Unique Water is Back...

"Unique water" has an interesting history in Australia. Dr Russell Bennett introduced it around ten years ago, it came with a huge splash, then seemed to disappear. What happened? It seems that his success was also his problem. 

He boasted so much about its curative powers – and harnessed some of the best PR people in Australia, that his claims of anything from arthritis to asthma came under the scrutiny of the Therapeutic goods Association. 

And because so much hype surrounded the water, they had to act. Unless he spent the money on a proper TGA approved double blind study, he must not advertise or disseminate any claims about his water. Sales slumped, which is a reflection, if anything, of the incapacity of our buying public to research a product for themselves. If they had, and if they had cross referenced magnesium on the thousands of websites and published scientific studies, they would have understood that this ‘miracle’ water was just simple good science. 

Magnesium is a wonderful and essential supplement, and few people get enough of it.

Dr Bennet became a master at saying things without saying them – walking the thin line of legality where any direct therapeutic claim can bring a million dollar fine and/or jail. So we heard statements such as “There's hundreds if not thousands of people out there who swear by it and call it all sorts of fancy names like ‘miracle’, ‘magic’, and ‘the fountain of youth’, where he got his point across but never said anything himself.

His website alluded to the benefits as well, but at best it was hard to understand and probably reduced sales rather than grow them.

Now he has taken the plunge, and completed what is described as a ‘proof of concept’ trial. This isn’t the sort of trial that would have been demanded of him. It’s a trial to demonstrate clinical efficacy with a small number of strictly selected patients. Its objective is basically to provide what the industry calls ‘early evidence’. It isn’t ‘bankable’ in that it can’t be really used to back up a healing claim because it’s too small.

So Dr Bennett is, in my opinion, being very, very careful in what he says, while still hawking the association that may – or may not – exist between the trial’s findings and his water. The trial found that regular consumption of his water caused – or may have caused – he can’t legally make a claim yet – a rise in blood albumen levels in subjects. The report from DataPharm, the testing company, is here, and it makes encouraging reading,

To quote: “The trial has shown has also shown that drinking several glasses of water daily causes blood magnesium levels to increase even if the water contains negligible amounts of magnesium.  If the water contains supplemental magnesium and bicarbonate, the increase in blood magnesium is greater and there is also a trend toward stabilisation of parathyroid hormone levels. Urine acidity decreases in these participants suggesting an effect on the body’s overall acid-base balance. Increased blood magnesium was also associated with increased albumin in the blood, an important blood protein which the body uses as a transport mechanism for entities such as thyroid and steroid hormones. These factors have major health implications, particularly for an ageing population.”

But before we all get excited and order pallet loads of the stuff, let’s be very clear here. We are talking about water with a tiny amount of magnesium bicarbonate.  It’s no secret that drinking water with magnesium in it is good for you.

• The W.H.O. has already declared this to be true.
• The National Research Council of the US has published a report on a trial which found a positive correlation between areas where the local water supply contained magnesium and bicarbonate and low premature death rates in the US population.
• There are many more similar studies from around the globe.

So why should we buy magnesium salts in a plastic bottle of water? Why not add magnesium to ordinary water?

The success of Dr. Bennett's water, I believe, lies in its marketing.

Put a product in a bottle and it looks more powerful than a pill. Make people believe it is ‘unique’ and you are employing one of the biggest marketing techniques in the business: scarcity. get the word out in places your market sees it; current affair TV, magazines, newspapers.. 'old' media. Appeal to a market that isn’t wellread in health matters and it will be as easy as catching those sheep Dr Russell first observed back in Monaro, ACT so many years ago. 

You see, the product appeals to people who ache. People who ache are old. Older people generally speaking do not comb the internet to check facts. They haven’t been on the long self-educational journeys their more media-savvy kids have. So they are easy to sell to.

“Here. Just Drink this. It's only water.”

As I read the press release I was looking closely to see whether any direct association between drinking the water and better health had been claimed. It had not. It said that the water increased certain internal parameters, and those parameters were associated with certain health conditions. 

The question I would raise, is: “What did you hear when you listened to the report.” If someone asked you what it’s all about 5 minutes after the video, I’m guessing that your summation may sound like “A new water that has been proved to have anti-ageing properties.”

So let’s assume that everything is kosher, and everything suggested is true. It is very good news that drinking 1.5 litres of water a day will improve your health. And yes, those who drank tap water did not have the same effect so we can certainly say it is the magnesium in the water.

Last week, Gabe Hunninghake, my US associate, sent me a swag of scientific reports on the efficacy of alkaline mineral waters from laboratories all over the world. (See them here) So we are not talking about anything unique. Here in Italy natural springs have been ‘healing' Romans of aches and pains for over a thousand years. My good friend Dr gerry Brady recommends a slab of San Pellegrino to people with arthritis and gout.

So if the water works, why do we have to have it in environmentally disastrous, carbon unfriendly, high food miles plastic?

And why do we have to pay so much for a bit of magnesium surrounded by water? Let us assume that a 600ml bottle costs $1.50. Drinking 1.5 litres per day will cost you around $4, or $120 a month.

What is the alternative? Buy an AlkaStream alkalizing antioxidant water filter and attach it to your tap. A replacement filter costs $130 and it lasts for six months. This usage rate is based on four people using it at around 1.5 litres per day so the per person cost of having magnesium water on tap is $5.41 a month.

If you want to give the plastic bottled water to everyone in your household of four, you are up for $5760 per year plus the disposal of (assuming you buy the 1.5 litre bottle) 2,190 plastic bottles.

Your cost for replacement filters for a year, on the other hand, will be $260.. a saving of $5500 or $105 per week!

Does the AlkaStream do what the bottled water claims to do? We are in the same legal minefield as the good Doctor, so we are not able to make any claims. We simply suggest you do your own researchgood place to begin might be www.waterfyi.com, the alkaline water industry’s foremost research blog, and see what they say. It could save you a lot of money, and save the world a lot of empty plastic bottles.