The Sceptical Chymist | Ion awe

Published in Chemistry
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Just every now and then, my train ride home in the evening is brightened up by some story I find in the (generally inane) free newspaper that I pick up from King’s Cross.

Today it was a brief note about a story printed earlier in the day by another newspaper (one you actually have to pay for – in fact, most things in the free papers can be considered to be recycled news, however, I digress) – something along the lines of ‘negative ions improve the performance of footballers’…!

So, I duly follow up when I get home and check out the original story, that can be found here.

It basically goes like this: negatively charged ions in the football shirts kick off a sequence of events in the body that ultimately leads to increased blood flow and speedier removal of lactic acid and an overall 2.7% increase in ‘mean power’… and that means you could score more goals, perhaps.

On this matter I’m somewhat of a skeptical chemist – what about you?

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Senior Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)

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