I was asked the other day if we had considered marketing a zazen Alkaline Water System with a glass bottom tank.

I went on to answer the question by explaining how the zazen Alkaline Water System worked emulating Mother Nature's water cycle, producing a clean and balanced water with a broad range of essential alkaline minerals ideal for the body’s hydration needs - and therefore in this balanced state would not leach chemicals to balance itself.

It was at this point he exclaimed!......"Oh, I get it he said… so zazen Water is not hungry!”

What a great description “hungry water”. So I thought to myself, "note to self....use this description going forward!"

So if zazen Water isn’t hungry  - what water is hungry?

Simple, any water that is acidic (lower than 7.0pH). Did you know that rainwater can be as low as 5.7 pH (acidic) and up to 7.0 pH (neutral). Why? Because it has not collected any alkaline minerals from earth yet and therefore not alkaline but acidic to neutral.

Many of the bottled waters in plastic bottles are hungry! Water created by the distallation and reverse osmosis methods create hungry water! They will leach minerals from the drinker in order to get absorbed or will leach chemicals from containers where possible.

PS. The zazen Alkaline Water System is BPA free. EVERY part of the system is BPA free - the filter cartridge housing; seals, tap and tanks – are all BPA* free.
It is important to remember that it is not just the tank that the water sits in but also ALL parts that water comes in contact with you should consider. 

What is BPA?
Bisphenol A is a chemical used in cheaper plastics which helps harden the plastic – it is a chemical which is described as an endocrine disruptor and the body takes in BPA, if it is present, thinking it is estrogen. BPA is called a “false estrogen”  and the body cannot discern any difference. Studies show endocrine disruptors have been associated with cancer.

I was asked this past week by a doctor what the medicinal benefits of drinking alkaline water were. I have written below what I wrote to her with her subsequent reply below as well.

I explained that we measure the alkalinity by the pH of the zazen Alkaline Water System and this will vary slightly depending on a number of factors, however the pH can range on average around 7.4 and up to 8.5. The alkaline minerals help create great tasting alkaline water through the re-mineralisation process of the zazen Water System. The blood in our body is slightly alkaline at 7.4 pH so that is also a goal.

So the first point is given the fact that zazen Water contains essential alkaline minerals (especially the electrolytes); plus the system reduces the toxins in the originating water, so the body does not have to do the filtering of these… then we believe zazen Water aids in cellular hydration.  If we accept for a moment that if an individual is hydrated then the body is able to perform the tasks of releasing metabolic waste and draw nutrients more efficiently into the cell, then we can conclude that drinking zazen Alkaline Water assists create a healthier more alkaline state.

The second point we make in drinking zazen Water is as the water reaches the stomach (the alkaline water helps stimulate the stomach to release hydrochloric acid – which is good), this then stimulates the body to release bicarbonate buffers into the bloodstream (to balance the acid in the stomach otherwise there would be holes burnt through the stomach lining). 

These bicarbonate or alkaline buffers naturally released by the body, also help aid in reducing the toxin or acid load in the blood etc. again assisting create a healthier more alkaline state. We of course make no medical claim.

Here is the reply from the doctor.

“Dear Janet. Thank you for answering my question. You have gone to a great deal of effort to try and help me with my query and that goes a long way in my thinking. Thank you again!"

Recent current affairs television segments have explored spring waters with magnesium added and the reported health benefits. Some of these bottled waters are marketed as “unique water” simply because of the addition of magnesium (used to enhance the alkalinity and overall wellbeing benefits).

So let us explore what may be happening when people drink water that has magnesium added to it. Magnesium is a critical mineral salt or electrolyte in the body. Magnesium is used in every cellular function. Benefits include helping with osteoporosis, prevention of cardiovascular disease, helps with hypertension, treats migraine, depression, insomnia, menopause, cramps … the list goes on.

Magnesium and hydration - To better understand how the body operates when hydrated, we can explore the movement of key electrolytes (minerals salts) sodium, calcium, potassium and magnesium (plus chloride).

