Does alkaline water really prevent sickness? If yes, how does it work?
Recently, there is a lot of different opinions on whether drinking alkaline water is really good for our body or bad.
This is mostly due to a certain MLM’s brand of ionizer in the market oversell, over claimed, and overpriced their product. Leading to certain individuals, including their competitors (not selling water ionizer), medical student and even some doctors, begin to have their personal opinions.
On the other hand, the ionizer seller continues to convince their customers with write ups from ionizer’s researcher and testimonies.
Everybody has their own say and believe or agenda. Leading to never ending arguments.
Causing confusion to the readers and end-users.
I’m not a doctor, not a medical practitioner, nor a researcher for the ionizer. I’m just a person who sells all types of water filtration. However, with my 16 years’ experience in this industry and information I gathered, I will use layman terms to technically explain how alkaline water helps prevention of disease.
Our body pH
As we know, different part of our body has their specific and constant pH.
When our pH is not at the required level, the result might be lethal.
So in order to constantly remain at the specific pH, there is a feedback mechanism in our body to monitor the changes.
Our blood pH is between 7.34-7.45. If our pH drops outside this level, our body will automatically adjust it back. By getting the required minerals from another part of our body.
For instant, if our blood is too acidic (Acidosis), our body will get/produce alkaline minerals such as Calcium, Magnesium, Sodium, Potassium from another part of the body to neutralize it back to required pH.
This may lead to deficiency of certain minerals to other parts of the body (Example: Calcium from bone may lead to osteoporosis). Cumulatively deficiency of certain minerals may lead to sickness (degenerative disease).
Thus, if we can prevent our body from getting the required minerals from another part of our body, by providing with sufficient minerals and nutrients, we can prevent sickness. And this applies to our whole body.
Our body, acidic or alkaline?
We all know anything excessive will be bad for health, be it acidic or alkaline. So how do we know if our body will be too alkaline instead?
The answer is “it won’t”… How do we know?
Simple, we all breathe out carbon dioxide (acidic) and breathe in oxygen (alkaline). This no-brainer show that our body is constantly acidic and in need of alkaline. While the same apply to plants and vegetables, the difference is they need carbon dioxide (acidic) and breathe out oxygen (alkaline). That proves that plants are always alkaline and need acidic to thrive.
This is the natural state for us. Because if our body and cells can thrive in an acidic environment like plants, the cells will be considered as mutated cells or more specific name as Cancer cells.
So how can we prevent sickness by drinking alkaline water?
Our stomach pH has to stay highly acidic between 1.5 – 4.0 to digest food and kill bacteria & virus.
When we drink alkaline water, the pH goes up.
When this happens, there is a feedback mechanism in our stomach to detect this and commands the stomach wall to secrete more hydrochloric acid into the stomach to bring the pH value back below 4.
Hydrochloric acid is created only when needed because our body cannot keep it and will burn through our body.
So the cells in our stomach wall must produce it on an instantly-as-needed basis.
The ingredients in the stomach cell that make hydrochloric acid (HCl) are carbon
dioxide (CO2), water (H2O), and sodium chloride (NaCl) or potassium chloride (KCl).
“Carbon dioxide + water + chlorine”
The formula as below:
NaCl + H2O + CO2 = HCl + NaHCO3,
or
KCl + H2O + CO2 = HCl + KHCO3
The by-product of making hydrochloric acid is sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) or potassium bicarbonate (KHCO3), both are alkaline which goes into the blood stream.
These bicarbonates are the alkaline buffers that neutralize excess acids in the blood.
Preventing our body to extract alkaline minerals from other part of the body. And lessen our body burden leading to a healthier life.
Since we all know “prevention is always better than cure”, this is my opinion of prevention.
In order for them to produce acid, they must also produce alkaline, and vice versa;
Here is another example of a body organ that produces acid in order to produce alkaline.
After the food in the stomach is digested, it must come out to the small intestine. The food at this point is so acidic that it will damage the intestine wall. In order to avoid this problem, the pancreas makes alkaline juice (known as pancreatic juice). This juice is sodium bicarbonate, and is mixed with the acidic food coming out of the stomach. From the above formula, in order to produce bicarbonates, the pancreas must make hydrochloric acid, which goes into our blood stream as waste.
We experience sleepiness after a big meal (not during the meal or while the food is being digested in the stomach), when the digested food is coming out of the stomach; that's the time when hydrochloric acid goes into our blood. Hydrochloric acid is the main ingredient in antihistamines that causes drowsiness.
Alkaline or acid produced by the body must have an equal and opposite acid or alkaline produced by the body; therefore, there is no net gain. However, alkaline supplied from outside the body, like drinking alkaline water, results in a net gain of alkalinity in our body.
Conclusion
I would highly recommend everyone to drink alkaline water, be it ionized or filtered with Bio alkaline . The different is ionized water produce additional benefit of anti-oxidant with ORP (Oxidation Reduction Potentials). But that will be another topic for another day.
