Alkaline water is the best for fasting. There are machines that "split" the water into acid and alkaline (you attach them to your tap). The acid water is great for cleansing the skin. Alkaline water is your drinking water. If illness is present, the ph balance is acidic. Alkaline water will, naturally, bring the balance back.

Be kind to yourself! Others are pleased in you!

Regina Noel

I agree alkaline water is best. The pH to aim for is 7.4 to 7.8, and this pH is best brought about by a misture of Calcium and Magnesium in an atomic ratio of 1:1. This is the physiological need of the body at the physiological pH. Any water from a Dolomite source is usually good, provided of course that it is not polluted.

I would like to caution all who read this topic on Alkaline water as constituting the "best" drinking water. It is my duty as site administrator to bring to your attention both points of view, and not all experts believe that water produced by the water ionizer constitutes the best drinking water. To learn about the possible dangers against this technology, please follow this link: www.fastingconnection.com/alkaline-water...-water-ionizers.html

Or go to the main "Health-Info" page and click on the "Alkaline water and water ionezers" link.

Excellent article David, scientifically written. There is one important point to mention still: We get only a percentage of our water from what we drink. There's also water in what we eat, and of course the body produces a lot of metabolic water.

I actually feel the whole issue of focusing on the VERY small amount of OTW ("other than water") substance in the little water we drink is missing the point, as there is probably a million times more OTW substances in what we eat. Very often these are the same substances that the filters remove from the water. Agricultural crops, after all, are irrigated with water, evaporates pure water and retain most of the OTW substances that was used in the irrigation water.

Anyway, the water we drink is only added to that already in the body, which (in order to be isotonic) already contains large volumes of OTW substances, many of which (For example Sodium, Potassium, Chloride) are the same as in the drinking water.

Therefore, although I believe one of my companies bottles the best water in the world, I never suggest that people use only that.. it is, after all, a really small factor in the greater picture. It's better to have whatever water you can, rather than to dehydrate..!

André

Dr Kruger thank you for your very useful comments and opening up a fresh angle on this topic. My main concern is that people don't go over the top with this new technology (water zapping ionizer), like you mentioned it is beneficial to get water from a variety of different sources.
Personally I use a five stage Reverse Osmosis filter which brings the Total Dissolved Solids down to 9 Parts Per Million from the typical 350 Parts Per Million in London tap water. The water tastes great and there is no risk of clogging up the veins and tissues with hard water and other impurities usually found in city tap water. But I also drink from bottled water and once or twice I collected fresh morning dew from a piece of specially chosen cloth. This is a unique experiment for anyone who is attuned to healthy drinking water.

Thank you for the comments. Interestingly, a university in South Africa once did research on "hard water" and found a REDUCTION in kindney stones in people who drank hard water, particularly from a dolomite region. In these hard waters, the ratio of Calcium to Magnesium is 1:1 on an atomic level (of course 40:12 on a weight level then).. \

It's interesting to still bear in mind that you get about 200 times more "hard" minerals from your diet than what you can possibly get from water, and once in the body, there's no way of telling whether it was in the water or the food or a pill or whatever else.. it distributes evenly in the circulation and in the extracellular fluid, from where the cells can then choose to absorb it or not.

Water with a very low solute level, like distilled water, causes almost immediate lysis (breakup) of cells upon contact. Isotonic fluids don't do this and af course water with some dissolved minerals but not quite isotonic will also not. But the mouth (saliva) and gullet (through secretions) puts a lot of minerals (mainly Sodium) and organic chemicals (mucus, mainly amino acids) into the water before it reaches the stomach..

Things can get complicated, but learning from Nature is always likely to be most body compatible.

André

Dr Kruger, thank you again for these valid points, however I would like to differentiate from the "hard" minerals in the body you have mentioned, and those which are found in water. According to my research, minerals which the body is able to assimilate are mostly of the chelated (organic)type.

Research carried out by the well known biologist Patricia Bragg suggests that in most cases, water from natural and unnatural sources is full of inorganic minerals which are in a non chelated state; and according to Bragg, these inorganic minerals cannot be easily assimilated by the body.

