How to Optimize Your Water Quality & Intake for Health | Huberman Lab Podcast

Andrew Huberman: Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and

science-based tools for everyday life.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

at Stanford School of Medicine.

Today we're discussing water.

Now, to some of you, water might seem like a boring topic, but I assure you

that water is anything but a boring topic.

In fact, water as a substance is incredibly interesting for a variety

of reasons that I'll explain today.

In fact, we are going to discuss the physics and chemistry of water, and

I promise to make it accessible to anyone and everyone regardless of

whether or not you have a physics or chemistry background, and I will

discuss how your body needs and utilizes water depending on what type

of water you drink, the temperature of that water, when you drink the water,

and indeed how you drink that water.

Now, water is actually a pretty controversial topic.

In fact, in preparing for this episode, which took me several months, in

fact, I ran into highly contradictory information and had to go on some real

deep dives in order to ferret out the best and most accurate knowledge for you.

I also found that there are generally two camps of people out there

in terms of how they think about water and the consumption of water.

One camp generally speaking, is of the mind that tap water is completely safe.

Perhaps it needs a little bit of filtering, but that in most areas

of the world, if it runs out of the tap, and unless there's a warning

sign directly above the faucet, that you can drink the tap water.

The other camp seems to be the camp that does not trust anything that comes

out of the tap and is excited by and in fact, relies on things like reverse

osmosis, deuterium depleted, hydrogen rich, or other forms of water that

sometimes can be very expensive or at least involve some substantial steps

in order to clean, filter, alter the chemistry of, or in some other way, adjust

before they are willing to consume it.

So today what we're going to try and do is to address all the stances around water.

For instance, we will discuss whether or not tap water is indeed safe, and I

will give you some tools that will allow you to address whether or not the water

coming out of your tap is safe, as well as some tools that will allow you to

address how to clean that water if indeed it does need filtering and cleaning.

In particular for things like fluorides and endocrine disruptors, which it turns

out, are quite prominent in a lot, not all, but a lot of tap water sources.

I will also talk about the more "esoteric forms of water" that

I mentioned a few minutes ago.

So I will go systematically through the list of distilled reverse osmosis,

spring water, deuterium depleted water, high pH water, and for those

of you that are already screaming out as you hear this, oh no, he's going

to tell us that pH water can alter the pH of our body in helpful ways.

I'm not going to tell you that, but I will tell you that the alkalinity or acidity of

the water that is the pH of the water that you drink has a profound impact on your

ability to absorb and utilize that water and the impact that those water molecules

have on specific biological systems.

So it turns out pH is very important, but not for the reasons that you've

probably heard about previously.

I'll talk about how the temperature of water that you drink does indeed turn

out to be important for the rate of absorption of that water and its impact

on the cells, tissues, and organs of your body, and thereby your health.

And I will talk about various zero cost and low cost tools that you

can use in order to get the most out of the water that you drink.

And finally, I will talk about when and how to hydrate your body best.

Before we dive into today's topic, I wanna share with you some very

interesting results that were just published on the use of deliberate

cold exposure to benefit fat loss.

Now, deliberate cold exposure is a topic I've covered before on this podcast.

We have an entire episode about that, that I've linked in the show note captions.

Deliberate cold exposure can be done by way of cold showers or immersion

in cold or ice water up to the neck.

That's typically the ways that it's done.

It has been shown to reduce inflammation, to increase metabolism, and I think some

of the most exciting results that have been published are the results certainly

in humans showing that deliberate cold exposure can increase the release of

so-called catecholamines, which are dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine.

And those increases in those three molecules are quite long lasting

and lead to substantial increases in mood and focus throughout the day.

Now, many people out there hear about deliberate cold exposure and cringe.

Other people hear about it and cringe because they've heard that deliberate cold

exposure, especially by way of immersion in water, can block the adaptation

to strength or hypertrophy training.

What I mean by that is yes, indeed there are data showing that if one gets into

very cold water up to the neck in the six hours, anytime that is in the six hours

after strength or hypertrophy training, that some of the strength and hypertrophy

increases that one would observe, are blocked by that deliberate cold exposure.

However, after six hours does not seem to be a problem.

So it can be done on other days besides the strength and hypertrophy training.

It can be done before strength and hypertrophy training.

It can be done after endurance work.

And I should mention that it does not appear that cold showers disrupt the

adaptations to strength and hypertrophy training, even if they're done immediately

after strength or hypertrophy training.

Okay, with that said, many people do enjoy the effects of deliberate cold exposure,

in particular for those increases in mood and alertness that are the consequence

of those increases in the catecholamine, dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine.

And again, those increases are very long lasting.

So it's not just during the exposure to cold.

It is for several hours up to four, maybe even five or six hours,

depending on how cold and how long the deliberate cold exposure happens to be.

Again, there's a lot to say and explore about deliberate cold exposure.

So again, I'll just refer you to the episode on deliberate cold exposure.

If you want to explore the mechanisms and the positive health outcomes,

some of the controversies within the data, etc., within that episode.

Meanwhile, I definitely want to share with you the results of this

recent study that just came out.

The title of this study is "Impact of Cold Exposure on Life Satisfaction

and Physical Composition of Soldiers".

The reason this study is very interesting is that it's one of the few studies

that used, or I should say, explored both deliberate cold exposure by

immersion in cold water, as well as deliberate cold exposure by way of cold

showers as it relates to weight loss.

Now, there's already data out there on the effects of deliberate cold exposure

and metabolism, and here I'm mainly referring to the beautiful work of Dr.

Susanna Søberg and colleagues in Scandinavia that showed that people that

do 11 minutes total of deliberate cold exposure by immersion and cold water

up to the neck per week, so 11 minutes per week total, spread out across some

different sessions by way of getting into water that's uncomfortably cold up to the

neck, and then getting out and then doing that several times per week to hit that

11 minutes or more threshold, and, this is very important, we'll come up in a

moment in the context of this new study, and warming up not by getting into a warm

shower, which is frankly what I do after my cold showers or getting into the ice

bath or cold water immersion, but rather forcing their body to warm up naturally

by using its own metabolic abilities.

In those studies, they observed substantial increases in brown fat stores,

which are fat stores that you really want around the heart, and clavicles increases

in metabolism that were quite dramatic in my opinion, and that could be very

beneficial for allowing people to feel more comfortable at cold temperatures when

they're not in cold water and on and on.

So lots of benefits shown in that study.

In this study, what I thought was particularly interesting is, again,

they explored both immersion in cold water and cold showers, and the

duration of cold exposure that they found led to substantial fat loss,

especially around the abdomen, was very brief, deliberate cold exposure.

Let me give you a few details about this study.

The study involved 49 subjects that include both males and females.

This is also really important.

The beautiful work of Susanna Søberg and colleagues, as far

as I know, only looked at males.

This study looked at males and females.

They were 19 to 30 years old, and there basically were two groups, people who

either were assigned to get deliberate cold exposure, or they were not

assigned to deliberate cold exposure.

The form of deliberate cold exposure involved one session per week of cold

immersion in cold water up to the neck.

And to just give you a sense of how cold it was, it was 3 degrees

Celsius, which translates to about 37.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

That's pretty darn cold, but it was only for two minutes.

Okay, so one session at 3 degrees Celsius, otherwise known as 37.4 degrees Fahrenheit

for two minutes every week, once a week.

In addition, the same subjects did five cold showers per week, or a

minimum of five cold showers per week.

And those cold showers were slightly warmer than the

immersion in cold water condition.

So they were 10 degrees Celsius approximately, or 50 degrees

Fahrenheit, still pretty cold.

And the duration of that cold water exposure in the shower

was just for 30 seconds.

Okay, so this is interesting to me because many people don't have

access to cold water immersion.

They might not have an ice bath or any place they can do that, but

they, most people do have access to a cold shower of some sort.

Plus, I think most people could do probably one ice bath per

week or find a place where they could get into cold water safely.

Now, I should point out that some people will not do well going

into 37.5 degree Fahrenheit, aka 3 degrees Celsius water, having never

done anything like this before.

So if you're going to try and employ these sorts of protocols that were used

in the study, I do recommend that you ease into it over the course of a week

or so and become somewhat adapted to the, the shock of cold water exposure.

So maybe start at, you know, 50 degrees Fahrenheit, kind of ease

your way back in terms of the cold water immersion, especially.

Now, another critical feature of this study is, as with the beautiful

work by Susanna Søberg, the subjects were told to warm up naturally

after the deliberate cold exposure.

So they basically hung out outside of the cold water immersion or outside of

the cold shower for 10 minutes after they were exposed to the cold in their

bathing suit, or I'm, I'm assuming they were wearing something, but the point is

that you are not going from deliberate cold exposure directly into a hot shower

or a sauna or something of that sort.

So again, their bodies were forced to heat up again naturally after the deliberate

cold exposure, but after the 10 minute period, they were able to do whatever they

wanted, essentially, reclothe, take a warm shower, and so on and go about their day.

Now the results of this deliberate cold exposure protocol, again, 2

minutes in cold immersion at 3 degrees Celsius, 37.5 degrees Fahrenheit,

plus 5 cold showers per week of 2 minutes long, a little bit warmer, 10

degrees Celsius, 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Now, the deliberate cold exposure used in this study caused

many different statistically significant positive changes.

They had a very extensive questionnaire that related to mood, everything

from levels of anxiety to sexual satisfaction, and on and on.

In fact, they saw a statistically significant improvement in sexual

satisfaction in the subjects that were exposed to deliberate cold exposure.

Not in the control group, although they didn't look at this, chances are those

improvements in sexual satisfaction were the downstream consequence of

the known increases in testosterone and free testosterone that occur

in both men and women who do the sorts of deliberate cold exposure.

Again, testosterone being an important hormone for libido in both men and women.

They also saw improvements in regulation of anxiety, which I think is very

interesting given that the deliberate cold exposure often causes people anxiety.

But here and in other studies we've seen it can lead to an better ability

to buffer against anxiety in the normal happenings of everyday life.

Perhaps the most interesting and significant results that they found

in the study however, were that in particular in men, there was a reduction

in waste circumference following 8 weeks of this deliberate cold exposure,

as well as a 5.5% on average, 5.5% reduction in abdominal fat, that

was quite statistically significant when compared to the other groups.