These electrolytes actually charge the body by charging the water and depending upon the charge they are holding (negative or positive) they can move water in and out of cells and around the body.

Sodium and calcium always partner and as they move into the cell they displace potassium and magnesium.

So What is an Electrolyte?

An electrolyte is a mineral that dissolves in water and carries an electrical charge.

Since the body is mostly made up of water, electrolytes are found everywhere in the body – inside the cells, in the spaces between cells, in the blood, in lymph glands and everywhere else.

Because electrolytes have electrical charges, they can move easily back and forth through cell membranes. This is important because as they move into a cell, they carry other nutrients in with them and as they move out of it, they carry out waste products and excess water.

To keep body fluid levels in balance, your cells need to have a lot of potassium inside them and a lot of sodium in the fluids outside them. To keep the balance, sodium and potassium constantly move back and forth through the cell membranes as do magnesium and calcium.

Sodium easily combines with other elements and is necessary to make hydrochloric acid – the powerful digestive juice inside your stomach that breaks foods down to enable it to be digested and absorbed.

All these electrolytes – sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium – keep the amount of water in the body in balance, carry impulses along the nerves, help make muscles contract and relax and keep the body from becoming too acidic or alkaline.

Electrolytes are also required to carry glucose (blood sugar) and other nutrients into the cells and to carry waste products and extra water out again. Electrolytes also regulate blood pressure and heartbeat.

zazen Alkaline Water has a balanced range of alkaline minerals including magnesium, sodium, chloride, potassium and calcium, which aid in hydrating you at a cellular level for maximum wellbeing benefit.

Many minerals such as magnesium are also more easily absorbed in water than in food.

The zazen Alkalinity & Antioxidant Enhancer product (AAE 100gm) – releases additional magnesium into your zazen Water system enhancing both the Alkalinity and Antioxidant value of the water. Click here to download the AAE fact sheet

Additional reading:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/02/10/magnesium-can-reduce-your-risk-of-sudden-death.aspx

http://www.newsmax.com/FastFeatures/Magnesium-health-benefits-supplements/2011/01/20/id/369647

10 Reasons to Drink Water

Did you know.......?

Roughly 70% of an adult’s body is made up of water.  At birth, water accounts for approximately 80% of an infant’s body weight.

While the daily recommended amount of water is eight cups per day (we more specifically recommend 1 litre for every 25kgs of body weight), not all of this water must be consumed in the liquid form. Nearly every food or drink item provides some water to the body.
Soft drinks, coffee, and tea, while made up almost entirely of water, also contain caffeine. Caffeine can act as a mild diuretic, preventing water from traveling to necessary locations in the body. So these drinks don't count in your daily water intake.

Pure water (solely hydrogen and oxygen atoms) has a neutral pH of 7, which is neither acidic nor basic.  Water dissolves more substances than any other liquid. Wherever it travels, water carries chemicals, minerals, and nutrients with it.

Somewhere between 70 and 75 percent of the earth’s surface is covered with water (similar to the percentage in our bodies - interesting coincidence!!).
Much more fresh water is stored under the ground in aquifers than on the earth’s surface.  The earth is a closed system, similar to a terrarium, meaning that it rarely loses or gains extra matter. The same water that existed on the earth millions of years ago is still present today. We are drinking the same water the dinosaurs drank! 
The total amount of water on the earth is about 326 million cubic miles of water.  Of all the water on the earth, humans can use only about three tenths of a percent of this water. Such usable water is found in groundwater aquifers, rivers, and freshwater lakes.

The average person uses anywhere from 300 to 400 litres of water per day. Flushing the toilet actually takes up the largest amount of this water.

By the time a person feels thirsty, his or her body has lost over 1 percent of its total water amount.
The weight a person loses directly after intense physical activity is weight from water, not fat.

We know our drinking water does not just contain hydrogen and oxygen (H₂O). Under a microscope and through chemical analysis we can find up to 2000 harmful contaminants in our drinking water. A key health hazard found in ALL chemically treated metropolitan drinking water are Chloroforms and THM’s.