In her book "Water The Shocking Truth" she mentions that water carrying inorganic minerals can and often do clog up the arteries, kidneys etc. There are also a host of other toxic minerals in processed tap water such as chlorine, Chloramine, fluoride, lead, insecticides, herbicides, detergents, oestrogen (also found in plastic bottles) and the list goes on and on.

You mention the benefit of water taken from a Dolomite rich area in reducing kidney stones, and it may well be that here is an exception to the rule. Is it conceivable that the presence of Dolomite clay causes a particular chemical balance in water (you mention the ratio of Calcium to Magnesium) which enhances the water's cleansing properties?

Could it also be that herein lies the crux of this issue? The pivotal point being mineral ratios and combinations rather than presence or absence of certain minerals?

It would be very useful to get hold of this report so that I can post it on the site.

I am sure you are right in an ideal non polluted world one could nip out to the mountain stream and drink to one's hearts content, but for most of us urbanites, this is a thing of the past.

You also mention that the body is full of hard minerals, and I am sure that Patricia Bragg would agree that there are some minerals we ingest such as inorganic sodium which falls into this category of hard minerals or "hard" to assimilate minerals as in this particular example, the sodium or table salt is in an inorganic state, and therefore according to Bragg, not useful to the body.

If Nature is the example to follow, which I am convinced it is, then one could also use this as an example of why it is not so good to drink very alkaline water, as this is rarely found in nature.

And finally, I hastily add that coming from a non scientific background, I beg your forgiveness if you find anything I have written to be obscure, confusing or inaccurate, but I have non-the-less opted to put my head on the chopping block out of thirst for knowledge and a greater understanding of this miracle we call water.

David

Thank you for the opportunity again. "Hard" water, particularly those containing Calcium and Magnesium in a 1:1 atomic ratio, such as the dolomite sources, do actually form our original ancestral water source. Most fossils of early hominids (about 1-2 million years old) were found in dolomite areas, such as Sterkfontein. Our ancestors therefore most likely drank water from dolomite regions for large parts of our evolutionary history.

The notion about "inorganic and therefore not usable" is unfortunately totally unfounded. Once in solution, minerals become ionized (turn into cations), whether their original source was
(1) organic (accompanied by/bound to hydrocarbons) or
(2) inorganic (accompanied by/bound to anions not containing carbon).

Thus, a calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium or any other mineral ion cannot "know" how it was bound or what it was associated with when it entered the roughly 40 litres of water that is in a human body. It becomes ionized into solution and distributes throughout all the fluid compartments in the body.

Some concentration differences between the intracellular and extracellular compartments are brought about by little "pumps" in the cell walls, such as the sodium-potassium and calcium-magnesium pumps. These handle only ions, thus inorganic minerals. They are "ignorant" of where the ion came from or how it was accompanied when entering into the body fluids. As mineral ions are single atoms, they cannot carry a "history"" with them.

I hope this does not sound too technical, please let me know if I should write an article on basic chemistry to explain the background.

André

Thank you Dr Kruger, you always have such an original take on things! I would like to come back in on the discussion regarding the science underpinning chelated minerals and organic minerals. As I understand it, what you are suggesting is that it makes very little difference whether or not we consume plant minerals or "rock" minerals. This is rather odd as much of the health food industry play on their own version of biology by forever rattling on about the virtues of chelated minerals and organic minerals. Now as I understand it from my own layman's perspective, plants will absorb mostly inorganic minerals from the soil for their own nourishment and through the process of photosynthesis will transform the light from the sun and the minerals from the soil into organic minerals which are in turn easily assimilated by man (or woman) providing the plant is edible, i.e. non toxic. I know that this is a very simplified version of the complex biological processes which actually take place. However, within the sphere of this simplified model, what I am trying to reconcile in a nutshell is the concept that the human body is capable of reaping as much nourishment from sucking a garden rock as eating a lettuce leaf! Could this be the case? Or am I missing a piece of the jigsaw puzzle? Water which runs through a river bed will collect a certain quantity of minerals by virtue of being in contact with the river bed and banks.

