Aug 07 2012
ASEA: Another Expensive Way to Buy Water
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27 Responses to “ASEA: Another Expensive Way to Buy Water”
The pure water is then combined with pure salt and allowed to cure, before undergoing a patented process that oxidizes and reduces the saline solution into the final product.
WOW … must be strong stuff if they both oxidize it AND reduce it before they bottle it.
Can you look up the patent so we can scoff some more?
This article does highlight something I have never considered before when it comes to alternative medicines- that they sometimes perform safety trials on animals. As tox tests should really involve the sort of thorough investigation that would require the sacrifice and post-mortem analysis of the animal tissues, these animals are victims of such charlatans. I am a vet and work in drug discovery, so I fully support the use of animals to test the safety of drugs- but I’d never jump to working in animals until there was excellent in vitro data or prior probability suggesting efficacy, and the idea that people are using animals on such useless drek is nothing short of cruelty. If I could ever show dishonesty (ie. that they know their product is b*llocks) I’d prosecute the lot of them for the unnecessary suffering and death of their animals.
I was laughing until I read Simon’s comment. Then all their mumbo-jumbo seemed not very funny. Sad instead.
Just as an aside, It take around 3 liters of water to make one liter of plain jane, unreactived, unretro-oxidated, unpurifictitious bottled water. http://www.pacinst.org/topics/water_and_sustainability/bottled_water/bottled_water_and_energy.html
The fact that this operation is taking place in Utah makes the wastefulness of the process even more aggravating.
This reminds of one of the other trends in “salt therapy” which is the claims made for Himalayan Salt. A “friend” brought me some mixed in a pint jar of water (quite a bit of salt as I recall) to “share”. She drinks this stuff every day! As I have (controlled) high blood pressure, I passed. She was visibly upset that I was rejecting her “miracle treatment” in favor of the advice of an “allopath”. I read the material she gave me with the salt and salt water (this was all done up in a gift basket) and it was the biggest joke–way worse than what you quote in this post. Absolute nonsense–and capable of harm I’d say–telling people to drink highly salted water daily.
This incident was truly the beginning of the end of this “friendship”. This woman jumps on every new bandwagon that passes her via some Newsletter (she won’t say which) she gets online. She used to be a nurse, but quit when she “lost faith in allopathy” and became…get this….a teacher!
It would all be a great laugh except that there are peripheral issues (as Simon mentions) that go beyond the moral issue of selling saltwater for many dollars per ounce.
In case you all are wondering why I fall victim to so many of these loons, it’s mostly because I used to own a small business that catered to middle-aged women, many of whom in spite of higher education, seem particularly prone to anything “alternative”. Because I was non-committal at my business, many of them have assumed that I am “into” this nonsense. One of them was a chiropractor who insisted on being called “doctor” at all times and even wore a beeper for “emergencies”!
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“ASEA is a mixture of 16 chemically recombined products of salt and water with completely new chemical properties. It is no longer salt or water just like table salt is no longer chlorine gas or sodium metal.”
“The final product is no longer a saline solution. It is not salt and water.”
“By comparison, when we look at the ingredients on a loaf of bread, we find flour, water, eggs, sugar, oil, yeast, etc. Nowhere on the list does it say “bread”. The raw ingredients have been blended and heated and forever transformed. You can no longer locate the eggs or oil that we know went into the process. It’s the same with ASEA.”
These are scientifically falsifiable statements. They really don’t leave themselves much wiggle room here. They clearly state that the chemicals of water (H2O) and table salt (NaCl) are no longer present in ASEA but that these substances have been reconstituted into chemically different substances. If these statements are correct, then in a double blinded test, AESEA should be at least distinguished from a salt water solution.
The question that comes to mind for me with things like this or homeopathic nosodes above 30C is, how would one verify that they have the authentic, genuine substance rather than just salt water or water? Even if the claims were genuine, how would one know they have the real thing rather than a counterfeit?
“They clearly state that the chemicals of water (H2O) and table salt (NaCl) are no longer present in ASEA but that these substances have been reconstituted into chemically different substances.”
I’m reading differently, Karl. They are simply pointing out that they have bested the alchemists of old, they’ve mixed salt and water and turned it into gold.
