In Defense of Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo and Structured Water: When Saying “Might” Is a Crime

I. The Ladapo “Scandal”
 The absolute best Surgeon General in any state’s history is Dr. Joseph Ladapo, and there isn’t even a close second (though, in fairness, only six states have Surgeon Generals, and the position itself is barely two decades old).
 Given we live an hour apart, Lisa and I have gotten to know both Joe and Brianna (and their three little rascals) and consider them both friends. Joe possesses an impressive combination of personality traits, a rare mix of kindness, intelligence, objectivity, courage, and determination. He’s one of the most impressive people I have encountered during my Covid journey. And with those traits, it should surprise no one that he was, and remains, one of the most publicly attacked and denigrated figures of the era.
 There’s a quote commonly credited to George Orwell, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” If that line ever needed a modern case study, Joe Ladapo is it.
 Now, although I run a fairly popular Substack, as much as I would want to, if I had to write a post every time one of my “brothers in arms” was targeted by corporatized, government-captured media propaganda, I’d be posting every single day (and probably twice a day).
 Imagine trying to respond to the daily fusillade aimed at my friend Bobby Kennedy over the past twenty years, now supercharged since he became Secretary of HHS. The pharma-media attacks began only when he shifted his focus from keeping mercury out of fish to keeping it out of children. I love that line about him: nobody ever called him anti-fish, but the moment he tried to protect kids, he was branded anti-vax. It’s a label he’s carried with the same resolve and grace as the parallel nonsense hurled at Dr. Ladapo.
 To mount real-time, daily defenses of people like Joe or Bobby (or Robert Malone), I’d need a staff of writers and a media conglomerate larger than my Substack.
 And it would still be pointless, because any rebuttal of mine would never reach the same eyeballs as the hit pieces pumped through NYT, Washington Post, Gizmodo, Yahoo, Fox, and the rest of the narrative-enforcement apparatus.
 But the latest attack on Joe made me both furious and laugh out loud.
 This time, they went after him for talking about water .
 II. The “Crime”: Saying “Might”
 I’m a structured water guy now, and it seems Joe might be one too. So I figured I’d defend both. Check out this clown-show of an article that a friend sent me:

 It’s funny how even the most obvious propaganda headline still “gets” you for a split second. That’s what propaganda is designed to do: insert thoughts into your head before reason catches up.
 Embarrassingly, my first reaction was, holy cow, is Joe selling a structured water product like I am? Then I thought maybe, kindly, that he’d heard about Aurmina and mentioned it positively. I dug in. Nothing. No mention of me or my product.
 Totally cool with me but I was instead shocked to learn that Joe’s high crime was a single sentence in a tweet:
 “Drinking structured water might offer more advantages.”
 Might. That’s it. No product, no claims, no prescriptions, no certainty.
 Just a cautious statement acknowledging biological plausibility. Apparently, that now qualifies as “peddling.”
 But here’s where the article crossed from laughable into enraging: the author didn’t just attack Joe. He attacked the very idea that water can be structured , or that it might have biological effects. My rage turned from what they were doing to Joe to what they were doing to upstream physiology.
 The position the Gizmodo journalist was tasked with presenting was not skepticism. It was deliberately feigned ignorance.
 III. Why This Attack On Upstream Physiology Matters
 And that is exactly why I could never spend my days hurling truth at the lies embedded in propaganda; that kind of work requires no insight, no rigor, and no curiosity. It would render me intellectually anesthetized.
 But for this one time, and because it defends my company, Aurmina, I will make an exception. So let’s do it.
 Water organizing itself into structure is not a fringe belief. It is documented across physical chemistry, membrane biology, biophysics, and agricultural physiology. Interfacial water, hydration layers, charge separation, and non-random molecular organization near mineral and biological surfaces are taught concepts, not mysticism.
 And the real-world data are even harder to dismiss because I literally just published a post compiling veterinary and agricultural studies showing improved outcomes like growth, fertility, metabolic efficiency, stress tolerance (even sperm production), when animals drink structured or modified water. Not humans. Animals. Where variables are controlled, and outcomes are measured directly.
 Animals don’t placebo. They don’t comply. They don’t read Twitter. They just respond. Which is exactly why that literature is so threatening.
 IV. Credentialism as a Weapon
 The article sneers:
 “2026 is already looking to be filled with plenty of crank science.”
 “Structured water isn’t something that really exists, according to actual scientists.”
 Clever! Inferring that Joe is not an “actual scientist.”
 Let’s pause.
 Joe Ladapo is an MD from Harvard Medical School , holds a PhD in Health Policy from Harvard , served as an FDA staff fellow , is Florida’s Surgeon General , and is a full Professor at the University of Florida College of Medicine .
 MD.
 PhD.
 FDA.
 Professor.
 But not an “actual scientist,” apparently. That was the funniest part.
 It gets better. To make Joe look foolish, the journalist had to reach across the planet to find a suitably credentialed critic, pulling in a chemist from New South Wales to dismiss structured water as “nebulous.”
 Even that quote accidentally concedes the point:
 “…at its most scientifically plausible, it describes unusual properties of water near an interface.”
 That is structured water.
 V. Pattern Recognition: The Kory Scale
 The article then recycled Joe’s previous COVID positions, positions that were cautious, evidence-based, and repeatedly vindicated by time, and closed with the now mandatory flourish: anti-science zealot.
 This is how modern propaganda works. You don’t debate the claim. You delegitimize the messenger, collapse nuance, and warn readers not to think.
 But why attack something as banal-sounding as water ?
 That really stumped me at first. But then I remembered The Kory Scale and, through that lens, what was behind this seemingly stupid article hit me, and it was glorious (for Aurmina and me).
 “They” aren’t just threatened by Joe and the profoundly “inconvenient” work he’s been doing, things like rolling back vaccine mandates, challenging reckless Covid vaccine recommendations, surfacing data on the lethality of Covid vaccines, and pushing research into cancer treatments using off-patent drugs (my man!).
 Now it seems they’re also threatened by… structured water? Truly terrifying stuff.
 To understand what was really behind that article, it is imperative that we revisit the central thesis of the Kory Scale (one of my most popular posts, actually);
 The conceptual underpinning of the Kory Scale is that the efficacy of any proposed therapy should be scored in direct proportion to the degree, breadth, and viciousness of the attacks generated from pharma-media and the “medical establishment.”
 Once I remembered my own damn (unquestioningly brilliant) theory, I got excited. They are scared of structured water!
 Not because it’s silly, but because it’s upstream of all illness.
 VI. The Vitamin D Parallel
 My long-time readers know this, but for those who joined more recently, know that my initial entry into the study of modern “disinformation” techniques occurred in early March of 2021, four months after I had unwittingly become globally known as an “ivermectin advocate” (thanks, Ron!)
 I woke up one day, coffee in hand, cruising through my inbox, when I stumbled upon an email from someone I did not know, a Professor by the name of William B. Grant, who I later learned was one of the most published researchers in Vitamin D science. It read:
 “Dear Dr. Kory, what they are doing to ivermectin, they have been doing to Vitamin D for decades.”
 That was it. Actually, no, that wasn’t it, because he also included a link to an article called “ The Disinformation Playbook ,” written by an organization called “ Union of Concerned Scientists .”
 Anyway, that article literally changed my life as it finally allowed me to understand what was happening to me, to my partner Professor Paul Marik, to our careers, to our non-profit organization, etc.). It explained ivermectin. It explained Vitamin D. It explained Covid. And now, it explains the threat of structured, mineral-balanced water.
 Not-so-fun fact: that very same organization refused my request to include images from the article in my book, “ The War on Ivermectin, ” because I was “too controversial.” Whatever.
 Tell me if you think I am over-reaching here, but my interpretation of this stupid Ladapo hit-job article became, “Holy cow, is structured water presenting as much of a threat as Vitamin D?
 The Decades Long Disinformation Campaign Against Vitamin D
 Quick refresher on the Disinformation campaign on Vitamin D, something Professor Grant has been fighting for decades.
 Vitamin D is literally the conductor of the orchestra that is our immune system (and other systems). Vitamin D supplementation (and K2 and magnesium), at the right doses and frequency, tuned to achieve optimal levels, is one of the best defenses against literally any disease. “They” know this.
 Thus, their decades-long injection of studies into the medical literature aimed at showing that Vitamin D supplementation (at anemic and infrequent doses) has zero efficacy in treating or preventing any disease. For every positive study of reasonable dosing that manages to get published, they will then inject two, larger, “more rigorous” (yeah, right, how about more “rigorously” manipulated) studies of low-dose, short-term, infrequently delivered Vitamin D that contradict any “positive” findings.
 “They” then buy the professional medical societies, allowing “them” control of the treatment guideline committees, lowering what is considered a “normal” level to the absolute lowest possible level without causing friggin rickets.
 I used to be afraid to say this, for fear of sounding like a tin-hat conspiracy theorist, but, based on now 5 years of fighting the pharmaceutical industry, I will state objectively, and fully; “they” do this to keep us as unhealthy and/or sick as possible, so that we become more voracious consumers of pharmaceuticals and sophisticated, immensely expensive health treatments. Period.
 Just one example; if the population were to achieve and maintain truly optimal Vitamin D levels (at least 50, I like mine over 100), the biggest bear of them all, the cancer industry, would undergo a massive downturn. And that’s just cancer; the markets for literally every disease and specialty would be affected.
 Know that in human antiquity, vitamin D levels were far higher than what is considered “normal” today. Multiple lines of evidence, from studies of modern hunter-gatherer populations living traditional outdoor lifestyles, to physiologic modeling of sun exposure at equatorial and temperate latitudes, consistently place ancestral serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels in the range of 40–70 ng/mL , with many individuals likely spending substantial portions of the year above 60 ng/mL .
 These levels were achieved naturally through daily, full-body sun exposure without sunscreen, indoor confinement, or seasonal light deprivation imposed by modern living.
 By contrast, contemporary populations in industrialized societies cluster around 15–30 ng/mL , with anything above 20 ng/mL now labeled “sufficient” solely because it prevents overt rickets, not because it reflects optimal immune, metabolic, or endocrine function. In other words, modern “normal” vitamin D levels are not a biological baseline; they are a deficiency threshold rebranded as adequacy.
 VII. Are They Doing It Again? Structured Water as the Next Threat
 So am I really leaping to conclusions, or just stating the obvious, by wondering whether my recent work on minerals and structured water, and the launch of Aurmina , a historically unique mineral solution that structures drinking water and has seen extraordinary adoption and customer satisfaction, is starting to worry them because they somehow believe that it might threaten demand for their therapies?
 I asked AI if there were any other mainstream media articles in the recent past that tried to critique or dismiss the idea that structured water might be good for your health. The list totaled 6 articles, but I cut them down for you. Still, buckle up, buttercup, we are gonna start with an example of the increasingly pervasive propaganda tool, the “Fact Check” article, from Australia, no less:
 1) AAP FactCheck — Structured Water Health Claims Are False
 A fact-check from the Australian Associated Press states that claims about “structured” or “hexagonal” water having superior health benefits are false , noting “there’s no such thing as structured water” according to expert chemists.
 Quote:
 “Structured water… has far superior health benefits than regular water… This is false. There’s no such thing as structured water.” — AAP FactCheck, quoting chemistry experts.

