Water & Water Filtration: Everything You Need To Know About Water Filters, Alkaline Water, Structured Water, Hydrogen Rich Water, Deuterium Depleted Water & Much More!

Foreign. It's amazing, Ben, that the most revered unassailable nutrient in the world, called pure water, also contains the seed of destruction that's unmatched in the world of contaminants. And I went, marcelo, what is this? I want more tomorrow. Can you get me more? And then somebody said, hey, this is your spiritual destiny kind of thing, and you do it. And so I did it.

I have a master's degree in physiology, biomechanics and human nutrition. I've spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet, from sealfit, Kokoro, Spartan Ogoji, and the world's toughest mutter to 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, freediving, bodybuilding and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science. Search the globe for the world's top experts in performance, fat loss recovery, hormones, brain beauty and brawn to deliver deliver you this podcast everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride. Well, I get tons of questions about water, like what water filter is best and should I add minerals to my water and what do I think about alkaline water and structured water and hydrogen rich water and this highfalutin deuterium depleted water and a lot more. And in all of my my dealings in the health sector, as far as different masterminds and conferences that I go to, I run into a lot of people who claim to be experts on water, but who don't have a lot of research behind what they say. However, probably one of one of the guys who I respect most highly in the water industry who has taught me more about water than just about anyone I know. You know, my dad is in the water filtration industry and has taught me quite a bit, but this gentleman, Robert Slovak, has taught me a ton about water. He's technically a mechanical and aeronautical and astronautical engineer who founded something called Water Factory Systems in the 70s. And I'll allow him to kind of tell you the story about his background in the whole water industry, but for the past near decade he has been researching everything from hydrogen enriched water to different forms of minerals and trace elements to different kinds of salts, all the way up to some of these more emerging technologies like deuterium depleted water and also structured water and water filtration. And he's just kind of the bee's knees when it comes to water. As a matter of fact, Right now, Robert, I am. I'm sipping out of a glass Pellegrino water bottle. And what do you think about Pellegrino, man?

Yeah, I think it's a decent mineral water. And you know, I'm a big fan of bottled waters. Typically they're very low in contaminants and not.

You don't mean like, you don't mean like plastic bottled waters though?

Well, plastic is a. Plastic bottle is another topic. It's nice to have it in a glass. But I think, you know, when we're talking about the best of plastics, there are so many other polymeric contaminants that you're exposed to that when people. And it's just out of our weakness, you know, we focus on bottles because it's right in front of us, but we don't really think about the carpet in our house and the massive amount of plastic inside of show. We don't think about the rug and the pain.

But surely you wouldn't argue though if I had the choice between like Pellegrino, one of those cranky, crappy little plastic bottled water brands that I. That there's not difference between the two.

No, you're right. Go for it. I'm there with you. I will always prefer to have it in glass too.

Oh, thank you for your. Your permission, good sir. Now I want to know a little bit about your background in the water industry. And I actually, even before I jump of my questions about like which water filtration systems are best, et cetera, I also want to dig a little bit into your personal health regime. Regimeen. Regime. I can't talk today anyways, the things you do for your health because. Well, can I ask you how old you are? Would that be considered rude?

No. 74.

Okay, you're 74. You look. And I'm not just blowing smoke. You look like you're like maybe early 50s. And when I met you, that's the general age range that I thought that you were in. And so I'm sure people are going to want to know a little bit about some of your anti aging tactics or any good little tips and tricks for exercise or nutrition or health protocols that you found to be quite handy. But before we get into that, how'd you go from being a mechanical and aeronautical and astronautical engineer to getting in the water? And I realize it could be a long story, but we got time.

Yep, it was boredom that drove it that way. My brother and I ended up in California from back east in the military industrial complex in the early 1970s, he worked for NSA. I worked on the Minuteman missile. And we eventually ended up in the same building. And we became, every time we met at lunch we go bored. And he said, I'm really bored too. So we knew we didn't want to stay there. And along comes something new on the scene inside. It wasn't our field, but we were very well educated in this broad range of sciences. And it was a new technology called membrane separation and more specifically reverse osmosis. We became fascinated with it overnight and within a couple weeks we had converted our bathroom in Corona del Mar, California to a laboratory to research membranes and all that stuff. And we just took it to a very high degree through the 70s, through the 80s. And we took this technology and probably we're most famous for refining it and bringing it to all the applications that this new technology, very inexpensive compared to other technologies and much more effective and complete and wide range of contaminant removal. We took this to many areas, from drinking water systems to restaurant systems, to microelectronics manufacturing to hemodialysis. We built the first portable hemodialysis water system so people on dialysis could take a vacation. It would just go in the back of their car, things like that. We did exotic stuff.

So did you actually invent reverse osmosis or did you invent a certain style of reverse osmosis?

Yes, well, we didn't invent reverse osmosis. That was done about a decade and a half before, but it was very crude. It was just, you know, things didn't work that well and there were lots of problems. And we helped refine it and build. I'd say our biggest thing was building and designing products that used it. Our favorite one, probably my brother would agree, was spot free rinse. It was the most, it was the crudest one, but was the most fun one because people spot free rents. Well, when you go to, I don't know if you've ever used a self serve car wash or been to a car wash, you know, and you're. And, and, and they don't even have to dry it off.

Well, we're really put on my swimsuit and get in movies and have car wash fights in slow motion there.

There you go. Well, I hope it's spot free rinse. But you know, we used to amaze people because everyone thinks that like water like itself leaves spots and pure water doesn't leave any spots. So we just had a grand time showing people their black BMWs. You just rinse it off with this water and it dries in the hot sun of California. Spot Free. And we built an entire industry called Spot Free Rinse. Huh.