THM’s & Chloroforms are a breed of deadly modern day man made chemicals created as a bi-product of disinfecting our water. They need to be removed before you drink your water as they are cancer causing.

THM’s & Chloroforms are produced from a chemical reaction with the organic compounds naturally occurring in our drinking water. The amount of organic matter (rubbish) in tap water is essentially made up of decomposing vegetation, algae and dead parasites killed through the disinfectant (chlorination) water process.

What happens to this organic matter as it breaks down and is exposed to disinfectants such as Chlorine and Chloramine?
Minerals are naturally released back into the water, which is fine, many of the minerals are used by the body and good for us. Unfortunately as this organic matter breaks down, proteins from the dead carcasses of parasites are also released. These proteins, when combined with Chlorine or the disinfectants used to kill parasites, create this deadly family of modern day chemicals called THM’s / Chloroforms.

For more information:
USA EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) Report on Health Risk of the Trihalomethanes Found in Drinking Water Carcinogenic Activity and Interactions.

What a Good Quality Water Filtration & Re-mineralisation System will do to your tap water.
A good quality water filter & re-mineralisation system will remove and reduce many of the harmful chemicals in our drinking water including THM’s and Chloroforms (refer zazen Blog Post Electrolytes in Drinking Water).  But the system should also rebalance your drinking water so that it supports your body’s ability to hydrate, creating a mineral rich Alkaline Water - just like natural water found bubbling out of a mountain spring.

Distilled Water and Reverse Osmosis Systems will not give you Alkaline Water.
The water produced by these systems does NOT nourish the body; nor hydrate it at a cellular level, most of it runs through us (you know the feeling of water sitting in your stomach). It is generally low pH or acidic water (below 7.0pH).

Because many of us are already mineral deficient, and we need minerals to actually use the water effectively and efficiently, the body has to rob minerals to absorb these types of water.

We are sure you would have heard the term electrolytes – and the need to replenish these when we have over exerted ourselves when exercising or if you have suffered from a diarrhea or vomiting episode.

What happens is that we have lost so much body fluid (water containing mineral salts) - that we become dehydrated. We MUST replenish both the fluid (water) and these valuable mineral salts in order for the body to rebalance itself.  Otherwise we get worse and suffer headaches, low energy etc.

What are Electrolytes and why are they so important?
An electrolyte is simply an alkaline mineral – or mineral salt. These “electrolyte” mineral salts dissolve in water and carry an electrical charge. Since the body is made up of over 70% water – electrolytes are found everywhere in the body.

 
Alkaline Water containing a balanced range of electrolyte minerals is essential for re-hydration – which is why sports drinks (Gatorade and PowerAde) are based on rehydration with electrolytes minerals contained in them – along with carbohydrates, flavoring and sugars!

Because electrolytes have electrical charges, they can move easily back and forth through cell membranes. This is important because as they move into a cell, they carry other nutrients in with them and as they move out of it, they carry out metabolic waste products and excess water. The key electrolyte minerals are Sodium, Potassium and Chloride (not chlorine!) mineral salts, which have a negative electrical charge.

To keep body fluid levels in balance, your cells need to have a lot of Potassium inside them and a lot of Sodium in the fluids outside them.

To keep the balance, sodium and potassium constantly move back and forth through the cell membranes. Sodium easily combines with other elements and is necessary to make hydrochloric acid – the powerful digestive juice inside your stomach that breaks foods down to enable it to be digested and absorbed.

So all 3 electrolytes – sodium, potassium and chloride – keep the amount of water in the body in balance, carry impulses along the nerves, help make muscles contract and relax and keep the body from becoming too acidic or alkaline.

Electrolytes are also required to carry glucose (blood sugar) and other nutrients into the cells and to carry waste products and extra water out again. Electrolytes also regulate blood pressure and heartbeat.

 
zazen Alkaline Water contains all 3 key electrolytes plus many other ionized alkaline minerals creating an alkaline water full of alkaline minerals ideal for the body’s modern day water needs.
 