 3) Vitarx — Marketing Myth and Lack of Evidence
 The Vitarx health site calls structured water (including “H₃O₂”) a marketing myth , stating that bulk water isn’t a stable form you can buy, and that any purported health benefits lack strong human evidence.
 Quote:
 “Structured water or ‘H₃O₂’ is not a real, stable form of water — this concept is a marketing myth, not science… Most chemists and biologists say there’s insufficient evidence to prove structured water offers any special health benefits.” — Vitarx.

 Sorry guys, but anytime I read an article that includes the term “insufficient evidence” as above, it triggers me to share, yet again, the one tattoo that I stupidly submitted to (or sought in anger) during the “ War on Ivermectin ”

 6) Wikipedia on Hexagonal Water — Marketing Scam
 Wikipedia’s entry on hexagonal water (another term for structured water) describes it explicitly as a marketing scam , not a scientifically substantiated health product.
 Quote:
 “Hexagonal water… is a term used in a marketing scam that claims the ability to create a certain configuration of water that is better for the body… the hoax… despite the reality that this compound is neither water nor stable.” — Wikipedia.

 My favorite was the last one from Wikipedia, err, I mean “Wiki-media.”
 VIII. What “Structured Water” Actually Is (and Isn’t)
 Although I will give them some credit for identifying that, aside from water containing Shimanishi’s mineral complex, every other method can only create a transiently “structured state” of water. Now you know why I have invested my life into Aurmina . If you add Shimanishi’s mineral complex, your water will remain structured and mineral-balanced for as long as you need it to (within reason).
 The importance of understanding the “stability” of water structured via a unique composition of a broad palette of sulfated minerals cannot be overemphasized for you to understand that I am discussing structured water in a ”scientific sense,” not a symbolic, experiential, or pseudoscientific one.
 Major Problem: The concept of structured water is poorly understood in wellness circles as well as in industry (and even science), with the many claims supporting devices or methods that supposedly structure water lacking published supporting evidence.
 Based on the work of Gerald Pollack at the University of Washington, a man considered to be the world's expert in the study of structured water (a term for which he uses “Exclusion Zone” water), the test he used to define water as “structured,” was an Ultraviolet Absorption analysis using a UV spectrometer.
 EZ water in Pollack’s framework is associated with an optical absorption peak near ~270 nm in UV–Vis spectroscopy.

 This peak is considered a marker of altered water structure at hydrophilic interfaces, unlike that of ordinary bulk water.

 The absolute magnitude of the absorbance peak can vary with conditions and is not a fixed number , but its presence and reproducibility are the relevant finding

 Older Methods Of Defining Structured Water
 Although Pollack’s work has received the most attention, he was not a “discoverer” of structured water; others had been structuring water and studying its effects on humans and animals decades before him (Shimanishi knew his minerals structured the water, and he called it “activated oxygen water). Others, such as Lorenzen, in patent filings for his water structuring method in the early 1990’s, defined structured water with ¹⁷O Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) linewidth, finding that ordinary water shows a broad ¹⁷O NMR resonance (≈115–140 Hz depending on purity, while the patented “microclustered water” consistently showed narrower linewidths, often 25–70 Hz, with 60–70 Hz preferred.
 The claim was that narrower linewidths indicate: reduced rotational freedom, more uniform molecular environments and longer hydrogen-bond organization.
 UV Spectrometer Analysis Of Aurmina-Treated Water
 Below are the results of such a test conducted on water treated with a product identical in composition to Aurmina , with the absorption compared to both regular tap water and “laboratory” water, which is completely de-ionized (zero mineral content).
 The full PDF test report is below. Note that in the Methods section, a critical detail is that the treated water sat in the lab for 6 days prior to the test .
 Uv Absorption Test Report
 698KB ∙ PDF file

 Download
 Download

 In the above, you can see the long “hold” where UV absorption is occurring in the 6-day-old mineral-treated water, still with 95% absorption at 270 nm, compared to the 15% absorption in tap water, and 0% in Ultrapure water (table not shown). See tables below the graph:

 IX. The Field Correction: Structure → Coherence
 With over four months of obsessive research and writing on water and minerals, and the founding of a company with a “water structuring and purification” product, I suppose you could say I am now fully immersed in what people loosely call the “Structured Water Health Space.”
 I want to say this as humbly as possible. Not because I think I’m smarter than anyone, and certainly not because I’m all-knowing. Any clarity I have here is simply the result of being mentored by someone I consider the leading expert on Shimanishi’s mineral extract and the physics underlying what is often referred to as “structured water.”
 What has become painfully clear to me, embarrassingly late, and only after months of using the term myself, is that almost no one who talks about “structured water” actually understands what they mean. I certainly didn’t. I don’t say this to mock anyone. I say it because the language is wrong, the concepts are blurred, and until we fix that, the entire subject will remain vulnerable to ridicule rather than understanding.
 Some people may feel exposed by what I’m about to explain, especially those making money atop genuine confusion. But ignorance isn’t a crime. In many cases, it’s simply the price paid on the way to understanding.
 Energy Medicine, Wellness Culture, and Structured Water Claims
 Many advocate for and practice various forms of energy healing and believe water can hold memory or act as a therapeutic medium. What I appreciate about these practitioners is that they are absolutely correct in treating water as a source of life and vitality.
 Nothing alive can exist unless three material conditions are met: carbon, water, and minerals. Carbon provides the scaffolding of life, minerals provide coordination and regulation, and water is the medium that allows both to interact. Without water, carbon cannot assemble into living structures, and minerals cannot move, signal, or participate in biology. Access to water is not just essential to life; it is the condition that makes life possible at all.
 More relevant to these “wellness” advocates, know that across virtually every ancient tradition, water has been described as having an essence and a restorative quality. Long before hydrogen bonding or electrical gradients were understood, civilizations recognized that different waters produced different effects on the body, the land, and the mind. Springs were distinguished from stagnant sources. Certain waters were sought for healing, fertility, and longevity. These traditions lacked modern chemistry, but they were observing something real: water is not biologically neutral.
 Two simple facts make this unavoidable.
 Water without minerals is biologically inert.

 Minerals without water are biologically inert.

