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Skeptoid #1006: Deconstructing Structured Water · Skeptoid

0:03
We all enjoy a nice crisp glass of water when we're feeling
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dehydrated, which makes sense because our bodies need it most of all.
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So, enjoying it is an evolved behavior.
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However, some people, notably wellness influencers, have determined that good old
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H2O is actually not a good thing at all.
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Who knew?
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And that what you really need is their own concoction that's actually
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an entirely different molecule.
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Structured water.
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We're gonna look at that right now.
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On Skeptoid.
0:40
You are listening to Skeptoid.
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I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com Deconstructing Structured Water
0:49
This episode was sponsored by John Sifling, Illuminati Imperator,
0:54
and Skeptoid Board Chair.
0:56
To sponsor your own episode, come to skeptoid.com/sponsor.
1:03
Welcome to the show that separates fact from fiction, science from pseudoscience,
1:07
real history from fake history, and helps us all make better life decisions
1:11
by knowing what's real and what's not.
1:15
Who knew there was a substance 10 times as hydrating as water.
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This is one of the many claims made by promoters of structured water and
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by their many celebrity endorsers.
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Structured water, they say, is a version of water that's
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chemically different and better.
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The water molecules are arranged differently, which brings a vast
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array of benefits to the buyer.
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So if you didn't realize that your regular water isn't quite water enough,
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well then today's episode is for you.
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We've got a rollicking adventure through the worlds of celebrity
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endorsements, a version of chemistry that is well creative, to say the
1:53
least, and the psychology behind buying water that is better than water.
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It doesn't take very long to search the internet and find products for sale based
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on the dubious claim of the existence of water that's better than water.
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The Natural Action Portable Structured Water Unit, selling for $279 is
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like a little filtering funnel.
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You pour water through.
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Spend a bit more and get the Vitalizer Plus Vortex Water Revitalizer
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for $899, which looks like a blender and makes structured water
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right there on your countertop.
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Or spend a lot more and get the Natural Action Magna Ray, MR 24 whole house
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unit for $2,999, which looks a lot like the little inline filter you might have
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going to your refrigerator's ice maker.
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If you don't wanna make it yourself, quite a few companies such as
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Ed Hardy, Defiance, and Mindful sell bottled water they claim has
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already been structured for you.
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You can even make your own the lazy man's way.
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Buy glass bottles from Flaska for $50 to $100 a piece.
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Fill them with tap water and they'll use vibrational structuring technology to
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energize it in as little as five minutes.
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The basic premise behind structured water is one of the hallmark red
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flags of pseudoscience, and that's the raising of an alarm, that there is
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something wrong with the status quo.
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In this case, the status quo is regular water, whether from
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the tap or from the bottle.
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Regular water is said to be chaotic or dead, and strictly
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speaking, those are both true.
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Water is certainly not a living organism, so it could be said to be dead, though
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non-living might be a better word choice.
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It's also chaotic in that it is a liquid and in any liquid the molecules are
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loose and jumbled and free flowing.
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Liquid has a defined volume, but no defined shape.
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It can flow into any shape precisely because its molecules are unstructured.
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But structured water, so the claim goes, has its molecules arranged
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into a particular ordered pattern.
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This is usually described as a hexagon.
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And just to be absolutely clear, this is not a real thing.
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Water does not and cannot behave this way, and we'll talk more about that.
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In some versions of the claim, six regular water molecules are arranged in a hexagon.
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The six big oxygen atoms are the points of the hexagon, and each has its two hydrogen
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atoms hanging off it in such a way that they don't interfere with each other.
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In other versions, they call it H3O2, instead of plain old H2O, asserting that
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each of the water molecules has both an extra hydrogen and extra oxygen atom.
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Some also call it coherent water, primary water, magnetized water, crystal in
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water, hexagonal water, or informed water.
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Often they come up with derogatory names for real water, such as
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uninformed water or depleted water.
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As you can probably guess, the health claims made for drinking this very special
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water are endless and almost always too vague to be falsifiable or testable.
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It's said to enhance your cellular hydration and energy, to facilitate better
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nutrient absorption and detoxification, to provide anti-inflammatory and immune
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system benefits, to confer improved digestion, skin health and weight loss,
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and my favorite that it "resonates with the energetic vibrations of
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your body to amplify your life force"
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Claims of hexagonal water structure are are not new.
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16 years ago, I talked about them here on Skeptoid number 139 when people
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selling equally pseudoscientific alkaline water machines claimed
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that water came in hexagons also.
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But since then, it found a new booster in science and has flourished anew.
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In 2013, Dr. Gerald Pollack, a professor of bioengineering at the University of
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Washington, published a mass market book called The Fourth Phase of Water, which
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discussed his legitimate and significant 2003 finding that water pushes away
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objects such as plastic microspheres from the region close to a hydrophilic surface.
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He has postulated several speculative mechanisms to explain this.
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Including what he discussed in his book, the conjecture that this so-called
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exclusion zone water or "EZ" water has the extra atoms in each molecule.
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This fanciful claim by a real scientist was all the scam artists
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needed to guild their old alkaline water machines and rebrand them as
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structured or EZ water machines.
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And now celebrities such as Kourtney Kardashian and countless wellness
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influencers who lack the science literacy to know any better, promote these
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devices as miracle health machines.
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There are several ways in which real water molecules can and do form into clusters.
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Liquid water has thermal energy that manifests as molecular motion as
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these molecules move and collide.
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Hydrogen bonds are constantly forming and breaking on femtosecond
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to picosecond timescales.
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Water molecules also arrange into transient tetrahedral networks,
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rings, and chain like structures that persist for similarly brief periods.
