How Much Alkaline Water Should You Drink?

W hen it comes to alkaline water, we all know that it can regulate your body’s pH level, prevents chronic disease including cancer, and slow the aging process, among other health benefits. Either store-bought, made at home following easy recipes, or produced on demand by an alkaline water ionizer machine that even filters the water before passing it through electrolysis and alkalizing it, what’s sure is that you must insert it into your diet if you seek to lead a truly healthy lifestyle and even attenuate the symptoms of certain pre-existing conditions. However, the question arises – how much alkaline water is it recommended to drink on a daily basis? Let’s find out the answer to this question together in the following lines.

How You Can Use It to Improve Workout Sessions

Multiple studies have concluded that it provides an important competitive edge as it reduces muscular acidity that can occur during physical activity. Moreover, it hydrates you better than plain water does, which in turn helps boost your energy levels as you work out and helps you sweat more in the process too.

Aside from the quintessential part it plays in physical activities, alkaline water has other uses that you can benefit from as well. These include:

• Coffee - You can use it to prepare coffee or even tea, depending on what is the beverage of your choice. Both are antioxidant beverages, and alkaline water does nothing more than increase their antioxidant potential, directly boosting their health-enhancing capabilities.
• Soak Vegetables - By doing this, you detoxify the vegetables and fruits you consume, all the pesticides and herbicides with which they were treated being neutralized by the water.
• Cooking - It is recommended that you cook using alkalinized water as well as the foods you prepare with it are bound to taste better and help balance your body’s pH as you consume them.

For drinking, cooking, and working out (if you use alkalinized water for all the aforementioned purposes and activities), a gallon of water per day is more than enough. If you seek to use it for more than just drinking, it’s best to use an water ionizer as it lets you change the pH of the water as needed so that you control its composition according to the purpose you have in mind at that moment, and it passes the water through filtration before outputting it as well.

Side Effects

Even though alkaline water is safe for consumption, it does have the potential to produce side effects. For example, it can reduce stomach acid, which can pose an issue for some individuals as low levels of stomach acid can lead to health issues. Among others, the purpose of stomach acid is to obliterate bacteria so it doesn’t pass into the bloodstream. It is crucial for the digestion of vitamin B-12 and protein as well.

Water that ranges in pH from 8 to 11 is mildly alkaline, while neutral water stands at a 7 pH level. If the pH exceeds 11, the water can actually end up irritating your skin, eyes, and mucous membranes. Aside from all of these issues, it can lead to gastrointestinal problems. Thus, you need to make sure the water you ingest is not too high in pH or it will inevitably disrupt your body’s pH, which will lead to metabolic alkalosis, causing unwanted side effects that include confusion, nausea, vomiting, muscle twitching, and hand tremors.

How to Calculate

We will provide you with the formula you need to use in order to calculate the right amount of alkalinized water to consume on a daily basis to only reap benefits instead of being confronted with any of the aforementioned side effects. Here are the steps to calculating the ideal water amount:

1. Divide your weight in pounds by 2. For example, if you weigh 100 pounds, your result in this first calculation is 50. This means that, per day, you must consume 50 ounces of liquid.
2. If you work out, add another 16 ounces for each hour you spend exercising so that you replace the water you lose in the process through sweating.
3. Generally, men need to drink approximately 102 ounces of liquids per day, while women require less than this. But this is only a generalization and estimations should be based on your weight as explained earlier.

Amount of Water to Drink per Day

Morning

Start the day off with a glass of alkaline water as it gives you a much-needed boost to kick off your day the right way, feeling energized and ready to take on what’s ahead. Do this first thing in the morning, before you eat breakfast so that your body will absorb water before anything else. Your skin, as well as your internal organs, will “thank you” for taking up this habit.

Throughout the Day

Consume it during the day, but make sure that you don’t go overboard by accident. Consume it just like you do regular water. To make sure you’re in the right when it comes to this aspect, use the formula we previously covered to know how much water you can drink and be in the clear. If you balance it out right, the pH level of your body will normalize and positive effects will be witnessed almost instantly.

Night

If you already reached your quota by this point, just have a full glass of water before you hit the sack, it’s more than enough. Just make sure that you don’t use the water in the preparation of other beverages that you might find a good idea to drink before you hit the bed, like juices, for example, as your stomach won’t be able to handle digestion properly if you consume these types of drinks before sleep.

Conclusion

As long as you drink the amount of water recommended for hydration for your body type and workout habits, it doesn’t matter that you drink alkaline or regular, there’s no difference aside from the fact that alkaline is superior in hydration and brings other health boosting perks, as opposed to regular water that, if unfiltered, can actually do more harm than good. Thus, switching to an alkaline diet is, overall, a smart option to improve your immune system and health, so using the guidelines provided here, start hydrating with it and you’ll look and feel better than ever.