Oxygenated water (also known as "superoxygenated" water) is offered at hundreds of Web sites. I highly recommend it if you happen to be a fish, but if you have lungs that breathe air, then forget about it! All water that has been exposed to the air is "oxygenated" to a small extent— about 8 milligrams of O2 per liter of water at room temperature— and this can be increased by pressurizing the water with oxygen gas; each additional atmosphere of oxygen pressure pumps an additional 40 mg into each liter. But what happens when you open the bottle? That's right, the extra oxygen goes right back out— but not immediately, so by drinking oxygenated water, you can still take a bit more oxygen into your stomach. But can any oxygen molecules that don't get burped back out actually find their way into your bloodstream through absorption in the stomach or intestine? I very much doubt it; the lungs are exquisitely adapted to this function, while your digestive system is specialized for absorbing other nutrients.
Suppose, instead, that you simply breathe in an extra liter of air (much easier to do than drinking a liter of water!) It's an easy chemistry students' calculation to show that you will be inhaling about 146 mg of oxygen in this way. Not all of it will enter your bloodstream, but you can always take an extra breath; it's free!
These products seem to be pitched especially at the sports community, always on the lookout for that thin advantage that can make all the difference. There is no credible evidence that it does, as the following articles mention:
- Superoxygenated water is latest sports scam
- Oxygenated water: Fad and fiction in one expensive burp
- Oxygen is good—even when it's not there; alternative medicine's claims for the efficacy of supplemental oxygen are less than convincing—especially when the supplement contains no oxygen (an article by Dr. Harriet A. Hall - Skeptical Inquirer, Jan-Feb 2004)
Oxygen is actually a cellular poison!
But don't worry about the water; the amount of O2 in even "superoxygenated" waters is far too small to cause harm, other than perhaps to your bank account!
Two common lies to confuse consumers
Low values of oxygen in our tissues causes cancer. Not so: Cancerous cells, being more primitive and often lacking an adequate blood supply, metabolize anaerobically, and so are able to get along with less oxygen.The oxygen content of the atmosphere was once much higher than at present (implying that 21% is not enough). The truth: O2 has been rising ever since green plants appeared about 4.5 billion years ago.
(For details, see here or here.)
...but why not pile on even more hype?
As you might expect, the real hypemeisters don't stop at merely adding oxygen; consider, for example, the one now-withdrawn product claimed that
colloidal minerials inserted and stablized in the Secrets of Hunza® and other ... Oxygenated Water have very large negative zeta potentials on each colloidal particle. [We] can formulate a varity of oxygenated, herbal and sports beverages with very large, stabilized zeta potentials up to several hundred millivolts if necessary.
(It turns out that zeta potentials, something I always thought only a colloid chemist can love, are a fairly big thing in the "alternative" water field. I doubt that any of the clowns that hype zeta potential even know what it is!)
One nameless outfit claims that their "Super Water" aqueous snake-oil provides
stabilized oxygen found in micro-encapsulated water clusters.
-- thus leading us back to the wide world of water cluster foolery.
... the molecules must first be extended USING A PATENTED METHOD OF EXPANSION AND CONTRACTION OF THE WATER MOLECULES SEVERAL TIMES/MINUTE TO CONSUME OXYGEN, WHILE TAKING ON DONOR ELECTRONS! Our patented method EXPANDS TODAY'S WATER MOLECULES... so they can take on more donor electrons! It's logical that most products are activated by the ELECTRONS in WATER [link]
They peddle a bogus "water machine" that falsely claims to enlarge the water molecules so they can accommodate these extra electrons. (See my detailed take on this one.)
And here, a naturopathic "doctor" cashes in on consumer scientific ignorance by offering up a melange of misinformation about how our bodies are starved for oxygen in the absence of "AO II", a magic potion containing "stablized oxygen" that is "formed through an electrochemical process." He repeats the untruths mentioned above about the diminishing oxygen content of the atmsphere and the long-debunked idea that lack of oxygen causes cancer. Don't blieve any of this garbage!
Langenburg lunacy
Langenburg Oxygen Water, formerly known as Aquarius Water, is offered to the world by one "Princess Karen zu Hohenlohe Langenburg" whose husband Max Langenburg is claimed to have devoted 40 years to researching and developing this Sauerstoffwunderwasser.
I can't help thinking that if he had spent the first two years taking Chemistry, he could have employed the remaining 38 years far more productively! (Max's deluded chemistry might be forgiven if he turns out to be a distant cousin of Mad King Otto of Bavaria, or possibly of Theophrastus Bombastus Diddlesnout von Glokenspeil, Landgraf of Hundsrück und Ost-Stomachpump. But I digress...)
Max's lack of chemistry/biochemistry smarts is clearly evident in the astounding claims made for this nostrum, which range from the merely dubious to the bizarre. What's worse, no evidence is cited for any of these claims, many of which appear similar to some of the water cluster pseudoscience bumpf.
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