The story of the Green Revolution began when, in 1943, the Rockefeller Foundation dispatched a team of agricultural experts to Mexico to set up a research program on local grains.

Soon to head the research was  agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug, the so called father of the “green revolution”.(1)

His research program soon paid off with effective results.  He used groundbreaking breeding techniques to produce disease-resistant varieties of wheat that produced much more grain than local strains.

By 1951, the disease-resistant wheat strains were widely established and a new wheat/fertilizer package was developed that gave high yields accompanied by newly developed irrigation lands of Mexico.

This initiated a rapid growth in overall wheat yields, which rose from some 770 pounds per acre in 1952 to over 2,900 by 1964 in the newly irrigated areas. (2)

This yield increase appeared to arrive at the right time because during the 1950s and 1960s, public health improvements led to increased population levels in underdeveloped nations, leading to concerns that present agricultural methods could not accommodate growing food demand.

Alerted to this concern, the Rockefeller Foundation, in 1961, created a new research program to study millet in India.  In 1962, it  joined forces with the Ford foundation to found the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines to develop new strains of Asia’s major food crop.

This new breeding project, with large financial backing, gave results even quicker than the Mexican project.  Within three to four years “miracle” rices of differing variety were boosting yields in the Philippines.  Like the Mexican wheat, the new rice varieties had similar stringent requirements for fertilizer and irrigation.(3)

Chemical farming was favored among the farmers and the growers for a quick yield of crops.  The growers found that it was much easier to cultivate crops without taking much trouble of preparing organic manure.

It generated dramatic results and increased grain yields of rice from 1.4 tons per hectare during 1934-58 to 3.6 tons in the early 1960s. (4)

The number of crops increased throughout the year.  The farmers obviously did not spurn the chance of growing more food with the chemical fertilizer and pesticide readily available through local mediums. (5)

Following the successes of the program, the term ‘Green Revolution’ was coined in March 1968 by the director of U.S. Agency for International Development, William Gaud. (6)

Thanks to the ‘Green Revolution’, world food production more than doubled between 1960 and 1990.  In Pakistan and India, two of the nations that benefited most from the new crop varieties, grain yields more than quadrupled over the period.(7)

Thus the ‘Green Revolution’ is usually thought of as the accelerated growth in Third-World grain production which resulted from combining new seeds, mostly wheat and rice, with heavy applications of fertilizer, pesticide and controlled irrigation.(8)

It would appear Borlaug’s work, which expanded agriculture at just the moment when such an increase in production was most needed, was of value.

Indeed, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply.  Many experts credit the ‘Green Revolution’ with averting global famine during the second half of the 20th century and saving maybe 1 billion lives.(9)

However, the story has recently taken a twist.

Experts in India, at a recent workshop on climate change and sustainable agriculture, have opined that the ‘Green Revolution’ has done more harm than good to the agriculture sector in the country from a long term perspective.

They suggested the farmers to return to traditional practices in farming in order to make the vocation sustainable in the future. (10)

What harmful effects are of concern?

Many resonate from chemical pesticides which have caused widespread environmental problems such as water pollution, soil degradation, insect resistance and resurgence, destruction of native flora and fauna, and human hazards.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), pesticides poison 25 million lives every year.  About 20,000 unintentional deaths occur every year due to pesticide poisoning.(12)

Most of these pesticides are prohibited but are smuggled into the “Third World” countries and black-marketed in private capacities.  For example, the USA exported more than 344 million pounds of hazardous pesticides during 1992-94.(13)

More pesticide is needed because insects and micro-organisms that inflict harm to the plant have developed a stronger immunity to the pesticides.  The overuse of pesticides has caused massive destruction of natural enemies of insect pests and resurgence of pest species.

The increase of pesticides and fertilizer usage is also accompanied by an increased risk of contamination to ground water supply.