 Water and minerals cannot be considered separate biological entities. The old habit of listing three material foundations of life, carbon, water, and minerals, is actually wrong. To be scientifically accurate, that list collapses to two: carbon and water, but only if the water is “real water,” meaning mineralized water.
 In the experiment above comparing Aurmina-treated water to tap water and so-called “Ultrapure” water, it’s worth pausing on what that last term actually means.
 “Ultrapure” water is nothing but H₂O molecules stripped of everything else, and no such water has ever existed anywhere in nature. Every natural water on Earth contains minerals. Always has. The only thing that varies is which minerals and in what balance.
 My views on what that balance should look like are probably already clear from my writing (and my starting up of a friggin company). But the larger point is simpler and more important: water is not just a liquid. It only supports life when it functions as a medium, carrying minerals. Without them, water cannot coordinate chemistry, carry charge, or support living systems. It’s just wet.
 So maybe we need a new word. Should we stop calling it water and start calling it “Minwater,” or“Watermin”? Because that’s what it really is.
 I’m now imagining a future where a kid comes inside after playing ball, or, more realistically, after six straight hours of internet surfing, and says, “Hey Mom, I’m thirsty. Can I have a glass of Watermin?”
 Love that future.
 The only reason biologically inert water drinkers remain alive (hello R.O. and distilled-water enthusiasts) is that the moment water hits their lips, it begins pulling minerals from saliva, blood, bile acids, and tissues. Although these “robberies” are often subclinical, the published medical literature reveals myriad health problems that spike when demineralized water is suddenly introduced into discrete human populations. When readers tell me they’ve drunk demineralized water for decades and “feel fine,” my response is simple: I smoked nearly two packs of cigarettes a day for almost thirty years and feel fine.
 Jokes aside, this is where intuition gets mistaken for mechanism. The problem is not that these “magical or mystical” perspectives exist. The problem is that they are routinely conflated with scientific claims when they are not making scientific claims at all. When symbolic or experiential frameworks are presented as mechanistic explanations, the entire field becomes an easy target for dismissal and ridicule.
 Properly understood, these traditions are observational and descriptive, not explanatory. They reflect a long-standing recognition that water behaves differently across contexts and that those differences matter biologically. The error arises when intuition is asked to substitute for mechanism, rather than point toward it.
 The Water Structuring Device Industry
 Short Term Water Structuring Devices
 Most commercial devices claiming to “structure” water—whether through vortexing, magnets, ceramics, pipes, turbulence, or passive geometries—share a critical limitation: the structuring they induce is typically short-lived . In the peer-reviewed literature, water structured by magnetic, light, or mechanical energy alone is consistently shown to persist for hours to, at most, a few days , with the degree of structuring proportional to the intensity and duration of the applied energy and decaying exponentially once that energy is removed .
 Under those conditions, any water produced by such devices, even if measurably structured at the point of use, would often arrive at a laboratory partially or fully de-structured , because the organizing influence is no longer present and bulk water does not reliably carry that order forward on its own.
 Long Term Water Structuring Devices
 The only other method I found which led to water which maintained coherence ver time, had a critical feature in common with Aurmina which is that they added metasilicate salts to the water. This was deemed a critical aspect, and should not be surprising - a mineral composition with specific ionic behavior is a requirement.
 Differences between metasilicate salt method and Aurmina’s sulfated mineral method;
 In the former, energy inputs were required which shows that the mineral composition acted as a stabilizing scaffold, allowing structured states to persist long after the external energy input has ceased (weeks to months)
 With Aurmina, no energy input is required, you just add minerals, and are good to go. The one thing we dont have is data on how long the water would maintain strcuture, but based on the below comparision by AI, it is predictably far longer.
 Another difference between the meta-silicate mineral method and the sulfated mineral method, is that the former is not found in nature nor are silicates biologically indispensable, while sulfur is both biological necessary and found in natural springs. So the former is a man-made method, while Aurmina relies on the good ‘ole fashioned “nature’s method.”
 Where Can “Naturally Formed” Structured Water Found?
 As Gerald Pollack has stated publicly, the only places on Earth where naturally persistent structured water has been observed are near hydrothermal vents and in natural sulfate-rich springs .
 There is only one meaningful commonality between those environments, and it is that the minerals found there are bound with sulfur, specifically in dissolved sulfate species. Thus, I will refer primarily to sulfate going forward, because it is the most stable, soluble, and widely bioavailable aqueous form, and therefore the most biologically relevant in drinking water.
 Aurmina contains a broad and diverse palette of minerals that are all sulfated. That detail matters far more than most people discussing “structured water” realize.
 Sulfate is required for water organization because water organizes around stable charge separation, and sulfate is biology’s primary mineral for managing protons, electrons, and interfacial charge without collapsing gradients. This is why sulfate-rich environments can support persistent electrical organization in water while devices cannot.
 This fact is virtually unmentioned by those making claims about structured water. The result is widespread confusion paired with confident but baseless assertions, leaving the field wide open to skepticism, ridicule, and journalistic attack. I am trying to change that.
 One of my first steps is to advocate that we stop using the word “structure” altogether, because it hides what actually matters and misdirects attention toward the wrong thing.
 The Core Insight - “Mineral Sulfate Coherence”
 It’s not about “structured water.” It’s about water maintaining electrical sulfated mineral coherence through ionic mineral content.
 Water cannot hold structure on its own. Hydrogen bonds form and break trillions of times per second. Any apparent ordering is temporary and collapses the moment the influence is removed. Water cannot store energy, hold charge, or maintain order independently. When people say “the water is structured,” what they usually mean is that something external briefly aligned the molecules. That is not structure, and it is not coherence.
 Sulfated mineral coherence in water is about function: continuous ionic movement, stable charge exchange, and buffered electrical gradients. That only exists when sulfated mineral ions are present to support that exchange. This is what turns water from a passive solvent into an active conductive medium.
 The crucial reversal is this: water does not remember. Sulfated minerals do. Sulfated minerals provide charge buffering, electron donors and acceptors, ion-exchange capacity, and continuous conductivity. Water simply transmits, responds, and participates. Without sulfated minerals, coherence collapses and biological function fails.
 This is the missing logic in almost every discussion of water.
 Why Natural Spring Water Works
 Pristine, natural spring water moves through sulfated mineral strata, where it acquires ionic species, develops conductivity, and establishes redox balance. That is why it remains stable after bottling, behaves differently from reverse-osmosis or distilled water, and supports biological systems without devices. Nothing is “locking” the water into shape. The sulfated mineral ions keep it coherent.
 At this point, a terminology correction becomes necessary. The term “structured water” has become so overloaded and mechanistically vague that it now obscures more than it explains. What biology responds to is not structure as a static property, but water’s capacity to sustain electrical order through continuous ionic exchange. That capacity arises from sulfated mineral coherence , not geometry, intention, magnets, or momentary alignment.
 For that reason, I am deliberately going to stop using the phrase “structured water,” except when referring to how it is misused in popular discourse. It is not that nothing real is being observed. It is that the language used to describe it is wrong.
 Water does not hold structure; it maintains ionic sulfated mineral coherence only when the sulfated minerals support continuous charge exchange.
 That single sentence reframes the entire conversation correctly.
 From Serious Discussions Of “The Science” Back To Propaganda
 Remember, I am (or was) an ICU specialist; “pattern recognition” was the unique, differentiating skill I gained after 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school, 3 years of residency, 3 years of fellowship, and then over 15 years of running busy urban ICUs.
 If you don’t see something in the pattern of journalism articles above, I will explain it to you. Why would repeated, varied publications take the time to “debunk” something without first deeply researching and presenting “both sides” of the existing data on an “uncertain” topic, thus allowing the reader themselves to ponder the relative significance of the supposedly contradicting data? Why would they instead simply target the goal of “telling you what to think?”
 Weird right?
 To be clear, I am not claiming that drinking (what I will now give an acronym) sulfated mineral coherent (SMC) water is proven to maintain health or reverse disease (relax, FDA and FTC, I’m not that stupid). What I am asking is far more uncomfortable: was this hit piece on Joe commissioned because “they” believe, perhaps correctly, that MSC water poses a genuine threat to a business model dependent on a vast, continuously sick or metabolically unwell population?
 Conclusion
 X. Ancient Water vs. Modern Water
 How We Quietly Replaced a Living Medium with an Industrial Solvent
 What I am trying to say is simple.
 For most of human history, people drank water that moved slowly through rock, soil, and living systems before ever reaching the mouth.
 Springs, seeps, rivers, and shallow wells delivered water that was sulfated mineral-bearing, microbially mediated, and conditioned by prolonged contact with stone, clay, and organic matter. Water chemistry was shaped jointly by geology and biology, not by industrial optimization. There was no chlorination, no aggressive filtration, no ion stripping (hello again to the R.O. and distilled-water enthusiasts), no plastic piping, and no mandate to prioritize sterility over physiology. That water was not “pure” by modern regulatory standards, but it was often biologically legible as sulfated mineral coherent (SMC) water .
 What almost no-one has publicly called attention to (sorry for bringing up another “attack” of modern life on your health), but modern water treatment routinely strips or disrupts sulfated minerals , through softening, ion exchange, reverse osmosis, and coagulation, leaving water that is chemically clean but electrically and biologically thin.
 Modern water is really something else.
 Today, water is engineered for distribution, shelf life, and liability reduction. Municipal treatment prioritizes pathogen elimination, corrosion control, and chemical stability across miles of pipe. Reverse osmosis, demineralization, aggressive filtration, and disinfectants strip water of dissolved minerals and disrupt natural ionic relationships. What reaches the tap is often chemically clean but, again, biologically thin: low in calcium and magnesium, high in residual disinfectants, prone to inducing diuresis, and poorly buffered at the cellular level. The goal is uniformity and safety, not biological compatibility.
 I am not claiming that ancient people didn’t get sick. They did. What I am arguing is that their baseline hydration occurred in a medium that supported electrolyte balance, intracellular hydration, and sulfated mineral retention rather than constantly working against it.
 Just as humans in antiquity lived with higher baseline vitamin D levels because sun exposure was unavoidable, they also lived with more SMC water because industrial stripping or pollution had not yet occurred. Modern humans are not SMC water deficient because biology changed. We are SMC water deficient because the environment did.
 When something basic, upstream, and ubiquitous quietly disappears, the consequences do not announce themselves as a crisis. They show up as chronic inefficiency, fragility, and dependence.
 Which raises an uncomfortable question.
 Has SMC water wandered into the same forbidden territory as vitamin D, an upstream input so cheap, so basic, and so disruptive that it reliably triggers ridicule, dismissal, and coordinated propaganda rather than honest debate?
 Remember the Kory Scale . If journalists simply wanted to attack Joe Ladapo, they had hundreds of his actions and statements to choose from. Instead, they went after a single, cautious sentence about the potential benefits of SMC water (formerly known as “structured)”. He chose that (now old) word, carefully. And with a claim he did not overstate..
 Joe is dangerous precisely because he’s careful. He didn’t claim certainty. He said might . And a cautious statement from a credible authority invites thought.
 Thought is the one thing they don’t want you engaging in.
 So yes, they invented a scandal around a Surgeon General acknowledging uncertainty. And in doing so, they revealed the real scandal: a media system so captured that it now mocks upstream physiology like SMC water while calling itself “pro-science.”
 I’ll end with a confession.
 Especially for those of you who have followed my now four-plus-month deep dive into minerals, and into the historically unique extract derived from primordial biotite rock developed in 1977 by the Japanese engineer and chemist Asao Shimanishi.
 Until about two weeks ago, I genuinely thought the book I’ve been writing, From Volcanoes to Vitality , was a book about minerals. It took the animal studies I referenced above, along with several recent insights, to finally force the realization:
 The gravitational center of that book is not minerals. It’s SMC water (which would have been useful to know earlier).
 Gizmodo is trying to convince you that SMC water doesn’t matter (while calling it something else). And when the media mocks fundamentals like SMC water, it’s not because it is irrelevant.
 It’s because SMC water is dangerous.

 If you value the late nights and deep dives into all the “rabbit holes” I then write about (or the Op-Eds and lectures I try to get out to the public), supporting my work is greatly appreciated.
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 More Stuff: Aurmina and Book Publications
 If you want to learn more about the water purifier we made from Shimanishi’s volcanic-mineral complex, go to Aurmina.com .

 Upcoming Book Publications
 Yup — not one, but two books are dropping from yours truly (at the same time? What?)

 If, instead of (or in addition to) these Substack posted chapters, you prefer the feel of a real book, or the smell of paper, or like to give holiday gifts, pre-order From Volcanoes to Vitality , my grand mineral saga, shipping end of January.

