After challenging myself this past year to increase my intake of water, which I feel I have been very successful in doing, I began to wonder what exactly is in the water I am drinking so much of. I know most of us grew up drinking from the hose or spigot and turned out perfectly fine, but my curiosity was more in-line with questioning what harmful or beneficial qualities different waters I am drinking posses. Being in an area with good water quality right out of the tap, I began to become curious as to what certain products, such as alkaline water and electrolyte water, could do for me?
I happen to suffer from chronic acid reflux, which carries with it a variety of possible health complications. I have been on an over-the-counter daily treatment for this, which as you can imagine, has a “laundry-list” of possible side effects much worse than anything the initial problem could cause by itself. After finding success recently in holistic/homeopathic remedies for treating a septum injury that traditional doctors told me would not be easily treatable, I decided to consult with this provider on the issue of my acid reflux as well. In doing so he suggested I try high-pH alkaline water, which has been documented in several studies to help neutralize stomach acid and provide much needed relief in acid reflux patients. Being as affordable to dive into as $50-$60 for a countertop alkaline water filter that converts tap water into purified alkaline water, I figured I would give it a go!
The basic principal that all of this is based on makes perfect sense when you think about it. pH is a measurement of acidity ranging from 0 to 14, where 7 is neutral. Anything below 7 is increasingly more acidic as it approaches 0 and anything above a 7 is increasingly more base as it approaches 14. To put it into perspective, the juice of a lemon is an average of around 2.2 on a pH scale. A lot more in general goes into trying to make your body less acidic because of the way your body processes different foods and drinks other than water, but figuring that I should consume half my body weight in ounces of water each day, getting a high pH water introduced to my body seemed like a good place to start.
This newly found knowledge of acidity in water made me a little curious as to what the different pH levels and levels of chlorine (another “not good” thing in water) were in some of the waters around the house I have been consuming more and more since increasing my water intake. I decided to pick up some simple water test strips to conduct a little home experiment. Although these swimming pool test strips will not provide a pinpoint drinking water analysis, they do offer some insight into the differences of several branded waters that are readily available. The following pictures are my amateur test findings, which will be briefly summarized below them:
As you can see, the pH is measured from orange to pink on the 4th line from the top (orange = acidic / pink = base) and the total chlorine is measured on the second line from the top, ranging from pale yellow to green (pale yellow = low chlorine / green = high chlorine). Alkalinity was also a concern of mine, as the benefits from high pH and high alkaline water have been my goal in this new water experiment. From my findings, all of the test samples were very low on the chlorine content, which is pretty much what I was hoping to find from anything I was putting into my body! What surprised me most were the pH readings I got from the different test samples. All of the waters were right along the neutral area on the pH scale, aside from the “electrolyte water” and “standard bottled water #2”, which were on the slightly acidic side of the pH scale. This little test of mine helped me in eliminating “bottled water #2” and “electrolyte water” from our house for good. “Bottled water #2” was what we recently switched our young daughters onto for their formula and drinking water, but will be switching to something more neutral now. If nothing else, this test of mine proves that not all water is the same and that questioning the norm and taking the time to experiment with it can be fun! Confirming that my tap water was of good quality and that the alkaline filter we purchased did what I intended, in making the tap water between an 8 and 9 on the pH scale, were great conclusions to take away from this. I will be reporting back in the “Health Smart” area soon if the increase in this filtered alkaline water helps reduce my acid reflux.