Everyone will detox at different rates. At the end of your session, the total amount of “gunk” in your foot spa water is only a representation of the total detox that your body will undergo. The detox you will experience happens inside your body through your lymphatic and endocrine systems over the following 2-3 days. The Ionic Body Balancer™ kick-starts your lymphatic system, which ultimately empties into your Excretory System. (The function of your lymph and lower GI tract is to rid the body of waste.) Because of this, you may feel the effects of the detox system for several days following each treatment. However, each person is different; some people will not experience any side-effects, while others will. You should allow 24-48 hours between using the Ionic Body Balancer™ as opposed to using every day, be sure to supplement your increased water intake with a good electrolyte mix, such as Emergen-C. (NOTE: The ionic foot spa process does NOT remove beneficial minerals/vitamins from your body!) If you are having healing reactions (search: Herxheimer Effect), cut back your use of the Ionic Body Balancer™ to every other day, twice per week, or once per week until your reactions have subsided. There are some good article on the Herxheimer Effect. The clinic that published the original articles specializes in treatment for Lyme Disease, but the Herxheimer Effect applies to many different types of illness and both healing and detox in general. This is the same principle as taking many doses of an antibiotic over a period of time, versus swallowing one really big pill; as bacteria and the other “bad guys” in your body die and are otherwise eliminated, they can give off chemicals and other materials that are toxic to us (this is how many infectious-based neurotoxins work, at a very basic level). If you kill too many bacteria and other parasites at once, you are likely to feel worse than you did at the start!! By working on the problem slowly and steadily, you are less likely to experience the headaches, fatigue, joint pain, and other symptoms. It also guarantees that everything you are seeking to rid your body of will be eliminated. That said, to fully detoxify your body, you must also eliminate any potential toxins from your diet and living environment. That includes (but is not limited to) smoke, diet (meat treated with antibiotics, steroids, etc., chemical preservatives and additives, artificial sweeteners, etc.), poor quality water, unnecessary medications, and bad stress. Good stress is having to work to pay your mortgage or to save for a vacation. Bad stress is allowing a micro-managing supervisor drive you nuts! Some people will experience detox in stages. What does this mean? For an individual with arthritis, the first signs of relief may come from decreased arthritis pain. After using the system for a few weeks, this individual may start to see more brown in their water, rather than orange (arthritis). Perhaps this person used to smoke half a pack of cigarettes per day for several years, but has been smoke-free for many years. Why didn’t the brown (lungs) show up at the same time? The body had more pressing issues to resolve.

We recommend starting with several DASHES of salt (if you are using sea salt). You should see a fairly vigorous amount of bubbling at the top of the array. If you are not seeing this, then use up to 1/4 teaspoon of salt, not more than 1/2 teaspoon.

If you have a tingling sensation around your ankles, when you turn on the machine, you have too much salt and you need to turn off the unit, remove some of the water, and replace it with fresh (warm/hot) water to reduce the salinity of the water. Follow the above salt amount recommendations.

You can use ANY kind of salt you wish, other than iodized salt. Table salt, Kosher salt, Sea Salt are all perfectly acceptable. A word of caution:  due to variability in the size of different types of salt (sea salt is a physically larger grain than table salt), you may need to add LESS salt if you are using table salt. 

Due to variability in local water supplies, as well as each person’s sensitivity to the Ionic Body Balancer™, more or less salt may be necessary. Salt is required for the detoxification process to happen – salt is what drives the chemical reaction in the foot spa water that creates the ions in the water.

*** Too much salt over many treatments can create a drain on the power supply and cause it to short out.

There is probably too much salt in your foot bath water. If you have a tingling sensation around your ankles when you turn on the machine, you need to turn off the unit, remove some of the water, and replace it with fresh (warm/hot) water to reduce the salinity of the water. If you do not see any bubbling action around the array after approximately 10 seconds, add a dash or two of salt, for most persons 1/4 teaspoon is standard, not more than 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

Some people are more sensitive to the current in the water than others. If you are one of these lucky ones, shake in salt a little bit at a time until there is some fizzing at the array. You can always add more salt throughout your session as needed.

See additional FAQ for more information here.

During the detoxification process, some people will leech acid into the foot spa water (especially during your first 10-15 treatments). The body’s natural pH should be slightly alkaline to fight infections and toxins most effectively. (In chemistry, ‘alkaline’ means ‘cool and slow,’ whereas ‘acid’ means ‘hot and fast.’ You can compare an acidic car battery, which needs to run hot and fast to start your car, to an alkaline battery in your TV remote control, which you would want to stay cool, and run for a long time.)