 And if you want to read (or gift) another chronicle of suppression, science, and survival, grab The War on Chlorine Dioxide —the sequel you didn’t see coming—shipping early to mid-January. On this one, I say: “Buy it before they ban it.” Hah!

Summary: They didn’t attack Joe Ladapo because he was reckless. They attacked him because a calm, credible authority suggested water quality matters, threatening an entire business model built on sickness.


Water Quality, Structure, and the Biology of Performance

Minerals are crucial for hydration, nerve signaling, muscle contraction, acid-base balance, and nutrient transport. Their effectiveness is influenced by composition, concentration, and structure.
 Aurmina End-of-Year Sale Ends Tonight
 As we close out Aurmina’s first year, really, its first few months, we wanted to mark the moment with something simple: gratitude.
 Lisa, Scott, and I built Aurmina because we believed there was a missing piece in modern water treatment, and we’ve been genuinely moved by how many people immediately understood what we were trying to do. Watching this small company help real people has been deeply satisfying, and we wanted to say thank you.
 Through midnight, we’re offering 25% off single bottles , with no limit on quantity. For those who already know they’ll be using Aurmina long-term, the 6-pack remains the best value at 34% off , so don’t outsmart yourself by buying six singles.
 Discount Code: HOLIDAY
 If you’ve been following my water series, you already know why this exists. Aurmina isn’t about stripping water down to nothing. It’s about restoring order, clarity, and purity after modern treatment has tried to do its job.
 This is our thank-you.
 A Blue Planet, With Less Water Than We Think
 From space, Earth appears blue because most of its surface is covered with water. But the reality is that only about 2.5 percent of all that water is fresh, and most of it is frozen in ice caps and Greenland. The remainder, consisting of lakes, rivers, and shallow groundwater, comes out to less than one percent of the planet’s total water, and only a slice of that is even usable. As pollution rises, that slice is becoming smaller and less clear.
 Inside the body, the situation is just as unforgiving. And yet the body has no warehouse of water you can draw from later. You stay hydrated only by constant replacement, day after day, against steady losses through urine, sweat, breathing, and stool. Balance is something you earn repeatedly, not something you bank.
 Why Animals Show the Truth First
 It is difficult to study the effects of water in humans because of the many other changing variables like diet, activity, climate, income, disease, and compliance. In animals, especially livestock, those variables are much easier to control. Feed is controlled and genetics and environmental settings are similar. Outcomes like growth, milk production, fertility, illness, and death are measured directly. That’s why the clearest signal connecting water quality to health shows up first in veterinary and agricultural studies.
 The pattern is absolutely striking. First, know that animals can tolerate a contaminated water source that would absolutely crush human physiology, and yet measurable losses in health and performance still appear as water quality drops. When water improves into a cleaner, better mineral balanced, and less osmotically stressful state, those losses reverse.
 When Water Looks Fine and Still Hurts
 Imagine water with a TDS of around 4,400 mg/L. Your kidneys could not tolerate such water physiologically, so thankfully, your taste buds would protect you from drinking it first. Osmotically, such water drives dehydration rather than correcting it. Yet water in that range shows up routinely in livestock studies.
 Those numbers don’t come from exotic toxins. They come from ordinary ions concentrated to brutal levels. Brackish groundwater loaded with sodium and chloride forms the base. Sulfate from gypsum-rich geology piles on. Calcium and magnesium bicarbonate add alkalinity. Stock tanks evaporate, shallow wells concentrate salts, and agricultural runoff adds nitrates. The water can be clear, disinfected, and free of pathogens but still impose constant metabolic stress.
 Energy is diverted to electrolyte handling and excretion, so animals drink less, which slows their growth and milk production. Reproductive performance also declines.
 The reason is simple physiology. Cattle, sheep, and goats can excrete salt at two to three times the capacity of humans. Their systems evolved for mineral-rich environments; ours never did. And even with that advantage, water quality still shows up in performance metrics again and again.
 That’s the key point. If organisms with wider tolerance margins still suffer measurable consequences, this suggests that in the more narrowly tolerable systems of humans, the difference in impacts according to water quality are likely larger.
 As water quality degrades, health, growth, and productivity slide. When water improves, those curves bend back the other way. The effects show up early and quietly, not as dramatic poisoning, but as chronic drag.
 Much of what follows in this chapter draws from a comprehensive review in 2009 from North Dakota State University, which pulled together field data and controlled studies tracking performance and health under different water conditions. The signals are consistent.
 Outcomes Associated With Poor Water Quality
 Across species, water quality affects performance before overt disease develops. Subclinical effects dominate and first appear as changes in intake, growth, reproduction, and efficiency.
 Multiple studies show that elevated TDS, sulphates, nitrates, iron, or poor palatability reliably reduce voluntary water intake. Because water and feed intake are tightly coupled, this leads to measurable drops in growth rate, feed conversion efficiency, milk production, egg production, eggshell quality, and reproductive success.
 For example, cattle consuming high-sulphate or high-TDS water showed reduced water intake, followed by reduced feed intake and impaired performance metrics.
 Water low in essential minerals, or water that delivers minerals in excess or distorted ratios, has been repeatedly associated with electrolyte imbalance, increased diuresis, disrupted mineral absorption from feed, and secondary deficiencies (notably magnesium, copper, and calcium interactions). Animals drinking mineral-poor or imbalanced water must compensate metabolically, often at the expense of performance and resilience.
 Field data and epidemiologic comparisons also associate low-mineral or poorly buffered water with higher rates of cardiovascular stress and sudden death (especially linked to magnesium deficiency), muscle weakness, tremors, reduced exercise tolerance, slower growth, developmental abnormalities in young animals, and increased morbidity in newborns. Again, these effects were observed without significant toxicity, reinforcing the idea that water quality exerts chronic physiological pressure rather than acute poisoning.
 Regions or operations using low-mineral or otherwise marginal water showed increased edema and anemia in pregnant animals, higher morbidity in offspring, and reduced reproductive efficiency. These findings were particularly striking because diet, air quality, and husbandry were otherwise comparable , isolating water quality as the differentiating variable.
 Improved Intake and Performance After Water Quality Improvement
 Here is where it gets good. Intervention studies and field corrections show that improving water quality, by reducing excessive TDS, sulphates, nitrates, or microbial load, produced rapid, measurable improvements, including increased water intake, increased feed intake, improved growth rate, improved feed conversion, and improved milk yield and egg production. One cited intervention showed that reducing TDS from ~4,400 mg/L to ~440 mg/L led to increased water and feed intake , followed by performance gains.
 Mineral-Appropriate Water as a Performance Variable
 The review repeatedly emphasized that water containing moderate, balanced mineral content supports better metabolic stability, improved thermoregulation, reduced stress during heat exposure, and greater tolerance to other dietary challenges. Animals consuming water with moderate calcium, magnesium, and bicarbonate levels demonstrated lower morbidity and more stable production outcomes than those consuming low-mineral water, even when all other variables were similar.
 Cleaner Water Reduces Disease Pressure
 Improved microbiological quality, particularly reduction of bacterial contamination and cyanotoxins, was unsurprisingly associated with lower incidence of acute illness, reduced mortality events, improved overall herd health, and reduced pathogen amplification within operations. Water improvements often reduced disease risk even when pathogens were asymptomatic carriers , highlighting water’s role as a silent multiplier or dampener of biological stress.
 Across species and settings, moving water out of the low-mineral, low-buffer range and into a moderate, mineral-coordinated range consistently improves hydration behavior, physiologic stability, growth, and disease outcomes, often rapidly and at population scale.
 Humans And Water: An Unrecognized Epidemic Of Chronic Dehydration
 Before we look into the compelling, albeit smaller, evidence base supporting the impacts of improved water quality on human health and performance, I first want to explore the issue of “chronic dehydration,” a scourge I was not really aware of until I started to dig deeper into water quality research.
 I thought chronic dehydration largely plagued only the elderly or impaired. I was shocked to learn that there is immense amounts of epidemiologic and physiologic data showing that chronic low-grade dehydration is widespread across the general population , seen in office workers, manual laborers, athletes, and sedentary adults alike.
 The key point I want to make here is that in these studies, they did not assess for obvious clinical signs and instead looked at physiologic signals that integrate hydration status over time , not just whether someone drank water that day.
 For instance, they looked at plasma osmolality (concentration of solutes in the blood). If levels are high - not enough water. Large cohorts showed a surprising proportion living near or above the threshold of 295mOsm/kg. Literally 40-60% of adults fell at or above this threshold on a single measurement, and 20-30% of adults remained there persistently across repeated samples. What?
 These are not institutionalized, frail, or heat-stressed populations! They are people with intact thirst mechanisms, normal kidney function, and regular access to fluids, many of whom believe they hydrate adequately. Yet their plasma chemistry shows a chronic bias toward concentration, meaning their bodies are continuously defending water balance rather than operating in a relaxed, well-hydrated state.
 It gets worse: controlled trials in healthy adults demonstrated that mild but sustained underhydration, often as little as 1–2% body water deficit maintained over days, led to higher blood viscosity, poorer cerebral perfusion, and reduced glymphatic clearance, the system responsible for removing metabolic waste from the brain during sleep. No wonder I get headaches when I forget to switch from coffee over to water around noon.
 Participants were otherwise “healthy,” exercising, and not “clinically” dehydrated, yet in this state, they produced measurable declines in attention, reaction time, endurance, mood stability, and thermoregulation. So is that what’s wrong with everybody lately?
 Basically, in younger or healthier adults, chronic dehydration tends to manifest subtly: fatigue, headaches, impaired concentration, reduced exercise tolerance, increased kidney stone risk, higher vasopressin tone, and long-term cardiometabolic signaling changes. Interestingly, such complaints are either normalized, misattributed to stress or aging, or never linked to hydration at all.
 Dehydration In the Elderly
 Conversely, in older or impaired adults, the same physiology instead tips into overt pathology : delirium, hypotension, acute kidney injury, falls, arrhythmias, constipation, infections, and hospitalization. Their margin for error is simply smaller because their perception of thirst decreases with age, many take diuretics or antihypertensives that increase water loss, and their regulation of blood osmolality weakens.
 Worse, studies of elderly patients have identified chronic dehydration as an independent risk factor for hospital length of stay, readmission, intensive care, in-hospital mortality, and poor prognosis. Apparently, it is so common that it has been tied to a substantial economic and social burden.
 One study really got my attention; it reported that up to one-third of acute confusion or delirium episodes in the elderly resolve with rehydration .
 That last finding genuinely humbled me. I immediately thought back to when one of my core roles as an ICU Director was training teams to respond to medical emergencies in the hospital. I had developed a number of protocolized assessment and response techniques to allow for rapid diagnosis and resuscitation across a myriad of causes and complaints.
 “Altered mental status” in an elderly patient was among the most common emergency calls I took, at all hours of the night. Yet, looking back, dehydration was rarely near the top of my differential diagnosis. To think that up to a third of those calls might have been resolved with something as simple as a glass of water? My God.
 Why We Are Chronically Dehydrated
 Historically, we drank water, not proactively, but rather in response to signals of deficit. Those signals are triggered in two ways, intracellular and extracellular. The first signal occurs when water is lost without accompanying electrolytes, solute concentration rises, which draws water out of cells into the extracellular space. The resulting cellular shrinkage is detected by osmoreceptors in the brain, which initiate hormonal signals that drive drinking. In this way, thirst only appears when a significant internal imbalance occurs.
 But, our brains make us stop drinking even before ingested fluid ever reaches the bloodstream. Sensory input from taste receptors in the mouth and gut, particularly signals related to salt content, activates anticipatory reflexes that tell the brain hydration is underway. These reflexes shut down thirst early, often long before intracellular hydration has been fully restored. As a result, people frequently stop drinking while cells remain relatively underhydrated.
 This aspect I found fascinating (and that I completely identified with), is that in modern environments, thirst only plays a small role in daily fluid intake. Most fluids are consumed incidentally, through foods, caffeinated beverages, sweetened drinks, alcohol, or for comfort and stimulation rather than physiologic need. While this pattern can prevent severe dehydration, it also disconnects drinking behavior from true cellular hydration status. The outcome is a population that drinks frequently yet insufficiently, resulting in subtle, chronic underhydration at the tissue level, an effect reinforced by intermittent beverages that blunt thirst signals without effectively restoring intracellular water.
 I think I just described my average friggin day. Yeesh.
 Ultimately, what I found both shocking and unsurprising is that chronic underhydration correlates with increased cardiometabolic risks, chronic diseases, and premature mortality markers. Even modest chronic dehydration is physiologically stressful and associated with measurable health costs beyond athletic performance.
 Benefits Of Water Quality In Human Exercise Performance
 Although human studies showing physiologic benefits from higher-quality drinking water do exist, they are far fewer and more heterogeneous than those in animals. My argument, grounded in the much larger, better-controlled veterinary literature, particularly structured-water studies demonstrating improved intracellular hydration and mineral handling, is that similar gains in human health and performance are a reasonable expectation as water quality improves, whether through better mineral balance, improved hydration dynamics, or both.
 Hydration, Muscle Cramps, and Exercise Recovery
 In athletes, water quality shows up in measurable ways. In one study of soccer players, regular consumption of mineralized bottled water was associated with improved hydration status and more efficient lactate handling, reflected in lower urine specific gravity and a rise in urine pH.
 Broader review s of the literature report similar patterns: when fluid intake includes water with appropriate electrolyte content, both physical and cognitive performance improve, dehydration is less likely to develop, and fluid–electrolyte balance is more easily maintained.
 This becomes especially apparent during and after heavy exertion, where c linical studies consistently show that electrolyte-containing water better preserves serum sodium, reduces the incidence of muscle cramps, and supports faster recovery compared with plain water.
 Benefits of Mineral Water On Human Cardiovascular and General Health
 In a previous post, we reviewed the wealth of studies showing the detrimental effects of demineralized and/or low-mineral-content water on a range of health outcomes. Conversely, in terms of the positive benefits of well-mineralized water, this study found that regular consumption of mineral-rich water was linked to improved cardiovascular health, blood pressure regulation, and vascular function.
 Across other large human epidemiologic studies and meta-analyses, drinking water that naturally contains calcium and magnesium was consistently associated with materially lower rates of cardiovascular disease, stroke, hypertension, and sudden cardiac death, with relative risk reductions on the order of 15–35% as mineral concentrations rose into ranges commonly found in untreated groundwater.
 Magnesium appears to carry the strongest signal, with protective associations emerging at concentrations as low as 8–10 mg/L, while calcium contributes additional benefit at moderate levels.
 Impacts of Structured Water on Animal Health
 When I discovered that there was a wealth of veterinary literature studying the impacts of “structured” water on health outcomes and performance, I was excited, not only because Aurmina structures water, but because I could not find a single study in humans.
 Let’s start with racehorses. In a randomized trial involving thoroughbreds, matched for physiological, training and racing attributes, researchers found that over four weeks, horses provided approximately 10 liters per day (which was only 15% of daily intake!) of structured water exhibited increased hydration (measured by bioelectrical impedance analysis), improved upper airway health post-exercise, and enhanced heart rate variability compared to the control group.
 One paper consisted of a narrative review of various studies of livestock and laboratory animals where they drank s tructured water, also called magnetized or modified water. Across those animal studies, the consistent findings (seen in three or more studies) included a cluster of positive physiological responses when animals consume structured water daily for at least one month, such as:
 Increased growth rates

