Health and Medicine
PUBLISHED
In the year of 2026, a health influencer is claiming that they have been drinking radioactive water for the past 250 days.
If you don't know why that's a bad idea, we heavily suggest you look into Radithor, Eben Byers, the "Radium Girls", and just radiation in general.
But just in case you needed a bit of a reminder, let's explore just how long we've known that usually radiation is not, in fact, that good for your health.
How long have we known this is a terrible idea?
In the grand scheme of things, or if you are used to working in astronomical timescales, humanity has not known about radioactive materials for very long at all. But we have known for over a century that radiation isn't something you should drink like a juice.
In 1895, Wilhelm Roentgen was experimenting with cathode ray tubes when he discovered the X-ray. He noticed an odd fluorescent glow on the other side of the room, despite the tube he was experimenting with being covered entirely in black paper.
Before you could say "are we absolutely sure this is safe" every self-respecting scientist was studying or experimenting with X-rays, sometimes with predictably tragic results.
French physicist Henri Becquerel was amongst them. In 1896, he was attempting to investigate whether X-rays were connected to naturally occurring phosphorescence, and decided to use some of the uranium salts he had inherited from his father.
His hypothesis was that uranium absorbed sunlight, and emitted the energy again as X-rays. To test this, he decided to wrap the uranium salts in black paper and place them on a photographic plate during a sunny day in Paris. If the day was sunny and the uranium did not affect the photographic plate, this would show that his hypothesis was correct.
Unfortunately (assuming you don't like receiving a Nobel Prize), the sky was overcast during the experiment.
But Becquerel decided to develop the plates anyway, and found that uranium emitted radiation with no need for sunlight. This work by Becquerel, and later Marie and Pierre Curie, won the Nobel Prize for discovering spontaneous radioactivity.
If you think that materials that emit a new kind of radiation would be treated carefully, you clearly aren't aware that Marie Curie is buried in a lead-lined coffin due to levels of radioactivity in her body.
The radioactive toothpaste was not, in fact, a good idea
Humanity soon learned about what radiation does to a body the hard way. The acute affects of radiation were known quite quickly, as scientists accidentally burned themselves, and then... did it on purpose.
"Pierre Curie voluntarily exposed his arm to the action of radium during several hours. This resulted in a lesion resembling a burn that developed progressively and required several months to heal," Marie Curie wrote in her biography of her husband.
"Henri Becquerel had by accident a similar burn as a result of carrying in his vest pocket a glass tube containing radium salt. He came to tell us of this evil effect of radium, exclaiming in a manner at once delighted and annoyed: 'I love it, but I owe it a grudge'."
It took humanity longer to learn about radiation's other effects, however, including heightened cancer risk.
Unfortunately, by this time there were quite a number of products on the market that sold the "health benefits" of radioactive materials, from Doramad Radioactive Toothpaste to radioactive cards you put in your cigarette packets to "enhance your cigarette smoking" while "lowering tar and nicotine". It did not do this.
The "Radium Girls" workers who made luminous watches by applying paint containing radium soon began showing signs of long-term radiation damage, with many workers losing teeth, jaws, and, more importantly, their lives.
Then, of course, there was the drink marketed as Radithor, which contained radioactive isotopes radium-226 and radium-228. We'll spare you the full horrible story, but in short, drinking radioactive juice will also make your bones and jaw crumble, as discovered by poor old Eben Byers the hard way.
In short, we have known for quite some time that drinking radioactive drinks, as well as working with radioactive paint, is not great for your health.
Ok, now show me the influencer
According to the Instagram account cultivateelevate, all this is some sort of conspiracy designed to keep you from seeing the "health benefits" of radiation.
"Radioactive Radium Water healing all in 1929. (Aka hot spring water)," writes the account in an Instagram post. "In 1933 when the Rothschilds FDA came along the 1st thing they went after was radium water… not vaxxines, dirty electricity, or pesticides. Gee I wonder why."
The obvious answer is "because radiation was making people's jaws fall off", although the influencer answers his own question with the predictable "Healthy people don’t yield large profits", to a baffling and quite frightening 13.5 thousand likes.
I appears that the account owner Matt Roeske is drinking from a 1920s-era product known as the Revigator.
"The glazed ceramic body of the jar has a porous lining that incorporated uranium ore," the Museum of Radiation and Radioactivity explains.
"Water placed inside the jar would absorb the radon released by decay of the radium in the ore. Depending on the type of water, the resulting radon concentrations would range from a few hundred to a few hundred thousand picocuries per liter."
So it's safe right? Not according to a 2010 study from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which found high levels of radon in these antique jugs, along with toxic levels of arsenic and lead (for added flavor?).
Among other dubious ideas, Roeske also promotes the idea of staring at the Sun to strengthen your eyes, per Futurism.
As always, it's best to get medical advice from professionals, and peer-reviewed science, rather than some guy on Instagram necking drink from a radioactive bottle we knew a century ago was incredibly harmful for your health.