Now, why there was no observed reduction in abdominal fat or waist circumference

in the female subjects isn't clear.

Could have to do with just the way that body fat is stored and

metabolized in females versus males.

That is going to be a topic for future exploration.

So I do think the study is very interesting because when you look at

the landscape of science and discussion around deliberate cold exposure, I

think there's a general consensus now that deliberate cold exposure

can change one's sense of mood and wellbeing through this increases in

catecholamines that I mentioned earlier.

But the impact on metabolism itself has been somewhat controversial because the

overall changes in metabolism that are observed while statistically significant

in many studies, have not ever really been shown to translate into weight loss or

body fat loss in any kind of specific way.

And of course, a great advantage of this study is that by exploring soldiers,

they were able to really hold constant a number of other features like the amount

of daily activity that those soldiers are exposed to, their diet, their living

conditions, and so on and so forth.

So at least insofar as human studies are done, it's a, it's

a very well controlled study.

We'll provide a link to the study in the show note captions.

And for those of you that are thinking about employing the protocol that's

used in this particular paper, or combining it with existing deliberate

cold exposure protocols, to me it seems pretty straightforward in

of pretty minimal time investment.

Just 2 minutes of deliberate cold exposure by way of water immersion

up to the neck, and 5 times a week of 30 seconds each of deliberate

cold exposure by way of cold shower.

And just a quick mention about cold showers.

If you're going to use cold showers to do deliberate cold exposure,

you're going to want to stand under the shower itself, right?

And essentially have it hit your head, the back of your neck and your upper

back, which is where most of your brown fat stores are concentrated.

And it turns out that cold exposure to those regions of the body in particular,

are going to trigger the adaptation of increased brown fat stores, which involves

increases in mitochondria in those fat.

Again, this is not the blubbery fat beneath the skin.

This is the fat that acts as kind of an oil in the furnace that is your

thermogenic properties of your body to generate heat and burn off so-called white

adipose tissue elsewhere in the body.

Now, anyone that understands the laws of physics and thermodynamics will be

saying, wait, in order to get fat loss, you need to have a caloric deficit.

Calories in, calories out still applies.

And yes, that's absolutely true.

We can only conclude on the basis of the results of this study that the people that

lost body fat were indeed in a caloric deficit, presumably because all other

factors were held more or less constant in this group of soldiers, presumably

because the deliberate cold exposure itself elevated metabolism, thereby

increasing the calories out component of the calories in calories out equation,

which of course, governs the rules of weight loss and body fat loss as well.

Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize this podcast is separate from my

teaching and research roles at Stanford.

It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer

information about science and science related tools to the general public.

In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

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Let's talk about water, and let's start off by answering

the question, what is water?

Water is of course H₂O, most everybody knows that from an early age, but what

H₂O means is that each molecule of water consists of two hydrogens and one oxygen.

Now, the physical arrangement of those two hydrogens and one oxygen turns out

to be really important for how water functions in the body, and frankly,

elsewhere in our world and life, if you were to make a peace symbol, that

is to put up your index finger and your middle finger simultaneously.

In fact, I'm gonna recommend you do that now, unless you're using your

hands for something else important.

In which case do it later.

Well, if you make that piece symbol and you look at your hand, you have a pretty

good impression of what an individual water molecule consists of, which is

H₂O two hydrogens and an oxygen and, with that piece symbol, the fingers

or the tips of your fingers rather are gonna represent the hydrogens.

Your fingers, that is the length of each of those fingers is going to represent

the electron bonds to the oxygen and the palm of your hand and the fingers that are

down are going to represent the oxygen.

Okay?

Now, what's important about that visual impression or visual

image of the individual water molecule is that it is polarized.

That is the hydrogen's over on one side.

Both of them are over on one side and the oxygen is over on another.

And what's really important about water molecules being polarized is

that they can bind to one another by way of that polarization.

And this has to do with something that we all kind of learned in chemistry

at one point, but many of us forgot.

Maybe we didn't even understand it the first time around, which is that

positives and negatives attract.

So when you have individual water molecules, they have the opportunity

to interact and essentially bind to one another and they bind through

what are called covalent bonds.

Covalent bonds are relatively weak bonds, and so as a consequence,

water can change its confirmation.

However, covalent bonds are strong enough that water actually can maintain some

structure and that structure will vary, of course, depending on its temperature.

So, what you need to know about water is that indeed it consists

of lots of individual H₂O , and those H₂O can arrange themselves in

different ways, and that temperature is a strong determinant of the

arrangement of those water molecules.

That is, they're bonding to one another.

And in fact, even they're spacing between those bonds.

So again, even if you don't have any chemistry, stay with me because

you'll definitely understand this.

Water can exist in at least 3 forms and maybe 4 forms.

We know that it can be liquid, of course.

That's really what normally what we think of when we think of water.

It can be gas, so we think of steam, right?

So if you heat it up, it takes on a not a semi-solid or a semi-liquid form, it

takes on this property of steam or gas.

Okay?

So when you see steam or when you breathe on a cold day through your

mouth or through your nose and you see your air, those are water molecules

that are condensing, that is bonding in certain ways, based on differences

in temperature between the inside of your body and the outside air.

And of course it can be a solid, it can be ice.

Now, ice is fascinating and important in understanding how water works, and

this will become relevant later when we think about how water works within

the body as well, especially how different temperatures of water impact

the health and behavior of our cells.

And the most important point to understand about water in its solid state is that

unlike most substances when water is in its solid state, it is actually less

dense than when it's in its liquid state.

So just think about that.

Most substances, like most metals, for instance, when they are in a

solid state, they're more dense than when they're in a liquid state.

So, for instance, if they're in a solid state, they will sink in a container

filled with their liquid form, not water.

Water is very interesting because as you cool water and water

transitions from a liquid to a solid.

It still binds.

That is, it can form bonds between those different molecules of water, but the

spacing between those H₂O , so again, those peace symbols with hands, so if you

had a bunch of those, so if you had, you know, a thousand hands all making peace

symbols, they can bond to one another.

But when it's cold, those bonds are actually made

further apart from one another.

And as a consequence, ice, as we all know, floats in water.

In other words, put very simply, water is unusual and special in that, in its

solid form ice, it is actually less dense than when it's in its liquid form.

And that's why ice floats in water.

Now this is important not just to our biology, but to all of life.

Because if you think about it, if it were not the case that water is less dense

in its solid form ice than it is in its liquid form, the bottoms of our oceans

would be covered with thick sheets of ice.

And if that were the case, you can be absolutely sure that life would not

exist on our planet the way that it does.

And there's a good chance that we would not exist as a species because so much

of what allows us to exist on this planet and the other animals to exist

on this planet, relies on photosynthesis pathways in plants that are dependent on

the sun and interactions with the oceans and lakes and other bodies of water.

And of course, the ice caps are vitally important.

That is the presence of ice, especially at the poles.

But elsewhere, in bodies of water as well, so-called icebergs are a critical

part of the ecosystem that allows for everything from photosynthesis

to the ability of certain animals to extract food from each other

and from their local resources.

Now, there's a whole discussion to be had there, but the important point for

now is that the physical properties of the bonds between water that are made and

changed depending on temperature, turn out to be essential for us to be present

on this planet at all and for our cells to function in the ways that they do for

sake of health and for sake of disease.

And we'll explore this later when we talk about the critical relationship

between temperature pH, which is the relationship between alkalinity, how

basic or acidity, how acid a given liquid, or in this case we're gonna

be talking about water is and the ways that our cells can or can't use water.

So I realize that this is fairly in depth for those of you that don't have

much of a background in chemistry.

I've tried to keep it really top contour, but if you can make a piece symbol or if

you can just imagine a piece symbol in your mind and realize that that's a water

molecule and that those water molecules combine to one another through bonds that

are relatively strong, but weak enough that they can be broken if they need

to, and that the temperature that those water molecules are exposed to changes

the distance between those bonds and that's what allows ice to float in water,

then you are gonna have no problem with the remainder of the discussion today.

In fact, You will also have the ability to understand things that you've observed

many times over, but perhaps have never thought about or really understood,

which are, for instance, that water has a certain level of surface tension.

For instance, if you've ever been to the ocean and the waves are coming in,

what you'll notice is if you walk on the dry sand or gravel, pebbles that

is of the ocean, it's very easy, right?

I mean, the pebbles move down or the sand moves down.

It depresses a little bit due to the weight of your body.

But as you get closer to the water, you're gonna sink deeper because that

sand is more saturated with water.

But at some point, you won't be able to actually walk on top of the water, right?

It has been said that Jesus walked on water.

There's the so-called Jesus Christ lizard so named because it can

actually walk on the surface of water.

A leaf can float on the surface of water under some conditions.

A coin can float on the surface of water.

If you make coffee in the morning, you can actually take a spoonful of that

hot coffee and pour a little bit on the surface of your coffee, and you'll

notice that it will bead up, and you'll get little round spheres of water.

Those are little water molecules bound to one another that spin on top of

the surface before they sink under.

That has everything to do with the bonding between water that's

dependent on temperature, but also as with the difficulty for

essentially everybody, to walk on water or for animals to walk on water.

The surface tension of water allows certain things to float

there or to stay at the surface.

But there's a very thin layer of water molecules at the surface of

water that are more dense than the water that resides at deeper depths.

And that's why most things, including us sink in water,

we are more dense than water.

Now, I did mention earlier that there are 3 forms of water.

Those are the ones that we all are familiar with, the solid

liquid and gas forms of water.

However, there are data mainly from Gerald Pollack laboratory at the

University of Washington that have described the so-called fourth phase

of water, which is structured water.

And we'll get into this a little bit later because structured water has really

been a prominent topic in the, let's call it the water health aficionados.

It's a heavily debated topic as to whether or not structured water

is somehow better for ourselves if it exists within our bodies.

We'll get into that in full detail later.

But the whole notion of structured water is that in the presence of

certain solids or certain liquids, the confirmation of water that is the water

molecules actually change somewhat.

This has been demonstrated.

Whether or not it has relevance to the biological function of

our body is a different issue.

But we know that there is this fourth phase of water called structured water.

Structured water is a fairly complicated topic, but we can make it very simple

for sake of today's discussion.

