would not be better health, or protecting you from rusting, or whatever the fuck it is they're claiming.

And at $36 (plus shipping and handling) for a twelve-pack of one-liter bottles, it's not cheap.  The bottom line: "Real Water" is primarily aimed at people with more money than sense.

Anyhow.  That's today's helping of pseudoscience.  Me, I'm going to go get a cup of plain old tap water, heated up, to which has been added ground up toxin-free all-natural free-radical-busting aura-protecting seeds from the sacred plant Coffea arabica.

Better known as coffee.

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NEW FEATURE ON SKEPTOPHILIA!

Each week (more often if I find something really cool) I'll post a link to a book that should be required reading for all skeptics.  This week I'll start with a classic: Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.  If you haven't read this one, you should rectify that error immediately!

Nutritional hydrogen

Yesterday I ran into an interesting example of the fact that a novel idea, explained by a non-scientist, can skew a person's reaction toward thinking it's nonsense.

The topic came up because of an email from a loyal reader of Skeptophilia who sent me a link to the website of one Zen Honeycutt, called Moms Across America, wherein she touts the value of molecular hydrogen as a nutritional supplement.  The email said, in toto, "What the hell?"

And to read what she writes, it seems like woo of the worst kind.  I mean, listen to how she sells this stuff:

Approximately 3.6 billion years ago Molecular Hydrogen served as the original energy source for Primordial cellular life, fueling its metabolic processes and protecting it from the hostile environment of early Earth. Without it, life would not exist.

Which is true in the sense that 99% of the atoms in the universe are hydrogen, and a great proportion of the atoms making up the organic compounds in our body are hydrogen (in fact, they're only outnumbered by carbon).  Add that to the fact that hydrogen is what fuels the nuclear fusion reactions in our Sun, then yeah... I'd say hydrogen is pretty important.

[image courtesy of NASA]

She goes on to say:

Hydrogen is the first and most abundant element in the Universe! Two atoms combine to form hydrogen gas, H2, the smallest and most mobile molecule. This exclusive property gives it greater cellular bioavailability than any other nutrient or nutraceutical. Molecular Hydrogen can rapidly diffuse into cells, mitochondria and fluids throughout the body to deliver its unique and abundant benefits.

And once again, there's truth here, but it's so mixed up that it's misleading.  Hydrogen ions are used as energy carriers in both respiration and photosynthesis, but it's unclear if this is what she's referring to.  And the part about hydrogen diffusing quickly is a pretty dubious selling point.  After all, hydrogen cyanide is also a small, mobile molecule, capable of diffusing rapidly into your cells and your mitochondria.  The problem is, it also blocks cellular respiration, leading to the unfortunate side effect of death.

Then we hear that hydrogen is found in high quantities in "healing waters" and raw foods:

An additional benefit is that Active H2 generates an electron-rich potential (-ORP) in the water (you can measure it!). This rare property is uniquely found in fresh, raw living foods and juices, mothers milk and many of the world’s healing waters.

And that, unfortunately, is just plain nonsense.

So anyway, on and on she goes, sounding like the wooiest woo that ever wooed.  But the ironic part?

This all has some basis in fact, as far-fetched as it sounds.

Shigeo Ohta, of the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at the Nippon School of Medicine, wrote a paper describing research he'd performed on the effects of molecular hydrogen on oxidative stress.  His research, described in "Recent Progress Toward Hydrogen Medicine: Potential of Molecular Hydrogen for Preventive and Therapeutic Applications" in the June 2011 Current Pharmaceutical Design, is described as follows:

Persistent oxidative stress is one of the major causes of most lifestyle-related diseases, cancer and the aging process.  Acute oxidative stress directly causes serious damage to tissues.  Despite the clinical importance of oxidative damage, antioxidants have been of limited therapeutic success.  We have proposed that molecular hydrogen (H2) has potential as a “novel” antioxidant in preventive and therapeutic applications [Ohsawa et al., Nat Med. 2007: 13; 688-94].  H2 has a number of advantages as a potential antioxidant:  H2 rapidly diffuses into tissues and cells, and it is mild enough neither to disturb metabolic redox reactions nor to affect reactive oxygen species (ROS) that function in cell signaling, thereby, there should be little adverse effects of consuming H2.  There are several methods to ingest or consume H2, including inhaling hydrogen gas, drinking H2-dissolved water (hydrogen water), taking a hydrogen bath, injecting H2-dissolved saline (hydrogen saline), dropping hydrogen saline onto the eye, and increasing the production of intestinal H2 by bacteria.  Since the publication of the first H2 paper in Nature Medicine in 2007, the biological effects of H2 have been confirmed by the publication of more than 38 diseases, physiological states and clinical tests in leading biological/medical journals, and several groups have started clinical examinations. Moreover, H2 shows not only effects against oxidative stress, but also various anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic effects. H2 regulates various gene expressions and protein-phosphorylations, though the molecular mechanisms underlying the marked effects of very small amounts of H2 remain elusive.

When I read this, I said, and I quote, "Well, I'll be damned."  Upon doing some digging, I found corroborating papers in the Journal of Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity, Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology, the Journal of Biomedicine and Environmental Science, and the prestigious Nature Medicine.

Now, it's important to note that the research I read was pretty clear that these were preliminary results, and it is far from certain what positive effects a person might accrue from consuming hydrogen-infused water.  A lot of interesting supplements and medical therapies have turned out, upon further study, not to live up to their promise.  Certainly Zen Honeycutt's enthusiasm seems a little premature.