Firstly will these cations which are formed during this process be any different to the reactions caused by placing a soft rock in one's mouth? Secondly if we can reap the benefits of minerals in our drinking water do we really need to go down the chelated route for our daily supply of minerals, (vitamins aside) or can we simply add more rock dust to our water and shake it up to create an abundance of cations? I am aware that a person with even very basic biology should be able to answer these questions, but the strange thing is that science in the natural food health sector is still at variance with some of the facts that you expounded in your last post. I trust with your help we will get to the bottom of this very soon.

As for your generous offer to write a short article on the underlying chemistry, I think there are many who would benefit from this, and would be most grateful if you are able to find time to do this.

David

Thank you for the interesting notes. I have however to differ from dr Bragg's interpretation of basic chemistry. There is NO way the minerals can "know" whether they were chelated when you first ingested them.

Chelation is just another form of making something soluble. Once in solution the minerals part from either their anions (such as sodium from chloride in ordinary salt in the naturally occuring inorganic form) or their chelates (such as EDTA or Ethylene Diamino Tetra Acetate in the synthetic chelated form). The cation is then in solution and it consists of a single ion (Calcium, Magnesium, Iron, whatever metal the cation was). There's no "memory chip" to tell it what it was bound to when first ingested.

Bragg does make interesting reading, as does the brothers Grimm. I do not doubt the good intentions but I do believe basic factual science should prevail. Anyway, I do not believe any laboratory, such as those synthesizing chelated minerals, are capable to improve on the natural which our ancestors were exposed to for millennia.

Some mineral nutrients are meant not to be easily absorbed. This allows the body to control their concentration by selective active absorbing in the first place. If we bypass this control mechanism by for example chelating the minerals in a chemical processing plant, the only alternative for the body is to try balancing their concentration by excreting the excess. Thus the excretion mechanisms become "turbocharged", which eventually leads to deficiencies and/or imbalances. This scares me to the extent that I will not willingly eat a chelated mineral.

André

I have come across a really interesting article which addresses many of the questions regarding colloidal and chelated minerals etc.

The article is entitled The Value of Organic, Plant-Derived Minerals
and the link is: www.advancedbio.com/ssmin.htm

Thank you for the reference, I have studied it and commented exhaustively but in a private e-mail as it is too long to post on a forum. You are welcome to use extracts if you so wish..
have a great day!
André

I found this thread very interesting as I do believe that taking in gobs of minerals such as iron in lumps from the chemist is a bad thing. You might as well chow down on a nail as far as I'm concerned. The body obviously takes some of them in as blood tests can prove but I'd bet that most of the minerals in the tablets (which are complete overdoses in many cases) end up in places in the body they probably shouldn't.

However minerals found in water in nature to me must be okay for us to drink. We naturally don't like salt water which is another overdose of extras but spring water which comes out of the ground and tastes as good as any water we can drink? That to me must be safe and even beneficial to drink. It's good to hear an explanation as to why this would be, not just to rely on my own common sense about the matter.

Fasting is a different matter though. For fasting I just want fresh pure water (H20) with nothing else in it. I obviously don't want chlorine and fluoride in it from my tap water which I don't drink anyway, but I also balk at adding minerals into my body on a fast when my body is digesting it's stores and seems to know where to get exactly what it needs already.. I don't like the idea of adding even small amounts of minerals into this equation and possibly giving the body confusing signals during a fast. Water is water and the body recognises the difference between water and food, but adding things to the water could have an adverse effect to the fast in my opinion.

Andrew.

Thanks for the comments Andrew, and I do think you are basically correct in your understanding. Fact is, however, none of our ancesters had access to "pure water".. actually, in periods of famine, there were likely MORE minerals in the water they drank.. after all, it was likely drought that brought on the famine in the first place!

Some of my patients, after a week or 2 on mineral water fasting, do indeed develop an aversion to mineral water and prefer distilled water, which I gladly supply.

Reading again some of David's very valid remarks, lwet's repeat: Listen to your body, it's much more knowledgeable than all the books out there!

