I can’t begin to tell you how much pleasure it gives me to
write this article. I will never forget being severly chastized a few years ago
by a senior executive of a company that sells thousands of RO systems per year
for “not knowing what I’m talking about” and that my challenge to him and the
industry about RO water being unhealthy was “preposterous”. At the time of the
meeting I was not equipped to fend off his accusations because I hadn’t put in
the research that I have now.
Despite being torn to shreds by the marketing executive at the
meeting, I never believed the RO industry claim that it didn’t matter if their
systems removed everything from the source water because the human body
couldn’t absorb inorganic molecules anyway. After all, most of the supplements
that are available on the market are inorganic, which means that either the RO
industry was protecting its “ass-ets” or the entire supplement industry was a
scam.
The RO industry has been disseminating inaccurate (that’s about as
politically correct as I can get) information for years. Doctors and other
health care professionals have unwittingly been endorsing the “RO water is the
best drinking water” message for years which makes the myth worse because we
trust these people with our health.
Proof that RO water is
unhealthy
I could write about the dozens of interviews I have conducted with
water industry experts and biochemists, or about the hundreds of scientific
articles I have reviewed but nobody would take the time to read it. In order to
keep things brief, I offer two sources of evidence that unequivically reveal
the fact that the water produced by RO systems is bad for your health if you
drink the water over the long term.
The American government’s online health
website www.pubmed.gov is an arm of the National Institutes of
Health. The site offers a collection of:
more than 22 million citations for biomedical literature from
MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books
I spent several long days poring over numerous studies related to
the ability of the human body to absorb inorganic elements such as Calcium and
Magnesium. I managed to find 14 scientific studies on the site that provide
irrefutable evidence that the human body can and does absorb inorganic matter
such as Calcium and Magnesium.
The bottom line of what I learned from reviewing the studies is
that your body will absorb anywhere fro 6% to 30% of its daily requirement of
essential elements from tap water. In a world where our soil is virtually devoid
of nutriets from too many crops and not enough recovery time, and where diets
are anything but healthy, it is very important to your long term health that
you ingest calcium and magnesium from drinking water.
The second website that drives a dagger into the RO industry myth
that its pure water is healthy comes from the World Health Organization
(W.H.O.). The WHO provides us with a Position Paper titled “The Health risks
from drinking
demineralized water” which was written by F. Kozisek. You can tell by the title where the article is headed.
demineralized water” which was written by F. Kozisek. You can tell by the title where the article is headed.
Here are some of the highlights from the article:
The final report, published as an internal working document (WHO
1980), concluded that “not only does completely demineralised water
(distillate) have unsatisfactory organoleptic properities, but it also has a
definite adverse influence on the animal and human organism.”
The potential for adverse health effects from long term
consumption of demineralised water is of interest not only in countries lacking
adequate fresh water but also in countries where some types of home water
treatment systems
are widely used or where some types of bottled water are consumed
are widely used or where some types of bottled water are consumed
The WHO provided
recommendations in 2004 as to what they believe should be included in drinking
water and in what concentrations:
* For magnesium, a minimum of 10 mg/l (Novikov et al. 1983;
Rubenowitz et al. 2000) and an optimum of about 20-30 mg/l (Durlach et al.
1989; Kozisek 1992);
* For calcium, a minimum of 20 mg/l (Novikov et al. 1983) and an
optimum of about 50 (40-80) mg/l (Rakhmanin et al. 1990; Kozisek 1992);
* For total water hardness, the sum of calcium and magnesium
should be 2 to 4 mmol/l (Plitman et al. 1989; Lutai 1992; Muzalevskaya et al.
1993; Golubev and Zimin 1994).
At these concentrations, minimum or no adverse health effects were
observed. The maximum protective or beneficial health effects of drinking water
appeared to occur at the estimated desirable or optimum concentrations. The
recommended magnesium levels were based on cardiovascular system effects, while
changes in calcium metabolism and ossification were used as a basis for the
recommended calcium levels
Summary of the research:
Scientific testing and the best “unbiased” brains in the world
have repeatedly demonstrated that long term consumption of demineralized (RO)
water is bad for your health.
What should you do if you
are drinking demineralized “RO” water?
You don’t need to disconnect your RO system and throw it away
(unless it is operating ineffectively which often happens if the system is not
properly maintained). RO systems do a great job of removing
impurities/contaminants from the water and that is a good thing. The problem
with RO systems is that they don’t discriminate between good stuff and bad
stuff as they remove everything. What you need to do is remineralize the water
once it has passed through the RO membrane. Adding back Magnesium and Caclium
in the proper concentrations fixes the problem.
The RO industry is just waking up to the reality that long term
consumption of demineralized water is bad for your health. The sellers of RO
equipment are now racing around trying to find a solution to making their water
healthy. From what I can see from the initial offerings, the industry has not
done its homework because they are offering Corosex and Calcite solutions.
While Corosex and Calcite will remineralize water, they were never designed to
work with the aggressive acidic water produced by RO systems. As a result,
Calcite and Corosex filters can dump more minerals into the water than your
kidneys can digest and result in the formation of kidney stones. Calcite and
Corosex filters are obviously not the right solution for remineralizing
aggressive acidic water produced by RO machines.
What is the solution?
My focus for the past couple of years has been on natural
remineralizing filters which can be used on their own as basic ionizing
filters, or in conjunction with RO systems. Intuitively, one would think that
the media of the various remineralization filters on the market would be very
similar, and to some degree they are. However, I have found that even the
smallest changes in the media, or the amounts of media used, and even the way
that the media is layered inside the filter can make a big difference in the
performance and life expectancy of the filter. Based upon my testing and what I
see in the market, the best RO/remineralization system on the market is the
Maxx by Vitev. You learn check it out athttp://www.leaupurewater.com/If you
already have your own RO system, all you need to do is add a Remin filter to
make your RO water healthy. Check out: http://www.leaupurewater.com/which is
the exact same filter used in the unit above. If you are thinking that the
remineralization filter is the key to performance, you would be correct.
As more and more people buy systems that produce clean and healthy
water, everyone should be able to take advantage of lower prices as the
economies of scale kick in. I have been pushing the companies in the industry
to lower their prices for a long time with little success until recently.
http://www.leaupurewater.com/
having alkaline RO starting from Rs.8990 to 21990
