By Dr. Mercola
Water is clearly one of the most important factors for your
health—especially when you consider that your body actually
consists of over 99 percent water molecules! I sincerely believe
water is a really underappreciated part of the equation of
optimal health.
I’ve previously interviewed
Dr. Gerald Pollack, who is one of the leading premier
research scientists in the world when it comes to understanding
the physics of water, and what it means to your health.
Besides being a professor of bioengineering at the University
of Washington, he’s also the founder and editor-in-chief of a
scientific journal called Water, and has published many
peer-reviewed scientific papers on this topic. He’s even
received prestigious awards from the National Institutes of
Health.
His book, The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond Solid,
Liquid, and Vapor, is a phenomenal read that is easy to
understand even for the non-professional.
It clearly explains the theory of the fourth phase
of water, which is nothing short of ground-breaking. The fourth
phase of water is, in a nutshell, living water. It’s
referred to as EZ water—EZ standing for “exclusion zone”—which
has a negative charge. This water can hold energy, much like a
battery, and can deliver energy too.
For years, Dr. Pollack had researched muscles and how they
contract, and it struck him as odd that the most common ideas
about muscle contraction do not involve water, despite the fact
that muscle tissue consists of 99 percent water molecules.
How could it be that 99 percent of the molecules were
ignored? How could it be that muscle contracts without involving
the water in some way? These questions help catalyze his
passionate investigation into water.
So You Think You Understand Water?
Gilbert Ling, who was a pioneer in this field, discovered
that water in human cells is not ordinary water (H2O), but
something far more structured and organized.
“I began to think about water in the context of
biology: if water inside the cell was ordered and structured
and not bulk water or ordinary water as most biochemists and
cell biologists think, then it is really important,”
Dr. Pollack says.
Dr. Pollack’s book also touches on some of the most basic
features of water, many of which are really not understood. For
example, how does evaporation take place? Why does a tea kettle
whistle? Also, despite the fact that conventional science tells
us freezing is supposed to occur at zero degrees Celsius,
experiments show that it can freeze in many different
temperatures down to minus 50 degrees Celsius.
There’s actually no one single freezing point for
water! Other experiments show that the boiling point of 100
degrees Celsius (or 212 degrees Fahrenheit) does not always hold
true either.
“There’s a famous website1
put together by a British scientist, Martin Chaplin. Martin
lists numerous anomalies associated with water,” Dr.
Pollack says. “In other words, things that shouldn’t be
according to what we know about water...
The more anomalies we have, the more we begin to think that
maybe there’s something fundamental about water that we
really don’t know. That’s the core of what I’m trying to do.
In our laboratory at the University of Washington, we’ve
done many experiments over the last decade. These
experiments have clearly shown the existence of this
additional phase of water.”
The reason this fourth phase of water is called the exclusion
zone or EZ is because the first thing Dr. Pollack’s team
discovered is that it profoundly excludes things. Even small
molecules are excluded from EZ water. Surprisingly, EZ water
appears in great abundance, including inside most of your cells.
Even your extracellular tissues are filled with this kind of
water.
The Water in Your Cells Give Them Their Negative Charge
Other inherent differences between regular water and EZ water
include its structure. Typical tap water is H2O but this fourth
phase is not H2O; it’s actually H3O2. It’s
also more viscous, more ordered, and more alkaline than regular
water, and its optical properties are different. The refractive
index of EZ water is about 10 percent higher than ordinary
water. Its density is also about 10 percent higher, and it has a
negative charge (negative electrical potential). This may
provide the answer as to why human cells are negatively charged.
Dr. Pollack explains:
“Everybody knows that the cell is negatively charged.
If you insert an electrode into any of your cells, you’ll
measure a negative electrical potential. The textbook says
that the reason for this negative electrical potential has
something to do with the membrane and the ion channels in
the membrane.
Oddly, if you look at a gel that has no membrane, you
record much the same potential – 100 millivolts or 150
millivolts negative. The interior of the cell is much like a
gel. It’s kind of surprising that something without a
membrane yields the same electrical potential as the cell
with a membrane.