André

The ionized water issue was why I came here. I do have an ionizer and use it daily. Since going through this thread I have backed off on the PH level, from 9.5 to 8.0.

I was originally coming here to see what peoples thoughts were on a suitable PH setting for fasting. Now however a bit of a curve ball has been thrown into the equation.

I currently drink around 4 liters of ionized water per day, all water is taken in roughly 30mins before meals or a couple of hours after meals and a small amount with meals.

Previous to drinking the ionized water I drank about 3 liters of RO/carbon filtered/UV synthesized/sediment filtered water a day, once I had the ionizer, not sure if this was mental or biological, but I craved more water badly, and upped it to 4 liters a day which satisfied the craving.

The theory and science behind the ionized water make sense to me. This has a direct relation to the electrochemical field I am involved in (corrosion engineering). The proponent stance against ionized water is very well presented and has me thinking about it. Forcing a water molecule through an RO membrane makes no sense to me, my apologies if any of you like RO water.

Overall my issue is on a personnel level, I like to think I am very "in touch" mentally and physically with anything I ingest. I can usually tell almost instantly when something is not quite right that I have taken in, and track a possible ingredient for the culprit. Ionized water has not triggered anything as far as I can tell and I absolutely crave it whereas the de-natured water I was previously drinking was more regimented regarding intake.

Anyways, those are my thoughts, I am still open to relenquishing the ionzer for water intake, and would like it if further discussion was re-visited on the electrical or chemical level regarding ionized water

Please always bear in mind, whatever water you drink, it is added to the water already in your body.. several "gallons" of the stuff. And in the water in your body there's Sodium, Chloride, Potassium, Proteins, Colloids of various description, Polipeptides, sometimes Viruses, and literally hundreds if not thousands of other substances. When you therefore add a few litres of water into the many litres already in your body, it is NOT all that important just how free of minerals/other chemicals this water is, as it only dilutes what is already inside.

And the pH of the water you drink: Bear in mind this water is unlikely buffered like your blood (serum) so its nett effect on the pH of your serum/cellular/extracellular fluid is likely negligible.

I know many people make a big issue of water but water is the one substance we ingest, which has the least potential to carry other substances into our serum or cellular fluids. We should much rather concentrate on what we eat, as this has a multiple factors larger influence.

André

Very interesting musings on ionized water Slim Pickens and it is also useful to know that you feel in touch enough with yourself to get a feel for what works and what goes against the grain. Personally I use an five stage RO filter and fit them for other people too, so I have become well acquainted with the technology. I am curious to learn why you are opposed to this system? It serves my needs in that it seems to be one of the better ways to have clean water to hand. Some people seem to worry about the lack of minerals in RO water as they do for distilled water, but I am exploring a way to add dolomite rocks to a remineralizing post filter. I have tried all the other systems too.

My very top favorite water is without a doubt dew water, but I have read that collecting morning dew from an urban area is not ideal. So I have postponed my dream for when I move to the pristine countryside.

As for deionized water, I was also interested in this water until I had some lengthy discussions with my friend Kelly Kurtz who is a scientist who has spent much time and money researching water. He gave me a number of scientific reasons why one should not drink this water, so I backed off. However as I am not a scientist I cannot honestly say that I understood all his reasons even though they seemed to strike a chord of truth on a more intuitive level. I think if you search the site you will find an article where he discusses the pros and cons of deionized water, but if you have any trouble sourcing the article let me know and I will post the link.

Thanks again for your input

David

Hey guys, thanks for the quick replies.

Regarding the ionized water, I have read Kelly's article 3 times now. As with all research you take it with a grain most certainly. He has presented an effective argument against the ionized water which has got the old hamster spinning the wheel in my head. I liked his article quite a bit, checked some other opponents against ionized water as well. The one thing I didnt find that washed was the unbonded metals such as calcium clogging your arteries, this to me is quite a stretch. I am sure there are countless organisms our bodies ingest which have a much greater propensity to artery clogging, but I believe if you are in good physical (and mental) health your body is quite aware of handling and routing of these "unbonded metals".

