YOU ARE WHAT YOU DRINK

Our health depends on drinking water. But new research shows that not all water is the same. The search for healthy water and a major solution to better health begins in Austria and leads to the state of Washington. 

“Two young fish are swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ The two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes ‘What the hell is water?’

With this parable, novelist David Foster Wallace (1962-2008) started a commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005. Foster Wallace wanted to illustrate how the most obvious and important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to understand. 

We know we cannot live without water. We can do ‘hunger strikes’. ‘Thirst strikes’, however, have fatal results very quickly. So, we know that water is essential to our life. At the same time, we hardly comprehend it. We don’t do much better than the fish in Foster Wallace’s parable.

We know the chemical formula: H2O. Water is a compound of two gases—hydrogen and oxygen—, yet we drink it as a fluid. But water is not a ‘normal’ fluid. It has dozens of characteristics that set it apart from other liquids. It behaves in mysterious ways.

Science journalist and author Philip Ball writes in his book H2O: A Biography of Water: “No one really understands water. It’s embarrassing to admit it, but the stuff that covers two-thirds of our planet is still a mystery.”

Some pioneering scientists are beginning to understand that water is not a passive substance that is essential to our life but an active participant in health and healing. These emerging scientific insights make clear that a better understanding of water can have a major impact on our health. 

“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are”, wrote the Frenchman Anthelme Brillat-Savarin in his book Physiologie du Gout in 1826. Yes, we are what we eat. But, as this story will show, that applies to what we drink as well—and perhaps even more so.

We eat food to digest and absorb nutrients. Subsequently, we excrete most of it as waste. But our bodies consist of two-thirds of water. We are mostly water. All water is H2O but not all water is the same. Many people are aware of the importance of staying hydrated. Many people drink filtered water. However, drinking enough water and cleaning water from the pollutants caused by modern society may not be enough to maintain optimal health. Beyond its chemical formula, water can have different qualities with very different impacts on the cells of our bodies. That is why the quality of water we drink and bathe in can make all the difference for our health. 

Our ancestors were on to something. In times when all water was still free from manmade chemicals and pollutants, they went to places with ‘healing waters’ like Lourdes. Of course, ‘miracles’ are usually dismissed as ‘religious’ experiences. However, in 2014, a team of scientists led by Bernard Francois, Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the University of Lyon in France studied more than 2,500 cures observed and documented in Lourdes between 1858 and 1914.

The scientists concluded: “Numerous astounding cures have been attended by hundreds of honorable physicians and thousands of witnesses. These are facts that cannot be ignored. […] Instead of being a simple place of miracles, of interest only to the pious, Lourdes presents a considerable scientific interest. […] We dare write that understanding these [healing] processes could bring about new and effective therapeutic methods.” 

The search for a better understanding of water begins with the Austrian naturalist Viktor Schauberger (1885-1958). In the beginning of the 20th century, Schauberger wondered how trout can jump up to ten feet high against the enormous force of a waterfall. He observed that water as it falls creates vortices—like it does as a bathtub drains. The spiraling water ‘implodes’ and creates a countercurrent at the center which the trout uses to jump. 

Schauberger learned that nature uses implosion everywhere: In the flow of water and air—birds use spirals in the wind to soar without clapping their wings—; in the sap of trees that rises against gravity; and in the blood circulation in animals and humans. Implosion is the most efficient way to move energy as the process concentrates its power towards the center. By contrast, we mostly use explosion (burning) to power our society. It works but it is not an efficient process. The power is directed outwards: Most of the energy produced gets lost as heat.

Schaubergers’s observations convinced him that vortices give water a special ‘vitality’.  With this, he aligned with the thinking of an Austrian contemporary, Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925), the founder of the anthroposophy movement who introduced Waldorf schools and biodynamic agriculture. Water vortexing is a core feature of biodynamic agriculture to bring energy—vitality—to the soil. As water spirals, it can absorb more oxygen which increases the level of healthy microorganisms.

It is not that long ago that all water humans drank came from free-flowing creeks and rivers or from natural springs. Water was continuously energized as it ‘danced’ down mountains dissolving minerals within it. Mountain streams turned into meandering rivers carrying natural vitality. Rainwater seeped through the soil into springs.

However, that is no longer the water we drink today. Water is trapped in stagnant basins, treated with chemicals, and squeezed into straight pipes. The energizing vortices have been taken away from our drinking water. Viktor Schauberger would say: “Our water is dead”.