Wow. But. But your. Your bio says that you retired from the water industry, like way back in the 90s. So what happened at that point was that way back.

Wow, that seems like yesterday.

Well, I was. I was what, I was 14.

So we took a pretty fairly high degree and our company was bought by. In 1989, was purchased by a very large company, I won't name it, in the water industry. And. And. And then.

Doesn't rhyme with REPC or Toque, does it?

No, but it wasn't for that reason. But it did rhyme. That company was quite soon purchased by a company that rhymes with 3M. So we stayed on as vice presidents of engineering and design until about 1995 and 6. And then we retired. And. And we didn't have any intention of actually retiring. So we both split up and I went to Brazil. Brazil to bring technology. It was great. I lived there over a period of about eight years. And I brought water technology to this country, to that country that had all these resources but no water technology to really make use of it like they should have. So I wrote, you know, I published magazines there, had training seminars, taught at universities, made university courses, and really added to the infrastructure of Brazil. But what changed my life in about 2004 was the fact that I went into a remote area of Brazil to do water research, because the remote areas were producing contaminants from unbridled industrialization that was making it to the cities, like to Sao Paulo and to Rio. So I went there to do this. But unfortunately I became. In this small, small village, I became deathly ill with serious gastroenteritis.

Oh, dude.

And I was like beside myself. I knew this was. I knew enough about health science to know this was serious and that I really needed a helicopter to airlift me to Rio de Janeiro. And they told me that that wasn't going to happen unless I had the cell phone of the president. And so someone handed me. And this was the. Defined a defining moment in my life, handed me six small glass vials. And he said, this is our doctor. I will never forget this moment. And I said, you know, Marcelo, are you really. Are you losing it? What do you mean? It's your doctor. This is what everyone uses to heal themselves. Here. There's no doctor. You're not going to have a doctor for a week.

Was it coffee?

No, it was something called Canton Marine Plasma. It was a harvested extract of plankton blooms in the ocean. And they somehow got it there and used it for almost everything. He said, take these six little 10 milliliter ampoules, take one per hour, and I think you're gonna be better.

How they get marine plasma in, like, the jungle of Brazil.

Somebody knew the Argentinian biologist who brought it to Brazil.

Okay.

And he was a kind of fanatic about this. And it was kind of like, I am now. And so somebody knew somebody, and they brought this, the. A supply of this out there to help them deal with the lack of real health care.

And so this was just like. This was just like a mineral and trace elements solution.

Yeah, but very. But remember, it spent most of the 20th century as a pharmaceutical medicine in the physician's desk. References of Europe. That is what makes it different.

And it's called Quinton.

Quinton, Q, U, L. The real French pronunciation is Quinton. But people say Quinton. People say Quinton.

Okay?

And it's famous. It's. It's. It came first. It came on the scene in 1897 from.

Is this the same stuff that. That Quicksilver Scientific sells?

Yes, it is. I'm the one who brought it to America.

Okay. Yeah, I started ordering that stuff. I started adding it to my water. But this is the same stuff you got in Brazil.

That is exactly the same stuff.

The other companies sell it, too. Is it. Is this kind of like, you know, like Meriva Curcumin, where different companies will add Moriva Curcumin to their supplements? No, no.

This is an exclusively. It's actually an injectable product. It's a true medicine. But now it's deemed in the United States, a dietary supplement.

Oh, wait, I remember. I think you were telling me, and I think you and I and Dr. Mercola were together when you brought up. Because I was looking into this for this biological medicine retreat I'm going to in Switzerland. You mentioned that it could also be injected and that that was a treatment that you could find often in Europe. But I forget the name of the protocol. Do you recall what that is?

Well, the protocol. I mean, there is one protocol for a specific health condition, a very serious one, called percutaneous hydrotomy.

Yeah, percutaneous hydro. But you wouldn't just do that for general wellness. That's usually. No.

If you had a damaged spine, this is a kind of a miraculous treatment for a damaged spine. It takes about a week. And there's a facility all throughout Europe, really, that doctors do this. And then there's one in. There's one in Mexico. Huh.

Okay, I'll look up percutaneous hydrotomy. But it's basically, you're essentially injecting seawater.

You're hydrating via gravity through a kind of an octopus subcutaneous array of needles into the surrounding spine area. And you're like super hydrating it with seawater, which is what hosted. This is the big connection for me. I mean, seawater was the host of life, the emergence of life and two and a half billion years of evolution. And I think that's pretty. That's a pretty good calling card for something called seawater.

So is it more than just minerals in the stuff?

It's very complex. It's way more than just minerals. First, the minerals are all very. They are organo complex with what you would guess is in a plankton bloom. And a plankton bloom is one of the most complex bioreactors on the planet. The sum of the plankton blooms make about 65% of the oxygen on Earth. And they are monitored by treaty and satellite and buoys and ships. And you have to have a license to enter them because people, they are afraid that, you know, they could be tampered with. It would make a great spy story, but they don't even want people to know there's plankton blooms.

Interesting. Okay, so you tried this stuff in Brazil. It nursed you back to life, and then you took it back to the.

