I was recently asked the question: ‘Is alkaline water good for you?’ and my answer wasn’t as straightforward as you’d think. I explained that alkaline water on its own can’t be described as inherently ‘good’ for your health but also that it’s better than stale and dirty tap water all the same.
I then explained I would need to sit down and explain for 5 minutes the reasons why instead of giving a simple yes or no, which could be slightly misleading. So in answer to the question ‘is alkaline water good for you?’ and whether it is worth investing in the stuff if you are looking to become healthier, here is what I have to say.
If we are asking the question ‘is alkaline water good for you?’ we need to establish first exactly what we are talking about when we say ‘alkaline water’. The fact that there are multiple different healthy drinking products on the market that are apparentlyalkaline is the reason why just saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ would be a slightly disingenuous answer. But in general, there are three main alkaline waters that are the most widely available: bottled alkaline water, alkaline water from an alkalizer, and alkaline water from a water ionizer machine. Only one of these types of alkaline water is actively healthy to drink.
As I touched on at the beginning, the quality of the tap water supply in the US isn’t great. In fact, the quality can be very bad, with estimates that as many as 20 million people each year get sick just from drinking their own tap water. So this is why even though basic alkaline water on its own, like bottled alkaline water, isn’t actively health boosting, it can be better than your tap water because it is distilled, a process which removes nasty impurities that are let through the gate by slack water quality controls. But there is a reason why I absolutely cannot recommend any bottled water as a health product: distillation is bad news as well as good. Distillation is a process that all major bottled brands go through and is basically the process of boiling water and collecting the vapour to be condensed. The problem is that this removes good things from the water as well as bad. When beneficial minerals are removed from the water, it turns it acidic. So alkaline bottled water tends to be acidic. And you don’t want too much acidic liquid inside you.
Something that produces alkaline water that is antioxidant-packed and filtered at the same time is a water ionizer machine with alkaline water filters. These are vastly more complex machines than simple alkaline water flasks and that shows in the quality of the drinking water they produce.
With a water ionizer installed on your kitchen sink, tap water will enter an ionizer unit and pass into a chamber equipped with a platinum-coated titanium electrode where electrolysis takes place. The electrode energises the water, imbuing it with hydroxyl ions and separating water with fewer ions as a secondary product (which can be used as a disinfectant). Hydroxyl ions are water’s natural antioxidant, and the presence of these molecules also makes water that has been ionized alkaline too. And you won’t have to worry about contaminants, either. Top ionizers have 16-filtration systems, which stop 99.9% of contaminants getting through.
So there is no doubt that a water that is alkaline, antioxidant and contaminant free is good for the human body. It’s just important to remember you can only get water with all these healing qualities from an ionizer machine.
To your health,
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