Could it be that most drinking water today instead of supporting our health is, in fact, undermining our vitality? That is the perspective of the third Austrian inventor in this story: Johann Grander (1930-2012). Grander was working on the design of a special engine using magnets when he discovered that magnetic frequencies could be transferred to water. He experienced that his ‘charged’ water tasted better and felt energizing. He also found that his water—without adding any chemicals—contained fewer harmful bacteria. 

In the 1980s, Grander created a device to ‘revitalize’ water. The device consists of a weakly magnetized metal housing and contains a chamber with water from a spring in an old copper mine deep in the Austrian Alps. The water has been treated with a generator developed by Grander. Water flows through the device passing along the walls of the chamber with the spring water from the Alps but not mixing with that water. The water that comes out is ‘revitalized’.

That sounds like magic. But after selling water ‘revitalization’ devices around the world for four decades, the Grander family has built up an extensive library of anecdotes that provide strong indications of the impact of revitalized water.

Users report that their fruits and vegetables stay fresh longer after washing them in ‘Grander water’. They say their tea and coffee tastes better and that their skin feels softer after they shower in revitalized water.

Owners of swimming pools report that they need to use less chlorine to maintain the same water quality in their pools. Laundry services uses less detergent to provide the same cleaning results. Industrial companies save on their cooling systems. For example: For years, German thermoplastics company ISO-TECH needed to change water filters twice a week to prevent clogging of cooling aggregates and heat exchangers. Since installing Grander devices, ISO-TECH’s cooling water system has been maintenance-free for years!

Many users run smaller, family-owned businesses. However, customers also include Vienna International Airport where revitalized drinking water is provided throughout the terminal and where planes and vehicles are cleaned with the water as well providing savings on cleaning supplies. The Chinese ministry of agriculture conducted tests and showed that yields for radishes, tomatoes and leafy vegetables increased with 12 to 13 percent after installing Grander devices in irrigation systems.

All these business examples illustrate clear financial savings for the users. In these cases, it is easy to show the benefit of a one-time investment. According to documented experience, there are no time limits to the Grander effect. Many Grander devices have been in use for more than 40 years, and their effect remains the same without any need for maintenance.

But what about human health? The Grander family and the website of the company do not make any health claims. But there are many anecdotal reports of people who experience major health improvements after using Grander water.

In 2003, when I was the editor, Ode Magazine published an interview with Johann Grander. Grander showed the reporter boxes full of letters he had received from happy patients around the world. He also told him that doctors and therapists from many countries were coming to see him, but he made no grand statements about the healing potential of his water. “I’m a little servant of nature”, he said.

Grander did express why he believed that the quality of water has a major impact on health: “Water performs functions that are essential to every life process. It supplies all living organisms with essential energies and disposes of waste. But where does water get its energy from? Mainly from the rocks and minerals with which it comes into contact. Therefore, each natural water source has its own energy and flavor. The churning and swirling movements that water makes give it vitality. This is why it is not good to force water into straight pipelines and transport it under pressure. When water loses energy, it takes that energy back from the organism it enters, and that may cause serious damage to health.”

Two recent research experiments begin to offer scientific support for the Grander water revitalization invention. The first study looked at microorganisms in water.

Water is the natural habitat of many microorganisms. Drinking water from the tap is by no means germ-free. A few years ago, researchers from Lund University in Sweden found that an average glass of tap water can contain up to 10 million bacteria. But that is not a cause for concern. These are ‘good’ bacteria that are essential for our health. Water becomes unhealthy when there are too few good bacteria which creates space for bad ones. The water quality changes and becomes unhealthy.

A 2021 study of two universities in Austria—the Medical University of Innsbruck and the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna—found that Grander treatment of tap water creates a kind of ‘probiotic’ effect. The number of desirable natural bacteria in the water increased. At the same time, the peer-reviewed case-controlled study published in Environmental Research confirmed that the water treatment inhibited bacteria that are less desirable—as Johann Grander had already observed several decades before.

The Austrian study seems to clarify the Grander effect. If the treatment increases the number of good bacteria and decreases the number of bad ones, it explains why pools would need less chlorine to maintain the same hygiene standards and laundry services less detergent for the same cleaning results.

It would make sense that ‘revitalized’, water with more healthy bacteria supports human health. The second experiment illustrates the impact of Grander water on health.

Complementary health practitioners have been analyzing life blood samples with dark-field microscopy for several decades. The treatment is not recognized by conventional medicine because there are no standard interpretations of measurements: Each drop of blood is unique. However, researchers like Professor Dr. Beverly Rubik have used life blood analysis to show, for example, the impact of unhealthy diets.

