In this episode of The Red Light Report, Dr. Mike Belkowski welcomes world-renowned scientist Dr. Gerald Pollack, the pioneering researcher who discovered the “fourth phase of water,” also known as Exclusion Zone (EZ) water.
Dr. Pollack shares the fascinating story of how he moved from muscle research into water science, and why his discovery challenges 300 years of conventional wisdom. They dive into how EZ water stores energy like a battery, its essential role in cellular hydration, and why a lack of EZ water is linked to fatigue, dysfunction, and even cancer.
Listeners will learn practical strategies to build EZ water naturally—from sunlight, red and infrared light, grounding, and saunas to specific foods and herbs like turmeric and basil. Dr. Pollack also explains how his research ties into mitochondria, blood flow, and overall energy production, offering a new lens on hydration and health.
Whether you’re fascinated by cutting-edge science or simply want to optimize your vitality, this conversation reveals why the future of health may truly be found in water.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:25:03 — Dr. Mike Belkowski
World renowned scientist Dr. Gerald Pollack, who brought us the fourth phase of water. So he's broken the trend of 300 years of where we had liquid, solid and gas. The water actually contains energy. If the cell has very little EZ water. It turns out that that's true of cancer cells. And the cell can hardly function. And it has low energy, which is why cancer patients have not much energy.
00:00:25:06 - 00:00:51:25 — Dr. Mike Belkowski
Welcome to The Red Light Report, your number one source for all things red light therapy. We'll also explore all anti-aging and longevity tactics centered around mitochondrial function, especially in the mitochondrial triad, which includes red light therapy, methylene blue, and carbon 16. This is your host, Dr. Mike Belkowski.
00:00:51:27 - 00:02:31:03 — Dr. Mike Belkowski
All right, everybody. Welcome back to — I anticipate — a very exciting and educational conversation with someone I had the great pleasure of meeting last year over a calendar year ago, Tracy Duhs’ Hydrate Summit in April. And it's none other than the worldwide famous and world renowned scientist Dr. Gerald Pollack, who has brought us the fourth phase of water, which — so he's kind of broken the trend of 300 years of where we had liquid, solid and gas.
And he has brought us the fourth phase. Just a quick background for those who aren't familiar with Dr. Pollack. He's a professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington; like I mentioned, a pioneering researcher in the field of water science and again renowned for his discovery of the fourth phase of water, also known as exclusion zone or EZ water, which we'll dive deep into that conversation today.
Beyond his research, Dr. Pollack is the founding editor in chief of the scientific journal WATER and serves as the executive director of the Institute for Venture Science. His contributions to science have been recognized with numerous awards, including the NIH Director's Transformative Research Award and the Emoto Peace Prize, amongst others. And Dr. Pollack's work continues to challenge conventional scientific paradigms, offering fresh insights into the fundamental nature of water and its role in life processes.
And needless to say, at Tracy Duhs’ event last year, Dr. Pollack, outside of your book, you brought some very interesting information, which we'll dive into here shortly. But with all that being said, thanks for taking the time out of your day to join us on the podcast.
00:02:31:06 - 00:02:55:04 — Dr. Gerald Pollack
My pleasure, Mike, it's great to be here with you and I look forward to the next hour.
00:02:55:06 - 00:03:13:25 — Dr. Mike Belkowski
Likewise. Likewise. So just give us a brief — or if you want to make it longer, go for it — kind of your origin story. How did you get into the world of water, which I imagine even back when you got into it was kind of an interesting path, right? Like water is water. How much could there possibly be more to learn about it? So what was your pathway to getting into this interesting world and then discovering a whole new phase?
00:03:13:25 - 00:08:25:09 — Dr. Gerald Pollack
I was studying muscle contraction at the time. We spent several decades studying muscles and how muscles contracts at the molecular level. I was happily doing that, and I think we contributed meaningfully to the field. And one day I picked up at the airport a Hungarian guy who was going to be working in my lab. He was senior to me, and he said, Jerry, would you like to go to Hungary? And I said, well, you know, sure. Why not? I'd like to travel. He said, there's a symposium there. And the symposium is to honor a great Hungarian biophysicist. And he actually interested… one was muscle contraction and the other was water. The guy's name was Ernst.
And I said, well, you know, why not? I'd like to travel. So I went and I presented my stuff on muscle contraction, and I think it was reasonably well received. And then the people who represented the field of water — there was one who stood out. His name was Gilbert Ling, and I had heard vaguely something about Gilbert Ling, but I didn't really know about the guy.
So I listened to his talk and, some background on Gilbert Ling. He was chosen in 1948 — the Chinese government decided to take their top young scholars and send them to the US for, you know, further training or contributions. And of the four they chose, Ling was one of them; of the four, three of them won Nobel Prizes. So this turned out to be a rather distinguished group. And people who knew Gilbert Ling say he should have won at least two Nobel Prizes for all of his contributions. But he didn’t because his work was controversial and maybe some other reasons, too.
So, anyway, I'd sit and listen to this guy, and he was saying that, despite the fact that textbooks claim that the water inside the cell is pretty much the same as liquid water — he says not true. The evidence shows that it's not true. And he was suggesting that the water molecules in the cell, or generally biological water, actually stack on one another. You can think of a water molecule as a dipole, a little being with plus at one end, minus at the other end, and you can imagine how these would stack upon one another, like soldiers standing at attention. And that's what he was arguing.
And I'm sitting here listening to him and I'm thinking, well, first of all, the major component of muscles, which I was studying, is water — you know, two thirds of the muscle is water. And the people who are trying to conceive of the mechanism of muscle contraction assume uniformly that water is absent, but water is there. And if you actually were to line up all the molecules inside the muscle — or pretty much any cell — and you start counting, it would be something like 99% of the molecules are water molecules. Because to fill that two thirds volume, the water molecule is pretty small, and you need a lot of that.