States in one day? In one day at midnight. And I was, you know, as you can imagine, the vomiting and all the body fluids. And at midnight, after taking six of those, I just came alive. I took a shower. There was a moment when I thought, maybe I'm just dead. And I transitioned. But I took a shower. I ended up literally running at half speed to the local bar, which was the only thing that was open. And I knew my friend Marcelo was going to be at the guy who gave it to me. And I went, marcelo, what is this? I want more tomorrow. Can you get me more? And he invited me to come for a beer, which I didn't take him up on. And the rest was history. I stayed in Brazil. I met that man in Rio de Janeiro, the biologist. Went to his house at 9 o' clock at night, apologized for coming late. I said, let me just tell me what this is in 30 minutes. I ended up leaving his house at 7 o' clock the next morning. And I never even said a word. My jaw had dropped. How do I not know this? I'm a scientist. How do I not know this? Scientist Rene Quinton. So the rest I Stayed there for two more years. I studied this with that biologist. I ended up bringing it to America, not with any business intentions, to really find somebody who was more appropriate than I. And then somebody said, hey, this is your spiritual destiny kind of thing. And, and you do it. And so I did it. When my brother passed in 2016, then I kind of didn't want to be in a day to day business anymore and, and, and enjoyed his partnership so much, I ended up passing this, this license of Quinton on to Quicksilver, which I'm also a part of.

Yeah, no, I love Quicksilver. I see crocheted all the time. He's like, he's like a mad scientist. He makes all these liposomal formulations. My wife actually, just, just because my wife loves it when I share her personal intimate health information on my podcast. She just was doing a consult with Dr. Matt Cook and he has her on Chris Shade's Liver Push Detox. I use his bitters. I like spray them into cocktails when I'm at the, when I'm at a bar as like a really good bitters. I love their stuff. Their little liposomal formulations are fantastic. So you license Kington to them. Good job.

No, just, I really just transferred the importation to them.

Gotcha. And so you did that and then what'd you do, retire again?

No, no, I actually have another entity called Water and Wellness and this is a more experimental, more flexible way of reaching and speaking to doctors and trying a whole nother line of products that include Quintone, that include Quicksilver scientific products. And then just very recently with, from January, I spent two weeks in Russia and I'm taking on probably the project of my lifetime, a water project called Deuterium Depleted Water, which I got to.

Ask you about that. So we'll get into that. I was looking at your water and wellness website. Like half the stuff on there that you have, like I use, you've got hydrogen water tablets, you have the, the Aqua True reverse osmosis filtration system. You've got the Quinton minerals. So you've got, you got a lot of good stuff on there. And by the way, I'll ever. Everything Robert and I talk about, if you're listening in, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com all things water and I'll put links to all the stuff that we, we discuss now I guess I want to ask you. And then we'll get back to Deuterium Depleted water because I want to ask you about that and hydrogen Water and structured water and some of these other forms of water. But before we do, don't leave our audience hanging. Why do you look so young man? What do you do besides drinking this, this crazy unicorn tear infused minerals from.

I would have to say the biggest routine that I've had for the longest time is really taking Canton. I mean I place a lot of emphasis on having the entire building block of evolution and that is the ocean is a solution of the periodic table of the elements and then when you add the living component, the plankton bloom and you are talking about there's everything in there including the kitchen sink from almost every vitamin, every phytonutrient, DNA, RNA from from for millions of years.

Yeah, it's kind of similar to how a lot of people swear by chlorella and spirulina. And you know, I have. So I make an order of ketone now every month I just put a. I don't know what you think about this, but I just drink it with my, my hydrogen water in the morning and then I'll typically, if I'm, if I've been sweating a lot during the day or I'm kind of feeling blah in the afternoon, I'll take another packet. But it seems, seems to work pretty well. But I mean you do, do you like, do you exercise? Do you do anything else?

I moderately exercise. I regularly ground.

Meaning like go outside barefoot.

Oh, yes. Okay. Maybe four times a week. I have a very strict dietary regime. Part of it is my eternal bachelorhood left me with no skills of cooking.

Oh, you're single ladies.

That may be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The 74 year old bachelor just really hot. And that may be part of the reason of eating raw and paleo.

Okay, so you're kind of on the paleo bandwagon part.

Yes.

Yeah.

I don't have any routine of eating. I don't eat at any particular hours. And I'm very committed to, I'm very committed to Quinton and now hydrogen. And of course I've always been had available the purest of water and I always mineralized the water with minerals and trace elements. You can't forget the trace elements. It's so critical.

But you get that from the ketone.

Yeah, get that from the ketone. I mean you have like 70 plus trace elements in there and it's something you, you can't get in your food. I even suggest people who have, you know, very involved with fresh juices and so on and excellent, you know, dietary addition. But the fact be known it contains probably Very few trace elements. So I always put a Quintone hypertonic in my fresh juice.

Do you lift weights at all?

No, no.

Do you like lift heavy stuff at all?

In my daily life, I mean, you know, I do sit ups and calisthenics.

Okay.

Even Zach Bush's.

Zach Bush's nitric oxide calisthenics. Yeah, I like, I like that too. I'll hunt down a video of that and put it in the show notes for folks. Now you also it's kind of funny because a lot of people are like, oh Ben, how do you take so many, so many supplements, blah, blah, blah. And you know, I asked you and you sent me over a list of everything you take and you along with most people I know in the anti aging sector who look amazing for their age, they've got a lot of supplements like you. If I could count them up, I'll put the full list. We don't have time to go over them all right now, but I'll put the full list in the show notes for those you want to see. But I would count maybe, maybe like 40 different things that you take and then like youryour kind of like special bulletproof coffee recipe you have that's like water, espresso butter, coconut creamer, MCT oil, coconut oil, collagen peptides, whey protein, cacao, turmeric, Ceylon cinnamon, MSM powder, magnesium, quinton ribose, vitamin C restore. So I mean, you know, it's very interesting because a lot of people kind of want to crack the code of living a long time and I think it does involve some better living through science. I mean, granted there's some Italians running around Acerolli Italy who are drinking rosemary and coffee and seem to be doing pretty well. But those of us who are kind of fighting a battle against living in a westernized post industrial environment, I think need to throw a little bit extra into the mix, so to speak.

