Structured Water: health benefits and how to DIY

Structured water’s been on the “to look into” list for gosh,... a while now. Yesterday I saw an ad for structured water on IG and decided to kick it to the top of the list.

So, I went to my go to site for biohacking to get the lowdown on structured water. In case you’re not already familiar with Scott, the guy behind BetterHealthGuy, he’s deep into the world of biohacking and alternative therapies especially when supporting some of the modern plagues like Lyme and toxicity (mold, heavy metal, etc.).

Generally speaking, biohacking (when defined as using technology or gadgets to improve human physiology) doesn’t do much for me. It often feels like selling expensive workarounds to achieve what nature’s already got on lock. And historically, every time I wander too far down that rabbit hole, I end up more anxious and several hundred dollars poorer, convinced I “need” something that ultimately doesn’t help — and often makes me feel worse.

Anyways, searching his site for “structured water”, I clicked on the link that recommended drinking distilled water to give your cells/mitochondria pure water from which to build structured water. I had to read it twice. Because it was the most ludicrous statement I read yesterday.

Distilled water for structured water? Um,... no.

One of the privileges of having worked in pharma is that I know a thing or two about water.

When you’re making a drug intended for injection, the water is stripped of essentially everything, effectively becoming distilled or Water for Injection (WFI). That level of purity is required when formulating a drug for injection, not because it’s inherently supportive of biology, simply because when it's stripped of everything there's a clean starting point. In fact, that water isn't administered in its pure form. It’s buffered and adjusted to be isotonic precisely so it doesn't strip tissues and wreak havoc on the body.

Distilled water is aggressive. It leaches metals from copper piping and even stainless steel if passivation isn’t performed. Ultra-low–ionic-strength water (distilled) lacks buffering capacity and pulls ions from its environment in an attempt to reach equilibrium… and it does it even when that environment is your body.

Just imagine, if distilled water is destabilizing to metal pipes, what exactly would slightly acidic, unbuffered, demineralized water do inside a human body that depends on exquisitely controlled electrolyte gradients? After all, electrolyte imbalance disrupts cardiac conduction and can literally cause arrhythmia and even death.

Structured water: New-age or mainstream science?

Mainstream science knows about structured water. Has since the late 1800s.

Back in the late 1880s, a scientist (Franz Hofmeister) at one of the universities in Prague was looking at effects of different salts on protein solubility (you might have just sat up straighter if your brain went straight to beta-amyloid plaques) and discovered what has become known as the Hofmeister series.

What he found was that certain salts encourage water to structure and other salts encourage water to flow/become more chaotic. Whether this was the origin of chaotrope/kosmotrope I’m not sure, but I’m not here to give you a history lesson.

A brief chemistry refresher on the structure of water

A water molecule is composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, covalently bound in a bent (V-shaped) geometry.

• Oxygen sits at the vertex of the V

• The two hydrogens form the arms

• The H–O–H bond angle is ~104.5°
  

Because oxygen is more electronegative than hydrogen, the molecule is polar: the vertex (where the oxygen atom sits) carries a slight negative charge, and the hydrogen ends carry slight positive charges.

This polarity allows water molecules to form hydrogen bonds with neighboring water molecules, not covalent bonds (bonds typically broken only through chemical reactions), but hydrogen-to-oxygen interactions between molecules (physical bonds).

Those hydrogen-bond networks are dynamic. Energy, whether thermal energy, mechanical movement, or electrical fields, reshapes them.

This is where Hofmeister’s work really ties into this conversation. Because what Hofmeister found was that different electrolytes have either a chaotropic or kosmotropic effect on water’s structure, and that impacts the structure of nearby proteins and other components of the intra- and extracellular spaces within the body.

• Chaotropes increase disorder and instability, loosening hydrogen-bonds making water more fluid.
  

• Kosmotropes stabilize structure stabilizing hydrogen-bonding between water molecules while promoting local order (a tie-in to Gerard Pollard’s Exclusion Zone)

Mitochondrial health is the real water-structuring tool

Here’s how this whole talk of kosmotropes and chaotropes fit into the picture, the part that’s being skipped when companies hock their structured water generators.

Even if you drink structured water, it’s not entering directly into your cells from what you’re drinking. It's not like you're opening up your cells and pouring structured water directly into them. The water you drink is restructured by the sheer act of drinking it (flow/movement energy), the churning of the stomach, and the distribution of the water from the GI tract to the cells and once at the cell membrane through the membrane (and then through subsequent membranes even once in the cell, like the nuclear membrane, into the mitochondria and other cellular structures).

Once water is inside cells, it doesn’t re-organize itself based on memory of previous structure. It organizes itself because of electrolyte gradients.

Biochemically speaking:

• The cytosol (fluid inside the cells) is rich in potassium (K⁺), magnesium (Mg²⁺), and phosphate

• The extracellular fluid (outside the cell) is rich in sodium (Na⁺) and chloride (Cl⁻)
  

This electrolyte gradient isn't arbitrary. It is actively maintained.

Magnesium and phosphate are strongly kosmotropic ions (structure building). ATP, one of the major energy molecules, the output of the mitochondrial engines within your cells, exists in cells primarily as a magnesium–phosphate ATP complex.

ATP stabilizes proteins, supports membrane integrity, and maintains hydration layers around macromolecules creating an environment conducive to the formation of structured water.