And so we're talking about, you know, a huge number — to imagine that water plays no role in muscle contraction or in any of the cells and what they do sounds bizarre, because in nature 99% of all the molecules do nothing? It's really odd. And Gilbert Ling said, well, they do something, and that something is basically line up. He didn't call it liquid crystal; he called it structured water. But he said the molecules are lining up and his evidence for that was actually pretty compelling.
So that's how I got into it. And I wanted desperately — after getting reassured by several of my students that not only is his idea interesting, but his evidence, as judged from what he presented and the book that I gave them to read (a book by Gilbert Ling), is compelling — you know, how could you resist getting into that field?
So that's when I jumped into the field. And what we found — just broad brush — is that Gilbert Ling was partly right in that the cell does contain ordered water of some sort. But it's not exactly water molecules lined up the way he was suggesting. We found that it's different from that. It's ordered, but it's different. And it undergoes transient shifts from ordered to disordered back to ordered again as an essential element of cell behavior. So the water plays an integral part. And some aspects are different enough from what Gilbert was suggesting, different enough to suggest a new, how should I say, new entity — that water can actually supply energy.
And if you ask me, you know, tell you more about what we found and why it's highly implicated in what goes on in your body and maybe even mine.
00:08:25:09 - 00:09:16:23 — Dr. Mike Belkowski
Yeah. I mean, that's kind of the direction I want to go. So thanks for that background also, Jerry. So with that being said, what have you found over the years — of course, with the book over my right shoulder a lot, as you explained in The Fourth Phase of Water — but what implications does this have for overall health and wellness? What is the importance of water in our body? Because growing up as a kid in my generation, it was like, okay, you drink water to stay hydrated. How much of that is true? And how much of that is not completely the full truth?
00:09:16:23 - 00:10:20:12 — Dr. Gerald Pollack
It's not the full truth. Yeah, hydration is basically water inside the cell, and the water inside the cell, as I mentioned, is not liquid water. It's actually what Gilbert says is structured water — what we call EZ water, Exclusion Zone water or fourth‑phase water. All of those terms are pretty much the same.
00:10:20:12 - 00:13:32:10 — Dr. Mike Belkowski (Ad Read)
At this point, I'm sure you guys have heard of methylene blue. Well, especially if you've been listening to this podcast for the last month or so, you guys have heard me shout from the mountaintops many benefits of methylene blue, but let's just review it quickly for those who aren't familiar.
So methylene blue is a major, major mitochondrial booster. It has a lot of similar properties as red light therapy, but they actually work slightly differently within the electron transport chain within the mitochondria as far as how they derive their benefits to the mitochondrial function. A couple of the. My favorite aspects of methylene blue include the fact that when you ingest it, the majority of the methylene blue ends up in your brain.
So that's why you see these amazing mental energy boosts from methylene blue. It can even stave off or prevent or reverse some types of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's. This is my second favorite part about it. So methylene blue has this innate sense to help the cells that are most metabolically dysfunctional. It goes and helps cells that have the most mitochondrial dysfunction first before helping other cells.
So not only does it help cells that need the help most, but again most of the methylene blue ends up in your brain where that is the most mitochondrial dense tissue in the body. That's why you see all these amazing benefits with the brain, with methylene blue. And maybe most importantly, as it relates to this podcast and people who are a fan of red light therapy, red light therapy in methylene blue are major synergistic.
So of course you have your independent benefits when you just use methylene blue or when you just use red light therapy. But when you combine them together, you amplify the benefits of one another and you get the synergistic response. So anyone that's interested in red light therapy should at least be considering or looking into the many benefits of methylene blue.
And as you know by now, if you've been listening to this podcast, my company, Bio Light, has released an enhanced Methylene Blue product that includes certain ingredients, like NMN, that further boost the energy production of the mitochondria. It also enhances the photodynamic activity already associated with methylene blue by including colloidal gold, colloidal silver, which have their own antimicrobial or cognitive benefits, silver and gold, respectively.
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00:13:32:10 - 00:17:11:02 — Dr. Gerald Pollack
And while it's true that that hydrate inside the cell is really equivalent to EZ water and you're fully hydrated if your cell is full of EZ water, that's very important. And EZ water, we found, plays a central role in the function of the cell. So what happens is the cell — and I'm omitting the evidence for all of this, which a lot of which appears in that book and in the more than a decade that's elapsed since the book was published — but what happens is your cell is fully hydrated. It's full of EZ water.
Now that EZ water, when the cell is stimulated to do what it's designed to do — that is for a muscle cell, it contracts; for a secretory cell it secretes, etc., etc. — and when the cell does that, what happens is that the EZ water undergoes what's called a phase transition. It transitions out of EZ water and into water that it's just like this. And then after the action is over, after the muscle cell contracts and wants to relax again, it undergoes a reverse transition to go back to the EZ water.
So this transition is absolutely essential for all that goes on in the cell. That's how the cell works. It's a common mechanism that works. We don't know if it works that way for every cell. But in the book that preceded that, I demonstrated — half the book was devoted to demonstrating — that this occurs in at least a half dozen different cells. So it seems to be general.
Now in terms of health, the problem is that the magnitude of that transition is really important. And if your cell is full of EZ water, and where the transition from EZ water to liquid water is a large one, then your muscle — if it's a muscle cell — contracts with robust contraction. If you don't have that much EZ water, if your cell is not as well hydrated, then the transition is smaller and the contraction is weaker.
