The Defiance Fuel Story, Part I

Mahatma Gandhi famously said, “It is health that is true wealth.” The amazing story you’re about to read illustrates Gandhi’s words perfectly.
In 1983 Penny Lorenzen was a very sick woman. A mystery illness was causing excruciating pain, fatigue and a myriad of other symptoms that did not add up to any plausible diagnosis. Prior to her illness, Penny had been a ranked tennis player and a great athlete. Now the former athlete and mother of two young children was practically bedridden and in chronic pain.
Penny and her husband, Dr. Lee Lorenzen, were told that Penny’s illness was psychosomatic–all in her head. Lee and Penny disagreed. Dr. Lorenzen received his BA in Biology from the University of California at Berkeley. From there he went to University of California Irvine School of Medicine where he was a Research Associate in the Department of Pharmacology. Lee continued his graduate studies in Biology at Cal State Fullerton and finished up with Doctorate studies in Nutrition at Metropolitan Collegiate Institute, London, UK. His professional background, as well as his understanding of his wife’s personality, made it impossible for Lee to accept that Penny’s mysterious ailment was not a disease in her body.
After two years of ongoing frustration for both Penny and Lee, to say nothing of the ongoing pain for Penny, an internist at UCLA was able to identify two viruses in Penny’s cerebrospinal fluid–Coxsackie B and Epstein-Barr. The official diagnosis was Myalgic Encephalomyelitis–one of the worst cases the doctor had seen. At this point, the couple were told that Penny would be bedridden for the rest of her life, and that basically there was no hope. She would live, but she’d want to die. The news devastated the entire family.
Despite the diagnosis, Penny and Lee tried every therapeutic approach possible–anti-virals, experimentals, chiropractic, acupuncture–yet no treatment helped in a substantive way. Then Lee met a physician who said he took a group of patients to drink from the healing well at Lourdes, France, every year. This doctor reported seeing wonderful results in his patients. Drinking the waters of Lourdes seemed worthy of consideration, but there was no way Penny could make such a trip–the flight alone would be too painful in her fragile condition.
So Lee got on the phone. He began investigating and found that healing springs exist all over the world–Japan, Russia, India, Mexico and more. He learned the efficacy of the water was attributed to faith or religious beliefs or in some cases the local deity. But Lee, who is himself a Christian, felt that a broader interpretation was possible; that it is possible for God to use a variety of tools to achieve His purpose.
Ultimately Lee spoke to an inn owner at Lourdes. Lee wanted to know specifically what the inn owner saw in the pilgrims’ experiences. The answer, which held as a constant across multiple phone calls to many inn owners worldwide, was that when patients drank directly from the source, the water helped their ailments, but when the water was bottled and taken back to their rooms, it didn’t work. Lee realized the water had a half life of minutes. Lee experimented a bit and learned that if the water was chilled its properties lasted a little longer. Thus, Lee realized the healing properties of the water could not be bacterial or mineral, but rather must be structural since the effects were so transient.
The next step was to have samples of the water at Lourdes flash frozen at the source and shipped back to US packed in dried ice. Under the microscope Lee found an organized cluster of water molecules held together by their shared hydrogen atoms–a uniquely crystalline structure. Lee then set out to recreate this same physical profile. He worked in his lab until he got the same pattern and he found a way to stabilize it. The process took four long years.
When Lee was satisfied that he had successfully recreated the healing water, he first experimented by drinking it himself and he had the family dog, a senior golden retriever with hip dysplasia, drink the water as well. Lee himself felt fine and to his amazement and delight the family’s old arthritic dog was jumping into the family car two weeks later. Next came the real test of Lee’s work — Penny began drinking the water. In six weeks she was up and moving around and feeling good for the first time in almost five years.
To Penny and Lee’s great delight, by 1988 Penny was feeling her old self again. But several years after Penny’s recovery, Lee realized that he was bothered by a feeling of niggling doubt lurking just below his consciousness. He knew Penny trusted him implicitly and that her trust might have led him to create the biggest placebo in the world. So he switched Penny’s healing water for regular water and didn’t tell her. After three days Penny was not feeling well and she asked Lee if he had changed anything. Lee confessed to his “experiment” to which his wife replied, “I’ll make a deal with you–you don’t change my water and I won’t change the locks.”
Today Penny Lorenzen is playing tennis again, chasing her grandkids and living a full active life. It’s hard to believe she was ever ill. The healing water that Lee created out of a desperate need to help Penny went through several more iterations. Lee then patented his processes. The end result is now known as Defiance Fuel, the first patented structured water formulated for athletic performance. Defiance Fuel is designed to return your body to a state of healthy hydration, energy, and balance.
In Part II of this post, I’ll share with you my own experience with drinking Defiance Fuel and participating in Defiance Fuel’s 30 Day Challenge. (Spoiler alert–I’m blown away!!)