However, some toxins and disease can cause our body to become more acidic. The acidity that is released into the foot bath water is being released by your body as part of the detoxification process. (Please note that the absence of this rash is not necessarily a sign that the Ionic Body Balancer has failed to work. Each person will detoxify differently.)

If you do get this rash, be sure to wash your feet thoroughly with soap and warm water after each treatment. You can also gently rub baking soda (which is an alkaline) on the affected area to help neutralize the rash, and then rinse the area well. If the rash becomes itchy, you can try applying calamine lotion. Appearance of this rash does not mean you should stop treatments. If it makes you uncomfortable to continue treatments, then wait a few days before resuming. Appearance of this rash can be a good thing, as it means that the detox treatments are working. However, our goal is to reduce pain and discomfort, not add to it!!

Yes, tap water is fine. Hard water does not affect the detox process. (Here at the home of the  Ionic Body Balancer™, we only use warm/hot tap water straight from our bathtub. We have very hard water and have found that hard water does not affect the detoxification process.)  However, if you have a water softening system in your house, you will need LESS salt. Water softening systems add sodium (salt) to your water to negate the effects of other minerals in the water.

If you have a water softening system, or if your local water company adds salt to the water supply, you may find it helpful to keep a bottle of distilled water on-hand to reduce the salinity of your foot bath water. You will need to heat the water prior to adding it to your foot bath. You can contact the manufacturer of your water softening system if you have questions about the amount of salt that has been added to your water. Due to the wide variability in these systems, we are unable to answer any specific questions about any water softening system you may have installed in your home or workplace.

If you live in the U.S., you can find information about your local water supply on the EPA’s website.

The technology behind the detox foot spa is based upon body mass/weight of the person using the system. For that reason, persons under 100 pounds should reduce their session time down from 30-40 minutes to about 20 minutes.

As for children, in addition to their body mass/weight being under 100 pounds, they also do not have decades of toxins built up within their bodies as adults may have. Foot spa sessions with children should be about 10-15 minutes depending upon age AND should be under parental supervision.

if you are not sure how to proceed, please call us 520-330-2686

The table below is widely available on the internet and used by ALL makers of ionic detox machines, used by many different companies who manufacture similar systems. The chart is accurate for any detox foot bath that utilizes water ionization. If you have previously purchased a system from one of our competitors and have yet to see these colors in your foot spa water, try our system. You may be surprised at what you see!

We regularly receive phone calls and emails asking why there is still color change in the foot spa water after it is run by itself; the reason for this has to do with the laws of Thermodynamics and how water ionization process works. 

When energy is set into motion (turning the system on, current flow into the water through the array), it has no choice but to continue in that movement, until an outside force is acted upon it, causing the energy to cease (turning the system off). While that energy is in motion, it must do something. What does it do? Reacts with all of the minerals that may be in your water (or salt, if it has been added), from suspension in the water. The resulting color change is a light orange color. The material in the water is just water, not toxins. If you dip your finger (or a rag) in this water, nothing will stick to it, it is just water. Trying the same thing after you’ve had your feet in the water and your finger (or rag) will be pretty effectively coated in muck. If you are using a rag, it will continue to be stained, no matter how many times you may wash it.

The colors changing in the water are a representation of the conditions that may be present in your body while doing a session. Similar to how EKG/EEG are showing conditions in the heart/brain. 

It is a generally widespread consensus that persons with organ/tissue transplants should NOT use ionic foot spas at all. The reasoning behind this, is that a transplanted organ/tissue is technically not part of your body and could be identified as an “invader” by the ions which would try to “fix” the organ/tissue by attempting to flush it out. For that reason, it is strongly recommended that persons with organ/tissue transplants NEVER use the ionic foot spa unless under close physician supervision.

The second category of persons who should possibly NOT use ionic foot spas are person with “electrically active” implants such as pacemakers, defibrillators, spinal stims, etc. Again, it is strongly recommended that persons with these implants NOT use the ionic foot spa unless under close physician supervision.

The third category or persons who should NOT use ionic foot spas are women who are pregnant or still nursing. The reasoning behind this is similar to organ transplants in that technically, the child is not part of your body and could be identified as an “invader” by the ions which would try to “fix” the organ/tissue. For nursing reasons, you would not want the detoxing materials to transfer to the newborn.

Inert transplants (nonelectrical) in the body such as metal pins, screws, rods, joints (hip, knee, etc) are just fine and persons can use the ionic foot spa without issues.