Diet Coke Nutrition Facts The Benefits of Alkalinizing and Mineralizing Water.
In this article, Mike Adams shares on alkalinizing and mineralizing water. Mike Adams is the founder of Natural News.
Kevin: Let's talk a little bit about alkalinizing water and there are a lot of machines that do that. What are the benefits of that? Do they actually take out some of the mineral content, as well? Are their filters built into some of these things or are they just changing the pH balance of the water?
Mike: Well, how these units actually work and based on just straight chemistry they produce two outputs. One output is more alkaline and the other output, the other stream of water coming out is more acidic, because you can't really change the pH of that. Let's say a pot of water you can't change the pH really, unless you add something to take something out. You would need to perform some kind of chemistry. You can split it apart. You can have one batch that's more alkaline and another batch that's more acidic. I owned a unit like that for a while and I have some very high end pH testing equipment that I use for my gardening, because if you're going to grow blueberries then you need the right pH for the soil.
Well, these units, sure they produce a little slightly more alkaline water, but it's not that big of a deal. It's really not that drastic. I found that you can create more alkaline water by stirring up some barley grass juice in a glass of water. That's far more alkaline. So if you want to drink alkaline water that's fine, but there are other ways to get that. Celery juice is very alkaline. So is cucumber juice and that's a great way to get that. The other thing people don't realize is there's a risk and a drawback to using this and that is that most people when they eat food they don't have sufficient stomach acid to properly digest that food, especially the minerals. If you want to digest calcium and magnesium and all of these minerals you need a really strong stomach acid. That's the only way you're going to break it down. Well, what if you take your mineral supplements and then you drink all this alkaline water? The fact is you're not going to be able to break down those minerals and they're going to go right for you and your going to waste your money. You might actually contribute to kidney stones or something.
There are times in your diet when you need more acid. Like when you're eating minerals, or if you eat meat for example, which I would never do, but some people do. If you eat a steak you want an acidic stomach, believe me, because you've got to break that stuff down. Dogs have very, very acidic stomachs, because they eat raw bones and they can just digest those bones with their stomach acid, but if you fed a dog alkaline water and then fed him some raw bones that dog would have some serious digestive problems. Finally, I know I'm answering this with a very long paragraph here.
Kevin: No. Keep going.
Mike: But finally, the main reason most people are drinking this alkaline water in the first place is because their regular diets or to acidic to begin with. They're using this machine as a way to compensate for really lousy dietary choices that are too acidic. So they think oh, gee, I'm going to drink a Coke and I'm going to drink a Starbucks and I'm going to have the sugar in my diet means and these are all acidic, so I'm I'm going to compensate with an alkaline water and that's the wrong approach. The right approach is just get those acidic substances out of your diet, drink some fresh water, drink some celery juice, drink some fruit juice and you're going to be fine. So personally, I don't recommend the alkaline machine. I don't see that they have important use in a healthy lifestyle, frankly.
Kevin: Yeah.
Mike: There's a lot of commercial hype out there and granted, there are some products are really great, like these water filters that are really fantastic and I mentioned I like the Aqua Sonic company. Their products really do work. Even the Pur filters and Brita filters. They really work and they take stuff out of the water and that's great, but plop down $600 or $900 on alkalinizing machine when your stomach acid might really need to be more acidic doesn't take any sense to me.
Kevin: Yeah. I don't know what your extent of knowledge about this is, but are we alkaline phobic? Is that the right word?
Mike: You mean are we afraid of being to alkaline?
Kevin: No. I guess that would be the wrong word, but I think we fear -- are we acidi-phobic. I like that.
Mike: Okay.
Kevin: Acidiphobic. I think of the natural health world, we might have become that a little bit.
