Alkaline Water

When asked about Kangen water by name, Aajonus was brief and categorical. He said it is "no better than any other processed water and can cause just as many problems as distilled waters if drunk." His view was that all water is devoid of nutritional value, and that no processing method, including ionization, filtration, or pH adjustment, changes this fundamental property. He acknowledged that some people report improvements in health when drinking Kangen water, but explained that such improvements likely reflect the water's ability to dissolve some compounds in the intestines, kidneys, or bladder. However, he warned that if those people continued using it, it would dissolve more than they intended. The solvent action of water does not discriminate between toxic accumulations and useful nutrients, digestive acids, or mucosal linings.

He was similarly dismissive of the fact that public figures such as Magic Johnson used Kangen water, and of reports that the Japanese government was subsidizing its installation. The popularity or governmental endorsement of a processed water system did not factor into his evaluation of it.

The digestive tract, as Aajonus explained it, is designed to operate at an acidic level of approximately 5.5 throughout. The mouth contains only one slightly alkalinizing enzyme, thiolin, which handles a small fraction of carbohydrate breakdown and constitutes only 2 to 5 percent of salivary content. The rest of salivary content consists primarily of bacteria, and those bacteria are acidic in nature. They are called putrefactive bacteria, a term Aajonus acknowledged sounds bad, but which simply describes the acidic bacterial populations that digest animal tissue. He noted that humans have more bacteria per unit of saliva than dogs or cats, with approximately 2,300 to 3,200 bacteria per centimeter in humans compared to 1,600 to 1,800 in canines and felines.

When alkaline water enters the digestive tract, it neutralizes hydrochloric acid and the acidic bacterial environment that the stomach and small intestine depend on to break down animal products, including meat, eggs, and dairy. If the system becomes over-alkalinized in this way, those digestive acids and bacteria are suppressed or destroyed, and the animal foods passing through are not properly digested. Aajonus estimated that in a state of significant over-alkalinity, a person might digest only a quarter of what they eat, or perhaps half at best. He also noted that alkaline substances passing into the colon neutralize E. coli and other beneficial bacteria that produce B vitamins, amino acids, and fecal material of the proper consistency and motility. Without those bacteria, feces become small, hard, and abrasive, causing damage as they exit the body.

He also described how eating whole vegetables, rather than vegetable juice, over-alkalinizes the intestines specifically because the fiber continues to secrete alkaline fluid as it moves through, persisting in a way that vegetable juice absorbed at the duodenum does not. Vegetable juice, when consumed correctly, is absorbed almost entirely before it reaches the intestines, meaning it can alkalinize the blood without over-alkalinizing the gut. Whole vegetables, by contrast, reach the intestines and create an environment hostile to the acidic bacteria responsible for 80 to 90 percent of digestion in humans.

One specific claim Aajonus addressed was the idea that maintaining an alkaline blood pH prevents or cures cancer. He rejected this directly, stating that cancer absolutely can survive in an alkaline blood system and pointing to the Optimum Health Institute as evidence. He noted that the alkaline-diet-based programs there consistently failed to produce survival in more than 23 to 25 percent of cancer patients, and that many of those patients were subsequently sent to him. The premise that cancer cannot live in an alkaline environment was, in his view, another piece of wishful thinking presented as scientific fact without proof.

Aajonus made a specific distinction between over-alkalinizing the whole body, which he opposed, and targeted alkalinization of the blood, which he endorsed in particular circumstances. He stated clearly: "Only the digestive and urinary tracts, and blood can be alkalinized. The body is basically, and should be, slightly acidic." He emphasized that the blood does benefit from some alkalinizing support because of the toxic load most people carry, and that vegetable juice serves this purpose well when used in the right quantity and form, precisely because it is absorbed before the intestines and therefore does not disrupt the acidic bacterial environment there.

He acknowledged that for people eating cooked food and chemicals, some degree of alkalinization is genuinely corrective. He even stated that for certain individuals, a short-term period of stronger alkalinization, lasting 10 days, 14 days, or even a few months, might be appropriate as a corrective measure. But beyond that window, he said, it becomes very damaging because the ongoing suppression of digestive acids and beneficial bacteria prevents proper assimilation of proteins and fats, and over time depletes the body's capacity to protect and repair itself.