I mentioned earlier that opposite polls attract that is positives and

negatives attract, and typically, things that are negatively charged

when presented with another negative charge either repel or don't attract.

Things that are positively charged in the presence of another

positive charge also tend to repel.

This is the basis of magnets, either sticking to one another

or repelling from one another.

There's also the idea that human beings who are opposites attract,

but that's a different episode that we need to do in the future.

The point here is that structured water is a unique condition in which

the local environment that these water molecules happen to be in allows

positive charges between different water molecules to attract one another.

So again, whereas normally it's positive and negatives that

attract in the configuration that we call structured water.

Positives and positives attract and form bonds that are stronger

than the typical bonds that would be formed between water molecules.

And just as it kind of prelude to our discussion about structured water,

as it may or may not relate to health later, there are a number of people that

believe that within the body, because of the presence of certain liquids

and solids, that the water within our cells, and in particular within the

interactions with so-called organelles, organelles are things like mitochondria.

The Golgi apparatus, they have fancy names.

These are, these are the things within cells that allow cells to do

everything from make proteins to traffic proteins out to the surface of cells.

Things like neurotransmitters and receptors and so on.

A lot of people who are interested in structured water as it relates to

biological function, have I hypothesized or like to debate rather whether or not

in the body water is not just present in its liquid form or gaseous form.

We know it's not present in its solid form unless you gulp down

some ice cubes, for instance.

But, There is a cohort of people out there, including some fairly accomplished

scientists that believe that within the body, the organelles of our cells act as

a substrate for water to exist in this fourth form, this structured water form.

And that's led to this whole niche industry of people, who are

proponents of consuming so-called structured water, and again, we'll

get to that a little bit later.

So now you know what individual water molecules consist of when you hear H₂O

hopefully you'll get that visual image in your mind of an individual water

molecule being the peace symbol and a bunch of those binding to one another

through these relatively weak bonds, but strong enough that certain things

can take place like surface tension.

Keep in mind that surface tension of water may relate to either standard

bonds between water or this fourth phase.

That's heavily debated still, but we certainly know that for instance, if

you were to take a piece of wax paper or glass and you were to pour some

water on it, you would notice that the water would beat up or kind of

aggregate at particular locations.

When you see that beating up or the aggregation of water

molecules on a particular surface, you're seeing two things.

This is actually kind of fun.

The next time you see it, you'll know that the, the aggregation, the beating

up of water with itself, so individual water molecules or many water molecules

kind of aggregating at one location and making a bead of water that's due

to these bonds, these covalent bonds occurring between water molecules.

Also, you'll notice that on a vertical pane of glass, say in rain or on your

windshield, that the water will look almost like it's sticking to the glass.

And that's because there are actually bonds between the water molecules that

have beat it up themselves and the glass.

So water can not just bind to itself.

It can also bind to certain surfaces.

And the fact that perhaps if you drive your car, if you were to tap the window,

or if a big enough bead of water formed on a window that it would start to drip down.

And that's because those bonds with the surface are strong, but they're

not so strong that it stick at that location quite different than water

that is in its solid form ice that can actually really adhere if you've ever

had to scrape ice off a windshield.

So for you, those of you who live in cold regions, you're familiar with this,

scrape ice off a windshield, you realize that the bonds between water in its solid

form and different services is quite a bit stronger than the bonds between

different water molecules with each other.

Or the bonds between water and different surfaces when they're warmer.

Okay, so I do realize that for a lot of people listening, that's gonna be

a pretty deep dive into the chemistry and physical properties of water.

But all you really need to know is that these water molecules are incredibly

versatile and can bind to each other, and can bind to different surfaces,

and can allow things to float or to sink or even to move across surfaces of

water based on the three, perhaps four different, states that water can be in.

And that versatility that you observe in the natural world on window pans and rain

and clouds and hail and ice and snow and scraping ice off your windshield in the

cold of winter and perspiration and so on.

All of that is fine and good, but realize that almost all of those same

sorts of properties of water become extremely relevant when thinking about

how your body actually utilizes water.

And the key thing here is that temperature and the so-called alkalinity or acidity

that is the pH of water turn out to be very important determinants of how

water is used by the cells of your body.

In fact, as I'll describe in a moment, we have entire sets of biological mechanisms

solely devoted to trying to get water into our cells in very specific ways, including

at specific rates and to use water in different ways because as you've probably

heard before, we are mostly water.

What's kind of interesting to me and what I found researching this episode

is that the percentages of our cells and bodies that are purported to

be water is a pretty broad range.

Some people say we're 55% water.

Other people will say We're 70% water.

Some people will say We're 95% water.

The exact percentage doesn't matter so much.

And really just boils down to whether or not the person that's stating that

percentage is talking about how much water is present in our cells and body

at a given moment versus how much water was involved in the process of creating

the sorts of proteins and other things of our body that are required to have

hair, cell skin cells, brain cells, etc.

So if you really want a number out there, I can't give you a single

number if you wanna be accurate, it's gonna have to be a range.

And basically we are anywhere from 70% to 90% water depending

on how you define being water.

That is whether or not you're talking about water being present in cells

in its liquid form or maybe in this fourth structure water form.

If you're, of the mind that that exists within us and whether or not

you're talking about water that was used to create a given protein, like

a receptor or a neurotransmitter, or whether or not you're talking about

the water, just being water as H₂O.

Okay, so again, it's very easy to go down that rabbit hole, and this is

part of the reason why there's such a wide discrepancy of assertions

as to how much of us is water.

But let's be direct.

Most of our body is water, and there isn't a single other molecule in the

universe that we can look to and say that it has as important a role in our health

and biology and frankly, our presence of life on earth at all than water.

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our

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Our gut is very important.

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Okay, so now at a minimum, everyone out there should understand that

water has a particular structure.

So when you hear H₂O, you can kind of imagine that structure and that the water

molecules can change their confirmation.

That is they can bind to other water molecules and it turns out they bind

to other things and actually change the confirmation of other things.

A good example of that is something we're all familiar with, which is

water's ability to dissolve certain substances like sugar or salt.

And that is because salt molecules or sugar molecules

are what we call hydrophilic.

They like water.

And when we say they like water, it just means that the chemical structure of

salt, sodium, or the chemical structure of say, sucrose like table sugar, can

actually interact with the hydrogens and oxygens of water and can change

those salt molecules or sugar molecules, turning them from solid into liquid.

Essentially creating what are called solids, which is basically the dissolving

of solids into liquid solutions.

In fact, water is one of the best solvents on the planet.

In fact, water is better at dissolving many solids than is acid.

All right? That's how incredible water is.

And there are a number of reasons related to the chemistry of

water that can explain that.

But as we transition from talking about the physics and chemistry of water to

how water actually behaves within our body and contributes to our health or

to disease depending on the case, it's important to understand that molecules

such as sugar and salt can be hydrophilic.

Or as we know, oil and water don't mix.

That's because oil's, lipids are so-called hydrophobic.

What's hydrophobic?

We'll, just think "Ahh" phobic.

Certain molecules such as lipids don't dissolve well in water.

And we all intuitively understand that if you take some olive oil, for

instance, and you put it into a little glass of water, it'll likely float or

beat up or form little spherical or amoeba like shapes within the water.

And that's because oil lipids are hydrophobic.

So different substances out there are either going to be more hydrophilic.

That is they are going to have a greater propensity to interact with water and

bind with the different aspects of the water molecules or hydrophobic to

have less of a propensity to interact with and bind with water molecules.

And I've sort of been alluding to this numerous times throughout this podcast

already, the temperature of water and the pH that is the alkalinity or acidity

of water will have a strong impact on whether or not a hydrophilic or

hydrophobic substance will have a greater or lesser tendency to interact with water.

You all know this intuitively as well.

If you've ever tried to dissolve say a big tablespoon of sugar in very cold

water, you'll notice that the grains don't dissolve as quickly as when you take that

big tablespoon of sugar and put it into a warm or hot cup of water, and that's

because the temperature of water actually changes how well that sugar molecule

is able to change its confirmation and interact with the water molecules.

Likewise, if you want to get something that's really hydrophilic into an

aqueous, that is a water containing solution, the temperature is also

going to strongly impact that.

Now, there are a near infinite number of examples of how temperature

in pH impact the tendency of hydrophilic and hydrophobic substances

to dissolve in water or not.

We're not gonna go into all those details, but as we migrate from our discussion

about the physics and chemistry of water into how water behaves within our body,

which is what we're gonna do now, and then as we continue into the third part of our

discussion, which is why and how certain types of water that some of you are

familiar with, like different pH water, distilled water, reverse osmosis water,

why those different types of water are thought to and in some cases do in fact

change the ways that our cells function, for better or for worse, all of that will

come together and make sense for you.

Okay?

So all the cells of your body, every cell, even your bones, that is the osteoblasts

and the other cells within your bones, your bone marrow, your red blood cells,

your white blood cells, your neurons, your nerve cells, your liver cells, your

kidney cells, all of them require water.

In order to get the proper amount of water into those cells, there are basically two

ways that water can access those cells.

Now, if we zoom out for a second and ask ourselves, how does

water actually get into the body?

Most of us just think, oh, well, we drink that water into our body.

Of course, that's the main way we can also breathe water molecules

into our body through humid air.

When you hydrate your cells, that is when you're bringing water into your cells,

that water needs to move from your gut and into the bloodstream and eventually into

the individual cells, whatever cell type that may be, and they're basically two

ways that water can access those cells.

The first way has been known about for a very long time, and

that is so-called diffusion.

Now, the outside of most cells is made up of fatty stuff, lipid.

So for instance, neurons, nerve cells have a lipid bilayer.

It's two layers of fat, and you already know that fat lipid is very hydrophobic.

Okay?

Now that turns out to be not a problem, but a solution for how water

can get across that lipid barrier.

Why?

It is the fact that water can change its confirmation and lipids can change their

confirmation just enough so that the bonds between water and the bonds between

those hydrophobic lipids can interact, allowing the water molecule to basically

pass through the lipid because it can bond very weakly or in some cases, not at

all, but very weakly to those lipids and then be pushed through to the other side.

Really incredible.

If you think about it, if there was too much of a hydrophobic relationship between

the lipid and the water, the water would come up to the surface of that fatty

outside of our cells, and then would be repelled away from it, or it would

just stay there right at the surface.

