Drinking water every day is essential for good health. After all, up to 60% of the adult human body consists of water, so it is incredibly important that you keep yourself hydrated if you want to remain fit and healthy.
Instead of simply drinking normal water to keep healthy, some people have instead tried to one step further by drinking alkaline water every day.
Normal water has a pH rating of approximately 7 which is neutral, but some people are starting to drink water with a higher rating than this.
This might seem strange, but it is part of a health craze that suggests drinking water that contains alkaline will balance out your body’s pH rating, allowing you to have more energy, and be less susceptible to disease.
But like all crazes, a lot of people have jumped on this without doing the proper research into whether or not it is safe to consume alkaline water. That’s why we’ve done the research for you, so if you want to find out if it is safe to drink alkaline water every day then keep on reading.
What Is Alkaline Water?
We’ve briefly touched on this, but let’s quickly establish exactly what alkaline water is. As we have mentioned, alkaline water is water that has a pH rating that is higher than 7.
The majority of water will have a pH rating that is close to 7 as this is neutral on the pH scale. Anything above 7 means that there are alkaline atoms in the water, and as the number increases the level of alkaline also increases.
Typically, most alkaline water will have a pH rating just slightly above the neutral level, with most types testing at the 8 or 9 mark. This small amount of alkaline is believed to balance the pH level of your body which is naturally more acidic and brings our body to a more neutral rating which is believed to have more positive health effects.
What Does It Actually Do?
We’ve also briefly explained what alkaline water is believed to do, but let’s have a look at this in more detail.
As we have said, it is believed by many people that drinking alkaline water every day will help to balance out the pH rating of your body by countering the high acidity levels with alkaline levels.
In theory, this should make your body have a more neutral pH rating which is believed to be a lot more positive for your health than a body with an acidic pH rating.
But, this doesn’t really work. A lot of people believe that our bodies have a high acidity rating as you can find acid in lots of different parts of the body, but this isn’t the case.
In fact, one of the most important parts of the body, your blood, usually has a neutral pH rating of around 7. The only part of your body that will be altered by drinking alkaline water is your urine, which will be leaving your body.
So by paying for alkaline water, you aren’t really getting any health benefits, instead, you are simply neutralizing the pH level of liquid that is exiting your body.
How much alkaline water should you drink a day?
Most alkaline water that you get is sold in bottles at a high price because of the ‘health benefits’ that it offers.
If you only drink a bottle of alkaline water a day then this will have no negative impact on your health, so even though it isn’t doing anything good, it also isn’t doing anything bad.
But, if you were to drink a high amount of alkaline water every day, let’s say, for example, a gallon, then this could cause negative health issues.
Drinking alkaline water doesn’t help balance out your body’s pH level, instead, the acid in your stomach has to work overtime to balance out the alkaline water, rather than the other way around. In small amounts, this will not cause an issue, but in large amounts, it could.
If you consume a gallon of water every single day then your body is going to have to work extremely hard to balance out the amount of alkaline and maintain your body’s pH level.
Due to this, your body will end up producing more digestive enzymes and more gastric juices. This is especially a cause for concern if you are someone who already suffers from a kidney condition and takes medication for this as it could result in your body storing alkaline, which isn’t good.
So if you do want to start drinking alkaline water for the alleged health benefits, then you should only drink a small amount a day to remain healthy.
Does Drinking Alkaline Water Cause or Solve Problems?
If you do any research into alkaline water, you will see that on the surface companies who sell this water advertise a huge range of health benefits, but alkaline water really doesn’t do much to your body.
Obviously, as we have said, it does successfully neutralize the pH level of your urine, but it has no lasting impact on your health or any of your internal organs. In the long run, drinking an excessive amount of alkaline water can actually cause problems within your body rather than fix issues.
So is it really worth it?
There have been some studies that have proven that drinking alkaline water can be good in the short term.
For example, one small study found results that suggested that drinking alkaline water can inactivate an enzyme known as pepsin.
Pepsin is the enzyme that is responsible for acid reflux and indigestion, so this could suggest that drinking alkaline water can prevent you from getting this.
But this study, and others that have found benefits for humans, were not completed on human beings, and so there is no official scientific confirmation that this actually works.
Summary
So is it bad to drink alkaline water daily? Not as long as you only drink a small amount.
Should you drink a gallon of alkaline water a day then you would be putting your health at risk, even though there is no proof that drinking alkaline water does anything good for our bodies.