# DOCTORS: Oxygenated Water: smart or dumb?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctors-oxygenated-water-smart-or-dumb/401987
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [April 28, 2007, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctors-oxygenated-water-smart-or-dumb/401987 "2007-04-28T21:03:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2007, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctors-oxygenated-water-smart-or-dumb/401987/1 "2007-04-28T21:03:51Z")
I was walking down the street and this guy had a booth set up outside a small grocery store that was carrying the product. He claimed it had 35 times more oxygen that normal water, anfd that that offered all types of benefits. particulalry for athletes.
Now the more oxygen an athlete can process through the lungs the better, right? But can the body use oxygen that comes in through other means? And a friend of mine who own’s a fairly well0known health supplement company is of the mind that the last thing you want to expose your cells to is more oxygen, as that is one of the things that ages them.
So does “oxydizing” water give your body renewed vigor? Or doe it basically speed up the “rusting” process?
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### Author:  [@Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Speaker_for_the_Dead)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2007, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctors-oxygenated-water-smart-or-dumb/401987/2 "2007-04-28T21:16:27Z")
Here’s [Quackwatch’s take](http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/PhonyAds/oxygencooler.html) on one type of oxygenated water. Basically, it’s bunk–molecular oxygen can’t be taken up anywhere but our lungs.
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### Author:  [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2007, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctors-oxygenated-water-smart-or-dumb/401987/3 "2007-04-28T21:22:14Z")
[QUOTE=magellan01]
He claimed it had 35 times more oxygen that normal water
[/QUOTE]
> [@](#):
>
> if air and oxygen from compressed gas cylinders are bubbled into separate water samples, the sensor reading from the oxygen-saturated water will be about five times larger than that of the sensor reading from the air-saturated water. If the sensor is calibrated to 100% in air saturated water or water-saturated air (as is done for most YSI meters), then the reading in oxygen-saturated water will be about 500% air-saturation.
[here](http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:aEU7LLpWOW0J:www.ysirepairs.com/YSI%2520Manuals/ENVIRONMENTAL%2520DISSOLVED%2520OXYGEN%2520VALUES%2520ABOVE%2520100.doc+%22oxygen+saturated+water%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us&client=firefox-a)
It’d be a good trick getting the O[sub]2[/sub] concentration 3500% higher than that of regular air saturated water.
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### Author:  [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2007, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctors-oxygenated-water-smart-or-dumb/401987/4 "2007-04-28T21:27:24Z")
I’m not a doctor, but one need not be in order to recognize a duck by its quack. In addition to the oxygen that is inherently bound in water molecules, normal water at room temperature will contain a small amount of dissolved gaseous oxygen, somewhere between 7-10 mg per liter. If you think this isn’t much, you’re right; you breath in about 30-60 mg per normal breath. (Never mind that your digestive system isn’t really set up to absorb diatomic oxygen in quantity anyway.) The idea that you can “superoxygenate” water is bunk. Sure, you can pump a lot of little bubbles through it, and some will even stick for a while, but by the time it sits on the shelf at the 7-11 for a few days all that oxygen is in that empty space you see between the fluid and the cap. I suppose you could take a whiff of it as you open it up in hopes of getting an extra burst of oxygen, but the only real benefit is the psychosomatic one that allows you to convince yourself that paying $3 a bottle is going to make you some kind of superhuman.
Even worse is the [“penta-hydrated”](http://www.chem1.com/CQ/pentabunk.html) water. There is no “restructuring” of water, because at room temperature water has only one molecular configuration and no gross structure whatsoever. If the claimed processes it undergoes are truthful, then at least it is highly filtered, but that’s as far as it goes.
If you want superoxygenated water, I recommend that you make it yourself. Get a Britta water filter, and pump the resulting tap water with a fish tank oxygenating pump. It won’t make the water any more healthful for you, but it’ll cost you a lot less than buying that overmarketed snake oil tonic they sell at the gym.
Stranger
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### Author:  [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2007, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctors-oxygenated-water-smart-or-dumb/401987/5 "2007-04-28T21:37:08Z")
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
Sure, you can pump a lot of little bubbles through it, and some will even stick for a while, but by the time it sits on the shelf at the 7-11 for a few days all that oxygen is in that empty space you see between the fluid and the cap.
[/QUOTE]
You could test for this quite easily. Simply light a match, quickly open your bottle of “superoxygenated water”, and drop the match in. If the match doesn’t explode brilliantly before hitting the liquid, you can be certain you’ve been scammed. Of course, you can be certain you’ve been scammed if you bought the stuff in the first place, but that doesn’t involve explosions.
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### Author:  [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2007, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctors-oxygenated-water-smart-or-dumb/401987/6 "2007-04-29T13:17:29Z")
Maybe if you had functional gills. Otherwise, well a fool and his money are soon parted.
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### Author:  [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2007, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctors-oxygenated-water-smart-or-dumb/401987/7 "2007-04-29T16:51:54Z")
[QUOTE=magellan01]
He claimed it had 35 times more oxygen that normal water, anfd that that offered all types of benefits. particulalry for athletes.
[/QUOTE]
Remember the 3 types of lies:
Lies
Damn lies
Statistics
IF they used some kind of isolated environment for their bottling lines you probably could strip out all dissolved gases amd replace them all with oxygen, it might even end up being 35x more if it was supersaturated akin to soda carbonation.
Of course you won’t see pepsi advertising 35x more carbon dioxide than water 😃
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### Author:  [@Gentle\_Robot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gentle_Robot)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2007, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctors-oxygenated-water-smart-or-dumb/401987/8 "2007-04-29T17:08:17Z")
[QUOTE=magellan01]
I was walking down the street and this guy had a booth set up outside a small grocery store that was carrying the product.
[/QUOTE]
Did the sign on the booth read “Snake Oil” perchance?
BTW I’ve some bear bile I went through hell to get, if you’re interested. Only $300 an ounce.
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### Author:  [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2007, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctors-oxygenated-water-smart-or-dumb/401987/9 "2007-04-29T17:19:51Z")
Could be [worse.](http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/news-article.aspx?storyid=77318) .
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### Author:  [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2007, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctors-oxygenated-water-smart-or-dumb/401987/10 "2007-04-29T20:15:49Z")
Louis-Jacques Thenard, the guy who discovered H[sub]2[/sub]O[sub]2[/sub], reported, “I have at last succeeded in saturating water with oxygen. The quantity which it then contains is 850 times its volume, or twice as much as the quantity that belongs to it. In that state of saturation, it possesses properties quite peculiar, the most remarkable of which are the following…” in _Annales de Chimie et de Physique_ **10** , 335 (1819)
You can read his communication [here](http://web.lemoyne.edu/~GIUNTA/thenardh2o2.html)
I don’t recommend drinking the stuff.