And that would be no good because we actually need that water to

diffuse across the cell membranes, or actually it's a double cell membrane,

as I mentioned before, two layers.

So water and lipids of cells can interact with just enough affinity

that the water molecule can diffuse across those cell membrane barriers.

But, and this is an important but, the diffusion of water molecules across

those lipid barriers on the outsides of cells is a fairly slow process compared

to the other way that water accesses cells and this other way that water

accesses cells is really something that was just discovered about 10 years ago.

So this is a fairly recent discovery, but turns out to be a fundamental

discovery, which is the presence of water called aquaporin channels.

Aquaporin channels are basically portals through the membrane that allow water

molecules to move very quickly across cell membranes at a rate of about 1 million

H₂O, 1 million water molecules per second.

And the way that water molecules move across the cell membrane through those

aquaporin channels is very interesting.

The inside of those channels, and the way you think of these

is they're literally tubes stuck through the membranes of cells.

The insides of those channels are very hydrophobic, allowing those

water molecules to just jot really quickly and almost as if in your

mind, you can just imagine as if it was sort of lubricated for the water.

Although it's not really lubricated, the the water molecules can move through

in single file a million per second.

Now, why would you need two ways for water to get across cell membranes?

One fairly slow through basic diffusion, and again, diffusion folks is the movement

of things from a gradient of higher concentration to lower concentration,

which you just think about this as things tend to run downhill from higher

concentration to lower concentration.

They try and create equilibrium across space.

So, you know, if you had a bunch of marbles on one side of a box,

they're just imagine that these were water molecules because of the

charges between those hydrogens and oxygens, there's a tendency for those

marbles to spread out and essentially take on a fairly even confirmation.

That's basically just diffusion across a space.

Water molecules will also move from higher concentration to lower

concentration cross cell membranes, and then you have these portals, these

tubes or these channels as they're called, these aquaporin channels where

water molecules can move very quickly.

Now, the reason why biology seems to have created these aquaporin channels,

and again, I wasn't consulted the design phase, but the most logical explanation

is that we have many tissues within our body that often need water very quickly

or need to release water very quickly.

Let's think about a couple of these and then let's look at what the

actual distribution of aquaporin channels is throughout the body.

What is an area of your body that on occasion will need to move

water very quickly out of it?

You can use your imagination here, but I'll just tell you that for instance,

your tear glands or tear ducts need to release tears very quickly.

So you need to take water that's stored in your body if there's an emotional

experience or if you look at a very bright light, for instance or you know, God

forbid if you get some sort of irritant in your eye, you're gonna start to tear up.

And those tears are the release of fluid from those tear ducts.

And so it's gonna be the very rapid release of water from those tear ducts

through so-called aquaporin channels.

And in fact, aquaporin channels are heavily expressed.

There are many of them in the cells of the so-called lacrimal

glands that release tears.

In addition, we need to absorb water from the gut.

And the gut has a lining, endothelial lining and other cell lining and

mucosal lining and water needs often to move very quickly from our

stomach into the rest of the body.

And one way that is accomplished is through aquaporin channels that

are expressed all along your gut.

So, the discovery of these aquaporin channels is really highly significant

in terms of understanding the different ways that water can interact with

and get into the cells of your body.

Now, there are aquaporin channels, not just in the lacrimal glands that

allow for tearing or within the gut, but in many tissues within your body.

And there even have different distributions within those tissues.

In fact, as one looks at the expression of the different aquaporin

channels, cause it turns out there are different forms of them.

Across all the cells and tissues of the body.

There's really no single tissue within the body, except perhaps

the bones of your body and perhaps the ligaments to some extent, that

don't have these aquaporin channels.

Some of you out there may have heard of the so-called fascia,

fascia and sheath muscles.

They're unique kind of connective tissue that gives some pliability

and yet some rigidity that allow for a lot of the physical abilities

of your musculoskeletal system.

It's incredible tissue.

We'll do an entire episode about fascia at some point.

Fascinating, fascinating tissue fascia, even contained aquaporin channels.

So the role of aquaporin channels in fascia probably relates to

our specific needs to be able to use specific muscle groups in

particular ways at particular times.

In other words, if you're sleeping or lying down or sitting, you're not

using your musculoskeletal system as much as if you're running or

performing some repetitive behavior.

It turns out that the aquaporin channels in certain tissues, like the fascia

can be used when we transition from low mobility states to high mobility

states, allowing more perfusion or access of water into particular

cells of the body when we need it.

Such as fascinating, fascinating channels.

These aquaporin channels, and again, only discovered fairly recently,

so we're still learning new things about our biology all the time.

Now, in a very important feature of the Aquaporin channel is that the

movement of water molecules across the cell membrane through those aquaporin

channels is strongly dependent on the temperature of water and the pH of water.

This becomes especially important in our description and our deep dive into

so-called alkaline water or higher pH water a little bit later, but I'll

just give you a little teaser for now because I'm sure that a number of

people are, are wondering about this.

If you go into the store or even a convenient store, you will see pH water.

Now, every water has a pH, right?

Lower numbers mean more acidic.

Higher numbers mean more alkaline, or more basic.

You'll see pH water.

That is 7.4.

You'll see 7.8, you'll see 9.8.

You'll see a huge range of these things, and there are many, many different claims

about how the pH of water is important for regulating the pH of the body.

Here's the real story.

The pH of your body, that is the pH of the cells at different

locations in your body, is strongly, strongly homeostatically regulated.

What do I mean by that?

It means it doesn't change that much, which means that you have very specific

biological mechanisms that ensure the pH is maintained, for instance, in the

skin cells of your skin, in the retinal cells of your eye, in your brain cells.

Now, It is true that across the body, different cells and tissues

have fairly widely varying pH.

You know, it has been said that the pH of bodily tissues is

generally between 7.2 and 7.4.

However, if you were to look at the pH of your gut, and keep in mind that

your gut is not just your stomach, your gut is the entire pathway ranging from

your throat all the way down to where you excrete things out of your body.

That entire pathway has different pH levels depending on where you are

along the gut and intestinal pathway.

And in fact, having much lower that is more acidic pH at certain locations

along your gut pathway is what allows those gut microbiota, those little

microorganisms of which you have trillions that are important for regulating

everything from neurotransmitter production to hormone production that

allow them to flourish and do well.

That said, except under conditions of hemorrhage or changes in blood volume

that are of a dangerous level that can lead to seizure or even death, the pH

of the rest of the cells of your body, and also those gut cells doesn't change

that much on a moment to moment basis.

So if somebody tells you that you should drink alkaline water or alkalized

water as it's sometimes called, In order to keep your body more alkaline

and less acidic, there is essentially no basis for that at a macroscopic

level or even at a local level.

Now, what that does not mean is that the pH of the water that

you drink is not important.

In fact, if the pH of the water that you drink is too low, that is if the

water that you consume is too acidic, it will not move as quickly from your

gut into the other regions of your body, and therefore, the other cells of

your body that require that water will not be able to access it as readily.

You've probably experienced this if you've consumed certain water and it feels like

it's sloshing around in your stomach or it feels like it's just somehow staying

there, or you feel it, its presence more, not just as volume, but it's almost

as if you can feel the little waves of water along the inside of your gut.

Now, sometimes that can relate to temperature, but oftentimes that

can relate to the pH of that water, and it turns out it is true that

water that is more alkaline, that is pHs of 7.4 or higher can move more

readily across the Aquaporin channel.

And in terms of absorption of water from the endothelial lining and

the other cell type lining of your gut into the rest of your body.

It is true that higher pH water provided that pH isn't too high, is going to be

absorbed more quickly, which partially explains why some people have an

affinity for this higher pH water.

Now, this is not to say that you need to consume high pH water in

order to hydrate your body properly.

I want to be very clear about that.

However, if you are interested in what the value of elevated pH

water is, it largely has to do with this accelerated absorption.

And as we'll talk about a little bit later, there is also growing evidence

that it can adjust the function of certain cells that are within your

immune system and thereby reduce certain inflammatory responses.

So I realize as I'm saying this, some people out there will probably think, oh

no, this guy's like a pH water proponent.

He's saying we have to drink alkaline water or buy very fancy water.

Now, I want to be clear that is not what I'm saying, and I'm also not saying

that you need to purchase very expensive water in order to derive the maximum

benefits from the water that you drank.

It turns out there are a few things that you can do by way of temperature and by

way of filtering water and a few other tricks that I'll tell you a little bit

later that will allow you to increase the absorption rate of water in the gut,

which turns out to be a very interesting, but also potentially important thing to

do for not just reducing inflammation, but also making sure that you're getting

proper hydration of different cell types in your body, including rapid hydration

of your brain cells, which as we'll also talk about in a few moments, can

greatly enhance cognitive function.

Okay, so we've talked about how water can get into cells.

There are two ways, diffusion and movement through these aquaporin channels.

We've earmarked the discussion that the temperature and the pH of water,

that is the confirmation of water.

And here I really want to embed this in people's minds, that when we talk about

temperature of water and pH of water, we're really talking about the arrangement

of those H₂O, those water molecules.

So keep that in mind.

We've covered how water can get into cells through those two

different ways, diffusion and through the aquaporin channels.

What we haven't talked about is what happens to water once it's in cells,

and this is very simple to explain.

Once water is inside of cells, it's going to be incorporated into the

different proteins and organelles.

Again, organelles are things like mitochondria, the nucleus of the cells,

which is contained to the DNA and so forth in different ways, depending

on which proteins are there and how hydrophilic or hydrophobic those

proteins are, or in some case aren't.

That's an entire landscape of protein to water specific interactions, none of

which we need to go into in any specific detail now, but the one thing that we do

need to realize and keep in mind as we go forward is that many of the biological

processes in our body that involve the movement to molecules such as water and

interactions with proteins, are going to involve the bonding or lack of bonding

between water molecules and proteins.

And anytime we're talking about bonding of one thing to the next at the level

of chemistry or biology for that matter, because they're really the same thing.

We're talking about whether or not there are electrons present or whether

or not there are charges that are opposite or the same and on and on.

If you've ever heard of so-called reactive oxygen species, what are

ROS or reactive oxygen species or so-called free radicals or antioxidants?

All of that is really just describing the presence or absence

of charges that are bound or unbound.

