Alkaline water. Do you drink?

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Originally Posted By: DBMaster
I have a reverse osmosis system. I drink a lot of water from it. A few years ago I found that I was suffering on and off from mild heartburn. I found that mildly alkaline water helps a bit. I bought a pH meter. The water from the RO system is pretty close to 7.0. If I add 1/2 TSP of baking soda and 1/4 TSP of pink sea salt to my 1.5 gallon refrigerator jug I get a pH of around 8.0. It also makes the water taste less "aggressive" much like what the mineral salts added to bottle water do. I know it's counter intuitive, but adding lemon juice also makes water more alkaline. You'll have to look that one up because I don't get it, either. Some people spend big bucks and get things like Kangen machines. I know someone who swears by it, but you know what that's worth.

I don't ascribe health benefits to it. I just know that I feel the heartburn less and the water is more pleasant to drink.

And, before you ask, the tap water here is perfectly safe. It just tastes lousy and has off smells to it depending upon the time of year.


The rest of what you posted is good opinion, but the highlighted is not. There's no way lemon juice which is about 5% citric acid is alkaline.
 
Apparently, the way your body reacts to lemon juice has an "alkalizing" effect. It may be pseudoscience and I may have been mistaken in adding that to my post.
 
Originally Posted By: DBMaster
Apparently, the way your body reacts to lemon juice has an "alkalizing" effect. It may be pseudoscience and I may have been mistaken in adding that to my post.


It is pseudoscience. Once that is in your stomach all bets are off, and what nutrients are in there are metabolized just like any other food. Look at the link Bandito440 posted. That is a good overview of how things in the diet simply do not affect the pH of the body except in extreme circumstances. Blood is buffered to maintain a narrow pH range and outside of that short range is lethal.
 
The way things were explained to me is the lemon juice and well, Bragg apple cider vinegar initially drank aids the acidic condition of the stomach thus calming it down. But as we digest it and assimilate the minerals in it,that determines if we benefit from it PH wise. In this case alkaline. They learn which foods are acid or alkaline by burning them down to ash I believe and then measure the ph values.
 
Originally Posted By: Toaster_Jer
The way things were explained to me is the lemon juice and well, Bragg apple cider vinegar initially drank aids the acidic condition of the stomach thus calming it down. But as we digest it and assimilate the minerals in it,that determines if we benefit from it PH wise. In this case alkaline. They learn which foods are acid or alkaline by burning them down to ash I believe and then measure the ph values.

No. The alkaline diet thing is pseudoscience, shared by naturopaths and yoga instructors everywhere.

You cannot change your body's pH with diet. Homeostasis keeps it at 7.35 - 7.45.

If you made your body more alkaline, you would be suffering from alkalosis, and due for a trip to the hospital. Read the links shared by myself and Shannow, or find a physician or biologist to ask about this.
 
Originally Posted By: Toaster_Jer
I never said anything about diet. I was only talking about the food or drink and what it contains with it's effect on Ph.


That's the point, it doesn't affect your pH in any meaningful way. Body pH is tightly controlled by a variety of methods, not the least of which are complex buffers in the blood. Only a very narrow range is permitted unless there is something wrong. Small temporary changes can be made, try hyperventilating for a minute - that's mild respiratory alkalosis. Is that how alkaline water makes you feel? Hopefully not.
 
Thank you kschachn.

Here's a handy tip: if an unqualified person mentions any of these trendy items to suggest a health benefit, it's very likely pseudoscience.
  • Alkaline anything
  • Apple cider vinegar
  • Lemon juice
  • Coconut oil
  • Himalayan (pink) sea salt
  • Turmeric
Contact your physician or a local university with a strong bio program to clarify if unsure. Internet personalities like Oz, Mercola, and Wolfe are not credible sources for health information. Neither are YouTube videos, without checking the source of information.
 
I used to work for a dietary supplement company and I attended numerous trade shows and presentations. Aside from the obvious quackery and junk science I noticed that there were many doctors and PhD's willing to put their credibility up for sale hawking the stuff. Thank you, DSHEA, for making it possible to bilk the public aggressively for the past 22 years!
 
FWIW, my curiosity got the better of me as I was reading through this thread.

I grabbed a beaker of our notoriously hard tap water, and it read 8.26.

The limestone geology around here makes it that way, and I would not be surprised if the pH is a decent bit higher in the central part of the state.

Whatever the case, I'm going to keep chugging tap water with the occasional mixture of water, carbon dioxide, phosphoric acid, and other flavoring agents. I also like hot water that has been used to extract oils from the beans of tropical plants.

None of it makes that much different to my ~pH 2 stomach acid.
 