And the same thing is true of other types of cell — that the action is a full action if the cell is initially filled with this kind of EZ water, the hydration water, and if it's less, the action is weaker and the energy is weaker — because, I haven't gotten to it yet, but the water actually contains energy. And I'll — if I forget — remind me to talk about that. And if the cell has very little EZ water in it — which turns out is true of cancer cells — then the transition is very weak and the cell can hardly function. And it has low energy, which is why cancer patients have not much energy.
That's a broad — well, not so broad — medium brush explanation. May I — if you have a question. But I did want to talk about energy.
00:17:11:02 - 00:17:40:17 — Dr. Mike Belkowski
Please go for that. Please.
You run the interview from here. You got it.
00:17:40:17 - 00:26:50:04 — Dr. Gerald Pollack
Well — yeah, I'm the interviewer and interviewee. So energy. How can water have energy? This is really weird. How on earth am I declaring that that water has energy?
What we found experimentally is we have a setup — a chamber — and the chamber to study this kind of water has water in it, and also some particles that are suspended in the water. They're called microspheres, little spheres. We know that, like an ordered crystal, would be pure; and if it's pure, it has to eject those microspheres, otherwise it’s not pure if it forms around the microsphere.
So we were looking for a region of water that excluded these microspheres. And we found it quickly. It was a gel. And we found that around every surface of the gel the microspheres disappeared — they were shoved out; they were excluded. And that's why we began to call it Exclusion Zones, or EZ. EZ is easy to remember. So it works pretty well except in Europe where it's E‑Zed — doesn’t work so easily.
Later we called that fourth‑phase water, because everything about that water that we investigated turned out to be different from liquid water. Out of curiosity, one day I had some experience with tiny electrodes that you stick into a cell — so‑called microelectrodes (invented by the same Gilbert Ling) — which you can stick into a cell, and we used to do that to measure the potential difference from inside to outside. Fifty years ago it was very common. A lot of people were doing that.
I thought — I know how to do it; why don't we just stick it into the Exclusion Zone and check it out? And we found that typically — not every time, but typically — it's negatively charged. That made no sense at all, because if you're starting with neutral water and now you're measuring something, a section of water, quote unquote, that's negatively charged — how could that be?
Well, the only reasonable possibility is there must be another region that's positively charged. Then we found it. So we found that — you've got the gel, and at the surface of the gel, it's a hydrophilic or water‑loving surface. What happens is you've got this zone where the microspheres were excluded; and we saw it growing and growing to a hefty size. And then beyond that are positive charges.
So what happens is the water is split and negative charges build — OH‑ groups build together to form the EZ. It forms in layers, and each layer is a kind of honeycomb structure. There's something like a million layers typically — it’s really substantial. And then, to become negative, it ejects positive charges — ejects protons — into the water. And so here you have water with proton positive charges which actually link to the water molecules to form hydronium ions. But be that as it may — you've got negative and you've got positive. That's a battery.
So what we found is that we start with water and under the right circumstances the water forms a battery. You know, nature doesn't throw away energy. And we found that nature uses this energy.
All batteries need to get charged. If I forget to plug in my cell phone at night, I’ve got nothing the next day; or my car battery — as the car is running, it gets charged continuously. So batteries need to get charged because you need the energy to separate the charges — as I said, as I just described how to separate the charges.
I couldn't figure out where the energy was coming from. I did a lot of head scratching — you see, I'm missing a little bit of hair. You can't take the chamber or the cell and plug it into the receptacle in the wall and get the energy that way — but where else?
Turned out the answer was obtained by a student — an undergraduate student, probably 18 years old with no background whatsoever — came into the lab and he was doing an experiment using one of those chambers that I just described. Any new worker or student who comes to the lab does that experiment just to get on board, to see an Exclusion Zone.
He was doing the experiment — and it was only a week or two after he started — and I don't know whether he was especially curious or bored, but he noticed sitting right next to him was a gooseneck lamp. He took the lamp and shined it on the chamber and the region that was illuminated — and the Exclusion Zone grew and grew, like three times. It was impressive. He called me in and I looked at it and said, my goodness, you solved the problem. The energy is coming from light.
And that made sense to me, because in photosynthesis the energy comes from light. And what's the first step of photosynthesis? It's the light hitting the cell. And the first step is that the water molecule — the charges, plus and minus — are separated. That's well known as the first step of photosynthesis, which is exactly what we found.
We finally came to realize many years after that initial finding that it might be that what we found is generic — and photosynthesis is one application of the same principle and probably optimized because nature optimizes everything. It's the same class — really the same: optical energy hitting the water and causing the charges in the water to separate, forming a battery that contains energy.
Next step was to find out — well, light contains a series of wavelengths. And that lamp contains a series of wavelengths ranging from, at the shortest wavelength, ultraviolet; and then longer through the visible spectrum; and then at the very longer wavelengths in the infrared. So we tested all of them using LEDs. And we found that ultraviolet — no effect. Later, years later, we found that the ultraviolet light actually builds negative charges in the EZ but it doesn't expand EZ.
Then we started looking at light — at first violet and blue — no effect. Longer wavelengths — and finally when we get to the red we see some substantial effect. And when we get to the infrared, longer (we can't see it) — huge effect. Huge. Absolutely huge. So red and infrared are the culprits responsible for doing this.
I know there's a lot of red light therapy, infrared light therapy. And I think what these therapies do is they build EZ — I mean that's what we found in the laboratory. And so projecting to the clinical condition — they build EZ. And I think that's the reason why they're effective in so many different syndromes. They can be reversed through the application of infrared light therapy or red light therapy.
So we have energy available. You might ask — how might we use this energy? First let me say that everybody who has studied biology even a little bit knows that the energy comes from ATP, adenosine triphosphate, which has a “high‑energy phosphate bond.” And when the bond breaks, the energy is delivered; and that's why we can walk on a treadmill for an hour, or run a marathon, or whatever. It comes from ATP, which we get from food ultimately.