A diet of mostly fruits and vegetables causes an image with free-flowing cells that are round and uniform in size (see picture A). At the same time, diets high in fat and protein produce a ‘rouleau’ effect in blood. The red blood cells get clustered and clotted (see picture B). Complementary health practitioners argue blood clotting means that cells get less oxygen and fewer nutrients. Such ‘bad’ blood suggests an early sign of inflammation and disease.

Spanish nutritionist David Jiménez Barrieras took blood samples of 10 random people. The life blood analysis of the 10 samples shows various degrees of clustering of the red blood cells. No sample showed complete free-flowing red blood cells. Subsequently, the 10 participants drank 200 ml (about 7 ounce) of Grander water every morning for 20 days. The next day, Jiménez took their blood samples again. All but one samples showed a dramatic improvement in the quality of their blood. In case of the one example where the blood did not show much change, the ‘before' sample already showed healthy free-flowing blood cells. 

Because of financial constraints, the research by Jiménez was not done according to established scientific standards. However, as the impact was universal across all participants, the results appear to provide some compelling evidence that Grander ‘revitalized’ water supports health and vitality.

Nonetheless, there is no place for the Grander effect in the laws of physics and chemistry. Whatever is happening cannot be explained by modern science. Grander water is H2O and the molecular structure is not different from any other water. In fact, scientists argue that any Grander effect would contradict the second law of thermodynamics: It is impossible to transfer any ‘information’ without energy input.

“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”, astronomer Carl Sagan famously said. Today, there is a consensus that science can only explain 4 percent of our reality. Yes, that is all that western science can explain after the proud discoveries by the scientists of the past 400 years—from Rene Descartes and Isaac Newton to Albert Einstein.

According to the latest scientific calculations, only 4 percent of the mass-energy of the universe is occupied by atomic matter and electromagnetic energy. That is, by stuff that we can see and/or measure. That leaves 96 percent, vaguely described as ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’, that we cannot see, do not understand, and cannot explain. (Full disclosure: Russian physicist Yury Kronn (1935-2021) dedicated his life to this research. I helped him finish his book The Science of Subtle Energy, the healing power of dark matter).

That 96 percent is here, everywhere and at every moment of our existence. Whatever happens to Grander water, happens in the realm of that ‘undocumented’ 96 percent. ‘Water revitalization’ is not alone. Let’s take homeopathy. One of the most compelling arguments in favor of homeopathy is that it has been demonstrated to work on animals. That rules out the placebo effect. 

However, the strangest thing about homeopathy is that many treatments are diluted with water to the point where there is no molecule of the original substance left. When there is ‘nothing’ in the homeopathic medicine, the medicinal effect remains. Homeopaths have argued for 200 years that their medicines work because water has some kind of ‘memory’. 

Scientists have indeed observed that water has the capacity to retain information. Recently, the French virologist Luc Montagnier (1932-2022), Nobel laureate and co-discoverer of HIV, demonstrated in an experiment that a copy of a DNA fragment in one test tube could be transmitted through exposure to electromagnetic signals to a second test tube containing nothing but pure water. Subsequently, Montagnier was able to use the ‘pure water’ tube to create new DNA with the same sequence as the original DNA. Montagnier noted: “High dilutions of something are not nothing. They are water structures which mimic the original molecules.”

Montagnier’s research followed experiments by his French colleague, the immunologist, Jacques Benveniste (1935-2004). Benveniste demonstrated in multiple experiments that water can retain a ‘memory’. His research, which seemed to validate the concept of homeopathy, created a major controversy in the global scientific community. However, his experiments have since been replicated many times. 

What Doctors Don’t Tell You (June 2023) describes how in one study, Benveniste took a test tube of blood plasma and added water exposed to the ‘frequency’ of the ‘blood-thinning’ drug heparin. The impact of the ‘water’ was the same as the impact of the real drug: The blood was more reluctant than usual to coagulate (clot).

In his book The Hidden Messages in Water, Masaru Emoto (1943-2014) documented his experiments exposing water to ‘experiences’ and subsequently freezing it to photograph the ice crystals under a microscope. The pictures were taken by photographers who did not know where the water was coming from. 

Emoto showed that the most beautiful hexagonal crystals came from water samples collected from pollution free mountain streams, lakes, and rivers. Tap water shows chaos and polluted water generally forms no crystals at all. The water from the well in Lourdes (!) looked like a rosary.

Water exposed to Mozart produces harmonic crystals whereas water exposed to heavy metal music looks chaotic. When you say “thank you” or I love you” to water, it produces beautiful crystals. When you say “you make me sick” or “you fool”, the crystals are ugly. Emoto also collected a water sample placed in front of a television during a political debate. The crystal pattern reflected confusion…

The experiments and studies by Montagnier, Benveniste and Emoto indicate that water appears to be able to transmit and pick up information. Johann Grander concluded the same when he observed that ‘living’ spring water was able to re-energize ‘dead’ water. Interestingly, he noted too that this was not at the expense of the vitality of the living water—the quality of that water remained the same. 

