Kangen water is a trademark for machine-electrolysed water, owned by Enagic. Similar water is also variously known as Electrolyzed Reduced Alkaline Water, Alkaline Water, Structured Water, or Hexagonal Water. It’s popular among new-age influencers and their followers, because it raises the vibrational frequency of their chakras and kundalinis, thereby energising the Qui so that Gemini shines in their quantum auras, or something. Of course, none of these are verifiable �because they’re all fictional.
Enagic itself is careful not to over-promise; their website says that their water can be used for preparing food, making coffee, watering plants, washing your pets, face, hair � who knew?! It rather confusingly tells you “Take your medicine with this water” (Archived web page):
Kangen Water® is intended for everyday drinking and cooking rather than for drinking with medication. The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare gives the following directions: Do not take medication with machine-produced water. (Archived page)
Alkaline water’s health benefits
As for health benefits, Enagic simply claims that Kangen water is
perfect for drinking and healthy cooking. This electrolytically-reduced, hydrogen-rich water works to restore your body to a more alkaline state, which is optimal for good health.
The mechanism by which it makes your body more alkaline is not explained, nor why a more alkaline state should be “optimal for good health”. In its article Is alkaline water a miracle cure � or BS? The science is in, The Guardian cites Dr Tanis Fenton, an adjunct professor at the University of Calgary and an evidence analyst for Dietitians of Canada:
Fenton stresses, you simply can’t change the pH of your body by drinking alkaline water. “Your body regulates its [blood] pH in a very narrow range because all our enzymes are designed to work at pH 7.4. If our pH varied too much we wouldn’t survive.��
Masaru Emoto and Water memory
The swamps of social media are full of people selling magic Water to each other, making all sorts of outlandish unscientific claims, such as water has “memory”:
This hokum was popularised by Masuru Emoto, a graduate in International Relations who became a “Doctor” of Alternative Medicine at the Open International University for Alternative Medicine in India, a diploma mill which targeted quacks to sell its degrees and was later shut down.
(The idea that water holds memory is often cited by fans of homeopathy. They agree: there is none of the actual substance remaining in this water because it’s been diluted out of existence, but it does its magical healing because the water *remembers*. Cosmic, maaan.)
Mr Emoto’s results have never been reproduced, his methodology was unscientific, sloppy and subjective. Mr Emoto was invited to participate in the James Randi Educational Foundation’s Million Dollar Challenge in which pseudo-scientists are invited to replicate their results in properly controlled scientific methods, and get paid $1 million if they succeed. For some inexplicable reason, he didn’t take up the challenge.
Hexagonal water hydrates better
It’s also claimed that this magical water forms hexagonal “clusters” that somehow make it more hydrating because it’s more readily absorbed by cells. This is nonsense: although water clusters have been observed experimentally, they have a very short lifetime: the hydrogen bonds are continually breaking and reforming at timescales shorter than 200 femtoseconds.
In any case, Water molecules enter cells through a structure called an aquaporin, in single file. If they were clustered, they would be too big to enter the cell.
Despite the promotion of the alkaline diet and alkaline water by the media and salespeople, there is almost no actual research to either support or disprove these ideas. This systematic review of the literature revealed a lack of evidence for or against diet acid load and/or alkaline water for the initiation or treatment of cancer. Promotion of alkaline diet and alkaline water to the public for cancer prevention or treatment is not justified.
It was demonstrated that degradation of the electrodes during functioning of the device releases very reactive nanoparticles of platinum, the toxicity of which has not yet been clearly proven. This report recommends alerting health authorities of the uncontrolled availability of these devices used as health products, but which generate drug substances and should therefore be sold according to regulatory requirements.
In short: machine-produced magic water has no scientifically demonstrable health benefits, and may actually be harmful.
Living structured water?
So why do people make such nonsensical claims about magic water? Some do it for profit, of course. Enagic sells via a multi-level marketing scheme, similar to Amway but for Spiritual People, Lightworkers, Starseeds and Truth-Seakers. (Typo intentional; new-age bliss ninnies love to misspell “sister” as “SeaStar”, for example, because the Cosmos reveals itself through weak puns, and ��of course�� the Cosmos only speaks English. You sea?)