What people don't know is that that view has been challenged by multiple studies. It starts in one study — the idea came in 1941 by a paper by Fritz Albert Lipmann. Another laboratory, I think it was a year later, said these guys made a simple arithmetic error — there is no high‑energy phosphate. That was confirmed by a group who did a comprehensive study — two guys who I know; I haven't seen them for many years — Morales and Podolsky. I almost did a postdoc with Podolsky. Anyway, these two guys are, you know, well recognized researchers in the muscle field.
They did a comprehensive study and showed that there is no high‑energy phosphate. Others, a couple of others, repeated the experiments and also found there is no high‑energy phosphate. So the idea that we necessarily get all our energy from the splitting of ATP is controversial — well, not controversial because people don't recognize or don't take into account the studies that conflict with the general idea.
So we don't know who's right — is the original guy right? Or the several people who challenged that — because nobody is studying it in detail currently. We're all happy with the idea of ATP. But another idea is that the water could be responsible — because water contains energy. You know, it's like a battery.
One observation — some more, but this one is, I think, pretty sound. So let me tell you about that — how the water might be responsible. It starts — I'm not going in chronological order — with a trip to Russia, and I went to see my friend Vladimir Voeikov, who runs the biochemistry department at Moscow University, which many consider to be their number one university throughout Russia. So he's an open‑minded guy.
I went to visit him — we're friends — and after some cognac and vodka at his home, you know, and some caviar, which is normal when you have guests, he said, let's go to the laboratory. So we go to the laboratory and he wants to introduce me to his friend, in a laboratory down the hall. So he telephones and the guy comes over and he speaks no English, but Vladimir translates — his English is better than mine.
So the guy comes and he starts by saying there's a big problem in the cardiovascular system. You know, my first reaction was, oh, come on, what kind of big problem are you going to tell me about? Why am I wasting my time? I had my nose up in the air, as the Israelis say, like cutting the clouds with your nose, you know, because in my graduate student days, I did my PhD thesis about the flows and pressures in the cardiovascular system, and I thought we had it all worked out. But this guy is telling me, no, there's a big problem. And he had me convinced in five minutes that he was right and I was wrong.
So what's the problem? The problem is the red blood cells that have to pass through the capillaries. The red blood cells are 6 or 7 micrometers in diameter, and the smallest capillaries are half of that diameter — you know, 3, 4 micrometers. So how do you pass a red blood cell that's twice the size of the vessel? It's kind of analogous to your toilet getting stopped up, and you get the plunger and you start plunging; it requires a bit of energy to squeeze it through, you know, to clear your toilet.
And it's the same thing, you know, same principle in the cardiovascular system. You've got to take each red blood cell and bend it, squeeze it so it goes through it. And we have videos showing indeed that — I have one in particular — in a muscle cell that you can see the capillaries and you can see the red blood cells passing through the capillary; and they don't look like a donut, which is a picture that you often see — a filled donut. They're kind of squeezed like a half moon as they go through.
So they really do need to get squeezed. And the question is — how much energy do you need to squeeze all the red blood cells that pass through? So it turns out, like most Russians, he's very good at mathematics. And he does a calculation and he calculates that if a heart or left ventricular contraction is responsible for supplying the energy to push those red blood cells through, it would have to generate an energy that's something like a million times more than it actually generates. You might call that high “blood pressure.”
And so obviously, even if he's off by an order of magnitude or two, there's got to be something else — something else that supplies the energy. So he's going down there, he's got a litany of a half dozen different ideas that he's talking about, about bubbles in the blood and other issues. And I must admit, I wasn't really paying much attention because we had just found something in the laboratory that I thought was a great candidate and which we ultimately tested and found that, yes, it does supply the energy — and that is flow through a tube that might actually be the same as a capillary — similar to a capillary tube.
It was a student — another student — and this student was playing with tubes made of Nafion, which is a hydrophilic material that we use quite a lot. And we found out that not only does it come in sheets (which we had been using), but it comes in tubes. So this new student comes to the lab and I said to him, hey, could you check, you know, and see if it forms Exclusion Zones the same way the sheets do, because it's curved — you know, maybe the curvature prevents that. Within a day or two he had the answer, and the answer was yes.
But I was away on a trip and I didn't get the message. And these were the days when email was a little bit uncommon or not used as much. And so it was like almost 20 years ago or 15 years ago, something like that. And so I came back and I remember I was sitting in my office interviewing — an interview discussion with some guy — and the guy was boring. I mean, you know, it was important; I don't even remember who he was, but he was important, quote unquote. But I was kind of hoping that the conversation would end because it was not so interesting.
Meanwhile, the student comes barging in, and usually I leave my door partly ajar because I appreciate when people want to come in and share — you know — and it's usually the students. Usually they'll knock gently and “hello, are you busy?” You know, or something like that. But this guy pushed open the door, barged in, and I pretended I was irritated by, you know, his being impolite and doing that, but secretly — oh thanks — I was happy that he interrupted our discussion because it was not such an interesting discussion.
He barged in and he said, I have to tell you something. I thought — I found something that could be significant. He said, I've been using these tubes of Nafion, and after I found out that they do generate Exclusion Zones, I immersed the tube into water, and I find that there's flow through the tube and it occurs endlessly; I can't stop it — it just keeps going.
And I thought, oh my goodness — if true, this is really important, because where does the energy come from in order to push a fluid through a tube? You know, like blood through your arteries, you need some kind of pump or something and the pressure difference, the pressure gradient; and there's no pressure gradient here because the tube is horizontal and immersed into the water — and it flows through the tube.