So for instance, if you hear about free radicals, sounds pretty wild, right?

Free radicals.

What are free radicals?

Free radicals can damage cells.

They don't always damage cells, but they can damage cells because they

are essentially free electrons.

They are a charge that's sitting out there not bound to anything

and therefore can interact with the molecular structure of certain

proteins and change those structures by binding to them or interfering with

the normal binding processes of those proteins to water or to other things.

And in that way cause damage to those proteins and potentially damage to cells.

Now fortunately, our cells have ways to deal with those free radicals,

and those are called antioxidants.

Antioxidants are molecules that can arrive in different forms.

Sometimes we think of antioxidants as vitamins, but they are also present in

other things as well that essentially bind up those free radicals or repair the

bonds between cells so that the proteins are no longer undergoing these, let's

just call them bad confirmations, that damage the functioning of our cells.

So there are many different theories of aging.

There are many different theories of disease, but there is not a single

disease, either of brain or body that doesn't in some way involve the generation

of what are called reactive oxygen species, these free radicals and the

damaging of cells at the level of their individual organelles and so forth.

Nor is there a single disease of brain or body that has not been shown to benefit

from having some antioxidant interference get in the way of that oxidative process.

So I realize today is pretty thick with nomenclature.

For those of you that haven't already realized it, what you're

learning here is organic chemistry.

So you can feel pretty good about the fact that if you can understand the water

molecule and understand a little bit about what free electron is, which is basically

a charge that's out there that can potentially do damage and the interactions

of things like reactive oxygen species and the ability of, of stable bonds to

buffer against or repair certain damage to cells as we're describing it here.

Well then what you're essentially thinking about and what we're

talking about is organic chemistry.

Now, since this is a discussion about chemistry as a service to try and

understand the biological effects of water, keep in mind that water itself,

believe it or not, can act as an antioxidant, provided that it's bonding to

things in the proper way, which requires that it get into cells in the proper

amounts and rates, which requires that the temperature and pH of that water be

correct and provided that there's enough water there and that that water isn't

bound to other things, it's not containing salutes that are damaging and potentially

that it's carrying some of the good things such as sodium or that there's potassium

present again, the so-called electrolytes that allow cells to function well.

Okay, so that's a bit of a trench of information, and I don't want people

to get overwhelmed or confused.

What I'm trying to do here is paint a picture of the biology of water,

understanding that when you ingest water, drinking it down, or when you

breathe water vapors in the steam room or on a humid day, that water is

entering your system, it's accessing your cells through these two mechanisms,

diffusion across cell membranes or movement through aquaporin channels.

And then once inside those cells, it's able to interact with and

change the confirmation of different proteins and accelerate or slow

down different cellular reactions.

Everything from normal metabolism to blood pressure to damaged cells, depending

on a number of different features of that water, as well as what the cells

happen to be doing at any given moment.

So with that in mind, I'd like to turn our attention to how water, depending on its

temperature, its pH, how much we drink, or how little we drink when we drink

that water, etc., how that can impact the health, disease and repair of different

cells, tissues, and organs of our body.

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Let's talk about how much water, or more generally speaking, how much fluid each

and all of us should drink each day, and how much fluid to drink depending on

our specific activities and environment.

Now, this is perhaps the most commonly asked question when

the topic of water comes up, how much water do I need to drink?

The other thing that comes up is a question, which is, can't we

just follow our natural thirst?

That is, can't we just pay attention to when we're thirsty?

And then drink fluids?

And then that leads to the other question, which is, does the color of

our urine provide any indication as to whether or not we are under hydrated,

over hydrated, or hydrating correctly?

So let me answer each of these things one at a time.

And in the backdrop, I want to highlight the fact that there are many, many, if

not dozens, hundreds of studies pointing to the fact that when we are dehydrated,

our brain doesn't function as well and our body doesn't function as well.

So what I'm attempting to do in that statement is throw a net around the

enormous number of studies that have shown that even a slight state of

dehydration, even 2% dehydration, can lead to a significant and meaningful

impact, that is a negative impact on our ability to, for instance,

carry out endurance type behaviors.

So our ability to run on a treadmill and stop at the point

where we feel we can't continue is going to be negatively impacted.

That is we will be able to perform less work for less period of time

when we are even slightly dehydrated.

Likewise, our strength is reduced by even slight dehydration.

Likewise, our cognitive performance, including memory, focus, creative

thinking, flexible thinking of different kinds, are all significantly impaired

when we are in states of dehydration.

Now, that raises an additional question that deserves attention, which is how

do we actually measure dehydration?

Now you hear different things like if you pinch the skin on the top of your hand and

it takes more than three seconds to lay down again flat, then you're dehydrated.

You hear that, you hear, okay, if you are to press on your fingernail and see

a change in the color of the tissue, just be below your fingernail, which

indeed does happen, and it does not go back to its original color within one to

three seconds, then you're dehydrated.

You hear things like this if your ankles are swollen when you're wearing socks,

you take off the socks and you can see the imprint of the socks on your lower

limbs, that means you're dehydrated.

You hear this kind of stuff, and you should probably be

wondering, is any of that true?

To some extent, it is true, although it can vary quite a bit by how

old you are, whether or not the skin on the top of your hand tends

to be looser or not depending on whether or not you're leaner or not.

So in other words, those are not absolutely objective

measures of dehydration.

Now, it is true that if normally you can pinch the skin on the top of your hand

and it returns to its normal flattened position within about one to two or three

seconds, and it does not do that within five or more seconds, there's a decent

probability that you're a little bit dehydrated, that you need to ingest some

fluid, or that if you press down on your nail and you see the depression causes a

transition from kind of a pink color to a white color, and then you release and it

doesn't go back to its original pinkish color within a few seconds, well then

there's a chance that you're dehydrated.

But again, these are not perfect measures of dehydration.

You may be surprised to learn, and I was surprised to learn that most of

the basis for these statements, like even a 2% dehydration state, can lead

to significant reductions in cognitive or physical performance are based on

not direct measures of hydration, but rather on measures of reductions in water

intake, which is a different thing, right?

It's saying that ordinarily, a person of a given body weight needs X amount

of fluid per day, and when they get even just 2% less than that amount of fluid

than their cognitive and or physical performance is impaired, rather than

focusing on dehydration of tissues.

Okay?

Now that might seem like a subtle distinction, but it's

actually a meaningful distinction when you think about it.

However, it's a meaningful distinction that we can leverage

toward understanding how much water or fluid we need to drink each day.

Now, there we can really point to some solid numbers that, believe it or not,

are fairly independent of body weight.

Now, I say independent of body weight.

I'm referring to the amount of fluid that most healthy adults need at rest.

What do I mean by at rest?

I mean when not exercising and when not in extremely hot environments.

So I'm leaving aside you a desert ultra marathoners or people that are

doing any kind of movement or living in environments that are very, very hot.

Here, I'm mainly referring to people that live most of their daily life in indoor

environments, could be air conditioned or not air conditioned, heated or not heated.

What we're trying to arrive at here are some numbers that can work across the

board, because of course there are an infinite number of different conditions

that each and all of you are existing in.

So I'm not going to attempt to give you a body weight by activity, by environment,

by humidity formula calculation.

In fact, no such calculation exists.

However, there are formulas that can put you into very stable frameworks.

That is levels of water intake for periods of rest when you're not exercising

and for when you are exercising, that will ensure that you are hydrating

with the one exception being if you are exercising or if you are living in

very, very hot conditions and you're not heat adapted to those conditions.

So what are those numbers?

In other words, what is the answer to the question of how

much fluid do we need each day?

And here I'm referring to fluid.

I'm not distinguishing between water, caffeinated beverages,

soda, tea, and so on.

I'll discuss that in a moment.

We can reasonably say that for every hour that you are awake in the first 10 hours

of your day, this is important, in the first 10 hours of your day, you should

consume on average, 8 ounces of fluid.

Now, for those of you that are using the metric system, not ounces, 8

ounces of fluid is approximately 236 milliliters of water.

And for those of you that exist in the metric system and aren't used to

thinking about ounces and vice versa, just think about a typical can of soda.

In the United States, it's 12 ounces.

In Europe, sometimes the cans of soda are a little bit smaller, but

that's a whole discussion unto itself.

But 8 ounces of fluid, that is 236, let's just say 240 milliliters because

we don't need to be too precise here, of fluid on average every hour for

the first 10 hours of your day, which translates to an average of 80 ounces

of fluid for the first 10 hours of your day, or 2,360 milliliters of water.

In other words, approximately 2 liters of water plus a little bit more

for the first 10 hours of your day.

Now, I wanna be very clear that this does not mean that you need to

ingest 8 ounces or 236 milliliters of fluid on the hour, every hour

for the first 10 hours of your day.

I'm certainly not saying that.

And in fact, most people are going to find that they're

going to ingest water in bolus.

That is, they're gonna have perhaps 16 ounces of water, 500 milliliters

of water at one portion of the day, and then maybe a couple hours of later

that they'll drink some more water or some more coffee or soda or some other

beverage and another portion of the day.

I do think, however, it's important for most of us to take a step back and ask

ourselves whether or not independent of any other activity or environmental

conditions, whether or not we are in fact ingesting 80 ounces or basically

2.4 liters of water for that 10 hours of the day that spans from the time

we wake up until 10 hours later.

Now, why am I setting this 10 hour framework?

The reason I'm setting this 10 hour framework is that it turns out that

your fluid requirements, even just at rest, are vastly different in

the time from when you wake up until about 10 hours later, as compared

to the later evening and nighttime.

And here I'm referring to people that are not doing night shifts.

But if you are requesting a number of how much fluid to drink independent

of our needs for fluid for exercise, that's going to be 8 ounces of fluid

or 240 milliliters of fluid on average for every hour from the time when

we wake up until 10 hours later.

That's the simple formulation that should basically ensure that you're

getting sufficient baseline hydration for the cells and tissues of your body.

Now, if you are engaging in exercise, whether or not it's endurance exercise or

whether or not it's resistance training exercise, you are going to need additional

fluids in order to maximize the effects of that exercise and to avoid dehydration.

And there too, we have some excellent numbers that we can look to.

Excellent, because they arrive from research.

And this is largely peeled from the episode that I did with Dr.

Andy Galpin, professor of Kinesiology at Cal State Fullerton.