 Reduced markers of oxidative stress

 Improved glucose and insulin responses in diabetic models

 Improved blood lipid profiles

 Better semen and sperm quality

 Increased tissue conductivity measured by bioelectrical impedance

 Among these outcomes, the most striking (and repeatedly observed) effects reported were increases in growth and improvements in metabolic and reproductive markers across multiple species, suggesting physiological changes beyond hydration alone.
 Note that some studies measured higher tissue conductivity by bioelectrical impedance .
 I want to stop on that last phrase, because it is relevant to a study I will be sponsoring, which assesses whether Aurmina-treated water improves intracellular hydration. So, a quick primer on bioelectrical impedance (BEI) is due;
 BEI is a well-validated method that reflects how water and dissolved electrolytes move and distribute through the body by measuring how easily signals pass through tissues. Changes in tissue conductivity reflect shifts in total and intracellular body water and electrolyte content.
 Rising tissue conductivity reflects water moving into cells and participating in charge transfer, signaling functional hydration rather than simple fluid accumulation. This indicates more effective electrolyte retention and intracellular water distribution rather than simple plasma dilution.
 Used properly, it lets us observe hydration where it actually matters, in tissue and cells, rather than guessing from intake, output, or lab work. As noted in the review above, animals that drank structured water consistently showed improvements in intracellular hydration.
 Conclusion: Water as a Quiet Determinant of Health
 By the end of this chapter, the pattern should be clear; water quality shows up in the body the same way it shows up in a herd, upstream, quiet, and cumulative. Long before pathology announces itself, water chemistry is already shaping hydration behavior, electrolyte handling, tissue function, and metabolic stability.
 The veterinary literature makes this impossible to ignore. When water quality degrades, animals do not immediately collapse; they drink a little less, eat a little less, grow more slowly, reproduce less efficiently, tolerate stress poorly, and fall behind. When water quality improves, those same systems rebound, often rapidly and at scale, even when nothing else changes. That pattern mirrors what we see repeatedly in human health: regulation fails gradually, not catastrophically.
 Human data, though thinner and more confounded, point in the same direction.
 Chronic underhydration is widespread, even among healthy adults with access to fluids and intact thirst mechanisms. Mild but sustained dehydration alters cognition, exercise tolerance, cardiovascular signaling, renal stress, and brain waste clearance. Mineral-poor water worsens electrolyte loss and increases diuresis. Mineral-appropriate water stabilizes hydration, supports cardiovascular function, and improves resilience, especially under stress.
 What makes this uncomfortable is how most water looks fine, tastes acceptable, and meets every regulatory box. And yet, when stripped of buffering capacity, mineral balance, and ionic order, it behaves differently inside the body. Hydration becomes inefficient, cells stay subtly underfilled, hormonal systems remain activated, and performance slips before disease ever appears.
 This post is about recognizing water as a biologically active input, not a neutral background variable. Like food quality, sleep, or light exposure, water exerts its influence quietly, every day, whether we pay attention or not. When its chemistry supports physiology, the body works with less friction. When it doesn’t, the cost is paid slowly, diffusely, and often invisibly.
 Taken together, the evidence supports a coherent pattern rather than a single isolated mechanism: water that carries geologically derived minerals appears to support cardiovascular and metabolic stability, while water stripped of its geologically derived minerals behaves more like an inert solvent that must be biologically corrected at the body’s expense.

 If you value the late nights and deep dives into all the “rabbit holes” I then write about (or the Op-Eds and lectures I try to get out to the public), supporting my work is greatly appreciated.
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 More Stuff: Aurmina and Book Publications
 If you want to learn more about the water purifier we made from Shimanishi’s volcanic-mineral complex, go to Aurmina.com where we are running a 25% off end-of year sale, code: HOLIDAY.

 Upcoming Book Publications
 Yup — not one, but two books are dropping from yours truly (at the same time? What?)

 If, instead of (or in addition to) these Substack posted chapters, you prefer the feel of a real book, or the smell of paper, or like to give holiday gifts, pre-order From Volcanoes to Vitality , my grand mineral saga, shipping end of January.

 And if you want to read (or gift) another chronicle of suppression, science, and survival, grab The War on Chlorine Dioxide —the sequel you didn’t see coming—shipping early to mid-January. On this one, I say: “Buy it before they ban it.” Hah!

Summary: Water quality affects performance, growth, and cognition before overt pathology emerges. Across species, the evidence shows water's mineral balance, structure, and quality impact health outcomes.