So I'm thinking the idea of infrared energy — maybe it's receiving infrared energy all the time from the environment, and maybe it's the infrared energy that somehow is getting converted into hydraulic energy or something that drives the flow. And we know that there's an Exclusion Zone. So you've got a tube and the Exclusion Zone is like a ring inside the tube and another ring outside the tube of EZ water.
And in the core of the tube are the protons. Remember, next to the negatively charged EZ are the protons. And these protons are repelling each other. And as soon as you get enough of them, they want to get out of the tube. So they'll exit the tube from this end or this end — I'd rather not get into what determines the direction — but it goes.
And as the protons leave — and the protons also stick on to individual water molecules forming those hydronium ions — so the protons leave dragging water with them. And therefore new water has to enter, and the process is perpetuated.
So when this Russian guy was telling me that there needs to be another source of flow, I'm thinking what we just found in the laboratory in these Nafion tubes could actually be occurring in the cardiovascular system — in yours and mine. And we did tests, and we tested — the signature feature of this flow system is that if you add infrared energy it goes faster — and we confirmed that was the case.
It didn't prove that that's necessarily what's driving the driving energy for pushing those red blood cells through, but we can't think of another source that makes sense. So getting to the bottom of the story — we're using hydraulic energy — basically the energy of water developed by infrared energy that comes in — and we're using this in our body. That's just one example of how we actually use fourth‑phase water — the energy of water — to drive something important inside our bodies.
I'm sorry I've been long winded, but I wanted to mention that. I mean, the bottom line is we really don't know for sure how much of our energy comes from the splitting of high‑energy phosphate ATP, or how much of it comes from basically electrical energy. This remains to be seen.
00:26:50:04 - 00:28:38:00 — Dr. Mike Belkowski
So I'm ready for your next question. I better make this one important. I just want to bring up this anecdote — I'm sure that on this podcast a handful of times off and on throughout the last year, but at the end of that summer and after I got done speaking my portion about mitochondria, red light therapy, all that stuff, you came up to me after my presentation, we had some back and forth, and I posited the question to you because after sitting in the back of the room all weekend and listening to all these amazing water experts from around the world, including yourself and many others, and me with my background and my passion for the mitochondria.
It's like, okay, to your point, Jerry, the mitochondria for decades have been considered the colloquial powerhouses of the cell, led by the production of ATP. Well, after listening to that conference, it's like, okay, and especially if you listen to Carrie Bennett, it's like, okay, there's this other avenue of the mitochondria where it produces biological water.
So there's ATP production. But a byproduct of that is biological water production, which would lead to cellular hydration when exposed to infrared and red light would build up that EZ water. And so my question to you a year ago was that if you are able to improve your mitochondrial function and thus improve your ATP production — but more importantly for this conversation, improve your biological water production more efficiently, I should say — could you hydrate your cells in your body by means other than drinking water?
For example, red light therapy or grounding or sunlight exposure or anything where you're introducing improved efficiency to your mitochondria? So I'm wondering — let's revisit that discussion if we could, and just give me some of your thoughts on that theory, because I don't think it's really been proven now, so to speak, in the research.
00:28:38:00 - 00:33:39:14 — Dr. Gerald Pollack
Yes, I'm right with you. We're on the same wavelength — infrared wavelengths. Yeah. So if you look at the structure of the mitochondrion, it has these membranes that invaginate the membrane. And I look at these as similar to what I was talking about — the gel surface, hydrophilic surface — just right for building EZ water. I think that the mitochondria are actually constructors of EZ water, negatively charged.
So if you stick an electrode inside the mitochondria and you measure negative charge, I can't remember what the potential difference is — probably like 200 millivolts or something from inside to outside. That's exactly the same as EZ water. So I think that the mitochondria are producing EZ water. Remember it might have come a long time ago — it used to be cells. Yeah. Cells are EZ water. So it's not a big leap to think that the mitochondria are also filled with EZ water.
Now, if you take, say, a muscle cell — muscle cell contracts by a phase transition, as I was explaining earlier — but it needs to return. The water structure, the EZ water, needs to build — fourth‑phase water needs to build — and it can build simply by donation of electrons. We found that experimentally; just like ordinary water, add electrons, through an electrode and it converts immediately to EZ water. And EZ water is again typically negatively charged.
So I think that's what happens in the mitochondria. If you think of the mitochondria in muscles, the muscles have a lot of mitochondria and all that's needed to rebuild after the phase transition is to rebuild the initial state of structure order — fourth‑phase water. How do you do it? Well, you can do it by drawing electrons that you've surrendered in order to undergo the phase transition. When you go from negative — negatively charged EZ water — to ordinary liquid water and you got rid of the electrons and now you kind of suck them back in.
But an easier way is if you have a source of electrons that's right nearby the mitochondria; those electrons can come immediately from right nearby to assure that the initial state is restored quickly. So, you know, the muscle will drive it again — doesn’t have to wait until all this happens — because the energy source or electron source is right nearby in fourth‑phase water.
So my view — and this will be tested; it's between speculation and hypothesis — that that's what the mitochondria do is that they produce EZ water because all those many membranes would serve as the template for the growth of EZ water. And they can restore the energy in the cell, whatever the cell is, whatever kind of cell. So the next events could occur again more quickly. That's how I see it.
00:33:39:14 - 00:44:30:09 — Dialogue: Dr. Mike Belkowski & Dr. Gerald Pollack
Mike: So in essence, kind of bring this full circle. Anything that improves your mitochondria will inherently improve your EZ water production. Or said another way, anything that causes mitochondrial dysfunction — whether that's physical or psychological stress or non‑native EMFs or poor circadian rhythm biology, what have you — mitochondrial dysfunction will decrease your internal EZ water production.
And I think, as you were alluding to earlier, the more EZ water you can build, the less cancer or less decreased chance or likelihood of having cancer. And the flip side is true — the less EZ water you have internally, the greater likelihood for having cancer. Something to do with your redox potential.