I think you're right on. And I realize there's people in, you know, live in the proverbial Himalayas and the Vilcabambas that don't have. They couldn't identify one of my supplements and they're living better longer than I am. So that I have my own theories on and nature can't be beat and we've abused it and we don't get the right dietary fix from our lifestyle water filtration systems.

In an ideal world, how would somebody set up their home water filtration system?

Cool. Here's what they say. Always find out like in the most basic Sense what is in your water? What is your water supply? So I tell people, number one, and this is what no one ever does. Please go on, find out who you pay your water bill to. Go on the website and look up the latest EPA water quality report for that area you live in. And I tell people, you're not going to understand this report and it's a dilemma of sorts, but people who know me send it to me and say, hey, would you recommend a system? So it really matters what's in your water. It really matters what disinfection the water supplier uses. It really matters, you know, what the hardness is. It really matters. Everything, even including the temperature of the water. And from that you can make some reasonable approximations on the best approach. So with the plethora of contaminants in water, the two methods that certainly remove the most from the greatest number of categories of contaminants is distillation plus activated carbon and reverse osmosis plus activated carbon. Those are almost equivalent in removing potential contaminants from the water. And then you should remineralize.

So you combine reverse osmosis with activated carbon and then you add minerals back into the water with something like Quinton or.

Precisely.

Or sea salt or. I know Aqua True makes some trace liquid minerals, something like that.

Yes. And I mean, I believe in Quinton because it's more of a living. It's derived from a living region that's much more than just the electrolyte, ionic electrolytes. It's really organocomplexed. When you start taking things from places like the Great Salt Lake and. Or you take ocean water and you kind of denature it by allowing it to become a salt and precipitate, you change a lot of balances. It's better than nothing, I will say that. But nothing really approaches Canton in its brilliance of balance and complexity.

If I had to buy a salt from a grocery store and could find something in my area and didn't have access to Canton, what would be the best salt to buy if I did want to? Just like a few pinches of that into my Celtic. Just like the. The brand. That's like the. It comes in a blue bag.

Yeah, well, there's many. There's Celtic gray salt, Celtic premium salt. But why Celtic? Well, I mean, one reason is Jacques delongra, who is the founder of Celtic, was really a student, so to speak, of Rene Quinton. And he. His whole objective in making Celtic salt was to retain as many trace elements that are typically lost in the salt Evaporation process. When you rinse salt, you rinse away probably 30 or 40 trace elements the first time because they're in such minute quantities. So Jacques Delangra really did, and he wrote the first articles in English on Rene Canton.

Is that, is that why it's kind of gray? Because it's not washed?

You got it.

Okay, cool. That's good to know. That's going to be super helpful for a lot of people because I get questions about, is it Himalayan, is it Mexican, is it Kona black?

But I'm not a fan of Himalayan at all.

Why not?

One, it's, it's, it's, it's from an underground salt mine. Okay. The second largest in the world. I can't recall the name right now. And it's not like a magical pink salt mine. It's really a part of the mine that just happens to have iron oxide contamination. That's how they viewed it in the beginning until a clever person, a marketer came along and said, that is really nice stuff. What will you sell that to me for? And you know it. I, I see it personally as a brilliant marketing move, but I don't like to add iron to my diet.

Yeah, most of it, Most of it comes from Pakistan. It's.

Yeah, that's right. It's not Himalayas.

Kira, something like that is the name of the mine.

You got it. That's exactly where it is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting. Okay, this is very good to know. So reverse osmosis plus a carbon block and, or activated carbon. Is there a certain, like a whole house brand or an under the counter brand? I mentioned that Aqua True water filter that you told me about. Would that be like a good countertop one or what are some brands people could look for?

It's my favorite. It's my favorite. It's really. There aren't many. There's only a, there's less than a handful of countertop ros. Now I, you know, my brother and I design probably virtually all the under sink designs of RO that ever were made. And we also did some countertops. But as I became more familiar with health and wellness, I realized there was a problem with RO systems or any water treatment system that has a storage tank that's sealed. And this is one of the things I'm going to be going next week to the Autism One conference. I've spoken at the Autism one conference, I think for the last five years. And I tell the mothers, do not give water from your under sink RO system to your child with autism. Why? Yeah, and it's like the bad news I don't want to give them because they already have enough bad news. But I tell them that it is too microbially contaminated and will disrupt further their child's microbiome and all kinds of other immune factors. And so I even show. And so they, they are like shocked. Generally. They are shocked.

Okay, so, so that's, that would be like an under the counter system has like a basin in it and microbial buildup can occur in that.

Yes.

Okay.

So when I wrote the book on that, I wrote the book, I wrote a book that's, that's been sold since 1991 on reverse osmosis system, the care and maintenance and all that stuff. And I made it clear in there that I said water dealers who are selling these things now, you can buy them at Costco. And that's a very bad thing, unfortunately. But water dealers who have some kind of responsibility to their customer, I would tell them, you must sanitize this storage tank at least once a year and every time you change filters. Well, unfortunately that never stuck and it's just not done. So they become an incubator for huge levels of bacteria. And that's very dangerous. So I taught women, I said, listen, if you can't do without your RO system, here's what you're going to do. I want you to, if you have a child with autism or any kind of immune, immune condition, you're going to drain that tank every other day. And that's still not good enough. I want you to go to Amazon.com or your local REI sports store and I want you to buy a product called the steripen. It's about 70 bucks. And the water you give to your child with autism, you are going to sterilize that water, that glass, that carafe, with the SteriPen.