I liked Kelly's statement about the 4degrees ideal state water temperature, that was cool, literally, I have set my fridge at 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4 celcius) and put a jug of water in there and drink out of it. Pretty chilly, we will see how that goes. So the jury is still deliberating for me regarding the ionized water issue. I am putting pH 8.0 in the fridge at 4 degrees and chugging that between meals.

And to the doctor, I have read your various posts and much appreciation for them. You have helped shape certain aspects of my approach to diet (not dieting) and fasting. My intake as mentioned in an intro post was weekly stock up of natural/wild/organic veggies and fruits grown as local as possible, then the same natural/wild/organic meats, grains (spelt, kamut, quinoa etc.) and fish.

After all this care and attention to good wholesome food, every once in awhile, say once a month, I fall right off the wagon and go out on a good drinking binge and eat nachos. Then I dont eat the next day and just fill up on water to try to repair myself.

Regarding the 5 stage filtering systems I take it there is a sediment bed or filter of some type, then an active or passive carbon filter, UV synthesis, RO and not sure what number 5 is. I dont mind the sediment and carbon filter as this is close to a natural occurrence filtering you find in nature, but the UV and RO are not what I believe to be complimentary to your water. I am far from qualified to present a sound argument or statement regarding this, but for UV you have a wavelength of some amplitude and frequency passed through your water, this is not likely a spectrum of wavelengths (that I know of) as found in nature but rather a specific targeted wavelength(s) "radiating" whichever culprit(s) deemed unwanted. For RO, again far from qualified for me to be talking about this, but actually forcing a fluid to the point of having it break down to pass through a membrane seems to me very harsh and not complimentary to your end result. "Reviving" the water (not sure if thats a great term) in the sun, and re-mineralizing with say dolomite would be an ok structural recovery, but I am not convinced you get the value you started with. Rather the sediment and carbon filtration then maybe a mineral type sift, then throw it in the fridge at 4 degrees like Kelly says. This would be more up my alley. After all that I guess I have somewhat contradicted myself regading ionization, as that is an electrochemical reaction with interference at the molecular level.

Allright, so ending the novel, which I could probably write forever, I will be going on a fast in July for 10 days, last food intake will be july 14th noon (just raw veggies and fruits for a week), last fresh juice intake will be july 16th at noon, then starting the 17th will be day one of the 10 days. July 27th at noon we will do it in reverse with the fresh juice. I can already taste and feel that awkwardly tangy sweet or bitter salty freshly squeezed juice after the fast that cringes your face, scorches your tongue and pumps massive amounts of saliva into your mouth....

All the best to everyone,
Jackson

Slim Pickens I do like your analogy of a hamster trotting around in your head! Ok so the fact that you at least read Kelly's article and have something of a scientific background is really useful to furthering this all important debate.

There are a number of points I feel the need to pick up on.

1. Equating Calcium with 'unbonded metal' Is Calcium not a mineral so did you mean unbonded mineral? If not could you explain please.

There are really two schools of thought. One is that minerals in water clog up the arteries as they are not in an ionic state(organic) minerals i.e. minerals which have been transformed by plants. So most minerals in water could be likened to sucking a stone. According to Dr Kruger some of these minerals such as Dolomite (calcium and magnesium) are in fact safe to ingest or 'suck'. I am currently experimenting with Dolomite in tablet form, but am looking for a suitable Dolomite rock to 'chew'
Strong proponents of this theory are Dr Norman Walker and Patricia Bragg, Paul Bragg's daughter who has written a book entitled: Water The Shocking Truth.
She has a background in biology, but Dr Kruger suggests that her biology is out of date.
The second school of thought is that it is perfectly safe to consume inorganic minerals.

Here is an article which explains it much better than I can:

vitamins-minerals.suite101.com/article.c...ls_in_drinking_water

2. From a Natural Hygienic or Nature Cure perspective, there is already a problem with attempting to change your water pH as if you take the example of Mother Nature as the 'optimal yardstick' (before human's extreme adulteration of Nature) I do not think you would encounter high alkaline water in Nature, but rather a balanced or slightly acidic pH. By altering the pH of water you are in effect suggesting that science has come up with a more optimal formula than what Mother Nature has to offer. Please don't think that I am dismissing it out of hand, but just rather going by the theory that Mother Nature for the most part gets it right or at least this is from a Natural Hygienic perspective.

