Alkaline water: it’s the rage. Celebrities, influencers… everyone is talking about it.
But does it really do what the vendors claim? Does Alkaline water help your health?
It depends.
But first, let’s try some simple maths. We already know what the recommended daily allowances are of the important alkaline minerals, calcium and magnesium.
Calcium:
Age and life-stage Recomm. dietary intake of calcium (mg/day)
Women 19–50 1,000 mg
(including pregnant and breastfeeding women)
Women 51–701 300 mg
Men 19–70 1,000 mg
Adults over 70 1,300 mg
Now Magnesium:
Age and life-stage Recomm. dietary intake of calcium (mg/day)
Age Male/Female PregnancyLactationBirth to 6 months 30 mg
7–12 months 75 mg
1–3 years 80 mg
4–8 years 130 mg
9–13 years 240 mg
14–18 years 410 mg
19–30 years 400 mg
31–50 years 420 mg
51+ years 420 mg
OK. That’s what our bodies need every day to maintain good health. Now let’s see what a typical drinking water analysis will give us.
On average, the content of calcium and magnesium in the drinking water is around 20-30 mg/L calcium and 10 mg/L magnesium.
Are you getting enough alkaline water minerals?
If you are a male between 19 and 70 years old, you need 1000mg per day. To get this from normal drinking water you’d need to drink…. ready for it?
33 litres a day!
To get sufficient magnesium from your drinking water you’d need to drink 40 litres per day.
Clearly, this is impossible. So if you are in good health, you must be getting your Ca and Mg elsewhere. There are only two sources left: food and supplements. It follows that your health proves you are getting enough alkaline minerals. Or conversely, if you are not healthy, then a lack of these minerals in your food may be playing a part.
Is Alkaline Water a good way to alkalize?
Yes.. and no.
Obviously, if you had a choice of acidic or neutral water and alkaline water, it’s smart to drink alkaline water simply because every little bit helps in maintaining an alkaline buffer in your blood, especially when we consider the highly acidifying elements of modern life.
So.. yes. Drink up!
But what sort of alkaline water will help most? and is the ‘alkaline water’ pushed by water ionizer vendors the real thing?
True Alkaline Water.
Let’s take the example of typical levels of alkaline water in the example we used above. It has 20-30 mg calcium and 10 mg magnesium in one tire. Most of us can just manage to drink 2 litres or 8 glasses of water per day. So if we drink water from the tap, we get a measly 60mg of calcium and 20mg of magnesium for our guzzling efforts.
If we have been talked into buying an electric water ionizer that uses electrolysis to separate out the alkaline minerals, we’ll at best, double that, because all the ionizer is really doing is reducing the water volume by half, thus doubling the mg per litre.
It may look like more because the machine will tell you you are drinking (for example) pH9.5 water. However, the pH you get when you test ionizer water is artificially inflated by the process of electrolysis. This ‘pumps up’ the pH but adds no more alkaline minerals, so the net effect is an inflated reading.
Other water filters actually use alkaline minerals in their filtration process, adding to the alkalis already in the water. These ‘natural’ water filters give a true pH reading and actually deliver the alkaline minerals reflected by the pH reading.
The Importance of Actual Alkaline Minerals.
The most important takeaway from this page is simply this:
We need alkaline minerals for good health. So we need to be aware of what sort of water we are consuming. Is it already alkaline? Most municipal water supplies are alkaline, and vast areas of the USA, Australia and Europe are naturally highly alkaline. So buying an expensive water alkalizer is frankly, unnecessary. If you do choose to use one of these systems, what you will do is most likely create very high alkaline water, as it concentrates the water. This, we’ve seen, is not a good idea. The body has major problems with this sort of water.
So step one for any such decision is to use a pH testing kit to determine whether you are already drinking alkaline water and if you really need it to have higher alkalinity.
If you do, look for a natural alkalizing filter that adds alkaline minerals to your tap water. That’s what your body needs.
Finally, it’s important to be aware that things have radically changed in the last five years. You may have seen (MLM) people telling you about their amazing health improvements due to ‘alkaline ionized water’. They are all wrong.
From what you’ve learned today, you can now appreciate that the minimal amount of alkalis you’ll get from an electric water ionizer couldn’t possibly have had the effect people say it did. Here’s our interpretation of these stories.
1. Most of the people were unhealthy, to begin with and the simplest form of health improvement – drinking more water – created the health change. As a nation, we are all chronically dehydrated.
2. A good natural or electric water ionizer has a byproduct of the ionizing function: molecular hydrogen. We were privileged to witness the discovery of this amazing molecule by Tyler Lebaron, some six years ago, and the development of water systems since then with purpose-built technology to increase the H2 levels in the water they filter.
Molecular Hydrogen Water
This article is already too long to champion the many, many health advantages of regular intake of molecular hydrogen. Tyler LeBaron’s website for his Molecular hydrogen Institute does a much better job.
Alkaline Water? Or Hydrogen water?
We have learned a huge amount over the last 21 years. We too thought that it was the alkaline water causing the amazing stories and it was quite a leap to learn that this simply wasn’t so. Yes, drinking alkaline water is a better health strategy than drinking neutral or acidic water, but the true benefit of owning molecular hydrogen infusing water filer doesn’t come from the alkalinity.
It comes from molecular hydrogen. The smallest molecule in the universe. The building block of life itself.