It's a good idea.

So that's it. But now when you really go to the Aquatru design, all that falls away. You don't have to do any of that stuff.

Is there any conventional under sink, point of use reverse osmosis system that one could use or is it. Do they pretty much all have that issue with needing to use a steripen or clean them out frequently?

There is one that was the last system that my brother and I worked on that's, let's say, better than the pack. The rest, the pack is all the same.

What's the brand?

So it's called, it's sold, you know, worldwide, but not. It's just kind of beginning. It's Called Wow. Okay. Water on water.

Okay.

Wow. Nevertheless, would I really use this with a child whose immune system is impaired? I still wouldn't take the chance.

Okay.

But what's coming is LED ultraviolet sterilization. You know, an ultraviolet lamp, and you have a quartz tube and you have a mercury vapor lamp, and it's. It shines into the water and it kills microbes. Okay. But that never was practical to incorporate with an RO system under the sink. It was too much heat and lots of problems. But now it's just coming out literally within the last few months. And I just came from the water, the National Water Conference in Las Vegas that they have led UV sterilization. And I. I talked to all the manufacturers and said this. You have to marry this with RO systems to reduce the bacteria to sane levels.

Okay, got it. But. But is that available as, like, a commercial system right now?

Nope, it is not. It's. It's still. It's. It's still a bad situation, I'm very sorry to say.

Okay. All right. So best solution at this point, if you're. If you're on the average municipal water and you'll have access to, like, a spring or a well or something like that, would be to use reverse osmosis with carbon block. Something like a countertop, like an Aqua True or an under the counter reverse osmosis with carbon block that you're going to clean frequently or use a steripen with, and then you're going to add minerals back into that water after that. Okay.

Yeah. I mean, there's. When I saw the Aquatru and I wasn't the designer of the Aqua True, I just. Bells went off in my brain. I said, this is the design that solves my frustration over the years since I've been in water and wellness and medicine, because now I don't have to tell women. And it was the happiest day of my life on my birthday last year that I told the women at the autism conference, I said, women, I have some great news, and especially great news because it's my birthday, May 24th. You don't have to do any of that stuff anymore. This is what you need to get for your child, for a family.

I interviewed the guy who invented that. Peter. I don't know if he invented it, but he markets it. Peter Spiegel.

No, no, no. He's. He conceived that design, and then a bunch of good designers came together. But, you know, he was. He was very clever.

Okay, cool.

Peter Spiegel.

Okay. Peter Spiegel. Yes, I'LL link to that one in the show notes. So the next question that I have for you is the whole idea of alkaline water. There's a lot of alkaline water generators. A lot of people are interested in alkaline water. There's a lot of companies, especially multi level marketing companies with fantastic money making opportunities marketing alkaline water generators. And I'm curious what your thoughts are on alkaline water.

Well, I've been an anti alkaline water person for probably seven years now. In all of my talks that I give internationally and here in the United States, I spend a lot of time with alkaline water. And I call alkaline water the scientific misconception that became a billion dollar business and it was not an intentional deceptive marketing thing. I believe that one of the main guys, Song Wong, he was a Korean engineer, really didn't know chemistry well enough to know that alkaline is different than alkalinity. There is such a misconception of the word and meaning of ph. People think ph, if ph is high, it automatically will neutralize acid. That's the connection that's made for them in marketing. And it's totally untrue. So ph is like temperature in a way that just because you have Something that's at 451 degrees Fahrenheit, it doesn't mean it can heat your house. So I give people the example. You have a match at 451 degrees Fahrenheit and you have a fireplace at 451 degrees Fahrenheit, but only one can heat your home. And ph is just like that. So at any given PH level, like pH9 or pH10, which people consider supreme, alkaline water, if it doesn't have buffering capacity, which is the equivalent analogy to the heat output of the fireplace versus the match, if it doesn't have this buffering capacity, which is called alkalinity, then it won't matter. It will do nothing. It won't matter if it's pH5 or 7 or 8 or 10, it's irrelevant. So the other thing is I tell people, listen, as soon as you drink alkaline water, the body is going to change the PH dramatically. So what value really? And how does it deliver its value? So the stomach, your first place the water goes is stomach acid. When I tell a room full of doctors this, most of them raise their open palm to their forehead and slap it like, how the hell did I not think of this? So alkaline water do not, I tell people to not waste your money on it. If you want to make water have the ability to alkalize your body, you have to add buffering capacity. And you add buffering capacity by adding alkalinity in the form of minerals that have buffering capacity. And those minerals are typically in the form of carbonates and bicarbonates.

Yeah, yeah.

So if you get a ph powder, you know, the neutralizing powder to help regulate your body fluid. Phion, we have one that's active ph restore. These powders you just add to in almost anything. You can add them to coffee. It makes a nice kind of frothy thing. These go in your body and alkalize your body by neutralizing metabolic acids. I also point out something really kind of cool that shocks everybody. We all know that fresh green juices are great way to alkalize the body. And so when I present it to a group of doctors, I go, hey guys, you all know that fresh green juices are very alkalizing. What is the ph of all fresh green juices? And they go, oh, you know, well, it has to be at least eight or nine. Some of them say it has to be 10. I said, no, all fresh green juices are actually acidic and yet deliver the alkalinity to neutralize metabolic acids. It's a little quirky thing in chemistry that the ph and alkalinity are not so connected as we are led to believe by alkaline products.