That raises the question: where does this negativity
come from? Well, I think the negativity comes from the
water, because the EZ water inside the cell has a negative
charge. The same is true of the gel—the EZ water in the gel
confers negativity. I think the cells are negatively charged
because the water inside the cell is mainly EZ water and not
neutral H2O.”
What Creates or Builds EZ Water?
One of the greatest surprises is that the key ingredient to
create EZ water is light, i.e. electromagnetic energy,
whether in the form of visible light, ultraviolet (UV)
wavelengths and infrared wavelengths, which we’re surrounded by
all the time. Infrared is the most powerful, particularly at
wavelengths of approximately three micrometers, which is all
around you. The EZ water can build on any hydrophilic or
water-loving surface when infrared energy is available.
It builds by adding layer upon layer of EZ water, and can
build millions of molecular layers. This is how it occurs in
nature. For example, ice doesn’t form directly from ordinary
H2O. It goes from regular water to EZ water to ice. And when you
melt it, it goes from ice to EZ water to regular water. So EZ
water is an intermediate state.
“Glacial melt is a perfect way to get EZ water. And a
lot of people have known that this water is really good for
your health,” Dr. Pollack says.
Testing water samples using a UV-visible spectrometer, which
measures light absorption at different wavelengths, Dr. Pollack
has discovered that in the UV region of 270 nanometers, just shy
of the visible range, the EZ actually absorbs light.
The more of the 270 nanometer light the water absorbs, the more
EZ water the sample contains. EZ water appears to be quite
stable. This means it can hold the structure, even if you leave
it sitting around for some time. Water samples from the river
Ganges and from the Lourdes in France have been measured,
showing spikes in the 270 nanometer region, suggesting these
“holy waters” contain high amounts of EZ water. According to Dr.
Pollack, there’s compelling evidence that EZ water is indeed
lifesaving...
EZ Cellular Water Helps Explain Health Benefits of Light and
Heat Therapies
Heating equates to applying infrared energy, and Dr. Pollack
has found that if you apply infrared, the EZ water builds and
doesn’t diminish. The implications of this are profound when you
consider the health benefits of sitting in an infrared sauna,
for example. Essentially, one of the reasons why infrared saunas
make you feel so good is because your body’s cells are deeply
penetrated by infrared energy, which builds and stores EZ water.
The same goes for
light therapy, spending time in the sun, and
laser therapy.
“There are various kinds of light therapy using
different wavelengths. We found that all wavelengths – some
in particular – of light, even weak light, build EZ. If EZ
is critical for the health of your cells, which I think is
clear, these therapies have a distinct physical chemical
basis,” Dr. Pollack explains.
EZ water also provides a mechanism that explains other
biological mysteries. For example, Dr. Pollack describes another
fascinating finding that further bolsters our understanding of
the mechanism of action behind the health benefits of something
as simple as exposing your body to the light and heat of the
sun:
“We found that if we put a simple tube, like a straw,
made of hydrophilic material, in water... there’s water flow
through the tube at high speed. This happens spontaneously.
But it shouldn’t happen spontaneously. The common
idea is that if you want to drive fluid through a pipe or
tube, you need to apply pressure. But we have no pressure
here. There’s no pressure difference between the input and
output. But flow builds up spontaneously, and it keeps
going.
Recently, we found that if we add light, the flow
goes faster. It means that light has a particular
effect; especially ultraviolet light, but other wavelengths
as well. It speeds up the flow. We think that somehow the
exclusion zones (EZs) are involved because inside those
tubes, there’s a little annular ring of exclusion zone, and
inside that is an area full of protons... It seems that the
exclusion zone and the pressure of these protons are driving
the flow.”
Now, let’s apply these mechanisms to your body. Your
capillaries receive radiant energy from outside all the time.
Energy is also received from the inside of your body, as
metabolic reactions continuously generate heat or infrared. So
the question is, is it possible that the flow of blood occurring
through your capillaries is automatically enhanced by exposure
to light? It appears the answer may be yes...
“This is an important issue because the capillaries
are puzzling,” Dr. Pollack says. “They’re so small.