My god. You're putting a hydric and phosphoric acid solution into your body? But, those chemikillz have scary names. They'll give you the cancers and the autisims. Here's a YouTube video that shows he truth. Shake up weeple! /s
 
I don't see why some have to get into tangent. If one feels good drinking a water then let them be in peace. It may or may not be a waste of money. Let them be to decide. I for one have had digestive disorders since I was a child. And I for one benefit from drinking lemon juice, and I benefit from cider, in fact Kombucha works great too. Call it what ever you want, but I would rather drink that than taking tums, rolaids, gaviscon or milk of magnesia. The fact is more and more alternative medicine is coming to this country and I am glad I can see a doctor about it now without some smarty telling people it's stupid. If it works safely Great.
 
Originally Posted By: Toaster_Jer
I don't see why some have to get into tangent. If one feels good drinking a water then let them be in peace. It may or may not be a waste of money. Let them be to decide. I for one have had digestive disorders since I was a child. And I for one benefit from drinking lemon juice, and I benefit from cider, in fact Kombucha works great too. Call it what ever you want, but I would rather drink that than taking tums, rolaids, gaviscon or milk of magnesia. The fact is more and more alternative medicine is coming to this country and I am glad I can see a doctor about it now without some smarty telling people it's stupid. If it works safely Great.


You vilify the commercial antacid products (which are "chemicals" just like lemon juice or vinegar), but what's in that Kombucha? Any studies out there that break down the host of chemicals in that product?

My mother-in-law used to be like that. She'd rail against coffee but promote some sketchy coffee substitute which had a list of ingredients a mile long, most of which I'd never heard of in my life. Her bottom line was always "they sell it in the health foods store so it has to be OK". Same thing for sugar, milk and seeming everything else I ate or drank (including city tap water). She relied on these untested, unregulated and completely unknown supplements, products and substitutes she found at the "health" food store or some Asian market. I tried to get her to understand that the list of ingredients (when it was even included) was a mile long list of things no one knows anything about. But that conversation never went anywhere.
 
Originally Posted By: Toaster_Jer
I don't see why some have to get into tangent. If one feels good drinking a water then let them be in peace.

The OP is collecting food stamps and living in a homeless shelter. He owns what will fit into a backpack, but is buying snake oil. If you don't want to have your purchases of woo woo critiqued, don't post them on a public forum.

Originally Posted By: Toaster_Jer
It may or may not be a waste of money. Let them be to decide.

When it comes to diet and medicine, it's up to individuals to decide what to use for themselves. It is not up to individuals to decide what is effective. We have scientific consensus for that.

Originally Posted By: Toaster_Jer
I for one have had digestive disorders since I was a child. And I for one benefit from drinking lemon juice, and I benefit from cider, in fact Kombucha works great too. Call it what ever you want, but I would rather drink that than taking tums, rolaids, gaviscon or milk of magnesia.

The appeal to nature is a logical fallacy. Things are neither better nor safer because they're natural.

Here's a partial list of kombucha's contents:
* acids - acetic, gluconic, citric, oxalic, phosphoric, lactic, kojic, malic;
* enzymes - protease zymase, sucrase, catalase, amylase, lipase;
* lipids - fatty acids, sterols;
* monosaccharides, disaccharides;
* ethyl alcohol;
* chlorophyll, xanthophylls;
* vitamins - C, group B, vitamin PP, vitamin D;
* Microorganisms - Acetobacter, Gluconacetobacter, Lactobacillus, Lactococcus, Leuconostoc, Bifidobacterium, Thermus, Allobaculum, Ruminococcaceae Incertae Sedis, Propionibacterium, etc.

Here's a list of the ingredients in Tums:

Sucrose, calcium carbonate, corn starch, talc, mineral oil, natural flavor, sodium polyphosphate

If you want to take one over the other, that's great. Just don't sell it as something it isn't. Kombucha is a solution that contains the chemicals listed above, although it'll vary some with every batch.

Fun fact: the active ingredient in Tums is calcium carbonate (CaCO3). That very same chemical is added to alkaline beverages to give them the alkalinity.

Originally Posted By: Toaster_Jer
The fact is more and more alternative medicine is coming to this country and I am glad I can see a doctor about it now without some smarty telling people it's stupid. If it works safely Great.

Hopefully it's a natropath who's preaching the woo woo and not a physician.

Do you know what they call alternative medicine that's been proven effective and safe? Medicine.
 
Originally Posted By: Bandito440

Fun fact: the active ingredient in Tums is calcium carbonate (CaCO3). That very same chemical is added to alkaline beverages to give them the alkalinity.


And it's also what causes the fairly high pH I reported earlier of my tap water.
 
Originally Posted By: bunnspecial
Originally Posted By: Bandito440

Fun fact: the active ingredient in Tums is calcium carbonate (CaCO3). That very same chemical is added to alkaline beverages to give them the alkalinity.


And it's also what causes the fairly high pH I reported earlier of my tap water.


Actually, the "electrolytically" alkalised water they do some stranger stuff to than just add salts.

A semi-permiable membrane, with a voltage applied across it to break the water and salts up...

http://en.natura-zdrowie.pl/ph-of-health/ionised-alkaline-water/
 
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