But it’s not harmless. The same people who promote magic water also bang on about “sacred earth“, claim Trump won the 2020 election, Covid is a “plandemic” and show a disturbing tendency towards far right politics. The excellent article The New Age Racket and the Left (from 2004 but still worth reading in full) sums it up brilliantly:
At best, then, New Age is a lucrative side venture of neoliberalism, lining the pockets of those crafty enough to package spiritual fulfillment as a marketable product while leaving the spiritually hungry as unsated as ever. At worst, though, it is the expression of something altogether more sinister. Rootedness in the earth, a return to pure and authentic folkways, the embrace of irrationalism, the conviction that there is an authentic way of being beyond politics, the uncritical substitution of group- identification for self-knowledge, are all of them basic features of right-wing ideology…
Many New Agers seem to feel not just secure in but altogether self-righteous about the benevolence of their world-view, pointing to the fact, for example, that it ��celebrates’ the native cultures that global capitalism would plow over. To this one might respond, first of all, that celebration of native cultures is itself big business. Starbucks does it. So, in its rhetoric, does the Southeast Asian sex-tourism industry. Second, the simple fact that New Age is by its own lights multicultural and syncretistic is by no means a guarantee that it is safe from the accusation of being, at best, permissive of, and, at worst, itself an expression of, right-wing ideology. The Nazis, to return to a tried and true example, were no less obsessed with Indian spirituality than was George Harrison.
Conclusion
Kangen water and its non-branded magical siblings are useless nonsense that wastes resources as it requires electricity. Enagic gives contradictory advice about whether it’s safe to use it to take (real) medicines with. Water machines might make the source water worse because the device releases very reactive nanoparticles of platinum. Most people who extol its virtues want of your money, and they might also be an anti-scientific quasi-fascist.
Yesterday, I got blocked on Facebook for asking “bioresonance practitioner” Life Principles for more information about their “Quantum Medicine”, as I’m too unversed in science to understand it from their explanation about homeopathy, and Dr Raymond Rife’s “electronic machine” that cured 14 of 14 peoples’ cancer before it was suppressed by “Big Pharma”.
To be clear, they’re not advertising treatments for cancer (that would be illegal). They’re selling “treatments” for addiction that use “Quantum Medicine”. This is from their QM “explainer”:
In 1981 Dr Raymond Rife came up with his electronic machine which would shake pathogen to death. He took 14 people who were sent home to die from end stage cancer and with a three minute treatment twice a week cured 12 of them. The last two were cured after another four weeks of treatments. This was certified by 12 eminent oncologists at the time.
The claim that ‘In 1981 Dr Raymond Rife came up with his electronic machine” is tricky to substantiate, as Rife died on August 5, 1971. OR DID HE?!? Maybe his machine made him immortal. Perhaps his quantum kundalini is metastatising with the cosmos, as we speak.
Also what is homeopathy if not energy medicine? According to Avogadro’s law of dilution the chances of the original molecules after years of dilution is nill but the remedies are even more potent. The imprint on the water is what counts and not the original substance they started off with, well that’s quantum medicine.
Certainly, Avogadro shows that “the chances of the original molecules after years of dilution is nill [sic]“. But he certainly did not go on to say “the remedies are even more potent”; that’s Samuel Hahnemann, the man behind homeopathy. The “imprint on the water” (“water memory“) is not accepted by scientists, and quite what that has to do with quantum mechanics is unclear.
So does it matter if the medicine is in a physical form or in quantum form applied to the body energetically or informationally? If the result is the same then they are effectively medicines.
Er – what?
This was vomited out for me as a Facebook ad (presumably because Life Principles is based in Birmingham, as I am). Facebook shouldn’t profit from such nonsense, especially as previous complaints about Life Principles’ dodgy advertising were upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority:
We told Life Principles Ltd to ensure that future ads did not make efficacy claims that implied guaranteed success for their treatments unless they held robust evidence to substantiate the claims. We also told Life Principles to ensure that their advertising did not offer treatment or discourage essential treatment for conditions for which medical supervision should be sought.
Life Principles describes “Modern medicine” as
a business model that makes tons of money for the Big Pharma who blatantly hide bad research and only publish favourable results.