Some of the capillaries are smaller in diameter than the red
blood cells that pass through them. Any competent engineer
would never build a pipe that’s smaller than the junk that’s
supposed to go through. But nature, apparently, has done
that...
Now, that means there’s a lot of resistance. You need
something to push those red blood cells through... One
possibility is that the flow in your capillaries is aided by
this kind of radiant energy... We’re starting to test
this... It’s possible that your cardiovascular system is
assisted by radiant energy in the same way that the flow in
the tubes is assisted by radiant energy.”
One of the more interesting healing modalities I’ve been
exploring lately is the use of a high-powered laser. The
K-Laser also has frequencies in the infrared range, which
can deeply penetrate tissue. This kind of laser therapy has
shown to provide profound healing for many painful injuries in a
very short amount of time—sometimes just minutes of
treatment. While the benefits of laser therapy are thought to be
due to its action on mitochondrial activity, it may very well be
that the benefits are also related to “recharging” your damaged
cells’ EZ water, as well as promoting increased capillary blood
flow.
EZ water in your body also plays a role is in hyperbaric
medicine, which is also good for injuries. In that case, your
tissues are exposed to high oxygen under pressure.
“The results are in. We think we understand the
mechanism as to why hyperbaric oxygen is so effective for
wound healing... EZ water has a higher density than bulk
water. If you take H2O and you put it under
pressure, it should give you H3O2 because the EZ structure
is denser than the H2O. We did the experiments and
we found, indeed, that’s the case. If you put H2O
under pressure, you get more EZ water.”
The same goes for oxygen. EZ also has more oxygen than H2O,
and when you increase oxygen content, you get more EZ water. So,
hyperbaric treatment builds EZ water in your body, particularly
in injured areas where EZ water is needed.
Alkalinity and Your Body’s Negative Charge May Be Critical for
Health
I personally drink vortexed water nearly exclusively as I
became a big fan of Viktor Schauberger who did much pioneering
work on vortexing about a century ago. Dr. Pollack found that by
creating a vortex in a glass of water, you’re putting more
energy into it, thereby increasing EZ. According to Dr. Pollack,
virtually ANY energy put into the water seems to create or build
EZ water.
“We have looked at acoustic energy that seems to
effect some change in the water. We’re still not sure
exactly what. Vortexed water puts enormous energy into the
water. There are several groups in Europe studying this
phenomenon right now. “
As mentioned earlier, EZ water is alkaline and carries a
negative charge. Maintaining this state of alkalinity and
negative charge appears to be important for optimal health.
Drinking water can be optimized in a variety of different ways,
by injecting light energy or physical energy into the water by
vortexing, for example. This is fairly easy using magnets.
Reversing the vortex every few seconds may even create more
energy.
Clearly, more research needs to be done in this area, but
some is already underway. My own R&D team is working on a
careful study in which we use vortexed water to grow sprouts, to
evaluate the vitality and effectiveness of the water.
As for a natural source of EZ water for drinking, an ideal
source is glacial melt. Unfortunately, this is extremely
inaccessible for most people. Another good source is water from
deep sources, such as deep spring water. The deeper the better,
as EZ water is created under pressure. Natural spring water is
another excellent way to obtain this type of water and you can
use FindaSpring.com2
to help you find one close to you.
Besides optimizing the water you drink, you can help generate
an electron surplus, or support this negative charge within your
body, simply by connecting to the Earth, which also has
a negative charge. This is the basis of the
earthing or
grounding technique, which has been shown to have
significant health benefits by allowing the transfer of
negatively charged electrons from the ground into the soles of
your feet. In a sense, it’s as though your cells are built like
batteries that are naturally recharged by spending time
outdoors—whether sunny or overcast, and walking barefoot,
connecting to the negative charge of the earth!
“If you have an organ that’s not functioning well—for
example, it’s lacking that negative charge—then the negative
charge from the earth and... [drinking] EZ water can help
restore that negativity. I’ve become convinced... that this
negative charge is critical for healthy function,” Dr.
Pollack says.
© Copyright 1997-2013 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.