Ground water is found in spaces between soil particles and rocks, and within cracks of bedrock.  The water table is the name given to the top of a saturated zone.

Major reservoirs of ground water are called ‘aquifers’.  Aquifers are recharged by rain, snowmelt, or interchange with surface waters.  Ground water is not stationary, but moves vertically or horizontally following the slope of the water table.(14)

How does pesticide effect the ground water?

Once pesticides are applied to its target area, many events may occur.  The pesticide may be consumed by plants, evaporated into the atmosphere, carried off by the wind, or ingested by insects, worms and microorganisms.  The pesticide may adhere to soil particles like iron filings to a magnet or be dissolved in irrigation or rain water.(15)

A number of pesticides that contain nitrates have the potential to interfere with normal functions of the body, particularly the endocrine system that regulates physiological functions through hormonal signals.

Nitrates can build up to high concentrations in groundwater, due to wash-off from agricultural use.

High levels of nitrate exposure in drinking water has also been suggested as a cause of cancer, thyroid disease and diabetes.(16)

To read the remainder of the article click here

On Monday the 17^th of September 2007, we were alarmed to read of over 42 schools in country NSW that were identified with elevated levels of lead in the schools water supplies. A year later in September 2008 there were 292 schools identified – and parents were NOT Aware!

Whats going on?  We have been asking ourselves the following questions:

1. How would lead leach into schools drinking waters supplies IF it is not in the piping or traditional plumbing materials?
2. If lead is in the school’s water supply – then is it possible or even probable that it is also in the local area water supply as well; if so how is it getting in there?
3. Where does the lead come from that we find in our water tanks?
4. How do we filter lead out of our water for peace of mind?
5. If lead is present – is there the possibility of other heavy metals likley to be present as well which could also threaten our children’s health?

And yes, as the coal is transported and railed across country NSW to Newcastle and as it sits in those massive open pit mines, open train wagons and piled high ready for loading – the coal dust picked up by the wind is deposited on the roofs, porches, grounds and play areas of our schools, houses and businesses.  And for those on tank water or where the water is potentially exposed to “dust and dust run off!” – it is dissolved into the water which ends up in our drinking water supplies! Simple but scary.

And no-one is taking any responsibility for this! They are still looking to replace the plumbing in the schools of any lead content!

The biochemist / geologist and his naturopath wife who is also a research scientist were alarmed when they moved to country NSW several years ago and tested their own tank and drinking water.  They found deadly heavy metals were present including lead, cadmium and arsenic!  They are now sending the message to all that will listen that you MUST filter your water and recently tested the zazen Alkaline Water system and purchased it for their own use (having tested many others).  Click here for the testimonial on the zazen Essential Water system

“Australian Children today enjoy good health compared to past generations thanks to major breakthroughs in medical research… there are however areas of significant concern emerging which may threaten the quality and length of our children’s lives."

Christine Bennett, Research Australia CEO, 2005

This quote shocked us when we first heard it.  
 
This report, and others we have since read, talk of the children today, young Australians, living a shorter lifespan than their parents, our generation!  This is of great concern to us.  So we decided to do something about it.

The health statistics of our children paint a clear picture……

We feel we only have a short window of opportunity to turn this around before its too late.

• 1 in 4 children are overweight/obese, trending towards 1 in 3
• 1 in 6 children suffer from asthma
• Asthma is the leading chronic disease amongst Australian children
• Exposure to unclean air is one of the most serious threats to a child’s health
• 1 in 6 children suffer from a developmental, learning or behavioural disability (Doctors for the Environment Australia)             
• More and more Australian children are suffering poor mental health with depression, suicide & behavioural disorders on the rise (Australian Institute of Health & Welfare)
• ADHD & Tourette Syndrome statistics are increasing
• The average home has 200+ cancer causing chemicals in it.

So where to begin?  
 
We decided it made sense to start at the beginning, with the foundation to good health and a longer life.  
 
We believe the foundation of good health … is drinking the right QUANTITY and QUALITY of WATER