10% Referral fee after someone has successfully stayed quit for 12 months. If you promote our business as a business distributing our leaflets we will give you 20% of our takings. So for heroin addiction you could earn a cool�400.
A “cool”�400. Classy.
As someone with Multiple Sclerosis, I get my fair share of quacks popping up to sell me bee-string therapy or warn me against coffee or aspartame.
I’d sooner trust “Big Pharma” than “Big Snakeoil”, thank you.
My attention was drawn to a product called “mahabis”, and now the world seems ever so slightly but irrevocably a sadder place. It’s some kind of slipper for hipsters (so why are they not called “Slipsters”?) with a website full of moody stock photography models and portentous bullshit text. For example, they are not merely selling overpriced lesiure shoes ��oh, no!�� they are “reinventing the traditional slipper” so that wearing them becomes an “everyday adventure” of “finding perfection in the mundane”. This is not copywriting. This is copy-shite-ing.
In their Frequently Asked Questions (how frequently, by whom?) they claim to be “based out of london. our product is quintessentially british.” No it bloody isn’t, or you’d say “we’re based *in* London”. Sod off. And “tell me more about the company” isn’t a bloody question. It’s an imperative that no human being ever says. Except for Venture Capitalists, bank managers and financial journalists �� and they are not human.
Dear Copywriter: sentences and proper nouns (like “London”) need to start with capital letters. Basic English punctuation is what I call “quintessentially British”. And tiny light-grey text on a white background is SHIT.
Mahabis are apparently the “essence of chill”. Bullshit. Essence of chill, literally, is chlorofluorocarbons or other regrigerants. Or beer.
Like every pompous brand bereft of ideas, “all our products are simple, functional, but strive for a simple universal aesthetic. endless reduction till we find something that no longer needs the complexity of explanation”. If they don’t need explaining, why is there a page of instructions on how to out them on? With bloody diagrams. How hard is putting on some shoes?
And how much does a pair of Slipsters cost?�89! They also sell candles and stupid notebooks, which tells you all you need to know.
My recent upgrade to Yosemite appeared to go without a hitch, until I fired up Garageband to tidy up the guitar line on my cello and harpsichord-driven song Girl In The Room.
To my dismay, the cello and harpsichord samples had disappeared, to be replaced by a very clunky generic synthesiser sound. After some investigation, it appeared that the new OS (or new Garageband 10.0.3) had nuked the soundfonts I’d put in Library/Audio/Sounds/Banks/. Perhaps I should have known this – but I’m new to Mac, and my experience on Windows is that it doesn’t hose your data when you upgrade. Ah well. Apple knows best, of course.
But, once I’d got the soundfonts from a backup and restored them to the correct folder, I’ve noticed that Garageband doesn’t see all of them. Other times, it sees a soundfont, lets me associate it with a track and plays it fine. Then I hit play again and the same track I heard seconds before is entirely silent although the dialogue box still claims the soundfont is associated with the track. (and what is a “user define bank”? User-defined, surely?)
This basically means Garageband isn’t usable for me with soundfonts (which was the whole purpose of my buying it; I don’t want to be restricted to the excellent-quality but rather middle-of-the-road default samples).
But I’m a Mac/ GB n00b and am probably missing something obvious. Anyone got any advice?
(Being part of an occasional series in which I grumpily fulminate against something that’s annoyed me.)
I’m fed up with tech-neocon wankery about “disrupting” industries.
You turned the public into taxi drivers? You simplify the process by which millionaires find a San Francisco parking space? Your iPhone app makes it easy to swipe a face away if you don’t want to fuck its owner? Woo, have a fucking Nobel Prize, Mr Disruptor.
In return for your clever oh-so-useful tech, you perpetuate a culture of all-nighters, working for stock, a lads-only pseudo-meritocracy. You whimper about government regulation that exists to protect consumers and workers. You claim a right derived straight from God (or Adam Smith, at least) to do what you want, when you want, to whom you want and you justify this by saying you’re shaking up (“disrupting”) inefficiencies. So noble! Reforming economics while relentlessly focussed on selling your company to a tech giant so you can repeat the process and enrich yourself.
Fuck your “disruption”. Disrupt your own grasping, me-first mindset. And then show me your tech.
It almost doesn’t matter how good the news is; if it comes after “actually,�� I feel like I was somehow wrong about something.