We did a six episode series all about exercise, everything from strength

training, hypertrophy, endurance, nutrition, supplementation, recovery,

everything related to exercise.

You can find all of that at hubermanlab.com.

And one of the components of those episodes that was discussed, but that

some of you may have not heard, is that there is a simple formula for

how much fluid to ingest on average.

Keep in mind, this is on average when you are exercising, and I refer to

this as the so-called Galpin equation.

The Galpin equation states that you should take your body weight in

pounds, divide that by 30, and that will give you the number of ounces

of fluid to ingest every 15 to 20 minutes on average while exercising.

Okay, your body weight impounds divided by 30 equals the number of ounces of fluid to

consume on average every 15 to 20 minutes.

When I say on average, what I mean is it is not the case that you

need to stop every 15 or 20 minutes and consume that volume of fluid.

You could sip it from moment to moment.

You could wait half an hour or an hour and then consume a larger

bolus of fluid, a larger amount.

Although it is recommended for performance sake that you sip

or consume beverages fairly consistently throughout your training.

One's ability to do that is going to depend on a number of things like

gastric emptying time, whether or not the particular exercise you're

doing, whether or not it's running or jumping, is compatible with

ingesting fluid on a regular basis.

Or whether or not you need to do it at different intervals

than every 15, 20 minutes.

Maybe it's every 5 minutes, maybe it's every half hour.

You have to adjust for you.

But if you were to take the hour of exercise or the half hour of exercise

or the 3 hours of exercise and ask how much fluid to ingest, it's going to be

that Galpin equation of body weight and pounds to buy it by 30 equals the number

of ounces for every 15 or 20 minutes.

And of course, I can already hear screaming from the back.

What about for those of us who follow the metric system?

And there there's a simple translation of the Galpin equation, which

is that you need approximately 2 milliliters of water per kilogram of

body weight, every 15 to 20 minutes.

Again, the Galpin equation converted into the metric system is going to be 2

milliliters of water per kilogram of body weight every 15 to 20 minutes on average.

I'm sure a number of you are asking whether or not hydration prior

to exercise is also important.

It absolutely is, and if you follow the numbers that I talked about before,

approximately 8 ounces or 240 milliliters of fluid intake per hour in the first 10

hours of waking, that should establish a good baseline of hydration heading into

exercise, which then prompts the next question I often get, which is, is the

amount of water that needs to be consumed according to the Galpin equation during

exercise on top of, or separate from that?

That is, does it replace the amount of fluid that one needs at a basic level,

that 8 ounces or 240 milliliters?

And there the answer sort of goes both ways.

I think if you're going to exercise, then obviously follow

the Galpin equation in some way.

Again, you don't need to be ultra specific about this.

These are ballpark figures that will ensure hydration, so we've set them a

little bit higher perhaps than needed to ensure more hydration rather than less.

But basically the short answer is if you're exercising for about an hour,

most people are exercising for an hour or two, probably not more than that.

Most of my workouts are certainly the resistant training

workouts last about an hour.

Well, then you can replace the 8 ounces or the 240 milliliters of water

that's required at baseline with what you consume according to the Galpin

equation during that bout of exercise.

A common question is if you are exercising in a heated environment, indoor, outdoor,

or you are somebody who tends to sweat a lot, and by the way, we can all get

better at sweating, by sweating more.

Sweat is an adaptation.

So if you sit in the sauna more, you're gonna get better at sweating.

If you exercise more, especially if you wear more layers, or if you do

it in hotter temperatures or more humid temperatures, you're gonna

get better at sweating over time.

And sweating is an adaptation that helps cool your body.

If you are sweating a lot or you're in heat, how much fluid should you ingest?

In general, I think it's safe to say that you may want to increase the values on

the Galpin equation by about 50 to a 100%.

So either increase by 50% or double those numbers if you're in a very hot

environment or sweating an awful lot.

If you are sitting in the sauna, I highly recommend consuming at least 8 ounces and

probably more like 16 ounces of fluid.

So that translates again to about 240 or about 480, let's just round up 500

milliliters of fluid for every 20 to 30 minutes that you are in a hot sauna.

And then of course, people ask, well, how hot?

And it, okay, that starts getting really detailed and we can't distinguish

between dry saunas and wet saunas.

And again, too many variables.

But I would double your fluid intake for that hot environment exercise or

for that hot environment sauna sit.

Also if you are feeling dehydrated, okay, what does feeling dehydrated mean?

That actually has a definition that we can get into a little bit later.

But what we're really talking about here is if you are feeling as if your throat

is dry, you are "parched", or you're very thirsty, well then there's absolutely

no problem with ingesting more fluids.

So 16 ounces of fluid or 500 milliliters of fluid per hour

while you're feeling parched.

My read of the literature is that thirst is a reasonable guide for

when we tend to be dehydrated.

However, it is the case that our thirst doesn't really keep up with

our body's level of dehydration.

And we know that based on some really nice studies that have explored the

amount of fluid intake compared to the amount of urination, compared to the

amount of physical output compared to the environment that one happens to be in.

And these are sort of older studies in the realm of physiology.

But here's the basic rule of thumb that's gonna work for most people.

If you are feeling parched, consume fluids, ideally you consume fluids that

don't contain caffeine or other diuretics.

Diuretics being substances that cause the release, the urination of fluid from

the body and or if you are consuming caffeine either prior to or after bouts

of exercise or even just at work or you work in a air conditioned or otherwise

dry, cool or hot environment, that you try and include some sodium and

ideally sodium, potassium, magnesium, the electrolytes in that beverage.

So it could be a little pinch of sea salt with some lemon to

adjust the taste a little bit.

It could be an electrolyte drink, an LMNT or some other sort, they're

a lot of different types out there.

For most people drinking pure water, and I realize that many people do

just like the taste of pure water.

Chances are you're going to have enough electrolytes unless you're sweating

quite a bit or you're exercising quite a lot, and under conditions where you

are consuming very few carbohydrates, you're going to excrete more fluid.

If you are ingesting caffeine, whether or not it's from tea or coffee, I

highly recommend increasing your non caffeine fluid intake about two to

one for every volume of caffeine.

So in other words, if you have a 6 ounces or 8 ounces of coffee, you're gonna want

12 to 16 ounces of fluid, ideally fluid with electrolytes, or a little pinch of

salt in order to offset that dehydration.

So hopefully those will provide good rules of thumb for what people want to do

when they're just moving about their day.

Again, underscored by the fact that even slight levels of dehydration can

really impair our cognitive and physical performance largely by creating fatigue.

But more often than not by creating brain fog.

You know, I get so many questions about brain fog.

Why do I have brain fog?

Why do I have brain fog?

There is a vast literature showing that quality hydration, meaning

hydration that matches the demands of humidity and output as described

in the equations that we went over a little bit before, really can enhance

clarity of focus and overall energy.

And we'll talk about why that is, but I'll just allude to it a little bit here.

The reason why ingesting sufficient fluids can enhance our ability to

focus, and in fact can reduce brain fog and can increase physical vigor

and output is not mysterious to us.

We know that there are two mechanisms by which fluid intake triggers

elevated levels of alertness, and it all has to do with the so-called

sympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system, which is a real mouthful.

But basically the sympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system, as

many of you've heard me talk about before, is the aspect of your nervous

system that makes you more alert.

Has nothing to do with emotional sympathy, has to do with a bunch of neurons in

the middle of your spinal cord called the sympathetic chain ganglia, and

some other related neural networks in your body, as well as regions of

your brain, like the locus coeruleus, that release things like epinephrine

and norepinephrine and make you more alert and in a kind of magnificent

arrangement, or I think magnificent arrangement, when we have fluid in our

gut and when our cells are well hydrated, and believe it or not, when our bladder

contains fluid within it, there is an elevation in activity of the sympathetic

nervous system by way of two pathways.

One is mechanical.

In fact, we have so-called stretch receptors in our bladder and in our

gut, these stretch receptors have fancy names like TRP trip channels

as they're called, or piezo, which are these stretch sensing channels.

This is the beautiful work of many laboratories, but in particular

David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian.

David Julius is at UC San Francisco, Ardem is at the Scripps Institute.

They've discovered a bunch of channels in cells that sends things

from cold to different mechanical pressure, including expansion of

tissues so-called Mechanosensation.

And basically what it all boils down to is that when our bladder has some

fluid in it, when our stomach has some fluid in it, and when our cells

are sufficiently hydrated, they send information about the mechanical

presence of that distension even.

And then here, I'm not talking about being like overly full or, you

know, full of chock-a-block, full of fluid or your bladder feeling,

you know, really, really full.

We'll talk about that in a moment.

But when we are sufficiently hydrated, there's a mechanical signature of

that, which is the expansion of our tissues because it has more fluid in it.

And there are chemical signals as well, which is the movement of water

across those aquaporin channels is actually understood at a biological

level by ourselves and sends information to the areas of the brain that are

associated with so-called sympathetic arousal and makes us more alert.

This is actually what wakes us up in the middle of the night.

If we have consumed too much fluid prior to sleep and we

need to urinate, we wake up.

This is a mechanism that is not adequately developed in babies and young children.

This is why babies, young children often will wet their bed.

And believe it or not, in both humans and in dogs, our ability to

control urination voluntarily is something that we actually learn.

Babies just pee in their diaper.

Dogs just pee on the floor until their house broken or until a child

learns to hold onto their urine, until they go to the bathroom, in the

bathroom, or particularly appropriate location outdoors or otherwise.

The point is that hydration of the body is signaled to the brain when we have

enough fluid in the tissues of our body, when we've consumed enough fluid, even

if it hasn't already arrived to the cells and tissues of our body, that is signaled

to the brain in the form of alertness.

And that alertness is what translates to the enhanced cognitive abilities

that we have when we are well hydrated.

It's also what translates to our enhanced physical abilities when we

are challenged with physical tasks.

So when you look out on the landscape of all these studies that have

shown impairments in physical or cognitive performance under conditions

of even slight dehydration, that all makes sense because our cells

need fluid and we need water.

But it also prompts the question of, well, does being well hydrated

actually make our brain and body function better in the context of

physical and cognitive performance?

And indeed, the answer is yes.

Now, earlier we were talking about these equations that you can apply.