The healthy spring water did not lose any ‘energy’. Grander therefore assumed that information rather than energy was being transferred. He proposed that water revitalization means that dead water reorganizes itself when it comes in contact with living water; that water can change its structure and properties depending on the information it receives.

Information needs structure and water does not seem to have that. The Hungarian biochemist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (1893-1986), who received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of vitamin C, spoke and wrote extensively about order in water. He described water as “the fuel of life”. According to Szent-Gyorgyi water is part of living systems not merely its medium.

Szent-Gyorgyi challenged the notion that water lacks structure. In 1958, he said: “Our everyday macroscopic experience is that water […] is a random fluid unable to hold structures. The fallacy of this impression is born out by the fact that […] a cooling from room temperature to -1C suffices to turn water into a rigid solid with a most regular structure. […] we can expect to find ‘ice’ lattice-ordered water even of this ice does not share the rigidity of common ice.”

Szent-Gyorgyi did not find structure—and the scientific explanation for the water’s ability to record and transmit information— in water during his lifetime. However, another scientist did a few decades later. Professor Dr. Gerald Pollack is a biomedical engineering research scientist and at the University of Washington in Seattle. 

Pollack’s research career gradually led him to water. Throughout his career, he realized that most scientific research is about incremental next steps in existing theories. The fundamental research that excited the world and brought many discoveries a century and longer ago is hardly practiced today. Pollack was looking for a fundamental challenge and water with all its mysterious characteristics presented just that.

Some twenty years ago, Pollack started studying water. “We found something really incredible. We found a different phase of water, a different state of water. It is not a liquid, it is not a solid, it is not a vapor. It is kind of somewhere in between,” he says. In 2013, Pollack published The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond solid, liquid, and vapor. In his book, Pollack documents that various leading researchers have speculated about a ‘fourth phase’ of water in the past century.

This ‘fourth phase’ of water has the consistency of a kind of gel, like raw egg white. It is not like ice, but it has structure which confirms Szent-Gyorgyi’s assumption. In this phase, water does not behave as a random collection of individual molecules. The molecules are somehow linked like in a polymer. It is clearly a separate state. Experiments show that it is difficult to freeze or boil water in this fourth phase and that the peak absorbance of light has a specific wavelength in this phase. 

The evidence of structured water that is not ice, offers and explanation for the experiments and phenomena that researchers Benveniste and Montagnier witnessed. It would also explain why homeopathic ‘water’ can contain information that supports healing.

Pollack called his discovery ‘exclusion zone (EZ)’ water, because in this phase water excludes any other particles or molecules. Structured ‘EZ’ water forms in abundance where water meets hydrophilic substances—molecules like minerals that dissolve in water. “EZ water is actually not unusual; it is found everywhere throughout nature—inside fruits and vegetables for instance. And most importantly, it is found in your cells. It fills your cells,” says Pollack.

That the water in our cells is more ‘gel’ like rather than regular water explains why our bodies—despite the fact that we are two thirds water—do not simply empty when we get wounded. We are not a bag of water that drains when it gets punctured.

Structured EZ water exists in high concentration inside our cells. Its presence appears to be essential for cell function and critical for health. Pollack argues that the relationship between structured EZ water and health has to do with an important characteristic of EZ water: It has a negative charge. 

It is well-known that cells in our bodies have a negative charge. A healthy cell has a negative electrical potential between -80 and -90 millivolts. An unhealthy cell—like a cancer cell—has less negative charge: between -10 and -15 millivolts. Pollack: “Negative charge is critical for life. It is one of the definitions of life. If you lose negative charge, you are dead.”

Mainstream medicine has no undisputed explanation for why cells have a negative charge. One theory is that the charge is caused by a mechanism of pumps and channels within cells. Pollack suggests however that the negative charge comes from the EZ water. 

In experiments in his university lab, Pollack has found that when negatively charged structured EZ water is formed, simultaneously positively charged proton-rich water is created. The positive protons leave our body as we exhale, urinate, sweat, etc. 

That dynamic turns the water within the cells into a kind of battery that produces energy as the negative charges clustered in the EZ water are eager to disperse. Negatively charged structured EZ water becomes regular, non-structured, water which has a neutral charge. That energy transfer drives cellular processes that are critical to all bodily functions, argues Pollack.

