Enagic® Kangen® in Serious Trouble for medical Claims

Enagic Kangen® is in serious trouble for medical claims made by it’s network of dealers. Enagic, the maker of the Kangen Water® machine, has long had a policy – which it never enforces –  of forbidding

its dealers from making medical claims for Kangen Water®. When asked why it doesn’t enforce it’s no medical claims policy, Enagic® corporate representatives simply claim they can’t enforce it.

That excuse is not going to cut it with the Malaysian Ministry of Health. They have taken action against the sale or promotion of Kangen Water®. Health Ministry director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah states: “The Health Ministry views such promotion very seriously because it can mislead people into believing the water can cure various illnesses.”

Why you can’t claim Kangen Water® can cure diseases

In most nations, medical claims are strictly regulated to protect people from health scams. To qualify any treatment as a cure for any disease requires a strict regimen of clinical trials. Those are meant to prove the treatment is both safe and effective. There has never been any clinical trials conducted on Kangen Water®, for a very good reason: There is no such thing as Kangen Water®, the term Kangen Water® is simply a brand name for the alkaline ionized water made by Enagic®’s Kangen machine.

There are over 40 studies on the health benefits of ionized alkaline water. The results of those studies also hold true for Kangen water.

Enagic®’s legions of multi-level marketers insist that their Kangen Water® is somehow different, and better than the water made by other water ionizers, and that’s simply not true. All water ionizers use the same process to make ionized water. The difference in quality between the ionized water made by the different brands of water ionizer is determined by three main things:

• Filtration – Determines the purity of the water
• Power – Determines how well the water will be ionized
• Plate quality – Determines how well the power is transferred into the water

 

The Kangen machine has less filtration and power than many machines that are half it’s price. Because of this, Kangen dealers know they can’t compete in a straight comparison of machine quality, so they make stuff up. They make the water made by their machine sound almost magical. The extraordinary and unproven health claims made by Enagic®’s sales force have earned Kangen Water® the well deserved label of snake oil. In fact, there are many articles on this blog which have sharply criticized Enagic® for the outlandish claims its sales force makes.

What can you claim for alkaline water?

Alkaline water supports general wellness. That is the designation the FDA allows for health foods, beverages, and supplements. General wellness means that something is good for helping the body to maintain good health. To make the claim of general wellness, you must be able to show that there are studies that provide evidence of positive health effects. There are over 40 studies on alkaline water which show evidence that alkaline water is good for your health. Those studies report a range of health benefits, including:

• Bone health – Helps maintain bone density
• Heart health – Protective of arteries and heart
• Gut health – Supports healthy probiotic microbes in the gut
• GERD – Inactivates pepsin, the enzyme that triggers the damage of GERD
• Detoxification – Helps purge 10 heavy metals in urine
• Brain health – Reduces oxidation in brain tissue
• Many more

 

But you can’t claim that alkaline water cures any of the diseases that accompany the above health issues because there isn’t enough medical research to make a claim of disease cure. Any ethical water ionizer company will tell you right up front: Alkaline water is not a drug!

What it takes to prove to the FDA that something cures disease

Before clinical trials can begin, a company must show the FDA that a treatment shows promise in preclinical animal trials. There have been several studies done at the preclinical level on alkaline water as an antioxidant, all of which have shown promise. In fact, there are many preclinical trials that have been conducted on alkaline water showing benefits for various health conditions.

Three Phases of Clinical Trials

Phase One: If the preclinical trials show promise, then the first of three phases of clinical trials begins. Phase one is on healthy volunteers. The goal is to find out what the treatments side effect are, and how the treatment is metabolized and excreted.

Phase Two: If phase one doesn’t reveal unacceptable levels of toxicity, then phase two trials begin. In phase two, effectiveness is tested. The treatment is tested against a placebo in volunteers that suffer from the health condition in question to see if the treatment is effective. The safety of the treatment continues to be studied.

Phase Three: If the treatment proves safe and effective, then phase three trials begin. These studies gather information about safety and effectiveness, they look at how the treatment interacts with other medications, and study effective dosage levels.

These three phases take years, often decades to complete. The cost to put any potential health treatment through the entire FDA approval process costs over a billion dollars!

Why haven’t water ionizer companies done FDA clinical trials?

The FDA approval process is simply too expensive for a water ionizer company to perform. Consider the size of the water ionizer industry next to the size of the pharmaceutical drug industry: Any single pharmaceutical company makes more money in a given year than all of the water ionizer companies combined. It’s too expensive, and it takes too long. Pharmaceutical companies aren’t interested in alkaline water because they can’t patent it, so they can’t gouge the public with obscene prices for it like they do for drugs.

Fun Fact: The average markup that pharmaceutical companies charge for drugs is 5,594. If Life Ionizers marked up our ionizers that much, a machine would cost about $84,000!

Alkaline water: Good health, hold the outrageous markup

When you look at the outrageous markup that pharmaceutical companies charge for their (sometimes dangerous) drugs, alkaline water looks like a bargain. Alkaline water also threatens the profit margins of those drug companies. If a person’s health improves from drinking alkaline water, they are likely to stop buying the expensive drugs they were using. This may explain why the medical industry in the US has been so dismissive of alkaline water.

So how can you find out if alkaline water could help you? It’s cheap and easy. Life Ionizers, and many other ionizer companies provide a 60 day return policy. This means you can try a water ionizer for 60 days to see if it helps. If so, then keep the machine, good health is priceless! If not, you pay a modest return fee, usually about 15%. So it’s just like renting the machine to see if it would work for you, and buying it if it does. Wouldn’t it be nice if the pharmaceutical companies gave you 60 days to see if their outrageously expensive drugs actually worked?

 

Yes, we will put an ionizer in your home for 60 days, so you can try it. Call us at 877-959-7977

 

References

 

The Independent. “The Independent.” The Independent. N.p., 17 July 2016. Web. 18 July 2016.

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Burckhardt, Peter. “The Effect of the Alkali Load of Mineral Water on Bone Metabolism.”

The Journal of Nutrition. American Society for Nutrition, n.d. Web. 26 Mar 2014. <http://jn.nutrition.org/content/138/2/435S.long>

 

Rylander, Ragnar, and Maurice Arnaud. “Mineral water intake reduces blood pressure

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an Adjunct in the Treatment of Reflux Disease.” National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1 July 2012. Web. 24 Apr. 2015. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22844861>.