Is alkaline or ionized water consumption with chemotherapy a significant health risk?
Chris M asked:
I know my grammar sucks, but I’m at work. I have an aunt who is in remission from a rare form of lymphoma, and I’m wondering if by buying her the water or the filtration system I’m putting her at more risk than I am helping. She currently is NOT having the chemo, but I’m just wondering if that makes a difference and if anyone has scientific evidence (as opposed to those alkaline water promo websites) to back it up. It sounds great, but you can understand my concern.
It’s sheer quackery.
The best water is distilled. But filtered tap water is nearly as good, unless the water in your area is particularly nasty. Then whole-house reverse-osmosis filtered water would be best.
It’s a cam. Read this excellent article – Acid/Alkaline Theory of Disease is Nonsense by Gabe Mirkin, MD:
I suspect someone will be along soon to lecture you about a book s/he has read about Otto Warburg and claim that this alkaline water can actually cure your aunt’s cancer.
Poor old Otto, his research must be among the most misrepresented in the world.
Dr Warburg won the 1931 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine not for finding a ‘cure for cancer’ but for”for his discovery of the nature and mode of action of the respiratory enzyme”, His research with tissue slices led to the discovery of oxygen-transferring enzymes in cellular respiration. But his research never showed that oxygen use by normal and cancer cells was different. What he did find was that cancer cells produced lactate from glucose in the presence of oxygen whereas normal cells only produced lactate from glucose in the absence of oxygen. This observation led him to conclude that energy metabolism in cancer cells was defective .
By 1960, research had identified nearly all energy-producing metabolic pathways in both normal and cancer cells and showed that energy-producing systems in normal cells were the same as those found in cancer cells .
Interestingly, it’s often claimed Warburg won a second Nobel Prize for his work in 1944; he didn’t, it went to Joseph Erlanger and Herbert Spencer Gasserhis that year, but it’s become part of the Otto Warburg folklore. The year he did win it, his Nobel lecture did not contain the word ‘cancer’ at all, which is odd if that’s what he was getting his award for.