A friend was extolling the virtues of this miracle drink and miracle gel, and I started to do some research on it.
What I found was appalling.
Marketed at $273 for 4 bottles of slightly under 1 litre each, the only two ingredients are “Water, Sodium Chloride”.
I came across this helpful video by Dr Craig Mortensen, which is really worth watching, since he unpacks his encounter with this (recommended by a patient’s friend) with minimal judgement and genuine curiosity. His mantra is “Trust, but verify”. My tweak on it is “Stay open, but verify” – for why would I start from a position of trust before I verify?
He was stunned when after searching, he found that the ingredients listed on the product’s website were simply and ONLY water and sodium chloride (which is table salt, NaCl in its most stable form, something that 14 year olds learn routinely in Singapore).
To sell salt water at S$68 a litre (and that’s being generous in my rounding) is quite criminal, if you ask me. And whatever they claim about Redox Cell Signaling properties is pseudo-science at best.
It is “only available here” because you are the only MLM (another long story) with the gall to market salt water as a health supplement. Dr Craig said that it’s “ridiculous”, I say it’s utterly unconscionable. What’s worse (as he states at the end of his video) is that it could harm those with high blood pressure conditions, because that’s what taking an excessive amount of salt does.
With these other marketing claims as above, it is no wonder that ASEA has been sued in the UK.
It really doesn’t take much of an online search to find articles exposing this product for what it truly is. A PhD holder from McGill University in Canada wrote an article (rather scathing in tone, so adherents might not even want to read past the first para), but I found it quite enlightening, albeit sarcastic.
Why would I not believe Dr Schwartz (with all his credible accolades listed below, from a Real University, not to mention I really dig his website’s tagline – “Separating Sense from Nonsense”).
Some others have also done their chemistry research and it wasn’t long before they came to the same conclusion as me (as excerpted below).
The other product that my friend swears by is the Renu28 gel, so I felt compelled to read up on it too. Same company, same outta this world claims, same foundation of sinking sand.
First I came across this on Reddit (replete with folks who have been trying to speak science to adherents with very limited success):
Adhering to my own mantra of “keep an open mind, but verify” I found these sites myself and corroborated what was mentioned above. First, the ASEA Renu28 claim.
Sure looks legit. But the plot thickens. When I click the “Dermatest” link on that page, it directs me to “dermatest.de” which looks like the Deutchland country domain. BUT my computer warns me that it is not a safe site and might be impersonating another site. Then i do a separate google search for Dermatest Germany and the ACTUAL WEBSITE is “dermatest.com” here! And when I do a search on the products and brands they have tested, there is NO RENU28!!!
If ASEA/Renu28 can even fake this, what else are we to believe (or not believe, rather) on their entire website? I later found out that Renu28 is $81 for 90ml. I scrolled down the entire page and could not find a list of ingredients, just unverifiable claim after claim after claim.
I guess the real tragedy is that 38 MILLION bottles of salt water (and 10 million tubes of gel, if their website claims are to be believed) have been sold to people who did not do a due diligence search, or still choose to believe that it works despite scientific evidence to the contrary. I’ve always believed that the mind is extremely powerful and the placebo effect is stronger than most of us think (pun intended).
Good people, well-intentioned people, buy into this and market it to more people with personal testimonies of efficacy.
Some might also put this down to the MLM model, which always benefits those right at the top of the pyramid. This is why MLM products always come across as pricey, because their original premise is to feed layers and layers of upline. A litre of drinkable saline solution probably costs $2 to produce, which means $66 is lining the pockets of everyone along the way. And the website is clearly geared towards MLM “business opportunities” (the German site) and “Start Earning” (the global site) is one of the 4 key tabs on the first home page.
I felt utterly compelled to write this and put it out there, in the slim hope that all this collated information can save some. My dear friends, we need not be skeptical of everything, but surely we owe it to ourselves to ALWAYS check sources (especially on news in this day and age of misinformation) and ALWAYS verify claims, especially if they pertain to health. Salt water today, perhaps something more sinister tomorrow. Take care everyone, and stay alert.
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