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Under unusual conditions, water molecules can exhibit different behaviors such
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as when confined to nanoscale spaces or in the presence of hydrophilic
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surfaces as Pollock discovered with exclusion zones, researchers have
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used lasers and other methods to temporarily alter water's structure.
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But it invariably recovers within Picoseconds due to rapid thermal motion.
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In short, while water molecules are constantly forming dynamic
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associations and structures, all of these arrangements are extremely
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fleeting, lasting at most picoseconds, rather than the permanent structures
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claimed by structured water proponents.
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But that's only one reason the so-called structured H3O2
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water doesn't actually exist.
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That molecule is certainly possible and it's real.
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It appears in some metal complexes where it connects metal atoms, but in normal
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aqueous conditions, it is extremely unstable and would rapidly decompose
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into more stable compounds like H2O2 and H2O (hydrogen peroxide and water).
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Hydrogen peroxide is extremely toxic.
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If you somehow drank something which then decomposed into hydrogen
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peroxide, you would be in for a very painful and fast death.
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Nobody has yet died from drinking the product of their structured water
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machine, at least not that we know of, so we can be pretty sure that H3O2
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is not coming out of these devices.
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But let us take the responsible path and not dismiss structured water
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machines based on their claims alone, but rather upon the test results.
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So let's go to PubMed and search for trials of having people drink
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structured water to treat some health condition, or even for
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general wellness and see the effects.
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Hmm, I only found one.
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And it's for animals.
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Structured water effects on animals.
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Published in the Journal of Animal Science in 2021.
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It's a review of 20 years of studies that exposed water to magnetic fields and then
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had laboratory and farm animals drink it.
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From the paper's conclusion (perhaps the vaguest I've ever seen):
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"A magnetic field strength of 1000 to 3000 G is required to generate water
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capable of exerting beneficial effects.
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While waters treated with field strengths greater than 5,000 G
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may result in detrimental effects.
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The animal research conducted to date consistently demonstrated beneficial
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effects of structured water consumption.
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Additional research is needed to demonstrate how these effects occur and if
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these types of structured waters are safe to consume and use over the long term."
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The paper was written by a Michael I. Lindinger, who does business
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as the Nutraceutical Alliance, Inc. In his acknowledgements, he
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states that it was "...part of a larger paid research contract... by
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Defiance Brands, Inc." Who are they?
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Recall back to the top of the show when we listed some
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products currently on the market?
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Defiance is one of the companies selling bottled structured water.
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Big surprise.
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But no papers about anyone testing it on humans?
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The reason is probably very simple.
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None of the claims made are specific enough to be testable, and if
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they were, the tests would fail.
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As there is no such thing as structured water, you'd be testing
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water against water as a treatment for something as vague and meaningless
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as enhanced cellular energy.
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What person with a scientific reputation they care about is gonna
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submit that paper for peer review.
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They'd never hear the end of it.
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We're nearly at the point where we've run out of things to say about the
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claims of structured water, but there are still two points worth covering.
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First, let's look at some more of the red flags of pseudoscience
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this product throws down.
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The appeal to nature fallacy.
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If it's natural, it must be safe and healthy and good for you.
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A number of these products use terms like "pristine mountain spring water".
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The number of wellness benefits found on all these companies' websites collectively
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probably rivals the Bible in length, and as we've seen a hundred times before here
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on Skeptoid, products claiming to treat everything, probably really treat nothing.
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The use of personal testimonials, including influencer and
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celebrity testimonials instead of presenting evidence.
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There is no theory supporting a mechanism for structured water to
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be beneficial to the body in as much as nothing meeting any consistent
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definition of structured water exists.
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Pollack's book was a published mass market book, not a scientific journal article.
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This means it had no obligation for peer review or to factual accuracy.
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It simply had to be popular.
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Lots of crazy sciencey sounding jargon.
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Meaningless to the scientist, but impressive to the lay person who
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also happens to be the customer.
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These products nearly all have paid social media influencers
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and affiliate marketing programs.
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You know, like real sciences don't.
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But we could go on like this all day.
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Let's move on to our second final point, which is the psychology behind a person
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who wants to buy a product like this.
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Understand that psychology and learning what levers to pull are
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critical components to successfully marketing and selling pseudoscientific
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products like structured water.
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The value of community.
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People love to belong to a community of like-minded people.
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Marketers love community echo chambers where everyone thinks the same way
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and believes whatever their peers say.
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Distrust of conventional medicine and science are always gonna be popular,
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and people love the feeling of having special insight into the suppressed truth.
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Embrace of products like this that contradict established science
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is psychologically fulfilling and confers a nice little dopamine hit.
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Confirmation bias thrives in wellness communities as it
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does in nearly every community.
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The feeling of buying a premium product such as paying nearly $3,000
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for a water filter indistinguishable from a $10 one on Amazon confers
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a sense of power and superiority.
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Even without the power and superiority many people genuinely
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accept that something more expensive must necessarily be better.
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Making any lifestyle change induces the placebo effect.
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I've done something.
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I've added this device to my drinking water therefore, I expect to feel better.
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Confusion of correlation with causation will be a feature of wellness
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products until time immemorial.
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Anytime these customers feel energetic or happy, they're likely
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to credit the structured water.
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And regression to the mean is what happens when any injury
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or illness heals naturally.
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And yet our fallible human brains prefer to give credit to
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some recent lifestyle change.
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In fairness, nearly any intelligent adult human is susceptible to most or all of
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these frailties, and when we consider that the average adult knows or cares nothing
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at all about molecular chemistry and knows nothing about the reasons to research
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sources or even understands the need to do so, we can hardly blame the victims.
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Blame for scam Pseudoscientific products should always lie upon those
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selling them because they are the people who have an ethical (if not a
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legal) responsibility to ensure the validity and efficacy of their products.
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Anyway, that's your skeptical analysis for today.
16:09
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