Yeah, yeah. You mean eating alkaline based foods is not necessarily a way to increase blood alkalinity.

Wait, you're. Wait, say that again.

Basically what you mean is eating alkaline or eating foods with high alkalinity or low acidity or vice versa, is not a significant way to adjust the body's ph.

No, it is. It is. If you have alkalizing foods, not alkaline foods, it doesn't matter.

Alkalizing. Yeah, exactly. So like lemon is acidic, but it's alkali.

It is. And that's another little quirk of chemistry called amphoteric acids. And we probably shouldn't go there, but one good rule is word. It's an acronym called pral, P R A L. Yeah.

Potential renal acid load load.

Potential needle. Acid load is really the way that you get a perspective of what you need to do to balance the alkalizing properties or acidifying properties of food so you maintain the proper ph of your body fluids.

Yeah. And the prow, the prowl score, there's a ton of charts. Like the acid alkaline association has a pretty good list on their Website, and I'll link to it. And it's based on the original study done on potential renal acid load. If those of you who are interested in certain things that could affect your ph, that'll be a good, a good chart for you that I'll, I'll link to. Okay, so alkaline water, possible waste of money. How about structured water?

Structured water is another can of worms because there's many. There's holographic structuring, vortex structuring, micro clustering, blah, blah, blah. But here's what I tell people. Structuring of water. It mainly refers to the molecular configurations that the water molecules take on that are purported to have some physiological significance. Okay? And it could be certain kind of patterns, hexagonal patterns of water molecules and so on. But the molecular arrangements and clustering of water is very delicate and very fickle. It changes every picosecond. And there are ways to perhaps induce a structure, but here's where it fails. It fails when you drink it. Almost no structuring could possibly survive the stomach. It's the most. It's an incredibly. Here is something that is so torturous it can dissolve a piece of steak. And you're thinking that this little delicate water structure is going to make it through and somehow go through all the ph changes from the stomach to small intestines and gallbladder, et cetera, and it's going to come out and end up going into your cells. Forget it. Never going to happen. And I've many researchers just over the decades that were structured water advocates, I would point this out to them, and I usually got the result of the palm being brought up to the forehead like, oh my God, how did I miss this?

Have there ever been any studies done on structured water that you're aware of?

Well, many studies, but no studies that I considered responsible in terms of its physiologic consistency, physiological benefits. Okay, so if you asked me what is there any structuring you would do, Robert, even though you don't have a study? Perhaps the only one that I'm attracted to, and it may be for weak reasons, is vortexing. I believe in the cavitation does bring in. Cavitation of vortexing brings in energies into a fluid that, you know, we have a lot to learn about it, but it's something I hang my hat on.

Now, I think, because I have a point of entry, structured water filtration unit. You know, full disclosure, it's the same one that like my, my dad creates.

And sells, like grander or something. Like that.

Yeah, that one is. Is a. From what I understand, it's a. It's a vortices. It's like a series of, like, glass seeds and minerals that the water passes through after it's filtered through. For my well water, I have bacterial iron and manganese filter. And that cleans it up. And then it goes from there through his whole house water structuring system. And that one is a vortex based system.

That water is used for other things. Like you have the. I am a big believer in that system that your father sells. Okay. And I see it as something that you're bathing in. Not necessarily relevant.

Yeah. Because it's a whole house system, so. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Cleaning with it, bathing with it, et cetera. And that one, I think is a new one, does use carbon as well. So it's carbon combined with structured water.

And you know, that system does perform miracles with. With. With growing of plants in agriculture.

Yeah, I mean, that's. That's his prior. His primary customers are farmers and large egg. Yeah.

Oh, that's the real deal. Yeah.

Okay. Good to know. You'll make my dad happy when he listens in. Okay, so how about hydrogen water? Hydrogen enriched water? I have. I have one of those hydrogen water generators in my basement. I travel with these hydrogen rich tablets. I've been doing so ever since I interviewed my friend Tyler LeBaron of the Molecular Hydrogen Foundation. And I'm curious to get your take on hydrogen enriched water.

Well, you probably don't know, but Tyler would tell you that the first person to ever create the reacting hydrogen tablet was Robert Slovak. And in December of 2010. Okay. I'm not sure how old tighter was at the time, but somebody's writing right now. Somebody's writing the history of hydrogen water. And this issue came up and they said, you know, you really came out with the first product. It was called Active H minus in December 2010. And he was so shocked. And I showed him our actual brochure of this, and he goes, wow. And I did this in cooperation with a pharmacologist.

Yeah, I know exactly how he said it too, because I can do a Pretty good Tyler LeBaron impersonation. Wow. You invented that.

That's good. In the beginning of hydrogen, everybody thought we were delivering hydride ions. Hydride ions are hydrogen atoms with an electron that is donated to a free radical. That's how we thought it all worked, like an antioxidant does. It was just a donator of an electron. And that's. And we all based it upon the oxidation reduction potential. We all carried oxidation reduction potential meters, meters around with us to show that our reactive hydrogen tablet was really delivering electrons. But it was wrong. We were wrong. We named the product wrong. It wasn't until people like Tyler and some other others from Japan who said, hey, it's not the hydride ion. It is the molecular hydrogen H2, the neutral, non charged, etc. Molecule. And it was a shock for me. I felt a little bit stupid. But now that's all been straightened out. But it is a phenomenal technology. I'm so happy it escaped Big Pharma because it was, you know, that. And cannabis just slid right through and they never noticed that. These were two great.