Jerry: Yeah, yeah. But not only cancer. I mean I'm talking about general cell dysfunction. Cancer, the extreme, sure. But the dysfunction, even pathology, are actually coincident with not enough EZ water in the cell — not enough hydration in the cell. And so yeah, mitochondria are critical for that. Our cells are as functional as they are because we have mitochondria. So keep on the good work studying mitochondria.
Mike: Well I appreciate it. Oh — all your studies and contributions as well. And with that being said, that begs the question, based on your research, based on what you've read and learned over the many decades, what are the best ways to improve our internal EZ water production? You mentioned some foods, I think, at the Hydrate Summit. Have you built upon that thought process or could you share that with the audience as well?
Jerry: Well, yeah, we did experiments. So there are certain substances that have been known for a very long time — like from Ayurvedic times, 5,000, 10,000 years ago — as being good for health. One of them is, for example, turmeric, which has gotten a lot of attention recently. So, you know, the idea is if you eat or have turmeric in your food, you'll be healthier.
And we wondered — you know, it's not just turmeric, but it's basil. It's ghee, you know, clarified butter, that have been used by the ancients for quite a while. They seem to know that they're generally good for health and it's not only the one type of health issue, but many. You know, many — if you put turmeric in your food it seems to improve, or if a capsule seems to improve, so many things. And we wondered — if it improves so many things, could it be that you've got like 30 receptors, each one for turmeric? And that didn't seem logical.
The other possibility is it affects something that in turn impacts all cells — and that's water. So we asked the question, is it possible that if you put turmeric in the water, the Exclusion Zone increases in size? Because if it increases in size and then since the EZ water is negatively charged, then the cell will be fully negatively charged and have a high‑magnitude electrical potential.
Excuse that I haven't talked about that — but it's the same; it just needed to mention that since the water has negative charge, the more EZ water you have in the cell, the higher the magnitude of the electrical potential — negative electrical potential. But higher magnitude correlates exactly with how much EZ water you have in the cell.
So a healthy cell would have a big negative electrical… that big magnitude — the 80, 90, 100 millivolts — but pathological cells, which don't have as much EZ water, will have a smaller magnitude of electrical potential. And it turns out that cancer cells have the smallest of all — 10, 15, 20 millivolts negative electrical potential instead of 80 or 90 or 100. And that's shown in many different studies.
So, yeah — I mean, the amount of EZ water in your cell is absolutely critical. And you need to build it. So turmeric… it turns out we did a study — not only turmeric but several other agents that have been known since Ayurvedic times — natural agents, including even aspirin (which comes from the bark of a willow tree). All of them build EZ water.
And so, on the other hand, as a control, we examined glyphosate — you know, poison; kills weeds (and maybe it kills us too, eventually). And we found that it does the opposite — it diminishes the amount of EZ water. So at least that poison works by dehydration. And we haven't tested other poisons because they are mostly students who do the experiments, and I don't feel like exposing them to poison.
Mike: Is it safe to assume — I mean, just based on that whole explanation and based on some of the research you've completed — is it safe to assume things that are disease, let alone cancer promoting, deplete your EZ, whereas anything that's healthful and produces vitality is building your EZ?
Jerry: Exactly, exactly. Yeah. You hit the nail on the head. I think this is absolutely central. In fact, I'm writing a paper on this right away — that there’s a kind of central mechanism for health and lack of health, and that is the EZ water. It's the pinnacle. It's the absolutely central agent for health in many different situations.
So there's, I think, a generic form of health and, at the same time, dysfunction. And dysfunction is diminishing the amount of hydration or the amount of EZ water in your cells. And, you know, it doesn't matter what kind of cell it is. I think there's a general paradigm that applies to many cells. I won't say all cells because we haven't studied all cells.
But that full complement of EZ water will probably lead to full function, and diminished EZ water leads to dysfunction; more highly diminished EZ water — pathology. And finally, the ultimate is cancer, which has the least amount of EZ water. And, you know, which suggests that to reverse cancer, what you need to do is to take measures that increase the amount of EZ water. And, you know, I'd like to say that has not been tried, but it has been tried — it's just that people have not put two and two together. Most of the focus on cancer has been in that focus, not focus on EZ water.
So, I wish — you know, we got a little bit of money to begin to study this. But we really need a substantial infusion of funds to hire the people who are needed to do the studies to test this hypothesis, because, you know, if it's right, it's major.
00:44:30:09 - 00:56:20:05 — Dialogue: Dr. Mike Belkowski & Dr. Gerald Pollack
Mike: And kind of to bring a correlation to what you're saying from a bioenergetics perspective — because that's what we're talking about — from Dr. Doug Wallace (mitochondrial researcher over on the East Coast). He's gone on the record — because he studies mitochondria, of course — and he says the more energy you produce per cell, the healthier you're going to be, which implies the less energy you produce, the less healthy you're going to be. Because I think he said that quite a while ago — at least a decade ago — and I think that was really on the premise of mitochondria produce ATP.
What we're seeing with dysfunctional mitochondria not producing enough energy… but again, I think it was largely based on ATP production. Whereas with this conversation it's like, okay, ATP certainly has its role, but we need to give EZ water its shine as well, because we could easily say the less energy you produce per cell is synonymous with the lesser amount or the lesser production you have of EZ water — absolutely leads to more disease.
So from drinking water specifically… like when we were at that conference last year. And I'm sure you're traveling the world still with all these different water conferences. There's different apparatuses or there's different modalities or tools — whatever you want to call them — to enhance your water, whether it's vortexing or electrifying the water or otherwise.