Inside America’s "Boil Water Advisories" - What They Really Mean and What They Don’t

Aurmina End-of-Year Sale
 As we close out Aurmina’s first year, really, its first few months, we wanted to mark the moment with something simple: gratitude.
 Lisa, Scott, and I built Aurmina because we believed there was a missing piece in modern water treatment, and we’ve been genuinely moved by how many people immediately understood what we were trying to do. Watching this small company help real people has been deeply satisfying, and we wanted to say thank you.
 Through the end of the year, we’re offering 25% off single bottles , with no limit on quantity. For those who already know they’ll be using Aurmina long-term, the 6-pack remains the best value at 34% off , so don’t outsmart yourself by buying six singles.
 Discount Code: HOLIDAY
 If you’ve been following my water series, you already know why this exists. Aurmina isn’t about stripping water down to nothing. It’s about restoring order, clarity, and purity after modern treatment has tried to do its job.
 This is our thank-you. The sale runs through the end of the year.

 Of the six “Acts” in my upcoming book, “ From Volcanoes to Vitality , ” the one exploring the many facets of the relationship between minerals and modern water has nine chapters. I have posted quite a few on Substack, primarily concentrated in this last week of the year, accompanying our sale above, in some combined “edu-marketing” effort. Today’s post will not be in the book, but since my research led me down this rabbit hole, I figured I'd share it.
 In my previous post called “ What Happens When Water Is Allowed To Tell The Truth ,” we reviewed what happens when you flocculate your drinking water with Aurmina minerals, what falls out of your water (showing what it had “invisibly” been carrying), and what compounds and contaminants make up that “cargo.”
 Our water quality is changing, and not for the better. It not only has changed over decades, but it also changes day to day. Let’s start with a few anecdotes that I believe you will find illuminating.
 Bottle Water Anecdote
 A colleague who has been working with Shimanishi’s minerals for 20 years to purify, structure, and mineralize their water told me that, when traveling, he always bought a particular brand of water, known for its high quality, pristine sourcing, and apparently superior taste.
 Twenty years ago, when he first added minerals to that brand’s bottled water, nothing happened, nothing at all. The water remained clear, with no haze or sediment. Today, that same brand produces what I’d call an average amount of sediment, no different from nearly every other bottled water on the shelf that Lisa and I have tested (go to the end of this linked post if curious). Times have changed. Even our once-pristine mountain sources are now carrying the “fingerprints” of modern life.
 Personal Anecdote
 I have been treating my water with Aurmina (and Adya Clarity before that) since April, 2025. About 2 months ago, I was tending to my little assembly line of water containers, and I noticed that the water filling the previous day’s container had at least twice the sediment I was used to seeing. I lived in Sarasota at the time and had been treating the municipal water for months, so I well knew the average amount of sediment it discharged from day to day.
 But on that day, the amount of sediment in the container was literally about 2 to 3 times the daily average. I called Lisa over and said, “Yeesh, looks like they are having a bad day at the water treatment plant.” Although it kinda freaked me out, I knew Aurmina was there to protect us from unknowingly drinking that day’s “invisibility quotient” in the water, and instead have it fall to the bottom of a container.
 The Boil Water Advisory Anecdote
 The third anecdote opens up a bigger can of worms and leads us to the focus of this post. A few years ago, a customer of Adya Clarity (forerunner of Aurmina ) called my colleague, who owns it, asking whether “the formula” had changed, as her water did not taste as good that day and was discolored, unlike its usual clarity and taste.
 Since the “formula” of Aurmina can’t and won’t ever change (aside from slight variations in mineral composition due to geology), she was told to check with her municipality, where she discovered that the municipal treatment plant had issued a “Boil Water Advisory” that day. Boil Water Advisory? What the hell is that?
 This ain’t gonna be pretty, but let’s go.
 Boil Water Advisories
 A boil water advisory (BWA), often called “boil water in effect,” is a public health emergency notice issued by a water utility or health department when there is reason to believe the municipal drinking water may be contaminated with disease-causing microorganisms.
 What triggers a BWA?
 A boil water notice is issued when microbial safety can no longer be guaranteed , usually due to:
 Loss of pressure in the distribution system (main breaks, power outages)

 Treatment failures (chlorination failure, filtration malfunction)

 Flooding that may introduce surface water into pipes

 Detection of E. coli or total coliform bacteria

 Cross-connections or backflow events

 Natural disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes, fires)

 Let’s unpack that list for a bit, zeroing in on the failures that can “ pull contaminated water back” into the distribution system.” Particularly, “back-flow events” and “pressure loss.”
 In each case, there is a sudden loss of pressure or a pressure buildup in a connection, and water goes the wrong way. Whoops. So, what can you get pulled in?
 Apparently, it depends on where the connection is, but here is the list:
 Fertilizers/pesticides from irrigation systems

 Boiler or cooling-tower chemicals

 Industrial process fluids

 Contaminated hose water (think hose in a bucket, mop sink, or chemical sprayer)

 Non-potable reclaimed water from cross-connections

 What Happens When It’s Detected, and What Does It Mean?
 Utilities can isolate or flush the affected area, temporarily increase disinfectant residual, or issue a “do not drink” or “ boil water” advisory if warranted.
 A boil water notice means: The system failed its most basic safety function. The utility cannot verify microbiological integrity; regulators are choosing the simplest available risk-reduction tool.
 It does not necessarily mean that the problem is fully understood or that chemical safety is intact. It’s basically a blunt instrument for an acute microbial risk.
 Do you know who makes the call?
 Now, before we go into what they protect against, what their instructions are, and whether they are increasing in the U.S. (they are), the thing I started to wonder about is how “embarrassing” it is for a municipality to have to issue one.
 I kept imagining what that must feel like in a municipality that prides itself on delivering the cleanest, safest water possible. I started picturing a conference room, people around a table, charts on the wall, phones buzzing, someone asking whether this really rises to the level of going public, someone else worrying about headlines and panic.
 So I dug in to see whether there are clear, immovable thresholds or if there is a lot of “personal judgment” involved.
 Well, wouldn’t you know, there are a bunch of “grey areas” because BWAs sit at an “ uncomfortable intersection” of engineering thresholds, regulatory rules, and “ human judgment. ”
 It should not be surprising that municipalities dislike issuing BWAs. They are reputationally damaging, politically uncomfortable, and operationally expensive. They trigger media attention, public fear, customer complaints, bottled-water costs, and scrutiny from regulators. No water utility wants to issue one unless it feels unavoidable.
 Second, although there are hard triggers, they are not as hard as people assume. Yes, some events mandate an advisory almost automatically, such as loss of positive pressure in the distribution system, detection of E. coli in finished water, or specific confirmed or backflow events. Those are codified in state primacy agency rules (EPA delegates authority to states). In theory, they are “hard stops.”
 But, and this is what concerned me, many real-world situations fall into gray zones, like:
 How long did pressure drop, and how low did it go?

 Was the affected zone small or system-wide?

 Was chlorine residual still present?

 Was the backflow event “theoretical” or “confirmed”?

 Did turbidity spike briefly or persist?

 Did samples show total coliforms but not E. coli?

 In these cases, professional judgment absolutely enters the picture, and further, the thresholds themselves are set by people under constraints. Regulatory triggers are built around what is measurable in real time , what historically correlated with outbreaks , and worst, what utilities could realistically comply with .
 They are built to manage risk without collapsing the system, which means acceptable safety-related uncertainty is baked in.
 Fourth, and this matters most, BWAs are often issued late, not early. Utilities may try a few things first, like:
 Flush and boost disinfectant first

 Take “confirmation samples” (ugh)

 Wait for lab results (which take 18–24 hours)

 Consult with the state before going public

 Unsurprisingly, although the above is standard practice, it means there is often a window of risk before the public is informed, and, of course, there are incentives governing these decisions. No operator gets praised for issuing “too many” advisories. They are questioned for causing unnecessary panic . So the system subtly r ewards delay until certainty rather than early warning under uncertainty . A systems-design issue.
 Ultimately, my worry about how much “judgment calls slip in” was not hypothetical. It’s inherent and reveals the uncomfortable truth that water safety is probabilistic, not binary, and that regulation manages population risk, not individual exposure.
 The most disturbing was the phrase “ transparency competes with institutional self-protection. ” So, ultimately, any system that depends on judgment under reputational pressure will often choose silence before certainty. To my fellow Covidian freedom fighters, that should sound pretty damn familiar.
 What Boiling Actually Protects Against
 Boiling water is about killing living pathogens , not removing chemicals because boiling kills bacteria (E. coli, Salmonella), Inactivates viruses, and kills protozoa (Giardia, Cryptosporidium). But boiling does not remove: heavy metals (lead, arsenic), PFAS, Nitrates, Pesticides, or Pharmaceuticals (in fact, boiling can concentrate the latter).
 What You’re Supposed To Do When Under A BWA
 They tell you to bring water to a rolling boil for at least 1 minute (3 minutes at high altitude). Then, you should use boiled or bottled water for: drinking, brushing teeth, making ice, washing fruits and vegetables, and preparing baby formula. But you can be reassured that you can usually still use tap water for showering (avoid swallowing), handwashing (with soap), and laundry.
 The bottom line is that a boil water advisory is about infection control, protecting you from germs when the water system’s integrity is compromised. It does not protect from broader chemical factors that shape water quality day to day (like that day in Sarasota).
 Frequency of Boil-Water Advisories
 There are thousands of boil-water advisories issued across the U.S. every year. The frequency varies widely by state, system size, infrastructure age, and weather events , with some large cities reporting recurring advisories year-to-year due to aging pipes and pressure issues.
 Louisiana, in particular, issues about 1,600–1,700 boil-water notices per year, and that is excluding major storm impacts. Not so fun fact: my oldest daughter goes to Tulane, and neither she nor any of her fellow students drink water from the faucet, instead they take turns going on endless Costco runs for cases of bottled water.
 Are Boil Water Advisories Becoming More Common In The U.S?
 Although there’s no single national reporting requirement for BWA’s, in a Kentucky water system study, the number of boil water advisories increased over 17 years (2004–2020). News and self-reported headline analyses show that mentions of “boil water notices” and related water quality reporting have risen in recent years.
 Root Cause: Aging Water Infrastructure
 Infrastructure failures are the leading driver of BWAs. Many U.S. water systems use pipes and equipment that are decades old, increasing the likelihood of breaks, pressure losses, and contamination, all common triggers for boil water advisories.
 And that, my friends, launched me down yet another rabbit hole.
 The United States is widely recognized by engineers, economists, and even its own government agencies as being chronically slow and inconsistent at updating public infrastructure. And much of U.S. infrastructure is old, like very old.
 Large portions of water and sewer systems were built between the late 1800s and the post-World War II boom. Water pipes in many cities are 75–120 years old. Treatment plants designed for mid-20th-century populations are still carrying modern chemical loads they were never built to handle. Replacement is always deferred in favor of patching.
 Second, U.S. infrastructure funding is reactive rather than proactive. Budgets reward new construction and visible projects, not buried pipes. Politically, ribbon-cutting beats pipe replacement every time.
 Third, responsibility is fragmented. The U.S. delegates most responsibility to states, counties, and municipalities, often with different tax bases, technical capacity, and regulatory rigor. Two cities a hundred miles apart can operate under entirely different standards, timelines, and risk tolerances.
 Fourth, regulation often lags reality. Rules are written around historical risks like pathogens, turbidity, chlorine residuals, and not emerging challenges like PFAS or complex chemical mixtures. Updating regulations requires years of rule-making, legal review, and political negotiation, during which systems continue operating as designed decades ago.
 Fifth, infrastructure is invisible until it fails. Roads, bridges, and airports get attention because failure is obvious. Water systems fail quietly, through leaks, pressure drops, corrosion, sediment, and advisories, until something dramatic happens. Yet another form of “invisibility” when it comes to water.
 It is well known that peer nations that invest continuously, like Germany, Japan, and parts of Scandinavia, replace and modernize systems on predictable cycles. The U.S. tends to wait for a crisis.
 So yes, the U.S. is well known for deferred infrastructure renewal, not because of incompetence or malice, but because the system rewards short-term function over long-term integrity. The bill always comes later, and usually quietly, until it doesn’t.
 The Last Line Of Defense
 Just as people buy firearms knowing that if community protection fails, responsibility lands at their door, I think similarly of Aurmina as a last line of defense. A way to see what the water brought with it before I drink it.
 Also, it does’t just keep intruders out; it helps rebuild the house - clearer, more stable, mineral-balanced, and structured.
 So, it should not come as a surprise that “I don’t leave home without it.” To wit, below is the Kory Family Traveling Water Treatment Plant . We came up to Montana so I could finish my book, and so we shipped our set-up here beforehand:

 If you value the late nights and deep dives into all the “rabbit holes” I then write about (or the Op-Eds and lectures I try to get out to the public), supporting my work is greatly appreciated.
 Subscribe now
 More Stuff: Aurmina and Book Publications
 If you want to learn more about the water purifier we made from Shimanishi’s volcanic-mineral complex, go to Aurmina.com where we are running a 25% off end-of year sale, code: HOLIDAY.

 Upcoming Book Publications
 Yup — not one, but two books are dropping from yours truly (at the same time? What?)

 If, instead of (or in addition to) these Substack posted chapters, you prefer the feel of a real book, or the smell of paper, or like to give holiday gifts, pre-order From Volcanoes to Vitality , my grand mineral saga, shipping end of January.

 And if you want to read (or gift) another chronicle of suppression, science, and survival, grab The War on Chlorine Dioxide —the sequel you didn’t see coming—shipping early to mid-January. On this one, I say: “Buy it before they ban it.” Hah!

Summary: BWA's expose a deeper truth about how fragile and judgment-driven our water systems are. Let's look at what triggers them, who decides, and why they are becoming a signal of a system under strain.


What Happens When Water Is Allowed to Tell the Truth

Aurmina End-of-Year Sale
 As we close out Aurmina’s first year, really, its first few months, we wanted to mark the moment with something simple: gratitude.
 Lisa, Scott, and I built Aurmina because we believed there was a missing piece in modern water treatment, and we’ve been genuinely moved by how many people immediately understood what we were trying to do. Watching this small company help real people has been deeply satisfying, and we wanted to say thank you.
 Through the end of the year, we’re offering 25% off single bottles , with no limit on quantity. For those who already know they’ll be using Aurmina long-term, the 6-pack remains the best value at 34% off , so don’t outsmart yourself by buying six singles.
 Discount Code: HOLIDAY
 If you’ve been following my water series, you already know why this exists. Aurmina isn’t about stripping water down to nothing. It’s about restoring order, clarity, and purity after modern treatment has done its job.
 And in the spirit of transparency (and a little humor), the first draft of the post below was written before Aurmina even existed. If that makes this post a marketing scheme, it’s the most accidental one I’ve ever been part of.
 Either way, this is our thank-you. The sale runs through the end of the year.

 The “What’s In The Sediment” Post
 Most people have never seen what their drinking water carries. Not because it isn’t there, but because, as discussed in this prior post , modern water treatment practices are designed to keep contaminants dissolved, dispersed, and chemically stable. As long as substances remain dissolved and below action limits, the water stays clear and is deemed “safe.”
 This chapter is about what happens when that invisibility breaks.
 Visibility as a Diagnostic Event
 When mineral forces are reintroduced and water is allowed to behave according to basic physical and chemical rules, material falls out. What settles is not created by the process itself; it is released by it.
 The sediment at the bottom of the container is a physical record of what modern water sources have been quietly transporting all along, industrial residues, destabilized minerals, altered organics, and fragments of a chemical history many people might assume had already been “treated away.”
 It means that whatever entered the water along its journey to your home is no longer being held in suspension. To look at that sediment is to confront the difference between water that appears clean and water that actually is.
 In untreated or minimally treated natural waters, minerals, organic compounds, metals, and particulates exist in dynamic equilibrium. In natural systems, this is how water cleans itself: particles bind, settle, are filtered through soil, or are taken up by biological systems.
 Modern treatment systems interrupt this process. By aggressively controlling pH, oxidation state, and ionic strength, they prevent these interactions from occurring. The water remains visually clear, but chemically unresolved.
 When mineral-rich water is reintroduced into such systems, whether through remineralization, contact with mineral substrates, or intentional mineral addition, aggregation becomes possible again. What appears is not contamination newly introduced, but contamination newly revealed.
 Disclosure and Reader Context
 I want to be transparent at the outset. My work over the past many months has led me deep into mineral science and water chemistry, and that research ultimately resulted in the creation of a company, Aurmina , which sells a mineral-based water purification product.
 That overlap can understandably raise questions for new readers about motive or bias. I don’t try to hide that conflict. Instead, I encourage all skepticism, as I always have, of institutions, of products, of claims, and of me. Nothing in this Substack should be taken on trust alone; it should stand or fall on evidence, mechanisms, and reproducibility.
 I am comfortable with that. The research summarized here predates Aurmina , is grounded in established chemistry and water science, and can be evaluated independently of any product. Readers are free to test, compare, disagree, or ignore entirely.
 My goal here is less to persuade, and more to illuminate and educate in a way that restores agency to my readers.
 Another reason I am careful not to frame this work as fear-based is simple reality: most of us have been drinking municipal water our entire lives without obvious catastrophe (just like R.O and distilled water drinkers). I’m a 1970s kid. I drank from garden hoses (heck, I still do). I’m alive, functional, and, on most days, doing just fine.
 This work is not about acute toxicity or imminent danger. It is about cumulative burden, structural chemistry, and biological context. Some bodies tolerate that burden better than others (just ask my friends from college). Some environments amplify it and some water systems hide it more effectively than we realize.
 Understanding that difference, and not panicking about it, is the point of this chapter.
 The Misinterpretation of “Something Falling Out”
 The appearance of particles are substances that water treatment had previously kept dissolved which are now binding, becoming visible, settling out, and thus becoming filterable.
 This phenomenon explains why some mineral-based purification systems appear to “dirty” water before clarifying it. What is seen is the unmasking of chemical burden that was previously hidden by stabilization chemistry. The discomfort people feel when water changes appearance is rooted in expectation, not chemistry.
 There is a simple way to understand what modern water is carrying that requires no charts, no epidemiology, and no trust in institutions. Basically, you add minerals, let the water sit, and watch what happens.
 The Kory Family Water Treatment Plant
 At home (seen below), I do not rely on municipal treatment alone, nor do I drink fully stripped R.O or distilled water that has not been “broadly re-mineralized.”.

 Our purification system at home is simple. Fill all three containers with tap water, add Aurmina as per label (1-2 tsp per gallon - or more depending on the quality of your water). Once added, wait 24-72 hours (we like 48 hours but are not overly obsessive about it).
 When the first container just to the right of our ceramic gravity filter “matures” at 48 hours, we pour everything except the sediment into the top chamber of the ceramic gravity filter to its left, then it goes to the “back of the line.”
 Once the water enters the top chamber of the gravity filter, it is now in the “polishing” phase, whereby any remaining particulates are removed as it passes (very slowly) through the filter into the bottom chamber.
 In this way, anytime we need water for drinking or cooking, we fill from the tap at the bottom of the gravity filter. Thus, all the water we consume is pure, clear and, get this, structured (if you don’t know what that means, enjoy this post).
 What Falls Out Tells the Story
 When water is allowed to interact with minerals freely, the resulting precipitates, flocs, or sediments reflect the history of that water, its source, its treatment, and its exposure to industrial, agricultural, and infrastructural inputs.
 Surface water drawn downstream from agricultural regions behaves differently than deep groundwater. Water exposed to chlorination and corrosion control behaves differently than untreated spring water. Municipal water with long pipe residence times reveals different patterns than freshly treated water.
 These differences are signatures.
 The Sediment
 Although most of the sediment is not classified as a toxin (although some is), most people don’t realize that, simply by virtue of it falling out of your water, it means that whatever it is, it otherwise would not be found in pristine mountain springs (which are unfortunately vanishing in number).
 The finer point is that, by name and elemental components, they may sound like compounds that can be found in nature and/or are not known to be toxic, but again, by their falling out of the water, it means that those compounds have been modified by human and/or industrial activity in some way, or into some new form, which now makes it precipitate out of the water.
 Such “non-toxic”, or more accurately, “supposedly” non-toxic compounds consist of industrial residues, destabilized minerals, and altered organics.
 What A Century Of Sediment Analysis Has Found
 The settled material formed during flocculation is not poorly characterized. In municipal water treatment plants, wastewater facilities, and laboratory jar tests, this material, often called “water treatment residuals” or sludge, has been studied routinely for more than a hundred years.
 Environmental chemists analyze it using standard tools: ICP-MS and ICP-OES for metals and minerals; GC-MS and LC-MS for organic contaminants; FTIR and Raman spectroscopy for microplastics; SEM-EDS for particle morphology and elemental composition; and targeted assays for PFAS, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and hormones.
 What those analyses show, consistently, is something that, at first, I found somewhat reassuring, but no longer do.
 What The Sediment Is Mostly Made Of
 By mass, the sediment is overwhelmingly composed of structural material:
 iron or aluminum hydroxides that form the floc matrix itself,