And here again, I really want to emphasize that these equations were not meant to

be followed down to the decimal point.

They were really meant and are meant as crude, but sufficient guides for

you to make sure that you're getting enough hydration depending on your

levels of activity and at rest.

If you recall when we talked about those equations, I said, you need

about 8 ounces or 240 milliliters of fluid per hour for the first

10 hours of your day after waking.

Now, why did I say for the first 10 hours?

Well, it turns out that the filtration of fluids from your body, which is

accomplished of course, by your kidneys and by way of your bladder, and the

excretion of fluid out urethra, so-called urination, is strongly, strongly

circadian dependent, meaning the cells of your kidney and the cells even of

your gut, in fact, all the cells of your body, but especially the cells

of your kidney, which filter the fluid that comes into your body, and that

makes certain hormones like vasopressin, which is antidiuretic hormone.

All of that functioning of the kidney is under strong regulation by so-called

circadian clock genes, circadian clock genes are genes that are expressed

in every cell, but that in certain cells of the body very strongly

impact whether or not that organ, in this case, the kidney is going to be

activated, meaning functioning at a very high level or at a reduced level.

And we can make all of this very simple by simply stating what's contained in

this beautiful review that I'll provide a link to if you want to learn more

called circadian rhythms in the kidney.

And basically what is known is that for the first 10 hours after waking,

your kidney is filtering fluid within your body at a very rapid rate.

There are a number of different cell types that do that, but they are

basically taking that fluid, pulling out any contaminants using hormones such

as antidiuretic hormone, vasopressin to adjust whether or not you're gonna

hold onto fluid or release more fluid from your body in the form of urine.

Depending on the salt concentration, depending on how much fluid

you need, your work output, the conditions you're in, all of that.

However, at about 10 hours after waking your kidney really starts to reduce

its overall level of functioning.

Now that doesn't mean that your kidney cannot filter fluid 11 or 12 or 16

hours after waking, but it becomes far less efficient at doing so, and thank

goodness it does because you do not want your kidney filtering fluid at

the same rate at midnight, assuming you wake up at say, 7 or 8 or 9:00 AM that

it was filtering fluid at 10:00 AM.

In fact, we can say that if you want to reduce your nighttime waking in

order to urinate, which is a common, common question and concern that many

people have, how can I avoid waking up in the middle of the night to urinate?

And there I say it's perfectly normal to wake up once, maybe twice each night

to urinate, but if you want to reduce the number of times that you wake up

in order to urinate across the night, maybe even make that number zero times.

You will greatly benefit by doing 3 things.

First of all, make sure that you're hydrating sufficiently during the daytime

per the equations that we talked about earlier, that will ensure that you are

not excessively thirsty in the evening and therefore consuming a lot more fluid.

Second, and related to that first point is that you do want to reduce your

fluid intake at night, provided you hydrated sufficiently throughout the day.

And believe it or not, the rate at which fluid moves from your gut and

into the cells and tissues of your body and then from your bladder into urine

is determined not just by the volume of fluid you ingest, but also the rate

at which you ingest that fluid and you might be thinking, that's crazy.

That makes no sense at all, right?

If I drink a ton of fluid slowly, doesn't it still mean

that I'm going to urinate a ton?

Yes and no.

It also stands to reason that you might ask, if I ingest very little

fluid, but I do it very fast, is it gonna be the case that I'm

gonna urinate it out very quickly?

Well, yes and no.

The point is that the fluid filtration systems of your body that range from

the gut to the bladder and include the kidney, of course, depend not just on the

volume, but on the rate of fluid that you ingest because of those Mechanosensors

that we talked about earlier.

If you gulp down a bunch of fluids, you are going to excrete those fluids

more quickly than if you sip them slowly, excuse me, sip them slowly.

So here's what I recommend throughout the day.

When you're trying to get your adequate yield of water or other beverages,

feel free to gulp that fluid or sip it.

I'm a gulper, not a sipper, but many of you are gonna be sippers,

not gulpers, consume fluid at the rate that feels right to you, but

feel comfortable gulping that fluid.

However, in the evening, if you are somebody who has challenges with

waking up excessively in the middle of the night, reduce your fluid intake

provided you hydrate properly throughout the day, and I suggest consuming no

more than 5, maybe 8 ounces of fluid between the time of 10 hours after

waking and when you go to sleep.

Again, if you're very thirsty or you under hydrate or it's very hot, feel

free to ingest more fluid please.

But most people will find that if they reduce their fluid intake to about 5

ounces or less of fluid in that later part of the day, after 10 hours of having

woken up and before sleep, and they sip those beverages as opposed to gulping

them, that they will have fewer bouts of waking up in the middle of the night

to go to the restroom and ideally zero.

Let's talk about tap water, and here I have to take a deep breath, not a

deep gulp, but a deep breath because in researching tap water and what's contained

in tap water in different regions, not just in the US but around the world, I

confess the picture is a pretty scary one.

I want to be clear, I'm not somebody who naturally orients towards

fear or conspiracy theories.

However, in researching tap water for this episode by way of looking at the

peer reviewed research, meta-analysis reviews, specific research articles where

specific hypotheses were tested, and in talking with experts in toxicology and so

on, it's a pretty grim picture frankly.

When one looks at what's contained in most tap water and whether or not the

compounds that are contained in tap water are present in sufficient concentrations

to negatively impact our health.

And the bad news is that much, if not all, tap water, believe it or not much if

not all, tap water contains things that are bad for the biology of our cells.

There is a silver lining, however, and the silver lining is that very simple

steps that are very inexpensive can be used to adjust that tap water to

make it not just safe to drink, but that makes it perfectly fine to drink.

So that's the good news, and we'll get to that in a moment.

If you are somebody who is interested in whether or not tap water contains

things like endocrine disruptors, hormone disruptors that can negatively impact

reproductive health in males or females, or both, there is a wonderful review,

wonderful, because it's so thorough.

Although the news isn't great, it's very thorough, which is great, which is

entitled Endocrine Disruptors in Water and Their Effects on the Reproductive System.

This is a review from 2020 that analyzes water from a bunch of different sources

within the world and essentially focuses on a few key components.

First of all, it focuses on the concentration of minerals.

That is magnesium and calcium within water.

Many people don't realize this, but so-called hard

water sounds terrible, right?

But hard water is water that contains magnesium and calcium,

which turns out to be a good thing.

Some water contains more magnesium and calcium.

Other water contains less.

They looked at the presence of magnesium and calcium because that

is going to impact the pH of water.

In general, the higher concentrations of magnesium and calcium and water, the

higher the pH that is, the more alkaline that water is, and the lower levels of

magnesium and calcium, the more acidic or lower pH that water tends to be.

The other thing that this review addresses is the concentration of so-called

DBPs: dog bulldog, porcupines, DBPs.

Which are disinfection byproducts contained in water.

So obviously local governments, the government wants your

drinking water to be clean.

They don't want contaminants in, they don't want sewage in that water.

They don't want chemical contaminants that are going to make people

immediately sick, so they treat water.

Water treatment plants, treat water with disinfection products, and those

disinfection products create things called disinfection byproducts.

And the presence of those DBPs or disinfectant byproducts can

strongly impact the pH of water by way of changing the concentrations

of magnesium and calcium.

Put differently, I do believe that governments are trying to provide

people with clean water, but in doing so, oftentimes we'll introduce things

to that water that are not good for us.

Now, it's very clear that DBPs can cause endocrine disruption in ways that

are not good for reproductive health.

I did a very long, in fact, 4 and a half hour episode on fertility and vitality.

That was male and female fertility, by the way.

And vitality that again, you can find at hubermanlab.com that talks about

all the biological processes involved in the generation of healthy eggs and

sperm and, and creating healthy embryos, implantation embryos, and so forth.

It's very clear that DBPs have been shown to disrupt ovarian function,

spermatogenesis and fertility outcomes.

Even at concentrations of DBPs that are present in drinking

water that comes from the tap.

Now, does that mean that you shouldn't drink tap water?

Well, the answer to that is it depends.

What does it depend on?

Well, it depends on several things.

First of all, I highly recommend to everybody go online and put

in your zip code and ask for a water analysis of water that comes

out of the tap in that zip code.

This is something that is readily available online, at least to my

knowledge, and unfortunately, there's no specific one site that I can send everyone

to, to get an in-depth analysis of the drinking water that comes out of your tap.

However, I highly recommend that you go online and put in your zip code

or municipal area code and figure out whether or not your water contains X

amount of DBPs or Y amount of DBPs.

Now, of course, you're gonna get a bunch of values back, and unless you're

a toxicologist, You are probably not gonna know what those values mean.

But what you're really looking for is whether or not there are

high, low, or moderate levels of fluoride in that drinking water.

Why do I say that?

Well, there are studies that show that the concentration of fluoride in drinking

water is of particular concern for the thyroid hormone system of the body.

Now, thyroid hormone has a lot of different roles in brain and

body, and thyroid hormone is very important for everything from

metabolism to levels of energy.

When thyroid levels are disrupted or thyroid receptors are disrupted,

it can lead to depression.

When thyroid hormones are optimized, it can lead to optimal

mood if there is such a thing.

But in other words, it helps keep your mood elevated.

It relates to everything from sleep to reproduction, thyroid hormones involved

in many, many things including bone health and tissue health generally.

So essentially, every biological process in your body is impacted by

thyroid hormone, and there's a study that I'd like to highlight, which was

published in 2018, and the title of the study is Impact of Drinking Water

Fluoride on Human Thyroid Hormones.

This was a case control study so this is not an extensive

analysis of many individuals.

However, what it shows is that fluoride negatively impacts thyroid stimulating

hormone and so-called T3 levels.

So you have thyroid hormone, T3, and T4 even in the standard concentrations that

are present of, and here's an important number, 0.5 milligrams per liter.

Okay?

So if you can get ahold of the fluoride concentrations in your tap water and find

out whether or not the concentrations are at below or exceed 0.5 milligrams

per liter, what you'll find is that even just 0.5 milligrams per liter of

water can disrupt thyroid function.

And this is going to be a particular concern for people to have familial,

so genetically related thyroid issues, or that are concerned with

keeping your thyroid hormone levels healthy, which I think is everybody.

So I am telling you that you should try and get ahold of some data about

the water that comes out of your tap if you intend on drinking tap water.