They did get a patent that GSK did, I think got a patent on the. On. On cannabis for, for anti inflammatory potential. But yeah, aside from that, but with hydrogen rich water. Would you then. Because let's say somebody's got an aqua true or they buy like a reverse osmosis with carbon block. Could someone do like you mentioned, like adding quinton minerals to their water and then add hydrogen tablets on top of that?

Absolutely.

Okay. Could they take their, the water that's been filtered by their central reverse osmosis filtration system or structured water system or not central, like, like a, like that wow water system you talked about or something like that? And could they then take that water, fill one of these hydrogen water generator systems and then drink that as their kind of like point of use water system?

Absolutely.

Okay. And they'd still need to add minerals to that too. I don't, I don't know of any.

Yeah, they could.

I don't know of any hydrogen generators that have like any type of remineralization feature on them.

No, no, no, no.

Okay, got it.

I mean you just do it separately.

Right, Right.

And the hydrogen, I like the hydrogen. You know, the hydrogen appliances that dose it. But you. None of them really can give. If you're using hydrogen seriously and therapeutically probably you can't match the tablet for giving you the dose.

That's my understanding at this point, where the technology's at is the tablets give you the highest, but. But you still get quite a bit of benefit out of, out of the hydrogen water generators. Like you'll still get some.

You do, because you can drink just more of it constantly. Because it's so easy.

Yeah, yeah. Now when it comes to this deuterium depleted water, and I suspect whatever you're doing over in Russia has something to do with this. What's the story with that. A lot of people haven't heard the term deuterium depleted water. I think the first person who told me about it was Dr. Thomas Cowan when I was speaking with him at one of the. I think it was the Weston A. Price conference, and he actually gave me a few bottles of it. But can you help people wrap their heads around what deuterium is and what deuterium depleted water is?

Yeah, it's not easy to wrap your head around it because we always thought, we always called water H2O but. But H for hydrogen, really. The hydrogen itself consists of three isotopes. We're only going to talk about two of them, but the isotopes are really called protium. That's the regular hydrogen. We think of that. We thought we were saying the right thing by H2O. And then there's deuterium and that's heavier than hydrogen. And then there's something called tritium that we don't worry about because it is radioactive and there's hardly any on the planet to begin with. So hydrogen and deuterium, these are two isotopes. And if we call hydrogen, the simple hydrogen, which is just a proton and an electron, if we call that H and we call deuterium, which is a proton, a neutron in the nucleus and an electron, that's deuterium. The remarkable thing that just shocked me when I realized it is that that isotope is the only isotope of all the elements that's twice as heavy as its sister isotope, proteum. Twice as heavy. That is a remarkable. For a scientist, that is a remarkable reality because you immediately think twice as heavy in all of the chemical reactions, twice as heavy must really be significant, just intuitively, right? So water is actually three molecules. It's H2O, it's HDO, where the simple hydrogen and the deuterium atom and oxygen combined and D2O, those are the three molecules. It's even more complicated than that. But I'm not going to take you down the rabbit hole that far. So these three molecules make up water. Now, if you ask, well, how much deuterium is there? There's only about 150 deuteriums for every million proteins, or we call it regular hydrogen for some of you are having trouble with the protium word. So 150 out of 1 million, that's not very much. It's really like 10 drops of deuterium in a liter of water. However, deuterium, when water is made with deuterium, it's called heavy water. And heavy water is Instrumental to the operation of conventional nuclear reactors that make energy and help make stuff for atomic bombs. So heavy water was the entire objective of the military industrial complex of four countries in World War II. Everybody wanted to make the bomb because they knew it was the controlling factor. And America won the race to extract the deuterium from regular water and concentrate it. Then they could make reactors and the atomic bomb. We won the race.

So they used the deuterium extracted from water to make bombs.

Exactly. And it's not used like in the sense of it's the bomb, it's just used to slow down neutrons. Okay. It's a very subtle thing, but it has to be that that's the only thing that could do it.

Now, based, based on the title then Deuterium depleted water, what would. Would you then want to eliminate deuterium from your water because it's so large that it would displace hydrogen ions? When you consume water with high amounts of displace.

Not displace it. It's its interaction with your, with your cells that is the problem. So in other words, when they took the deuterium out of water to use it for bombs, they were left with a supply of deuterium depleted water. They took it out and they would throw that away. It was the Russians in the late 50s and early 60s. And the Russians, I can tell you, are among the smartest people I've ever met on the planet. Especially their scientists. They are a, a step above. They said, you know, everybody's making the heavy water, but I wonder if there's anything unique about the water left behind which we could call light water or lighter water. And that's really what we call it, light water or deuterium depleted water. And it produced some incredibly unusual biological effects in both plants and animals. And their reports, dramatic increases in lifespan, growth rates, survival and diseases, etc. This was something that they alerted us to. They alerted scientists and physiologists early on, but no one really took it seriously except themselves. Partly there was no explanation.

Interesting. Can you get, because I've heard this before, that you can get high amounts of deuterium from certain foods or plant sources. So is that something you should take into consideration as well?

Not high amounts? When we talk high and remember, deuterium depleted, if there's 150 out of every million deuterium atoms in normal water somewhere, it could be 155 too. But if there's only 150 out of every million, when we deplete it, we even consider depleted as 130 parts per million, meaning you've only reduced to 20. We call it depleted when it's 120 parts per million. We call it depleted when it'S 80 parts per million. We call it Depleted when it'S 5 parts per million. So there's lots of kinds of or degrees of deuterium depleted water.