From your perspective — not trying to call out any products or anything — but just from a baseline level: what can a person do to best enhance the water they drink to optimize their EZ water production internally? Are there merits to vortexing? Are there merits to electrifying your water? Or is there just other ways to, I guess, minimize the damage from the water we drink? Right? I mean, there's some obvious ones there, like tap water, fluoride, all that.
Jerry: Just go right there — a lot of studies on fluoride and the dangers of fluoride. It's of course controversial. But anything you can do to build EZ water is going to be to your benefit if what we've discovered is true and adequate. And so there are different waters that you can drink.
There's even water — I just discovered at an airport — companies building, you know, after you pass through security you can fill your container with water. And the company I saw at four or five different airports says it's EZ water. I don't know whether there's… and we haven't studied any of those waters, and we don't know if the research has shown that indeed these waters contain EZ or don't contain EZ water. We don't test them because, you know, we do fundamental research. And if we start testing different waters, you know, we turn it into a testing station rather than a research [lab]. And we have so much to study that's important.
So I can't comment on any of the waters except I can say one thing — that spring water, some spring water (not all) contains EZ. And so if you — I mean a fraction of the water is EZ water. And we have a way of testing that — it's a simple spectroscopic test. And some of the hot spring waters contain apparently no or very little EZ, and others contain a lot. We look for a spectroscopic absorption peak at 270 nanometers. And if it has a small peak then you've got a little bit of EZ water, and we've seen some that have a peak that looks like the Empire State Building — it just rises up.
So it depends which spring water you drink. But drinking water that contains EZ (negative charge) is good for you. Sources of negative charge are generally good for your health because they build EZ.
Other ways of getting it? Well, sure — you need to drink water. I don't drink enough of it myself because some of that water, some gets peed out and another amount… EZ water gets… water gets converted into EZ water. So yeah, that’s important. Those herbs I was talking about and other substances that build EZ water — that's another easy way (pardon the expression) to build EZ in your cells.
Sauna is good because it's heat and heat is associated with infrared. So if you get into a sauna — expose yourself to that heat, whether it's dry or moist — doesn't matter. I think it doesn't matter. You build EZ. And that's why, you know, that's why you feel better after you're in the sauna. You have a headache; you come out, you don't have a headache. You're tired; you come out, you feel refreshed, etc., etc. So that's another way.
Juicing — you go into your backyard, you pull some leaves, you crush the leaves either with your hand or by some machines that you can buy. And the liquid comes out. And the liquid is basically the liquid from inside the plant cells — it's the intracellular water in the plant that had been exposed to light. And that water is full of EZ. So drinking that water should be good for health. And, you know, many health practitioners suggest that that's the easiest way to gain health, improve your health, is to do this juicing. It's maybe a little bit labor intensive. It doesn't taste great, but it's good for you.
And there's one more that I should add, and I don't usually talk about it because it's not so simple. But, you know, if you can afford it, it's worthwhile. And that is hyperbaric oxygen therapy. And hyperbaric oxygen therapy — just like turmeric — is good for so many things that earlier it came into being to heal the wounds of soldiers that couldn't be healed otherwise.
They put them in this chamber, either an iron chamber or canvas chamber, and the oxygen that's delivered to the person is a high concentration of oxygen — close to 100% — under high pressure. We were wondering, what does that do? And we thought maybe it builds EZ water. And so we had a student who tested it and he found indeed — it's exactly what it did. High pressure produces more EZ water and high oxygen produces more EZ water. So this is… use hyperbaric oxygen for many syndromes, including even cancer. And why is it effective? Well, I think it's because it builds EZ water.
Mike: That makes perfect sense. Sorry to interrupt, Jerry… just to kind of piggyback on your hyperbaric oxygen point: the point is to oxygenate your tissues, right? Well, what really utilizes the oxygen at the end of the day? The mitochondria. It needs oxygen in order to produce that ATP, water and that biological or EZ water we're talking about. So it makes complete sense — if, like we're talking about, if there's a way to accrue electrons that's gonna improve mitochondrial function, same thing — if you can improve oxygenation, that's going to improve mitochondrial function, which at the end of the day should improve EZ water production in your body.
Jerry: Well, there you go. Okay. This is just kind of pulling in some threads there. Also, you mentioned grounding. Or as the Europeans say, earthing — same thing. So we're insulated from the Earth. We wear leather‑soled shoes — that's an insulator. You know, you can insulate yourself from a high voltage line by stepping on the line — nothing will come through because it's a really good insulator. And so we're insulated from the Earth.
On the other hand, if we connect ourselves electrically to the Earth by taking off our shoes and walking on wet grass, or walking around — walking on the beach near the water — if we do that, then we connect ourselves electrically to the Earth. Now why should that make a difference?
Well, it turns out that the Earth is negatively charged. I studied electrical engineering as an undergraduate. No professor ever even hinted that the Earth was anything but neutral. I had no idea about this negative charge — until I had a Russian guy in my lab, and he spent six months doing wonderful experiments, and I didn't communicate with him as much as I should have because he was a clever guy.
And just the day he was leaving, he said to me something about the Earth's electric field. And I said, Andrei, what are you talking about? The Earth has no electric field. It has a magnetic field. You must mean the Earth's magnetic field. He said, no, no, no, I mean the Earth's electric field. Don't you know about that? I said, I never heard a thing about an electric field.
He said, in Russia, every middle school student was taught — at the same time that he was taught, and he was close to my age, maybe ten years younger — was taught that the Earth is negatively charged and up in the stratosphere it's positively charged. So you have like a capacitor with positive there and negative in the earth, and you have an electric field that runs between the positive and the negative.
