Countless sports stars, Olympians, A-listers and chart-toppers swear by drinking alkaline hydrogen water from a water ionizer. There are hundreds of studies on the potential benefits of drinking ionized water. But there is still an air of mystery about the machines themselves.
What exactly does a water ionizer do to your water? Let’s dig!
The most compelling thing that tends to draw the ‘oooohs’ and ‘aaahs’ is the realization that water ionizers take your source water – the same old water that flows out of your taps – and literally transforms it into something pretty special.
As if by magic? Not quite, but it sure does seem like it when you taste a glass of your basic tap water next to a glass of the ionized stuff!
A water ionizer is plumbed in line with your water supply. At the push of a button, water flows into the ionizer unit. Now each water ionizer brand is different to an extent, but generally what happens next is that the water hits the filters. Filtration is vital: removing the toxins and contaminants in your source water is crucial for taste, safety and peace of mind.
Once your water has been cleaned up by the filter or filters (top of the range machines have multiple, chemical-free stages of filtration) it flows into the electrolysis chamber and over and around electrically charged plates. The process of electrolysis is the ‘ionization’ part. The water is split into two separate streams: acidic water and alkaline water that is brimming with molecular hydrogen.
The final stage guides the water through a membrane before being dispensed into your glass.
Now all of this sounds like a lot of stages and processes to go through to get a glass of water. However, it all happens at the push of a button, with the best machines giving you close to no wait time at all.
It is pretty amazing. Tap water flows into the water ionizer machine: clean, safe, alkaline water flows out.
Within this process, how effectively each stage is completed, how fast you get your glass of water, and how much of that vital molecular hydrogen it contains depends on your choice of water ionizer.
When you’re deciding which water ionizer to buy, look out for advanced filtration technology that removes almost all of the scary stuff from your water. Some machines remove up to 99% of deadly lead, for example, without taking out vital minerals.
Has this helped to demystify water ionizers? We hope so! Enjoy tracking down the water ionizer that’s perfect for you and your family!