There is also the notion which Kelly introduced about the body being a transformer or if you like an alchemist. So by ingesting the end product of what the body needs once it has done its own chemistry it is similar to drinking juice without any chewing. Where in nature do you find orange juice or pear juice etc? So according to Kelly's model it would be more favorable to drink slightly acidic water so that the body can transform it to make its own alkaline water. As I am not a chemist this is all philosophical as Dr Kruger would put it. But that is the kind of contribution I can make. Come up with an idea but alas not back it up with science. But I hope you get the picture.

3. I get what you mean by pressing water through a perforated membrane and I have often wondered about the effect this would have on H2O but have not found any literature on it. There again the alternative would be to drink water just using ceramic, Activated Carbon and a sediment filter, but if you check the technical data sheets, these do not eliminate all the nasties.

Also using the RO I get my London tap water down to about 12ppm whereas this would not be possible using just carbon filters and ceramic filters. I have tried all permutations.

4. I do not use UV lighting and have never really had any problem with bacteria, but precautions do need to be taken, such as emptying out the tank when the filters have been inactive for a week etc.

5. I would like to reiterate that I firmly believe that dew water is the best water to drink, but unfortunately you would have to live away from city conditions to get optimum dew. If you do try it let us know what you think of the taste.

Are you joining the July Group Fast if so let me know and I will add you to the list.

Experience has shown that only very few can actually stick to a dietry plan of action as you have mapped out, so sometimes it is best not to plan in order to avoid any unnecessary disappointment as that causes stress and can also trigger over eating too!

David

David, right on, quick on the draw,

This is a choppy response as I have been writing reports at the same time with some back and forth on this, the order might not make sense should be ok though.

I would love to reply to the fullest of my understanding and logic behind all of the factors but my 1st year biology and 2nd year organic and inorganic chemistry are stored pretty deeply somewhere in my brain and not readily accessible. I went pretty deep into the ionized water research a few months ago so giving my brain a break from the deep retrieval mode. I even dusted off the old textbooks to help with the research. I will revisit it soon though considering both sides of the equation. For now I will continue with the 8.0 pH @ 4 degrees, and relax.

The comment regarding the "unbonded" metal was not accurate on my behalf, it was in reference to this comment in the article"Metal ions of calcium (made with the help of water-ionizers) plaque arterial walls causing stroke/heart attacks" I dont buy this as a biologically allowable process, especially in a healthy body. Possibly in an excessively unhealthy body where the digestive system has been in full shock for such a long period it somewhat gives up, then possibly.

Overall Kelly has put together some solid material, but for myself and I am sure many others, you always read these types of articles and the first thought that crosses my mind is was it a real experiment or was outcome already pre-conceived and the experiment portion just a formality. This train of thought is much more applicable to the pharmaceutical industry, but still everyone may possibly have a slight agenda or something to sell.

On a side note, feel free to absolutely slash and burn any comments I make, I take absolutely no offense whatsoever, it is obviously preferred if a basis and sound argument to counter or redirect my thoughts is forwarded, as you have done, but also if others feel the need to be full out negative I just laugh it off.

I have not actually heard premise behind dew water, the concept as implied is straightforward and makes sense, unfortunately I live in the city as well and further unfortunate is its quite arid thus not readily available even in the country. Although we do have the canadian rocky mountain water Kelly talks about 45 minutes away.

Havent noticed the group fast, I would assume its an online collaboration for support, exchange of ideas and possibly just some good old BS'ing to pass the time during a fast?
Once more, I have posted my regiment a few places, but the official start is Thursday July 17th to Sunday the 26th, 10 days, with a 1/2 day trailing and leading with just water. If others are up for this alignment then I am good.

Hopefully I have replied sufficiently or forwarded moderately acceptable opinions for now. I will get back into it soon enough and post my moderately hopefully more acceptable and better researched opinions.