I couldn't understand. I thought he was on some kind of drug. And I went home, you know, scratching my head — what the hell is he talking about? You know, he's a very knowledgeable guy. But the Earth has negative charge? So next morning, another student came to me with the famous Feynman Lectures — Richard Feynman, the famous Nobel laureate; they said to me, the Einstein of the second half of the 20th century — and volume two, chapter nine — he opened to… the whole chapter deals with evidence for the Earth's negative charge.
So what happens if you connect yourself electrically to this vast source of negative charge? Well, any region in your body that doesn't have enough negative charge — enough EZ water — is going to flow from the Earth into the person, restoring that negative charge, restoring the EZ, and restoring health.
And I think that's the reason why when people connect themselves to the earth, they feel better. There's a whole literature on this, with many mechanisms suggested — and some of them might be on target — but the negative charge flowing into the body, I believe, is central to all of that. So, yeah, that's another way.
So, you know, if you want to keep healthy, these experiences that I mentioned would seem to be the right way to go. And there's a lot of research now that shows indeed that many of these experiences do work.
00:56:20:05 - 01:04:09:12 — Dialogue: Dr. Mike Belkowski & Dr. Gerald Pollack
Mike: Oh, more thoroughly than I could have ever hoped for. And I'm going to pull one last way to improve our internal water battery from Carrie Bennett, one of her posts. She brings up movement. Movement generates electrons in our connective tissue via piezoelectricity, so we can maintain our water battery simply through movement. And if the movement reaches the intensity of generating infrared heat or light, that's an additional EZ water support.
So shout out to Carrie for that from one of her posts. But that's why, I mean — that's a viable reason why exercise is so beneficial to our health — because it's also bolstering our EZ water.
Jerry: Well, that sounds entirely reasonable to me. I know Carrie, but I guess I don't remember hearing that — maybe I was too distracted. But good for her. Yeah, sure makes sense.
Mike: And on that note, Jerry, with the last question here — where is the future of water for health or water research in general? Where do you think we're going to be in five, ten, 20 years from now as far as our respect or hopefully reverence for water in terms of how it impacts our health and wellness?
Jerry: If I can project from the current views of all this — you know, it started out when I published that book, The Fourth Phase of Water — very few people had any interest. And the interest has now mushroomed extraordinarily — not among biophysicists who tend to stick to the same paradigm and thinking… thinking that maybe either one or two layers of interfacial water or nothing beyond that.
But people who are interested in health — and I'm talking about people who make their living, so to speak, health practitioners — and people in general who are really open‑minded — this has really taken off. There's a huge, huge interest in this stuff and it just keeps growing.
I've got to tell you that I'm booked for so many conferences starting in a few weeks to the end of the year because the interest has just absolutely blossomed. So if it continues in that direction — and I don't know if it will or won't — but if it continues in that direction, then numerous people will be dealing with EZ water, and a lot of people will take on an understanding that hydration is at the center of all health.
I hope so, because, you know, our health is not doing so well — there needs to be a turnaround. And I'm hopeful that this will constitute a turnaround. I'm optimistic about everything. So maybe I'm overly optimistic. But I feel so.
It impacts my life because all I want to do is do more of this stuff. But there are so many things that require doing, you know — like going to see a doctor to take care of yourself — doing all of life's necessities which take a lot of time. And also, frankly, I spend so much time trying to get money for the lab to continue the experiments. We need a substantial amount more to keep it going.
And I think there's a great future in it, and also some rewards for somebody who would like to support research that I believe is really going somewhere. So I don't want to say too much because this is not the purpose of our meeting. But I'd just like one more thing — please look out for the next book — “Charged” — it'll be available around middle of September.
01:04:09:12 - 01:12:01:29 — Dialogue & Closing: Dr. Mike Belkowski & Dr. Gerald Pollack
Mike: Amazing. I was literally going to… that was going to be my next question — are you writing a book? That's awesome — Charged. I won't ask you any questions because I would want to leave that as a cliffhanger. I'm really looking forward to that because, like you said, the book behind me, The Fourth Phase of Water, is well over a decade old at this point — not saying that the information is necessarily outdated, because that's a great history of how you came about fourth‑phase water and then your experiments to prove it, or experiments that didn't work, and what happened.
So that's still well worth reading. So I highly recommend people go check out that book. There'll be a link in the show notes to find that book on Amazon. But then I will of course keep people updated as I see your Charged book coming out near the end of this year — September, you said — but I'll keep my eyes posted because I'll be very excited to read that book.
Jerry: Sure. Absolutely. I appreciate that.
Mike: Jerry, this has been an absolutely amazing conversation. I've been looking forward to this for a long time. I know I reached out to you maybe a month ago, but it's been on my to‑do list for some time to reach out to you because I've been very much looking forward to this conversation. So thanks for your generous time and thanks for everything you've done for the world of water research and getting us to this point so we can have these types of conversations — because that allows future generations, or like the next wave of scientists, to carry forward you as well, to see how far we can take this water story and where it can ultimately be as far as it impacts our health and wellness.
Jerry: Well, thank you, and I appreciate your farsighted brilliance. Maybe come work in my laboratory.
Mike: If I were going to school right now and getting a PhD, it would be certainly in this realm of, like, water or something in bioenergy. What was it, 2012 when I started to get into school — 13 years ago — I was fervent and passionate about becoming a physical therapist, and I still wouldn't change that for the world because it got me to where I am today, speaking with amazing people like you.
But if I were in college today seeking a PhD or something like that, I would certainly be in this realm because there's just unlimited possibilities and ways to go and things to learn, and certainly could have a major impact on humanity.
Jerry: Well, thank you for your kind comments. I really appreciate that. Of course — it's been fun for me.
Mike: Likewise. For Dr. Gerald Pollack, this has been Dr. Mike Belkowski. I hope you guys enjoyed this conversation, and I'll see you guys on the next episode next week. Until then, light up your health. Three.