Consider these two sentences:
Actually, you can do this under “Settings.��
Sure thing, you can do this under “Settings!�� 🙂
…It’s amazing how much brighter my writing (and speaking) gets when I go through and lose the “actuallies.��
While I’m at it, I try to get rid of the “buts�� too.
Sentence 1: I really appreciate you writing in, but unfortunately we don’t have this feature available.
Sentence 2: I really appreciate you writing in! Unfortunately, we don’t have this feature available.
Feel different? When I substitute my “buts�� for exclamation points, I feel so much happier with my message.
In short: Don’t forget the happiness exclamation marks! And the smiley face! Every sentence should have one! Every thing must be happy! All the time 🙂
Kopprasch tells us that removing the word “actually�� from her vocabulary is “One of my favorite “happiness hacks��”. I’ve got nothing against the words “but” or “actually”. But I’d drown the phrase “happiness hack” in a bucket.
Oops: I mean “I’d drown the phrase “happiness hack” in a bucket!! OMG LOL!! :)”
Meanwhile, Techcruch has discovered The App Store Is Proof We’re In Idiocracy. Apparently this is because these days, the best-sellers in the iTunes App Store are games like Weed Firm, Toilet Time, Flappy Bird clones and the like.
Now, I’m no defender of walled-gardens of programs for closed platforms; I take childish delight that, in Finnish, “åpp større” means “fellate a demon”. But a swift glance over some YouTube comments, Facebook will show that the open Web is has its own teensy niches of popular culture. As do TV schedules, book shops, the music business. Because – shockingly – people like popular culture, and popular culture isn’t always intellectual and esoteric.
Sarah Perez, the author, laments that the dirty proles have access to technology:
…phones are now in the hands of a broader, more diverse group of people, both young and old, who won’t necessarily share the same tastes as the tech elite whose punditry and personal recommendations about the “next great mobile app�� used to matter.
Boo-fucking-hoo to you, Pope Perez, and to your tech elite priesthood. Getting the web and tech to all the people is the point.
I’m not shy about talking about having multiple sclerosis (largely because I have supportive employers so I’m not constantly in fear of being fired as many disabled people are). So from time to time I get blog comments or emails from crazies who tell me that multiple sclerosis is caused by coffee/ aspartame/ invisible MS rays from the evil Quaziquarg, Lord of the Quarg People.
These people simply don’t understand the nature of scientific cause and effect. My fist and their noses would serve admirably to demonstrate how this process works.
This morning I wrote to my MP, John Hemming, via writetothem.com to express my concern about web censorship:
Dear John Hemming,
I noticed you tweeting that your geek rating is 90%, so I guess I don’t need to explain why David Cameron and Claire Perry’s attempts to censor the Web are so dangerous.
I’d like to know your thoughts on why this isn’t being debated in parliament; why it seems to go against their own policy after a consultation on the issue, and whether you (as my representative) agree with Mr Cameron’s ideas?
I’m deeply concerned at the scope-creep of these policies. We all oppose obscene images of children and rape. But those are illegal, and filtered, already. Is it true that we will have to opt-in to “extremist” material, and material on “smoking”? Who decides what is “extremist”?
I urge you to oppose this censorship by the back door, and I hope you’ll raise it in parliament, which is the proper place to debate such matters.
Yours sincerely,
Bruce Lawson.
To Mr Hemming’s credit, his reply came after a couple of hours:
My understanding is that the proposals relate to the default or factory settings of the domestic broadband router. I don’t think anyone has a problem with this.
Why not write to your MP? Hopefully you’ll get a more sympathetic response.
Added 17 August 2013: I’ve just had an hour long meeting with my MP, John Hemming (both of us lying on his floor as his back was gone, and it was weird for me to sit while he lay) about the plans for a UK-wide Web filter. He agrees with me that it’s a civil liberties problem, and we’ll work together to campaign against it. More detail later.
The South By South West conference has published its First Timer’s Guide with such nuggets as advising readers to drink water and “Be sure you know the name of your hotel”. In my customary mode of unceasing public service, I offer some more tips:
Wipe your bottom after every poo. Wipe from front to back.