A similar scam is Kangen Water and hundreds of similars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_luHF6CA8A8
http://www.apswater.com/article.asp?id=198&title=Alkaline_Water_Hoax_-_It_Is_Simple_Science.
They also claim that the water is so good because it contains ‘microclusters’ giving it a creamy taste. And hydrate the body. Prevent old age. etc. etc. It is such transparant nonsense that it boggles the mind to imagine that anyone believes it.
Actually, it looks like this was originally being developed as a drug! That’s why there are all those tox studies. It seems the product was originally called MDI-P, and was being developed by a company called Medical Discoveries, Inc. They were supposedly planning to submit an IND to FDA and everything. You can pull up a summary of their safety studies here. That doc has embedded links to multiple full study reports.
For example, there’s a rabbit study that says:
It also references a review by Baltch et al. (Am J Infect Control 2000; 28:251-257).
Some Googling shows that the company trying to develop it as a drug essentially ceased to exist in 2007. I guess someone decided “To heck with science and FDA and drug approval – let’s just sell the stuff as a miracle supplement!”
The thing about vague statements on supplements / crap like this always perplexed me. Why are you allowed to make vague, yet claim real effects, without having to show it. So what if they don’t claim to be treating, curing, or preventing a specific disease, they are making claims on what their product does.
Any claim, in my opinion, needs to be justified because if you can make any wild assertment than what’s to stop companies from making “treat-alls” (I know they already exist). Is there anything the people can do about this? Write to the FDA or something?
I like the Vit O part:
“They explained that the lab’s precision equipment couldn’t measure over 40 ppm of oxygen and there was so much oxygen in their product that it had registered as zero.”
No, that means your equipment is faulty. If I have a pressure gauge and apply SO much pressure (beyond the max read / record limit) it will read the max value not zero. I would hope that any layperson would see this as incorrect.
BobbyG: “wild-crafted?” WILD-CRAFTED water? LMAO!
Actually, they’re missing a whole lot of potential clients with the “wild-crafted” and “all-natural” claims. Just think how many more fools you could sell your salt water to if you describe the water as having been formed by the collision of trans-Neptunian planetoids with the earth — “Our Water is Really Out of This World!” “May contain trace remains of aliens — no extra charge!” Suddenly UFO hunters would lust after it, Scientologists and Mormons would fear it; the sheer buzz of having such “truly” unique water from space will get you free ads on all those lousy local daytime “news” shows. Then, once you establish your client base, you can offer them a special water a month plan: how about “preservative-free” water — contains no minerals, vitamins or other additives? Next month, they send you some Perrigrino — the slight radioactivity is all you need to cure the cancer you imagine you have or will develop, so long as you also drink it from our patent-pending uranium glass drink set! Only $19.95 plus shipping, handling, free mammograms included!
As a response to Karl Withakay – back in the early 80′s we had a homeopathy-scandal (though missed by those not in the trade or of regulatory bodies) in Sweden where it turned out that one of the producers of such things had decided that actually diluting a mother tincture was unnecessary when you couldn’t distinguish the product from tap-water anyway. How was it found out? Depending on who you ask, either by whistleblowing (which I believe) or by the compiled experience of homeopaths realising that their medications didn’t work (something most of us already had understood). So if you are a highly trained professional with strong beliefs in potentiation of water through succussion you obviously have some magical ability that prevents any failure of quality control by GMP/GLP/ISO-standards that we merely mortals have to rely on.
Jimmylegs, actually I work with many instruments that will inaccurately read 0 when the actual cause is a reading sufficiently higher than the instrument can handle (different field though). But it would be unusual for a lab to not know that limitation and make sufficient adjustments.
By my understanding, dissolved oxygen is saturated in water at 4-5 ppm. So upon opening a bottle of Vitamin O, it should fizz like soda as dissolved oxygen (laughably assuming its 40+ ppm) flees the liquid. This too should have been immediately noticed by anyone opening a bottle and the significance of it understood.
Oh, I see. Salt water from Utah sold by Mormons.
Oh, I see. Salt water from Utah sold by Mormons. (I looked up the management team…BYU grads.)