 calcium and magnesium carbonates

 silicates and clays

 bound sulfate

 organic matter derived from soils and plant decay

 Together, these components typically account for well over eighty to ninety-five percent of what settles out. This is why water engineers often describe floc as a scaffold whose job is to gather, bind, and carry other things out of suspension, and not as anything toxic.
 What Should Not Reassure You
 The core issue for me is that, although these materials are not classified as toxins, their presence in these forms are not “natural” or “neutral,” and thus should not necessarily be reassuring.
 In clean, coherent water systems, undisturbed springs, intact aquifers, you can find similarly named substances (albeit in different forms and compounds) that remain dissolved, balanced, and biologically compatible. They do not collapse into particulates or act as scaffolding and they do not settle.
 The main point of this post is that, if something settles out of the water, it tells you it never should have been there, or, more accurately, the modern world has modified it into some new form compared to the form that the otherwise harmless sounding elemental compound would exist as in nature.
 The Small Fraction That Matters Most
 The contaminants people worry about, things like microplastics, PFAS, pesticides, endocrine disruptors, pharmaceutical residues, are real, and they do appear in the sediment. But those are almost always a very small fraction of its total mass, typically well under one percent.
 Yes, by weight, the toxins are minor, but by biological significance, they raise much higher concern. Luckily, flocculation concentrates what is present in the water, thus making the invisible visible, and converting these contaminants into a removable mass.
 When “Chemical” Stops Being A Useful Word
 When I refer to a “chemical burden,” I am not using the word chemical to literally mean synthetic, toxic, or unnatural. Let’s be calm and clear here: even a mineral is a “chemical” when using the strict, scientific definition.
 At its most basic level, a chemical is any substance with a defined composition and structure. By that definition, everything made of matter is chemical: water, oxygen, sodium chloride, quartz, hemoglobin, ATP, and yes, minerals. Calcium carbonate is a chemical. Magnesium sulfate is a chemical. Silicon dioxide is a chemical.
 But that is a scientific definition and not the “biological” one most people use. My sense is that in everyday language, when people say chemical they mean something synthetic, industrial, toxic, foreign, or something added to nature rather than arising from it.
 Calling minerals “chemicals” is technically correct but biologically meaningless unless the form, context, or behavior is specified.
 I feel that the best distinction between chemical and non-chemical is to think of each as ordered or disordered, lattice-bound or freely reactive, biologically coherent or biologically disruptive.
 Let’s go through some examples:
 Calcium locked into a crystalline lattice behaves very differently than calcium stripped into excess ionic form.

 Aluminum bound into silicate minerals behaves very differently than aluminum present as free hydroxide complexes.

 All are “chemicals.” Only some are biologically appropriate . My argument is that modern water contains:
 chemicals in the wrong forms

 chemicals in the wrong ratios

 chemicals in the wrong redox states

 chemicals liberated from their natural structural context

 chemicals behaving in ways biology did not evolve to handle continuously

 Ultimately, although natural solid minerals are technically chemicals, when they are stripped from their natural order and forced into reactive forms, they stop behaving like nutrients and can instead start behaving like stressors.
 When Minerals Lose Their Place
 Mining, agriculture, water treatment chemistry, infrastructure corrosion, acidification, and altered redox conditions have displaced minerals from lattices into free or loosely bound ionic forms. Metals that biology expects to encounter as constrained structural elements now appear as reactive participants.
 And here is where the rubber hits the road; minerals in such forms can compete at enzyme binding sites, interfere with membrane transporters, displace magnesium or zinc in metalloproteins, and catalyze redox reactions that increase local oxidative stress. There you have it.
 Chronic Disruption Without Poisoning
 Their presence does not automatically produce overt toxicity. The issue is that, over time, this creates a state of chronic and inappropriate biological availability, increasing the burden of “oxidative stress,” a central driver of inflammation, dysfunction, aging, and disease, particularly when present at non-physiologic concentrations or in inappropriate biological compartments.
 A similar disruption occurs with organic compounds like synthetic surfactants, chelators, and disinfectant byproducts. These are the substance that are used to keep molecules soluble when normal water biology would typically precipitate or degrade them. “Chelators” prevent their sequestering while disinfectants stabilize compounds that should break down. Surfactants can carry organics across membranes and into places they were never meant to go.
 The result is not poisoning in the classic sense. It is chronic disruption: distorted mineral signaling, altered enzyme kinetics, mitochondrial redox imbalance, and microbiome shifts that never trigger regulatory alarms because no single substance exceeds a toxic threshold.
 Ultimately, the problem is not what these substances are, it is what they have been turned into.
 What Sediment Is Revealing
 In that sense, the sediment is a material record of what the water was quietly carrying all along. When people ask what’s in the sediment, the most honest answer is this:
 “mostly minerals, along with a concentrated archive of everything modern civilization has forced water to carry”
 The more material that settles, the more the source water has been pushed out of equilibrium by oxidation, treatment chemistry, agricultural runoff, industrial residues, or aging infrastructure.
 At this point, my view shifted from initially being somewhat reassured to one of feeling warned.
 What Remains After the Burden Is Removed
 During my research into mineral chemistry and water behavior, I encountered Shimanishi’s sulfated biotite mineral complexes because they addressed a problem this post has defined repeatedly: modern water carries a chemically stabilized burden that biology never evolved to process continuously. I had already been using an identical mineral system to remove this burden from our household water before founding Aurmina and loved it, and that is why I started the company.
 After flocculation and filtration, the remaining water is not stripped or inert, as with reverse osmosis or distillation. It retains a lighter, cleaner ionic profile: low-level ionic calcium and magnesium, trace iron and aluminum at or below detection, sulfate-coordinated multivalent ions, and minimal organic interference.
 That is exactly what one of the world’s leading water contamination experts, Paul Rosenfeld’s ICP-MS analysis, found ( covered in this prior post) . Minerals were still present amd in forms water water could “structure” around rather than be destabilized by.
 Fun fact: Rosenfeld volunteered, without pay, to perform the analysis driven by scientific curiosity, specifically, to see whether the proposed purification mechanisms of Themarox-derived solutions would withstand laboratory testing.
 Ultimately, what interferes with water coherence is disordered mineral load : particulate hydroxides, carbonates, colloids, fine clays, excess monovalent salts, and organic debris. It disrupts exclusion-zone formation, collapses charge organization, and degrades functional hydration ( it is this latter limitation that applies to R.O and distilled water as well ) .
 Shimanishi’s extract does not remove minerals to induce structure. It removes mineral disorder so structure can stabilize. In the most elegant view (which is what initially pulled me into an exploration of the science behind it), it performs an “addition by subtraction.” Following treatment, electrical conductivity rises, oxidation–reduction potential stabilizes, exclusion-zone behavior becomes detectable, and total dissolved solids often increase. It becomes a medium that not only carries charge but organizes it.
 What settles out during flocculation is not “the minerals,” but mineral chaos: excess hydroxides, carbonates, clays, silicates, and organic residues displaced from their natural context. What remains is water capable of coherent behavior—electrically active, chemically ordered, and biologically compatible.
 Where Aurmina Fits
 Practically, I think of Aurmina as a last line of defense. It offers protection from everything modern industrial society is adding to, and keeping in, your water by allowing you to make it visible and removable. It intervenes at a point between the faucet and when it reaches your lips and begins its journey to each of your cells. The beauty of it all is that it gives you a water that is not “pure but dead,” but one more like that of pristine, undisturbed mountain springs (however few there are left).
 Closing
 Modern water safety prioritizes invisibility. If substances remain dissolved, tasteless, odorless, and below regulatory thresholds, they are treated as negligible. Biology does not operate on thresholds alone. It responds to cumulative exposure, chemical form, and structural context.
 When mineral context is restored, water stops behaving as a simple stabilized solvent and resumes behavior as a chemical and biological system. In doing so, it tells the truth about where it has been.
 Once revealed, that truth cannot be unseen.

 If you value the late nights and deep dives into all the “rabbit holes” I then write about (or the Op-Eds and lectures I try to get out to the public), supporting my work is greatly appreciated.
 Subscribe now
 More Stuff: Aurmina and Book Publications
 If you want to learn more about the water purifier we made from Shimanishi’s volcanic-mineral complex, go to Aurmina.com where we are running a 25% off end-of year sale, code: HOLIDAY.

 Upcoming Book Publications
 Yup — not one, but two books are dropping from yours truly (at the same time? What?)

 If, instead of (or in addition to) these Substack posted chapters, you prefer the feel of a real book, or the smell of paper, or like to give holiday gifts, pre-order From Volcanoes to Vitality , my grand mineral saga, shipping end of January.

 And if you want to read (or gift) another chronicle of suppression, science, and survival, grab The War on Chlorine Dioxide —the sequel you didn’t see coming—shipping early to mid-January. On this one, I say: “Buy it before they ban it.” Hah!

Summary: When black mica minerals are allowed to interact freely with your water, they reveal what modern treatment systems are designed to conceal. What falls out tells the real story. And it ain't pretty.