I received a comment last week that has sort of turned into a long letter so I will post it here.
Hi,
I am looking for a water purifier for my mother (who has osteoporosis) as they have just begun flouridating the water where she lives. I've checked into both Nikken (of which I have a PiMag system) and Zazen (which appears to be a little cheaper) and there are a couple of things that concern me on the Zazen site.
"High in Antioxidants - eliminates free radicals" - How is this possible?
"It also helps increase the amount of oxygen (a natural antioxidant) in the water – oxygen is actually absorbed 10 x faster in water than from breathing!" How on earth is oxygen an antioxidant? This sounds like an oxymoron to me.
I know you don't represent Zazen, but as you recommned both I wondered if you knew anything further about this?
Kind regards,
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Hi XXXX.
Sorry for the delay on this reply. Have you found a filter yet?
There are a number of issues in your short post. Thanks for the opportunity to answer them.
Osteoporosis is a fairly well understood disease in terms of nutrition although most people find it difficult to understand.
Firstly, osteoporosis is rarely caused by an inadequate intake of calcium. It is most often the amount of calcium we excrete that is the issue. Taking excess calcium can slow down the progress of the problem but usually does not address the causal issues. There was a chinese study recently of several hundred vegan buddhist nuns that found not one single case of osteoporosis and their average intake of calcium was less than 400mg per day.
Most often the issues are to do with a diet with high levels of inflammatory agents. There are a couple of posts on my site that address some of these issues. Osteoporosis can also be a disease symptom but that is not very often the case. If you want more information feel free to get in touch.
Regarding the Zazen system. The owners of the business are friends of mine and while I have nothing to do with their business I am quite happy with the Zazen system.
The comment about the antioxidants, well! That can actually be a rather long story, however the short version is. Vitamins are not the only antioxidants. Quite a number of minerals are too, and some of those minerals are too. Some of those antioxidants are the electrolyte chemicals that the systems replace in the water. So yes the Zazen and Pimag systems produce water with the ability to neutralize free radicals.
I will leave the oxygen question alone for now. Suffice it to say they are correct but the answer is long and complicated and rather boring for anyone who has not got an interest in the minutiae of biochemistry.
Anyway, the outcome is that I do support the Zazen and the Nikken systems. As a distributor of Nikken I naturally lean that way but I certainly do not believe that one is 'better' than the other.
Regarding fluoride.
Do not get me wrong. I am, do and always have absolutely opposed adding fluoride to drinking water. I think it is a dangerous and rather stupid thing to do. There is, in my opinion, no reasonable scientific proof to support adding it to water supplies.
However, (Taking a deep breath here) I believe that for most people, fluoride in the water is a dangerous mis-focus from real issues. Fluoride fears come mainly from the marketing arms of filtration companies.
Fluoride is a natural and necessary nutrient for our bodies. We require is for a number of chemical process including bone and tooth health. Mind you we normally get it in the form of calcium fluoride in plants. And I believe that if it needs supplementing we should be doing that through fertilizer in gardens not in water supply. (Besides the point.)
Now the point at which fluoride becomes toxic (several grams for the average person, not milligrams) would require that you drink several hundred litres of water a day on an ongoing basis to have a negative effect. If you do the research you will see that town water supplies do put a low level in. There are many locations around the world that have much higher naturally occurring fluoride levels than ours.
In Australia, our government has done research and found that the filtration methods that remove fluoride are often unreliable so have created codes about claims to remove fluoride. The most reliable (cheap) filtration method to remove fluoride uses aluminium as a base. It is this that companies use for normal filters. This is because we can get an accurate estimate of the fluoride removed over the life of the filter. This is not possible with other filters.
So while many filters, including the Nikken and Zazen filters, will remove a large portion of fluoride in the water there is no way to give reliable estimates of the life of the filter or of the levels of fluoride removed. This is why Australian standards do not allow these claims to be made.
However is is not commercially viable to make small numbers of filters to remove fluoride. Very expensive to produce small numbers of anything.
My personal opinion is that this is the reason behind the fluoridation scares. (Please, remember that I do not support water fluoridation)
Now, having said all of that, there are a small number of people for whom even these low levels are toxic, hence the change in laws so that you cannot sue the government for damage caused. These people do need to find a water source that does not have sodium fluoride or to find a way of removing it. This is where a fluoride filtration system comes in.
There are many types of these but a small under sink filter will suit most people. Try ringing Byron at Water Filter world at Graceville. However doing all of that still does not address any of the issues addressed by the Nikken PiMag and the Zazen system so I would still consider that one of these is needed after any other system....
Hope all of that helps. Feel free to contact me direct if you have more questions.
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Kindest Regards
Francis McGrath
OasisLiving.com.au
Email: androdynamics@gmail.com
Ph: 0409 670 218