The negative charge of the EZ water in the cells needs to be restored constantly so that new cellular action can be ‘powered’. Our bodies are healthy when they are able to maintain a negative charge. To remain healthy, we need to constantly feed that negatively charged EZ water in the cells. That is why the water we drink makes a critical contribution to our health. 

“Many people think of hydration as just drinking enough water. I think of it as the cells having enough structured EZ water; as the cells having enough negative charge”, says Pollack. “If your cells do not have enough structured EZ water, you do not have enough negative charge and your cells are not healthy. The more negative charge in your cells, the more energy you have, and the healthier you are.”

“You cannot drink a glass of EZ water. That does not exist”, he adds. However, some waters contain “fractions” of structured EZ water. Our ancestors drank water from natural springs, creeks and rivers which had fractions of negatively charged structured EZ water in it. Today, some mineral waters resemble the water they drank.

Most mineral waters are slightly alkaline. They have a slight negative charge because minerals create clusters of structured EZ water. That water—like the water our ancestors drank—stimulates the formation of EZ water in the cells which drives the negative charge in our body.

To keep our bodies healthy, we need to hydrate with structured water. Most people, however, drink tap water that has no structure, no EZ, and no negative charge. As Masaru Emoto showed with his pictures of water crystals—most tap water has chaotic patterns which prevent the formation of structured EZ water. 

Hydration with tap water is not going to be very effective because it does not add the essential negative charge to the cells. Filtering tap water takes out pollutants, but it does not add structure and negative charge. And that is where a major cause of disease in our modern world may be hiding.

There are other ways, besides drinking water, to ‘feed’ the negative charge our bodies need. It happens, for instance, when we drink fruit juice or eat fruits and vegetables because plants contain structured EZ water (see sidebars ‘Thirsty, grounding, alkaline, or lack of charge?’ and ‘Dehydration? Chia seeds!’). 

Pollack and his team have also found that when water absorbs light—particularly infrared light—, it builds structure and EZ. EZ water is not only formed when water touches and dissolves substances like minerals, but also by the ultimate source of all energy and life: Light from the sun. Infrared light turns ordinary water in to EZ water. The sun can touch water in rivers and lakes, but not water in pipes… Infrared saunas provide a ‘workaround’ to stimulate the formation of EZ water in the cells and thus the negative charge of our body. 

Back to Johann Grander’s ‘revitalized’ water. Would Pollack’s discoveries explain why so many people and businesses have had beneficial experiences with Grander water over the past four decades? Over the years, Pollack has tested many different waters—from spring waters to waters that have been treated with special processes—in his lab. In many cases, he found fractions of structured EZ water in the test samples.

Pollack has never tested Grander water. However, it would make sense that the existence of fractions of structured EZ water in Grander water would explain why the water has healed ailments and improved the growth of plants. The scientific experiments by Benveniste and Montagnier have shown that structured water can store and transfer ‘information’. 

In the Grander device, water that has been damaged by outside circumstances such as straight pipes, pollutants and additions of chemicals is ‘informed’ about its original natural state by the ancient spring water from the Alps. That ancient water likely contains minerals with fractions of structured EZ water around them. And Johann Grander found a way to further ‘energize’ his water and strengthen its EZ structure with the generator he developed. 

Grander water is certainly not the only healthy water in the world. Pollack has many anecdotes about the healing qualities of waters he has tested. As an example, he refers to the fact that the Japanese health care system reimburses the expenses for the treatment of gastroenteritis with Kangen alkaline—negatively charged—water. 

According to Pollack, negative charge is the most important characteristic of any healthy water. The more structure water has, the more negative charge it can hold and the more oxygen and nutrients it can make available. “Water is deeply involved with everything that happens in your body”, he says.

Water is an essential element of life. It participates in virtually everything. Its behavior depends on location. It organizes itself differently next to different surfaces and in different circumstances: Not all water is the same!

There is much more to be explained. After a few decades of research, Pollack is the first to say that water still requires a lot more study. He organizes an annual Conference on the Physics, Chemistry, and Biology of Water (www.waterconf.org) where pioneers of water research from around the world meet and share their experiences and discoveries.

The fact that much of water’s behavior is still a mystery holds a big promise: With relatively small investments of time and resources, a lot more can be learned. As the discoveries and experiments from Viktor Schauberger, Johann Grander, Luc Montagnier, Jerry Pollack, and many more show simply changing the way we treat and consume water has a big the impact on the health and vitality of people and in society. Yes, you are what you drink. [JK]

More information:

About Professor Dr. Gerald Pollack and his research on water: www.pollacklab.org

About The Annual Conference on the Physics, Chemistry, and Biology of Water: waterconf.org

For general information about Grander water: www.grander.com

For Grander water in the United States: www.vivacityimports.com