Grow Youthful: How to Slow Your Aging and Enjoy Extraordinary Health
Grow Youthful: How to Slow Your Aging and Enjoy Extraordinary Health

Air Ionizers

What is ionised air?

Naturally ionised air is clean

Effects of non-ionised air

Air Ionisers - what to look for

What is ionised air?

Spend some time high up in the mountains, or walking on a beach breathing in air that has just blown off an unpolluted ocean and you will feel rejuvenated. The 'energy' in this high quality air is quite tangible. It comes from negative ions - highly active molecular fragments, each of which carries a negative charge equivalent to one electron.

There are good scientific reasons to live on a mountain or near the sea, aside from the beauty. People in the mountains or by the sea live longer, and it is not only because they are often far from sources of pollution. High on mountains and close to the ocean, the electrical gradient between the earth and the air is stronger, and the air is more strongly ionised with high concentrations of negative ions. They effectively remove pollution and dust from the air. The negative ions have a direct effect on the people living there, improving their energy levels and all vital functions (immunity, digestion, circulatory and so on).

Negative ions in the air are essential for your health and longevity. These tiny charged particles hold atmospheric energy and carry it into your body via your breath. Atmospheric negative-ion energy, along with the ionic energy extracted from your food, is the basis of all life and biological energy.

Air molecules can be ionised with an electric charge. The suns rays and the electric potential between the earth and the atmosphere ionises air molecules. Negative ions are air molecules with an extra electron. They are attracted upwards, towards the clouds in the sky. Positive ions are molecules with a missing electron. They are attracted toward the ground, and are dissipated into the earth. Most of the remaining ions just above the earth are negative.

Naturally ionised air is clean

Both positive and negative ions attach to pollutants or dust in the air. The positive ions, along with their contaminants, are then dissipated into the ground. Negative ions are attracted high up into the atmosphere.

This is nature's way of cleaning the air. Wherever the air is weakly ionised, it is dirtier. In highly polluted urban areas, the sun's rays do not get through strongly. The air is also ineffectively ionised in lowland areas, far from the sea. Pollution is a vicious circle - the more polluted is the air, the less able nature is to clean it. Polluted city air can contain about 500 positive ions for each negative ion. Clean air out in the country, by contrast, has roughly three negative ions for each positive ion.

Effects of non-ionised air

Most of us have experienced the exhaustion that comes from working all day in a heated, air-conditioned or sealed building, even if the work has not been physically demanding. By contrast, people such as farmers who work outdoors in clean rural air, can be physically active all day and still not be exhausted. This is mainly because of the high levels of negative ions in the clean country air.

Air conditioning and central heating rob the air in closed buildings of this vital negative-ion energy. Air pollutants such as motor-vehicle exhaust, smoke and industrial emissions have the same effect. They fill the air with heavy positive ions that negate the activity of negative ions.

Unless you compensate for such 'dead' air with internal energy practices such as yoga and deep breathing, or alternatively purchase an air ioniser, your immune system will gradually deteriorate, leaving you chronically fatigued and vulnerable to the mildest infections.

Air Ionisers - what to look for

You can buy an air ioniser for your house or car. They generate negative ions, which clean the air, and are also reputed to make you feel good. The negative ions attach to pollen, dust and pollution, and then move to earth - basically the walls and floor of the room. More advanced models collect the dust by shooting out negative ions for about 10 seconds, and then change to a high plus voltage to attract back the negative ions, with the dust attached, into the unit's dust collector.

Ozone. Most air ionisers produce a small amount of ozone. Ozone is highly beneficial to our health, with antifungal, antiviral and general purification properties. It stimulates blood flow, and greatly assists with healing of damaged tissues. Ozone is created naturally by lightning, and this accounts for the slightly different smell in the air during and after a thunderstorm. The only thing to watch out for is if you inhale a big dose of ozone gas, as it is an irritant to the lungs. It's actually not harmful to the lungs, just irritating, and only in big doses. As a therapy, ozone may be given intravenously, topically on the skin, or in ozone-added water.