Alkaline water can improve your metabolism, boost your liver health, and even help you fight cancer—at least according to its fans. However, the reality is much more mundane. There is little good evidence to support these and many other health claims of alkaline water, and the only way alkaline water is significantly better than regular water is that it is more expensive.
Alkaline water is water that has been treated (usually through an ionizer) to have a pH above 7, which is the normal and neutral pH of water (scientists use pH to measure how acidic or alkaline a substance is, Starting from 0) to 14). The basic premise behind alkaline water is that it can balance an overly acidic body, specifically by targeting the acidity in our blood, thus repairing a long list of health conditions purportedly related to acidity.
A major problem with these claims is that few studies provide even tenuous support for them.Some studies suggest alkaline water may have benefits, but these usually involve animal, petri dishor very small sample size Human volunteers.Larger exams don’t show up much, such as the 2016 review not found Any positive association between drinking alkaline water or eating alkaline-rich foods and preventing cancer or improving cancer outcomes.
The review’s authors bluntly concluded: “There is no justification for promoting an alkaline diet and alkaline water to the public to prevent or treat cancer.”
Regardless of the evidence, Very logical Alkaline water is mixed in many ways. First, the human body is already very good at ensuring that our organs and body fluids remain at the desired pH. This is one of many examples of homeostasis, or the complex biological processes that ensure the stability of an organism. The typical pH of our blood even hovers above 7, so it is already slightly alkaline, and any lower or higher levels over time can be harmful to us.
While certain health conditions can disrupt this balance, given our biology, it’s unlikely that an occasional sip of alkaline water would do us much good in this situation. The water we drink enters the stomach first, which is very acidic, so it is quickly neutralized. Drinking large amounts of alkaline water may significantly increase the pH in your stomach, but this is only temporary as the body is very good at making sure everything stays the same. Additionally, thankfully we have treatments that reliably address conditions where the body is overly acidic (such as stomach antacids), so there’s no need to roll the dice on something that’s almost certainly useless.
So yes, you should drink plenty of water (although not necessarily eight cups a day! But if you stick with tap water instead of more expensive alkalizing substances, that’s totally fine.