R
Oh, I see. Salt water from Utah sold by Mormons. (I looked up the management team…BYU grads.)
Okay, I read their description and . . . WTF are they saying? There are words, but they don’t really go together or make any sense. Bafflegab is all it is.
“What philosophy is this?”
“I can easily teach him. All it takes is a cunning imagination and a glib tongue.”
— The Masque of Mandragora, “Doctor Who”
Also, I initially read this as “AESA” and was trying to figure out how someone had managed to get a hold of an active electronically scanned array (the cutting edge of fighter jet radar tech right now) and turn it into a nostrum….
Hi, and thanks for having this source of information available!
I stumbled upon this site through a related search and am impressed by the discourse here. Knowing that there are some established relationships and that I am a newbie I am aware of my own ignorance on medical topics so will tread lightly.
But I would like to ask the community’s opinion of a study done at the Human Performance Laboratory at Appalachian State under the direction of David C. Nieman (summarized below), as I don’t have the “chops” to do so. Do the findings suggest that the experimental substance would have positive effects on athletes? Others? Is it at all an exciting set of findings?
Thanks much for your thoughts,
Joe
_______
The study included 20 fit athletes in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-based, cross-over study. After baseline testing for VO2Max and body composition, one-half of the athletes drank four ounces of the experimental substance each day for seven days. The other one-half of the athletes drank four ounces of a placebo for seven days. Then all athletes completed a 75-km cycling trial, with blood drawn prior to the trial, immediately after the trial and one hour after the trial.
After a “washout” period in which none of the athletes drank the experimental substance or the placebo, a seven day cross-over study was conducted. The original experimental group drank the placebo and the original placebo group drank the experimental substance for a seven day period. Then all athletes completed a second 75-km cycling trial, with blood drawn prior to the trial, immediately after the trial and one hour after the trial.
The subjects using the experimental product rather than the placebo experienced a shift in 43 metabolites.
The research demonstrated that drinking the experimental substance taps into the body’s largest energy reserves, freeing fatty acids from adipose tissue, before exercise or athletic competition.
The research found that the release of fatty acids is coming from fatty adipose tissue, the body’s source of abundant, available energy. Adipose tissue is fat stored around the organs of the body, with the most common and largest fat store being the abdominal area. Adipose tissue triglycerides represent the largest energy reserve in the human body. Utilizing these stores is critical for prolonged endurance exercise.
The study also demonstrated that the athletes in the study experienced a massive increase in blood levels of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) after exercise. This could indicate less oxidative stress on muscles. Further research is being conducted to determine the implications of this increase.
@biz prof,
Where to start? It was reported at a conference, not published in a peer-reviewed journal where others could examine and critique it. Since we don’t have a published study, we can only comment on the second-hand report. It is a very small pilot study, so it can only produce preliminary data suggesting a route for future study. There are any number of things that could have gone wrong with the study. It measured a lot of lab values rather than any direct clinical benefit on health. It has not been replicated. Presumably the ASEA company paid for the research, and we know manufacturer-funded studies are more likely to get positive results. We don’t know if other studies failed to show a difference with ASEA and were not reported. The interpretations of their findings are pure speculation. I have no idea what the increase in vitamin C might mean, and there are studies showing that supplemental vitamin C decreases exercise performance. And ASEA is nothing but salt and water, so the prior probability of an effect is exceedingly small, and like homeopathy, evidence to support its effectiveness would have to be very strong indeed.
In other words, these findings are interesting if true, but probably not true. We must disregard it unless it can be replicated in independent labs or supported by other studies showing strong effects. I predict that instead of further verifying and investigating these preliminary findings and building on them to produce a coherent body of evidence, they will go on to other kinds of studies looking at different end points.
It seems to me the first step in studying ASEA is to prove that it is distinguishable from salt water. Aren’t there ways (gas chromatographs?) to identify the “16 chemically recombined products of salt and water” they say are in it? Without establishing that, any clinical study of ASEA is Tooth Fairy science.
@Harriet Hall Thanks so much for the reply. Agree with you about the likely direction of the company, in terms of future research. They are clearly using the testimonial and selected studies route.
@TsuDhoNimh asked about patents for scoffing purposes.