This leads to a crucial point that’s rarely stated plainly:

Metabolism itself is a water-structuring process.

When ATP production is robust:

• Proteins maintain their proper conformation

• Hydration shells (exclusion zones) are stable

• Cellular membrane potentials are intact

• Interfacial/structured water forms naturally
  
  

When ATP falters:

• Proteins unfold

• Cell membranes leak

• Ion gradients/electrolyte gradients degrade

• Water becomes functionally disordered — no matter how “blinged up” the drinking water was
  
  

Water follows structure, not the other way around.

Why biohacking your drinking water misses the point entirely

Structured water inside the body is not imported. It is generated locally at hydrophilic surfaces under the right energetic conditions.

Distilled or demineralized water:

• Lacks electrolytes

• Lacks buffering capacity

• Disrupts ion/electrolyte balance when consumed chronically

This is why pharmaceutical-grade water is buffered before use, and why municipal systems re-mineralize softened or RO-treated water. It’s also why vortexing the water, exclusion zone (EZ) generators, and magnetic water devices even if they create structured water don’t result in the presence of structured water at the cellular level where it matters.

So, how do you actually “get” structured water?

Structured water, a natural result of healthy metabolism/mitochondrial function

Inside the body, structured (interfacial) water emerges when several conditions are met:

1. Adequate ATP production

Mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell creating ATP to literally supply your body with energy. The process of creating ATP generates structured water by creating the environment where water structures through emission of infrared radiation (result of ATP creation) and maintenance of electrolyte gradients. Poor mitochondrial ATP production means poor water organization/reduction in structured water within the body.

2. Electrolyte integrity

Sodium, potassium, magnesium, and phosphate determine water’s behavior at a cellular level.

3. Healthy proteins and collagen

Water structures around hydrophilic surfaces. Glycation, oxidative damage, and protein misfolding disrupt this. Healthy mitochondria function promotes healthy proteins and collagen.

4. Movement and fascia

Fascia behaves as a liquid crystalline matrix. Movement and oscillation improve charge flow and hydration dynamics.

5. Nervous system regulation

Electrolyte balance isn’t passive. It is hormonally and energetically (mitochondrially / metabolically) regulated, and when this regulation breaks down, tissues become functionally dehydrated, unable to retain or organize water where it’s needed. Looking at 4 key hormones:

• Aldosterone (sodium retention, potassium balance, plasma volume)

• Cortisol (glucose availability, vascular tone, energy response)

• Thyroid hormone (Na⁺/K⁺-ATPase expression, mitochondrial ATP output)

• Insulin (potassium and magnesium intracellular shift)

Chronic sympathetic dominance disrupts all four.

When the nervous system can’t downshift, electrolyte imbalance isn’t a “hydration issue”, it’s a neuroendocrine issue.

Despite popular marketing speak, nervous system regulation isn’t something you think your way to on a Zoom call. English isn’t the language of the nervous system and true nervous system regulation starts with the body, not the brain. I would say while all somatic practices are intended for nervous system regulation, there are nervous system specific modalities of which Spinal Flow and Network Spinal are my two favorites.

These nervous system specific modalities enhance the development of structured water 3-fold:

1. Restoring nervous system elasticity and state-switching capacity, allowing effortless movement between fight-or-flight (sympathetic tone) and rest–digest–heal (parasympathetic tone) as new neural pathways emerge and threat responses soften.
   

2. Dissipation of chronic tension and defense patterns, allowing fascia to regain responsiveness and generate greater piezoelectric charge — improving signal transmission, hydration dynamics, and the local conditions required for structured (interfacial) water.
   

3. Re-regulation of hormone-driven electrolyte and energy balance, including aldosterone, cortisol, thyroid hormone, and insulin signaling. As ATP production and ion gradients stabilize, tissues resolve functional dehydration and regain the capacity to organize water internally as a downstream effect of restored physiology.

This is why Spinal Flow works when simply talking about regulation doesn’t, it restores the physical capacity for healthy nervous system regulation.

This brings us to an important question regarding DIY'ing structured water at home...

What if the problem was never the water, but the physiology trying to manage it?

If you landed here because you were about to buy a structured water device (or switch to distilled), here’s the pivot: stop trying to upgrade the water… and start upgrading the physiology that determines whether the water you’re drinking is able to properly hydrate you and is able to become structured at the cellular level.

If you’re drinking plenty of water, doing “all the right things,” and still feel wired, inflamed, depleted, or weirdly dry at the tissue level (or wake up between 1 and 3 am parched), that pattern isn’t fixed by a structured water gadget. It’s fixed by restoring ATP production + hormone-driven electrolyte balance + nervous system switching.

If you want to feel what real structured water feels like in your body, book your first Spinal Flow visit. No gadgets. No hacks. Just optimal physiology.

References

• Pollack GH. The Fourth Phase of Water. Ebner & Sons, 2013.

• Pollack GH et al. “Exclusion zones in water.” Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 2009.

• Hofmeister F. Arch Exp Pathol Pharmakol, 1888.

• Ling GN. A Physical Theory of the Living State. Blaisdell, 1962.

• World Health Organization. Health risks from drinking demineralized water, 2005.

• Niggli E et al. “Physiology of ion homeostasis and mitochondria.” Physiological Reviews.