Do not put a sharpened pencil into your ear, then smack the side of your head against a wall. This may drive the pencil through your Eustachian tube and into your brain.
If any panellist mentions Postel’s law, Fitt’s law or Moore’s law, loudly applaud their effortless erudition. However, if a food retail operative mentions “Cole’s Law”, they are referring to salad consisting primarily of shredded raw cabbage.
If a tiger escapes from Austin Zoo and, maddened with fear and hunger, races into a conference session that you’re attending, don’t embarrass yourself by falling victim to the tiger-petting anti-pattern.
If a stranger asks you if (s)he can see your genitals, say “no” in a friendly but firm voice. (Video tutorial)
Even though this is your first time, tell everyone you meet that “it was much better back in ’07”. Everyone will love you.
Happy Southby!
(It was much better in ’02 when I was hanging with Cory Doctorwho and David Byrne at the Jackalope. Of course, nobody went to the Jackalope, then.)
Finally, a boring post about something other than web minutiae!
Eighteen months ago, we moved into a large Victorian house that needed lots of work. Twitter chums have responded to my requests for recommendations for builders, roofers, tree surgeons, decorators, plumbers, electricians and plasterers enthusiastically. But when I innocently tweeted “Can anyone recommend a decent double-glazing company that aren’t pressure-salesmen, cowboys or criminals” I got no replies at all. Not any. Twice. That’s telling in itself. So I decided get a couple of quotes and compare them.
Firstly, I called Amber Windows, told them what I wanted and told them that I had an hour maximum for them to measure (two doors – how long should it take?), and emphasised that I didn’t want to waste time with faux-discounts; give me your best price and go away.
Needless to say, Cliff, the Amber Windows salesman, told me of a “special discount” to reduce the�5600 cost (ha!) to�2500. Then came the usual palaver of “calling his manager” to ask if there was an extra special deal. Lo and behold! there was. Mild pressure was applied; a curt “that’s the lowest price, if you sign up today. Take it or leave it”. I told them I’d leave it as I hate people pressuring me and insulting my intelligence. Other the next two weeks I received several phone calls, from different people, offering me wildly different prices until I told them to stop calling me.
I told Jim, the Anglian Windows salesman, not to waste my time and simply to give me his best price. He was direct, but was clearly anxious to sign me up there and then with the implication that there was a further discount. (I said no, as I wanted to discuss the various different designs with my wife at our leisure). He also didn’t seem to know about his products; the Anglian brochures boasted of a certain British Standards that their windows meet; my insurance requires a different Standard and he couldn’t tell me if Anglian’s windows meet More>Than’s minimum security standard.
His price was good, so I invited him back to take a deposit, provided that he could answer the British Standards question. He didn’t come prepared with an answer, and was visibly annoyed at my asking the question. I signed the contract and gave him a cheque on condition that her find out (this was written into the contract) and I emailed him several times subsequently but he never satisfactorily answered my question. Eventually I gave up and the surveyor gave me the answer on headed notepaper as Jim had promised (but failed) to do.
Jim also promised me that my burglar alarm contacts would fit on the new doors, and that I would have a trickle vent to prevent condensation forming. This was written into the contract. When they were eventually installed today, the trickle vent was missing on a door, and the burglar alarm contacts wouldn’t fit. I can only assume that the factory misread the words “trickle vents to be fitted above doors” as “trickle vents to be fitted above only one door”, and Jim’s error regarding my burglar alarm was nothing to do with his eagerness to get a sale.
After signing the contract and paying a 20% deposit in August, I waited and waited and eventually chased up Anglian myself for a survey date and a fitting date. The fitting date was postponed by Anglian at the last minute, three times. The first two times because of bad weather, the third time because of lack of fitters. When I complained on Twitter, they mysteriously found a fitter who came today. They’ve done a nice job, but have yet to return today to finish the job (to put trim around the back door, put in a spyhole and a knocker and install a trickle vent. The burglar alarm contacts I’ll have to sort out by myself). I was hoping to visit the doctors on Monday morning, but now I’ll have to wait a week.
I have another window that needs double-glazing, but simply don’t feel like going through this rigmarole again.
If there is an Apple-style “just works” double glazing firm that doesn’t entirely ignore customer satisfaction in its haste for profit, I hope it will clean up the market.