Here’s one I found. Again, I don’t have the level of expertise to fully decipher. Is there anything here?
http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20090110749
Redox signaling molecules are important as I understand it, and study of them is growing, I think, but whether ASEA has actually stabilized them (the flourescents don’t measure ROS molecules, apparently), and whether warm-blooded mammals benefit from ingesting or applying them separately from what the mitochondria produce remain good questions.
Other patents from ASEA’s predecessor company concern sterilization of equipment and something HIV-related.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=mdi-p&FIELD1=&co1=AND&TERM2=&FIELD2=&d=PTXT
And, as @qetzal pointed out it was a company that was trying to get FDA approval as a drug before it was sold to the current owners (and patent holders). Then, to me as a business school professor at least, the story gets positively Jobs and Wozniak-ian (or maybe Hewlett and Packard-ian).
As the story is told, late in discussions with a pharmaceutical company they realized people currently using the product (through what I’ve heard referred to as a “focus group,” though that is something I associate more with marketing than medicine), numbering about 150 (up from the 40 who had begun, due to word of mouth) would be forced to stop taking the product while it was in further development.
And, voila, they decided to use network marketing instead so there’d be no interruption in the benefits users were experiencing. Hearts of gold, undoubtedly.
Just to be clear, I’m not a distributor or anything…just was doing some research and was thrilled to find a knowledgeable community to check things out with.
Thanks again,
Joe
Hi all
I was recently approached by a (middle-aged) woman promoting ASEA in the UK who wanted to interest me in the product/get my endorsement. My first thought was “if it’s too good to be true, it usually isn’t” and if their claims were valid then this product would be flying off the shelves (but maybe it is judging by the plush offices in their HQ). I listened attentively to her explanation of the product (as I’m a polite chap) but my first thought was around the effects of copious amounts of HCl in the stomach on this buffered/clustered solution.
Not many substances are absorbed in the stomach and then mostly lipid-soluble ones. If ASEA’s chemically re-combined chemicals are not lipid-soluble and survive the acid test then they should pass into duodenum and be exposed to the pancreatic juices instead. In the UK & USA, we take most of our medicines orally so many drugs are either placed in capsules to protect them until they pass through the stomach else can survive the effects of the acid environment. If ASEA is made-up of many unnamed combinations of H2O and NaCl then I wonder just how stable they can be to survive long enough in such hostile locations?
I must say I loved the video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApOez2QCMvE), I really want to believe this product (middle-aged physio speaking here)! The emphasis on the stunning university, study results and clearly very impressed, highly-educated scientists was winning. The elite athletes saying the scientists have ‘proved’ what they already believed about the product was a very subtle way of saying it was proven when it obviously is not. If it wasn’t so expensive I’d give it a go but then again, being so expensive, the placebo effect to will it on should provide a good kick of endorphins for that authentic true-believer experience!
Lee
I only think that “many” are worried that Asea can threaten their interests and this blog seems to be a clear example. If someone wants to criticize Asea…well…he is free to do it…but just after having tried it for at least 60 days and proving that he hadn’t any benefit! My opinion is: if you don’t test the product you can’t talk!….ignorance should not be admitted…
If you want to go through the details just ask me. If you live in Europe I can send you free samples, and if you live in US I can help you as well
When I saw that this thread had a new post, my immediate thought was “somebody’s shilling for the frauds.” Lo and behold, I was right!
Unfortunately, this post is out of date, referencing previous clinical studies and not adressing the findings of Dr. David Nieman in his two double blind, crossed, placebo controlled studies. I understand the questions… I had them myself, as any half intelligent person would. Then I really looked into Dr. Ni…emans credentials (VP American College of Sports Medicine, Director of Appalachian State Research Lab, his past research on other topics (over 200 peer reviewed studies), and his current research with ASEA. This independent researcher with a double blind, cross, placebo controlled study had more data than all of the naysayers I have seen, so I tried it. And now, I am convinced that ASEA is new science for athletes. I challenge each of you to do the same investigation and make your own decision.
Oh, and guess what the placebo was? yes – it was salt water
Dox-Shots,
Citation needed.
That’s a neat trick, DS, proving that salt water is better than salt water.
Somebody seems to be puffing the CV.