But what I find most interesting about all of this is how unscientific commentary, blended in with misunderstanding and outright silliness, can blind you to something that actually has scientific merit.  I know that my own reaction, upon reading Honeycutt's website, was "Wow, this is serious bullshit."  And had I dismissed it out of hand because it "sounded silly," that wouldn't have been proper skepticism -- it would have been scoffing at a claim because it didn't fit my preconceived notion of how the world works.

All the more indication that the fundamental rule, when reading anything, is "check your sources."

Especially when it sounds like nonsense at first.

In vino veritas

In some ways, it's no wonder that people these days distrust everything coming out of the media.

Look, for example, at the whole thing about "antioxidants."  To a lot of folks who are "natural medicines" aficionados, antioxidants seem like the next best thing to an immortality pill.  Consider some of the claims made about resveratrol, an antioxidant that occurs naturally in grape skins (and therefore in red wine).

From Fit Day:

The... health benefits from drinking wine have been proven to be from poly-phenolic flavonoids, which are better known as antioxidants. These antioxidants are found in grapes that are used in wine. More antioxidants exist in red wines than in white wines because grape skins, which are rich in antioxidants, are included in fermentation in red wines. The antioxidants that are most active in wine are resveratrol, quercetin, and the catechins.

These antioxidants neutralize harmful free radicals in your body, which can cause certain types of cancer, heart disease, stroke, immune dysfunction, and degenerative disorders such as dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Harmful free radicals are everywhere in our environment, but mostly caused by exposure to pollution, chemicals, radiation, pesticides, alcohol, unhealthy food, and even sunshine.

From WebMD:

A new study shows an antioxidant found in red wine destroys cancer cells from the inside and enhances the effectiveness of radiation and chemotherapy cancer treatments.

Researchers say the antioxidant found in grape skins, known as resveratrol, appears to work by targeting the cancer cell's energy source from within and crippling it. When combined with radiation, treatment with resveratrol prior to radiation also induced cell death, an important goal of cancer treatment.

From Wine Folly:

While your health-freak friends spend hundreds of dollars on weird miracle fruit juices, you can sit back and relax. As it happens, your red wine habit might just be the key to staying young longer.

The health benefits of red wine are greater than you might think. Besides having antioxidants, fermented foods are good for digestion and alcohol itself has also shown some surprising traits over long-term moderate use. Discover the health benefits of red wine and how much you should consume to live well.

Sounds pretty good so far, doesn't it?  Far as we can tell, the key to a long, healthy life might be inside your next bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.

Dig a little deeper, though, and you begin to find that despite the hoopla about antioxidants in general, and red wine in particular, there is far from consensus on the subject.

From a study at the University of Copenhagen:

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen followed 27 men with an average age of 65 who were in good health.  Over an eight-week period, all of the study’s participants performed high-intensity exercises, but half received 250 milligrams of resveratrol each day, while the other half received a placebo.

For the men taking resveratrol supplements, it seemed as though the benefits they received from exercising had been reduced.

"We found that exercise training was highly effective in improving cardiovascular health parameters, but resveratrol supplementation attenuated the positive effects of training on several parameters, including blood pressure, plasma lipid concentrations and maximal oxygen uptake," said Lasse Gliemann, a researcher who worked on the study.

From an article by Harriet Hall, in the online magazine Skeptic:

What happens when we ingest more antioxidants than we need? Is the excess excreted? Does it just sit there doing nothing? Does it do something we didn’t intend? It would be nice to know.

There is good evidence that people who eat more fruits and vegetables are less likely to develop cancer, heart disease, and other ailments—and are likely to live longer. It’s easy to assume that the antioxidants in fruits and vegetables are responsible, but that might not be true. Other components of these foods (such as flavonoids) or the mixture of components in the diet might be responsible. Or maybe people who eat less fruit and vegetables are eating more of something else that causes those diseases.

If antioxidants in food do reduce the incidence of those diseases, it’s only logical to think that antioxidant supplements would reduce the incidence even more. Unfortunately, controlled studies have consistently shown that they either have no effect or make things worse. It’s not the first time reality has rudely intervened to spoil a great idea. Study after study has shown no benefit of antioxidants for heart disease, cancer, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, or longevity.

Well, I don't know about you, but I find that kind of disappointing.  I love red wine (I think it's in my genes, being of French ancestry), and it was nice to think that I wasn't just drinking it because it tastes good, but that it was doing something positive for my health.  Now, it seems like I might have to reevaluate my rationalization for my oenophilia (and yes, that's the real word for the love of wine).

The bottom line is, it's hard to establish health claims with any certainty, simply because human health is so complicated.  We do need some antioxidants; they break down free radicals (also called reactive oxygen species), natural metabolic byproducts that, left unchecked, can damage tissue.  But we not only get antioxidants in our diet, we produce them -- three well-studied ones are peroxidase, catalase, and superoxide dismutase.  Even if we did get some benefit from the antioxidants in red wine, how would we tease that out from the effects of other antioxidant chemicals in our diet (such as vitamin C and lycopene), and the action of our own self-generated antioxidant enzymes?

Not a simple task.  Which is why, unfortunately, the media has tended to cling desperately to the simple answer -- "red wine is good for you."

But it's understandable why this is a popular position, isn't it?

The truth, as usual, is far more complex than that.  And despite my doubts that red wine has any significant benefits to my health -- which is my conclusion, after having read a good bit of the research on the topic -- I'm not going to give up drinking the stuff myself.  I'm of the opinion that a glass of bold California Syrah next to a rare t-bone steak is just about one of the finest things in the world.

Whether or not it extends my life.