Mike: Sure. There's a lot of legitimate research based on the idea that people are too acidic in terms of what they take in, because it's all processed foods and caffeine and sugar and phosphoric acid, which you can either drink a Coke or you can scrub anchors on battleships with it. It's a multiple purpose acid. So that's very true, but the answer, like I mentioned is not to counter that with alkaline substances, per se, but rather to remove these dangerous acids from your diet and then just eat fresh produce and drink fresh vegetable juice and eat like a freshitarian, to use that term that we talked about before. Get this, some people who have bone health problems, especially elderly people, will swallow Tums. Tums are made of some really low-grade minerals, like calcium carbonate, for example and sodium bicarbonate, which is an alkaline mineral. So they're taking calcium minerals and alkaline minerals together. What does that mean? It means that they're probably not going to be able to digest the calcium. If you were going to take calcium and you want to be able to use it you should take it with some vinegar. Drink some vinegar and take some calcium and then you get it. Think about this. Pregnant women, when they get weird cravings they sometimes make a lot of sense. One night an expectant mother can wake up and just say I want pickles and ice cream. What is pickles and ice cream? Pickles are acidic. Ice cream is calcium. It has a lot of calcium in it. She's craving calcium and her body is giving her the signal that says eat some calcium and break it down with acids and absorb it and that's why she's craving pickles and ice cream.
Kevin: It sounds awful.
Mike: Yeah, it does, but if you need calcium so desperately your body can come up with that signal.
Kevin: Right.
Mike: A lot of times during pregnancy that's exactly what's going on.
Kevin: It goes for or whatever it has recognized as the source of that?
Mike: Absolutely. Like magnesium and chocolate. People who have this craving for chocolate, often they just need more magnesium.
Kevin: Yeah.
Mike: I find that, for example, if I have a craving for salty fat foods it means I'm deficient of salt and I hope we get a chance to talk about salt and water, by the way.
Kevin: What an incredible way to move on... Let's talk about that, because the conception or misconception or the myth, which I believe it is and I just want to put that on line is that we should drink eight glasses of water a day, eight ounces and that's sufficient for everyone.
Mike: Yeah, okay. Where do we begin on this one? Well, clearly water is important to health and I'm a big advocate of drinking water, so let me put that out there first. It's not just what you drink. It's not the water that passes through your body that's important. It's the water that's hydrating your cells and your tissues and your brain. Your brain has a lot of water in it. So how do you retain this water? How you actually keep yourself hydrated at a cellular level? The answer to that is, of course, salt. You've got to have salt and I don't mean that processed sodium chloride garbage that people have too much of. I'm talking about full spectrum sea salt and Celtic sea salt. You know the rough stuff, the brown looking stuff. It's not white. It's not processed. It's full spectrum sea salt. When you get that into your body it allows you to retain the water and makes you healthy, so that you can lubricate your neurons, so that your cells can get rid of toxic byproducts that are water-soluble, so that you can circulate the vitamins and minerals that your cells need in order to live. This water is crucial for that, but you got to have salt to keep in. You know, some people will say well, I don't want to retain water, because it makes me look fat and I noticed that, too, like when I go to the ocean and I swim in the ocean for three or four days. I get so much salt in my body that I do kind of puff up a little bit. I think last time I was there I gained 5 pounds of water weight.
Kevin: Wow.
Mike: I don't care. I'm not competing in Mr. Natural Bodybuilding contest. I'm here to be healthy and not to lose so much salt that I look ripped all the time. I want to be healthy and if I have a little bit of puffiness I know that that's associated with good hydration. The truth is I've been in cases where I exercised too much and I sweat too much, because I live in the desert and I'll run and I'll exercise and sweat out all the minerals and I'll look really thin and really fit, like a triathlete and I find I'm salt deficient. I'm craving salty snack foods. One time I found myself at Trader Joe's sleepwalking on pharmaceuticals or something, even though I don't take them, sleepwalking towards the bag of Cheetos or something. I was like, oh my gosh, what am I doing?
Kevin: Right.
Mike: Clearly I needed salt.
Kevin: That's an incredible point.
Diet Coke Nutrition Facts.