In 2004, some pioneers began to distribute water ionizers from the Far East for domestic drinking water optimization.
The first brand of these devices was “Aquion”, which was developed by Salux GmbH, whose managing director is still Johannes Heppenheimer today.
At the same time, Karl Heinz Asenbaum and his company Quantomed began to promote the Aquion water ionizers from the spa town of Bad Füssing, where Dr. Walter Irlacher incorporated the alkaline active water into his modern spa concepts as a “perpetuum mobile of deacidification” (Service manual for people, 2006).
Although electrolyte water in basic, neutral and acidic forms was a popular drug specialty for metabolic diseases and in veterinary medicine from 1931 to 1981, it changed after the death of Inventor Alfons Natterer cannot be as established as in the Far Eastern countries, where the first electric water ionizers were developed for everyone in 1985.
After 2004, in addition to Aquion, several brands of devices aimed at the European market developed, such as Ionquell, Aquaphaser, Tyent-Europe, Bionlite, Aquaphoenix, Sanuslife, Aquacentrum and AquaVolta®.
Karl Heinz Asenbaum and Johannes Heppenheimer in conversation
In the early years, the focus was on the deacidifying power of alkaline active water, which led to the abbreviation “alkaline water”, which then quickly filled the market with chemical-based “water ionizers” in the form of sodium bicarbonate concentrates or so-called alkaline powders, which took advantage of the public’s lack of knowledge about the nature of alkaline active water and flooded the market with products that produce alkaline solutions.
In 2008, Karl Heinz Asenbaum, Dr. med. Walter Irlacher and Dipl. Ing. Dietmar Ferger therefore published the multimedia book “Drink yourself alkaline – The breviary for alkaline activated water”, which also pointed out the antioxidant component of the activated water in the form of a negative redox potential, which cannot be generated with chemical water ionizers.
In the following years, a large number of scientific papers, especially from Japan, showed that the molecular hydrogen dissolved in it is primarily responsible for the exceptionally low redox potential and the antioxidant effect of activated water. This opened up completely new perspectives not only scientifically and medically, but also technologically. Today you can specifically build water ionizers that enrich the water with hydrogen without making it alkaline at the same time. The two active water experts are debating with passion and competence whether this makes sense or not and which is the right path in 2017.