Can you somehow deplete the deuterium, you know, using all the water filtration mechanisms that we talked about? I mean, I know to buy deuterium depleted water is expensive to like to buy, like bottled deuterium depleted water. Is there a way to deplete the deuterium in the water with something you would add to your water or deplete the deuterium in your body with something that you would take?

Great question. No. There is no other process other than the rigorous. It is one of the most complex and difficult challenges I've ever witnessed in all of my years as a water scientist and engineer. I mean, it was like, it almost like threw me back the first time I walked into the deuterium depleted water room, manufacturing room, and I go, oh my God. And I went to Russia really primarily to find somebody that would help us build the facility in America. And it was very defeating when I saw how complex it was. So remember, you're not messing with molecules here. You're messing with the atoms themselves. So you're in another level. That's why RO and regular distillation and carbon filtration and all the gizmos cannot touch the deuterium.

Now, from what I understand, the process of beta oxidation or fat burning can create some amount of water. And I think it was Dr. Cowan who was telling me about this, suggesting that being in a relative state of ketosis or burning, a higher amount of fatty acids than carbohydrates could naturally create deuterium depleted water metabolically. Which within the body. Have you heard anything about that?

Bingo. Bingo. You're really I seeing this as the singularity. It's almost everything that modern health science is leading to, such as a ketogenic diet shift from MTOR to autophagy. It's the whole gamut. It's really all ends with what's the end result. I'm depleting the body of deuterium. So you're right. For every like 2.4 pounds of fat you burn, you produce about 1.1 liters of deuterium depleted water. And when I say deuterium depleted water, let's say between 50 and 80 ppm and this is being generated in the mitochondria.

I love it. The best things in life are free, right? Do some fasting.

The best things in life are free.

Well, not necessarily. There's a lot of people who achieve ketosis by buying overpriced beta hydroxybutyrate supplements. But the best things in life to achieve naturally are free, right?

And this is how the camel does it. This is how the camel walks across the desert with all the energy needed to do that and doesn't need to drink because he hydrates from within from burning the stored fat in the camel hump. He burns that and he's producing all this incredible deuterium depleted water in the mitochondria that's hydrating him and having the benefit of having no or little deuterium to start messing up the mitochondria itself. Because that's the reason we want it. We want deuterium depleted water because deuterium happens to destroy the mechanism that admits hydrogen into the electron transport chain of the mitochondria. And it's really good for everybody to look that up and watch the little animated illustrations of how this nanomotor they call it, spins at about 9,000 rpm. It's actually like a fantasy. You think you're watching Disney and you can't believe this is actually going on in your body. But all the mitochondria are aligned with these nanomotors and they index protons from the cytoplasm of the cell into the electron transport chain. And if a deuterium enters into that motor, destroys the motor. So from the time we're born, we're a mitochondria destroying machine. And this is the great aspect of this discovery. And you want to stop us, ourselves and our metabolism from becoming a mitochondrial destruction machine.

Wow.

The production of the deuterium water is yet another benefit to preserving the mitochondria. But the deuterium is destroying mitochondria. In a way, it's like the new definition of aging. I mean, it's really one of the reasons we are slowing down, because we are losing mitochondria.

I'm going to make some T shirts that say deuterium is kryptonite. Nobody will know what the hell they mean.

It's amazing, Ben, that the most revered, unassailable nutrient in the world called water, assuming it's pure water, is also contains the seed of destruction that's unmatched in the world of contaminants. Yeah, I mean, it goes right to the core of your ability to make ATP.

Well, God bless those Russians hearts for figuring this stuff out and God bless you for doing all this water research, man. I hope people are listening or people who are listening get the impression now about what I was saying how Robert really does do a lot of research on this stuff. He's one of my favorite guys to talk to about water. Probably you, my dad and Tyler Lebaron are the three guys I really like to talk about water.

We now have, we have a container of deuterium depleted water on its way from Russia and it will be here. We have a brand called light water, L I T E water and our website you can go on even though that it's just going up. It's called drinklightwater.com and we will have the lowest deuterium light water in the world, 5 and 10 bpm.

Are you going to have that on your, on your water and wellness website too?

It will be, it will be on there very shortly. And the 5 and 10, the purpose of it, you don't need to take 5 and 10. You don't probably want to take 5 and 10. But with 5 and 10 you can use it as a concentrate. You can mix it to make a higher ppm water which is all that really is required. Say 100 ppm water is fantastic. So you can mix like 3 liters with 1 liter of ours. And now you've cut down the shipping and the cost of all the higher deuterium depleted. Higher ppm deuterium depleted water. It was our strategy. We know we have to get the price down so more people can take advantage of deuterium depleted water.

Brilliant. I dig it. I'll link to all this stuff in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com AllThingsWater I'm very glad I was able to record this episode with you Robert, because there was a lightning storm outside and fittingly enough torrential rain has been coming down during this entire show. So I've been watching water out my window while I'm talking about water.

Ben, Rain is typically, is typically slightly lower in deuterium for meteorological reasons. Okay, so the grass fed, the grass fed factor in the butter we eat and the milk and so on is a factor. So if you have pasture raised animals, typically their fat, their products, their butter will be lower in deuterium than animals that are, that are grain raised.

Good thing I keep giant buckets outside to collect rainwater to feed my children. All right man. Well thanks for coming on the show. And again folks, the show notes are@BenGreenfieldFitness.com AllThingsWater Leave your questions, your comments, your feedback over there, Robert, or I will jump in and point you in the right direction. And I hope this has been as enlightening for you as it was for me. And until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Robert Slovak signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes. Use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.