For people on a raw diet eating animal products properly, he maintained that the body self-regulates its acid-alkaline balance without intervention. The urine and saliva may not match blood pH exactly in the short term, but if the person is eating raw foods consistently, the body corrects the balance naturally. He advised against using urine pH as a diagnostic tool for blood alkalinity, since by the time the body excretes urine, it has often already corrected whatever imbalance existed.

Aajonus drew a firm line between alkaline water and alkalinizing minerals. He strongly endorsed consuming alkalinizing minerals, particularly calcium, phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium, as nutrients the body uses to de-ionize toxic heavy metals and neutralize free radicals. Neutralizing one molecule of mercury, he explained, requires approximately 12 molecules of calcium, 10 molecules of magnesium, around 40 molecules of phosphorus, and 5 to 12 molecules of potassium. This enormous demand for alkalinizing minerals explains why cheese eaten with honey is one of his primary mineral supplements, not because it is alkalinizing in the systemic sense he opposed, but because it delivers concentrated absorbable minerals the body uses for that neutralization work.

Phosphorus he identified as one of the most important alkalinizing minerals for balancing the body's acid environment and cleansing it of over-acidity, noting that the bacteria and enzymes that work with phosphorus are destroyed at 98 degrees Fahrenheit, making cooked food a particularly poor source of this mineral. The minerals in water, including mineralized or alkaline mineral water, he considered essentially non-absorbable in humans. He stated that even heavily mineralized water contains only trace amounts of minerals and that adding more trace amounts via a water product does nothing useful, because the minerals in water do not have the ionic bonding or nutrient matrix required for cellular absorption. The best concentrated mineral supplement, he said, remains cheese with honey.

Aajonus noted that almost all municipal water is already alkaline, not for health reasons but because water treatment facilities add chemicals to preserve pipes. This forced alkalinity is incompatible with the skin's natural pH, which he stated is 5.5, meaning that washing or bathing in overly alkaline municipal water dries the skin out more than water at a compatible pH would. For bathing and hot tub use, he recommended correcting the pH issues by adding sea salt, vinegar, milk, and other ingredients to the water regardless of what the municipal pH happened to be, because those additions resolve the issue functionally without relying on any pH manipulation of the source water.

Aajonus addressed ionization machines specifically, reporting on his own laboratory research conducted between 1973 and 1974. He found that ionized water poses a particular problem because of the electrical and magnetic charge it carries. He explained that an ionized charge in water will drive substances directly through the intestinal walls and through tissues without the natural filtration that normally occurs, because the charge is not bound by mucus or tissue in the way that food-borne ions are. He distinguished between ions derived from food, which he considered appropriate and beneficial, and ions in water produced by a machine, which he said cause the charge to penetrate indiscriminately into tissue. If someone were going to use an ionizer, he recommended placing it in the living room or other rooms at night and keeping the bedroom door closed, then moving it to the bedroom during the day if desired, specifically so the person was not sleeping in close proximity to it.

Rather than promoting any kind of processed, filtered, or alkaline water, Aajonus recommended drinking as little plain water as possible and meeting fluid needs primarily through milk, raw juices, and raw foods, which he noted are already predominantly water by content (milk at 86 to 92 percent, fruits at 90 to 92 percent) but with the H2O ionically bonded to a full matrix of nutrients. This bonded form of water, he explained, is the only form the body can absorb into cells without causing dehydration. Plain water, including alkaline water, lacks this bonding and therefore cannot be taken up by cells without drying them out.

When he did drink water, he drank naturally sparkling mineral water, specifically Gerolsteiner, which he preferred because the carbonation is natural, drawn from the carbon dioxide layer in the aquifer and pumped together with the water rather than added synthetically. His reasoning was that naturally carbonated water increases nitrogen in the digestive tract and oxygen in the blood more than still water does, making it marginally more useful. He also noted that naturally sparkling waters are typically bottled in glass rather than plastic, avoiding the additional problem of phthalate and PCB contamination from plastic bottles. He reported drinking as little as one cup of water per week in fall and winter, and perhaps a cup per day in summer, relying on milk when thirsty.

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