My network of folks interested in alternative health is BUZZING about the amazing stories regarding better energy, toxicity cleansing, and disappearing symptoms with the use of a water ionizer. So herein is the water ionizer defined.

The human body needs to be slightly alkaline (about 7.4 on the pH scale) but is bombarded with acids from emotional stress; foods like meat, dairy, sugar, and soft drinks; medications; toxins in the environment; and much more. When we become too acidic, our bodies rob alkaline minerals from our cells, depleting critical stores. As acidosis occurs, the body’s ability to absorb nutrition is damaged, cells cannot repair, rebuild, detoxify, and maintain energy. Tumor cells thrive in an acid climate, and we are overall prone to fatigue and disease.

Last year, I spent several months researching alkaline water: studying, talking to experts and people who own ionizers, interviewing company reps, and testing water from different machines.

I finally came to the point of being able to make recommendations to my local group buyers and purchase an ionizer for my family. Many of my local network had been influenced by the massive presence of the network marketing company Enagic (Kangen). I had been trying to sift through the hype by the network marketers and look at the technology from the three big companies: Life, Enanic, and Jupiter. I simply could not bring myself to spend $4,000 on the Enagic unit that I know lines the pockets of eight distributors AND the manufacturing company. Furthermore, many GreenSmoothieGirl readers, and folks in my local network, simply cannot afford that price tag without going into debt.

Still, I had come to believe that drinking alkaline water has powerful potential for our health. (I had been buying 4-oz. bottles of alkalizing drops for $73, and that had to end!)

A close friend of mine, a breast-cancer survivor, said that one month on alkaline water did as much for her energy and health as five years of eating 100% raw. She had made a list of 27 health benefits she’d noticed in the first month of drinking alkaline water. Borrowing water from her, I felt an increase in my own energy level as well.

It takes 20 parts alkaline to neutralize 1 part acid, and most of us have a lot of acid coming in. It makes sense that alkaline water is the most volume way to balance the pH and neutralize the effects of the acidic conditions of stress, refined foods, etc. You could eat 80% raw and alkaline and not achieve effects as impressive as 8 daily glasses of alkaline water can. (That said, you should eat as much raw and alkaline as possible—and I take my own advice on this.)

Jupiter agreed to make me a good group-buy deal, but their models have inferior pH range and warranties. I have loved my Life Ionizer 7000 that installed UNDER MY SINK. I simply refused to have the big, bulky Enagic machine on top of my sink, taking up valuable counter space and cluttering up my kitchen, for the rest of my life. Life has the ONLY under-sink-installed ionizer on the market.

Life Ionizer is the oldest ionizer company in North America (13 yrs. old), is headquartered in Korea, and its machine has the same pH range that Enagic has (2.5 to 11.5, a bigger scale than Jupiter's 4.0 to 10.0 scale). This unit beats Enagic's in alkalinity readings. Enagic does beat Life in water acidity readings, but you need that only for cleaning. I think all of us are more interested in alkalinity and aren’t willing to pay $2,700 more for slightly lower pH acid water.

The Life model has a 5-yr. parts and labor warranty like Kangen (Jupiter has 2- and 3-yr. warranties). You don't have to fall prey to the “testimonials” of those selling the network-marketed product with Enagic that their product is the ONLY one that can make alkaline water, because it's very simple to test the water for alkalinity. I did it with both companies’ water. You simply use drops you can buy for a few dollars. It is not rocket science, and Life and Jupiter are massively less expensive--even without my group-buy price--because they don't have to pay 8 distributors. The technology is very similar.

Further, for the many who are going to a friend’s house who has an Enagic machine and returning home with two days’ worth of water in bottles: I tested water from both Enagic and Life, and the pH goes back to almost as acidic as tap water after 8 hours. You really need to own your own unit. That’s the water ionizer defined for you.