So you get the gist of it, alkaline water filters raise the pH of water to a more basic solution (and although raising the pH of a solution has a bad connotation to it, I assure you this doesn't cause any harm) which in turn is supposed to have health benefits.
What are these benefits? Who has made these claims? Are they real, and are they scientific claims? Well, let's get to the bottom of it.
First, allow me to give a brief description of the process of alkaline water filters.
Most models utilize a water ionizer that ionizes water, thus changing the pH, which for those of you who do not know, is a measure of how acidic a solution is.
The higher, the less acidic, so this product aims at lowering the acidity, thus raising the pH.
The water ionizer uses a process known as electrolysis to separate water into alkaline and acidic fractions.
Keeping it brief, this makes it so water lacks mineral ions, such as distilled water, which is why many of these alkaline water filters have a compartment that artificially adds minerals to your water.
This is, for the most part, a good thing.
There have been many claims over the years as to how these water purifiers can help people's health.
The claims include that it can actually help people live longer and fight off signs of age by altering the acid-base ratio in the body! This is quite the claim, and is worth discussing in greater details.
Companies also claims that it acts as an antioxidant which helps your boy fight of bacteria and disease.
Obviously, some of these claims are a bit exaggerated, but there is also some truth to them.
The fact that alkaline water filters can help you live longer is a little bit ridiculous for a couple of reasons.
Number one, there have been no long terms tests and therefore no empirical evidence of such a phenomenon.
In science, in order to establish a new principal or theory of any sort, empirical evidence is needed and the alkaline water market lacks just that.
While, they are lacking in real tests, they somewhat make up for in the theory behind this water filter.
They claims say that raising the pH of water helps your body maintain acid-base homeostasis, which is a scientifically known definition that the body's pH remains at a certain pH and cannot be altered.
Therefore, drinking something closer to that pH can allow for less stress on the body.
In theory, this could help prevent the body from aging as fast, although noticeable results are probably a farfetched idea.
This ties in with the next claims, which is that this pH altered water acts as an antioxidant.
We have already answered this indirectly, but it's worth discussing a bit more.
Electrolyzed water has been used in the world to help sanitize certain foods, which is essentially what you are doing with your water if you use one of these.
One could jump to conclusions and say that drinking electrolyzed water helps sanitize your water, therefore acting as an antioxidant in your body.
While there is a little bit of truth to this, most people will find that tap water is already sanitized in most big cities, and using an alkaline water filter, will not do all that much to sanitize it further.
While it looks as if the benefits of alkaline water filters are getting slimmer as we dissect it further, let's not fully dismiss the benefits of them.
There are many theories in this world that have little evidence now, but come to form well established knowledge in the future.
My personal opinion on these purifiers is...
why not use them? There is nothing bad about drinking a pH altered water solution, and the claims made by certain companies do have credibility to a certain level, although as we can see there is no empirical evidence of their claims.
Perhaps in the future, chemists and scientists will find more information on the ability for alkaline water filters to help sanitize water further, and act as an antioxidant in our body.
For a greater, more in depth analysis of these relatively new purifiers, visit http://countertop-water-filter.
net/alkaline-water-filters/.