Characterization and Properties of
Structured Waters
“Materials Day” at the Materials Research Institute
Manju Lata Rao, Tania M. Slawecki, M. Richard Hoover, Prof. Rustum Roy
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Introduction and
Overview:
Ultradilute and energetically imprinted waters have been
observed to have therapeutic, corrosive or combustible properties although
chemically they remain H2O.
H. E. Stanley (
In our work, an Inphotonics Raman Spectrometer (Model RS 2000-3B-785 with 785 nm laser) with liquid immersion probe is utilized as the primary tool with which to examine the structure of water in these preliminary investigations. A very careful protocol has been developed to ensure spectral anomalies do not arise from instrumentation, sample holders or sampling methodology. Incident laser intensity has been optimized and 20 second data acquisition scans are used. There is minimal localized heating of the bulk water sample from the instrument’s laser. Instrument performance is gauged by the spectrum of a fresh deionized water sample prior to all experiments. The results below indicate strong structuring of water that persists not for mere picoseconds, but for hours, weeks or longer. Reproducibility has been established for some while for others the work is in progress. Others methods (ICP, DSC (freezing point), UV-Vis, FTIR, XRD, TEM, DTA, TGA, SEM) have complimented some of the work profiled below.
Below is a photo of a typical probe-in-water setup and the resulting standard Raman spectrum for water which exhibits the standard double-peaked primary –OH stretch band and the much smaller –OH bending mode peak and even smaller and broader, the –OH bending and rotation mode as labeled on the graph. Vertical scaling of the graph is arbitrary since it can depend on the intensity of the incident laser light as well as the sample scattering.
Five sample “waters” are presented: silver colloids, energetically imprinted water, a homeopathic remedy, Sedlmayr microwave-distilled water, and a “combustible” water as per the John Kanzius discovery of being able to “burn saltwater”. These five samples provide a sense of the complexity of water and shed light on its potential uses in new contexts.
1. Colloidal Silvers
American Biotech
Labs provided us with their reverse-osmosis purified start water and four
silver colloid preparations that they manufacture: 10 ppm,
22 ppm, 32 ppm and 201 ppm silver in water.
Prior analyses we conducted verified the accuracy of their reported ppms. Biological
studies reveal these ultradilute silver solutions act
as strong disinfectants or as potent antibiotics. With so little silver present, how is this
possible?
Left: Samples were run in
dual-beam mode relative to an empty quartz cuvette in a Cary 100 UV-Vis
spectrometer. Strong UV absorption is evident the
higher the ppm of silver in solution. Silver normally absorbs well above 400 nm, yet
strong absorption occurs here in the 200-240 nm range and remains
uncharacteristically flat up to 800
nm. Below: Raman
spectra indicate clear structural differences between the different silver
colloids. These results are
reproducible and consistent between sample batches, providing a structural
identity of each silver solution that may be linked to its antimicrobial
properties.
2. Energetically
Imprinted Waters
Dr. Yury Kron
produces a line of energetically imprinted “Vital Force” waters via a
proprietary technology. In veterinary
studies, his solutions have had strong, positive healing effects on animals,
suggesting that, since placebo responses are less likely in animals,
his formulations are responsible for the observed results. We obtained and validated that his samples
are chemically identical within reason, so chemical differences could not be
responsible for the therapeutic effects reported.
Left: Raman spectra of chemically identical
spring waters, three of which were energetically imprinted several weeks
prior by Dr. Kron. Traces are reproducible; all
samples were at room temperature.
The different structures observed had survived being shipped to
Discussion: These spectra are a small
sample of many obtained on Dr. Kron’s imprinted
waters. While further studies are required
to validate long-term reproducibility with different sample batches, these
preliminary data suggest that Kron’s device
structurally alters water in distinct ways that confer different therapeutic
effects when ingested.
3. Homeopathic Remedies
For
those unfamiliar with homeopathy: it was founded by Samuel Hahnemann
in the 1800’s and became the dominant form of medicine for half a century as it
was much more benign in its approach to healing. Hahnemann is
regarded as the father of modern pharmacology and was the first to test
remedies on healthy (as well as sick) people, and on men, women and children as
unique groups requiring different treatment dosages. At the time, many toxic substances were being
employed by the medical establishment to cure the sick. Hahnemann learned
that these substances would make a healthy person quite sick, so it did not
make sense to him to make a sick person more sick. Homeopathy treats “like with like”:
substances that elicited similar symptoms to those a person was experiencing
were administered in ultradilute solutions to very
gently tax the immune system to respond in the same way – to gently enhance the
immune response to the disease without overtaxing the body. What made no sense, however, was that,
through experimentation, Hahnemann discovered that
the more dilute the solution, the more potent it appeared to be in its effect
on healing the body. A nomenclature was
developed to quantify the potency as a function of the number of times the
sample was diluted and then succussed (shaken) a thousand times. It isn’t long before the dilution
ensure that the probability of finding even one molecule of the original
substance introduced to the liquid base is essentially zero. The base solution is usually water or a water-ethanol
mix. While a great deal of high-quality
double-blind studies validates the efficacy of homeopathic remedies today, it
remains controversial because “it has nothing in it!” How could it possibly work?
Our
initial hypothesis was that the process of succussion might create nanobubbles that persist or assist in generating unique
water structures that have real effects on the body. The following example is work in progress.
Six
homeopathic (ultradilute, succussed) samples prepared
in a pure water base were sent to us from M. Sue Benford. One set of three were labelled with their
potencies (6x, 30x and CM); the second set of three
were labelled 1, 2, 3. From a chemical
standpoint, all three are nothing more than pure water. From a chemical standpoint, all six samples
should be identical and should look like pure water.
4. Sedlmayr Microwave-Distilled Water
Inventor
Steve Sedlmayr was tired of his wife’s water
distillation units breaking. Frustrated with
their poor design, he decided to insert a 2.54 GHz microwave antenna directly
into a water distillation vessel. To his
surprise, multiple distillations of the same water resulted in unusually
corrosive and/or healing properties of this water: those drinking his
microwave-distilled waters began to report surprising healing effects, but he
found he could not store the water in plastic bottles and, in fact, even the
plastic tubing he was using in his condenser unit appeared to get eaten away by
this water. Yet, it was just…
water! How could this be?
Above: Sedlmayr
distilleries at
Left: Raman spectra of initially identical
water samples after being distilled in one of six differently sized, shaped
or coated vessels. Samples were sent
via air mail from Sedlmayr in
5. Kanzius
Saltwater Combustion
John Kanzius was seeking a cure
for cancer by using a radio frequency (RF) field to heat nanoparticles
that could be tailored to selectively attach to cancerous cells in the
body. When someone asked him if the machine
he invented could be used to desalinate water, he put some saltwater in the
field and inadvertently bumped the test-tube.
When it sparked, they put a match to it and discovered that it would
sustain a flame as long as the RF field was on.
This discovery is non-trivial to understand: With no inserted
electrodes, water seems to electrolyze: a 10-6 eV
RF photon apparently weakens or breaks the 5 eV
OH-bond. How?
Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge
support for parts of this work from a seed grant from the Huck Institutes of
the Life Sciences and the Materials Research Institute, and from private
donations and Friends of Health (501c-3).