And probably even if you don't just know what's in your drinking

water, your local government should provide that information and or it

should be readily available online.

And in particular, I think it's worthwhile to address how much fluoride

is present in your drinking water.

Again, I don't want to create a lot of scare.

I'm not trying to trigger fear here.

I do think, however, by way of reading this review by way of reading the paper

that I just referred to a moment ago, again, links to these are going to be

provided in the show note captions, that there is extensive evidence that

elevated levels of fluoride in drinking water are simply not good for us.

Now, that could open a whole discussion of why fluoride is in our drinking

water in the first place at all.

But leaving that aside, it seems to me that most everybody should know how much

fluoride is in their drinking water.

And ideally, everybody, yes, everybody is filtering their drinking water.

Now, that raises the question of how best to filter drinking water.

And that brings an answer of it depends on a couple of things.

First of all, how healthy or unhealthy do you know yourself to be?

Okay?

So if you're somebody who has no health issues, you have plenty of vigor, you're

sleeping well at night, you have no autoimmune disease, you're not aware

of any health concern, minor or major, well then perhaps you're somebody that

doesn't want to filter your water.

I would argue that why wouldn't you employ some very low or even zero

cost approach to filtering your water?

There are going to be other individuals who are suffering particular ailments of

brain or body, or both, that absolutely should be filtering their drinking water,

if they're getting their drinking the water from their tap because it is pretty

well established now that tap water contains a lot of these disinfectant

byproducts, as well as in most cases, exceeding the threshold of fluoride

that we know to be healthy for us.

How should you filter your tap water?

Well, you have everything ranging from the so-called Brita type filters.

So these are gonna be carbon type filters or other filters that you essentially

put over a container or a compartment where you can pour the water over it

and goes into the compartment below.

Will those work?

Are they sufficient to filter out the disinfectant byproducts?

The general answer is yes, provided you change the filters often enough.

However, it is not thought, unfortunately, not thought that

they filter out sufficient fluoride.

So what I highly recommend is depending on your budget, that you go online

and you search for at-home water filters that can filter out fluoride.

There are a number of straightforward and inexpensive tools to do that.

And here I don't have any relationship to any of the water filters or

things that I'm gonna mention.

Now, I wanna be very clear about that there's no brand code or affiliation here.

I'm simply trying to direct you to resources that will allow you to filter

your tap water for it to be more safe for you to consume in a way that meets your

budget with the understanding that people have very different disposable incomes.

So the range of costs here is going to be pretty tremendous.

I just wanna get that outta the way first.

, you know, there are water filters that you can use repeatedly.

So these are what I'll refer to as pitch filters that are

less than a hundred dollars.

Now keep in mind that that's a one-time purchase except for the replacement

of the filters, which fortunately doesn't have to be done too often.

So there are different filters.

I'll provide a link to one that I found that is at least by my

read of the lowest possible cost.

So this is the so-called clearly filtered water pitcher with affinity filtration.

So this is a filter that can adequately remove fluoride, lead,

BPAs, glyphosates, hormones, and some of the other harmful things

that are contained in most tap water.

Again, I do realize that for some people, even an 80 US dollar

cost is going to be prohibitive.

But do realize that what you're doing here is you're purchasing a unit that

can be used repeatedly, over and over.

The reason why it's lower cost than some of the different filtration

approaches that I'll talk about in a moment are that you can't really

put all the drinking water that you would use, say for an entire week or

for an entire month in one pitcher.

You're gonna have to repeatedly pour water into the pitcher in order to filter it.

Now, as I mentioned before, the range on water filter costs for filters that

can adequately remove fluoride and all the other things that you want

out of your top water is immense.

In fact, you can find you know, whole house water filters that

are, you know, $2,000 or more.

Again, these are gonna be filters that are gonna be in your garage or in a, a

laundry room that are going to basically pull from the, the piping system of

your house and deliver purified water.

I technically, it's not purified, but that's removing these contaminants and

fluoride from all the sinks in your house.

So you could effectively drink from any or all sinks in your house.

That's what explains the higher cost.

I think most people are probably not going to have the disposable income

or have the opportunity to include one of these whole house filters, although

if you do have the means and it's important to you, you could do that.

And then there are going to be what I would call intermediate systems.

So systems that cost somewhere between 200 and $500.

Probably one of the more common ones or popular ones is a

so-called Berkey filter system.

These are filter systems that, again, remove the things that you want

removed from your tap water, and they can do it at higher volumes.

And they're typically countertop units.

They don't require any plugin typically, or they only require brief plugin

and electricity, and they're going to filter out many, many liters or tens of

liters of water so that you can always have access to that clean filtered

water time or day or night without having to pour over into the pitcher.

So I mentioned these different options because again, I realize that people have

different levels of disposable income.

As far as I know, there's no tablet or simple mechanism that can be purchased

as a transportable, you know pill that you can just simply throw in

water and remove the contaminants.

If anyone is aware of one that can adequately remove fluoride and

other contaminants, please put in the comment section on YouTube.

That'd be the best place.

So that I and everyone else can see it, but hopefully the mention of the

different filtration systems that I mentioned we'll give you some choices

that I would hope would fall within the range that one could potentially afford.

An important note about filtration.

Just as in our body, there are mechanisms to signal mechanical changes and

chemical changes that occur in our gut, in our brain, etc., elsewhere

and in general, both mechanical and chemical changes are signaled across

the body to invoke different changes, whether or not those are, you know,

a response of the immune system or to make us more alert or more asleep, etc.

So too filtration capitalizes on mechanical and chemical filtration.

What I mean by that is when you run a fluid water or any other

fluid through a filter, those filters are doing two things.

They are physically constraining which molecules can go through by creating

portals, pores that allow certain size molecules to go through and not others.

And almost always, they contain certain chemicals themselves, right?

Those filters have been treated with certain chemicals that

neutralize certain other chemicals.

Okay?

So you may be wondering how when you filter water, you know,

magnesium and calcium could get through, but fluoride doesn't.

And that's because these filters have been very cleverly designed

in order to neutralize fluoride or to prevent large molecules, such as

sediment and dirt, which is kind of easy to imagine being filtered, but

also to allow certain small molecule, like calcium, which is small-ish, or

magnesium, which is small-ish to still pass through into our drinking water.

And this is wonderful because what it means is that by filtering our

water, using any of the methods that we talked about before, you're still

going to get whatever magnesium and calcium was present in that water while

still adequately removing the fluoride and other disinfectant byproducts.

Now, what if you can't afford any of those options?

Okay, well here you have an interesting zero cost option.

It's not as good as the other ones of filtering that water, but it is an

option, and I do think it's important to give options to people who don't have

any disposable income for the purpose of filtering their water, which is to

draw a gallon or 5 gallons or maybe even more, tap water out of the tap and put it

into some, some container, some vessel.

So it could be one gallon, 5 gallon, 10 gallon container.

And then to let that tap water sit for some period of time to allow some of

the sediment to drop to the bottom.

Now you might say, well, there's no sediment, there's nothing contained

in that tap water and it isn't fluoride diluted in the water.

And indeed the answer to that is yes.

However, there is some evidence that letting tap water sit out at room

temperature and outside the pipes that deliver that water can help remove some,

not all of the contaminants in that water.

If, however you are filtering the water using any of the methods

that I talked about a few moments ago, you do not need to do this.

Okay?

I realize there's a whole world out there of people who insist on putting their

water in the sun or only keeping it in certain containers and putting it out

for a few days before they get ingested.

That to me, seems a bit extreme.

If you wanna do that, be my guest, but I don't think most people need to do that.

However, I do believe that for people who have zero disposable income to devote to

paying for any kind of filtration system for their tap water, they're taking that

tap water and putting into some container at room temperature and keeping it room

temperature for a half day or a day or more, and then pouring off the top

two thirds of that water into another container and consuming the water from

that second container is going to remove some, not all of the contaminants that

one would need to be concerned about.

And here I should mention something that I neglected to mention a few moments ago.

If you were going to do this zero cost option and, and let the

water sit out for a bit, you would want that water to sit uncapped.

Sorry, I should have mentioned that before.

Uncapped, of course, trying to keep things from falling into that water.

In fact, you could even put a a little bit of cloth above it, so you don't

want things falling into that water, but you want certain things to be able

to evaporate off, and you also want some of the sediment to drop down.

And the reason why this process of letting water sit out would work at all is because

many of the contaminants contained within water are not present because of the

source of that water or even the treatment of that water, but rather because of the

pipes that that water arrives to your glass or your, the pot that you have from.

Okay?

And here again, there is an infinite number of variables.

So some people are living in buildings for which the pipes are

very, very old, but very, very clean.

Believe it or not, some people are living in newer buildings and structures.

They have new pipes, but for which the seals between those pipes contain things

that are not good for you to consume.

So by letting water sit out for a while, you are able to remove some of the

contaminants present within the pipes of your home and the building and even the

pipes that lead to your home or apartment.

Now, some people get really obsessed with this old tap water thing and really

wanna find out all the details about the pipes and what sorts of, you know, hard

metals and how much magnesium and how much calcium are present in their water.

There are ways that you can test your drinking water for those sorts of things.

Most people, I realize, including myself, are simply not going to do that.

If you want to know what I do, I tend to drink water that is filtered through

one of these lower cost filters.

Or if I'm going to be consuming a lot of fluid, I will drink certain kinds

of fluid that later I'll tell you, I've been doing an experiment for sake of this

episode looking at so-called molecular hydrogen water, which sounds very fancy

and esoteric and almost a little wacky.

But it turns out has largely to do with the amount of magnesium and

calcium and the pH of that water.

So if you are somebody who has a very low budget or simply just wants to

spend a very small amount of money and try and still drink tap water, there

is absolutely a way to do that safely.

But it does require a few of these steps.

So, on the topic of magnesium and calcium, this relates, as I mentioned

earlier, to the "hardness" of water.

So what of the hardness of water, you know, is it better to have more magnesium

and calcium in your water or less?

Some people don't like the taste of hard water.

They prefer the taste of water that has less magnesium in calcium.

However, there I would encourage you to take a step back and

consider some of the literature.

In fact I'll mention a paper in particular now, published in 2019, which describes

the quote, regulations for calcium, magnesium, or hardness in drinking water

in the European Union member states.

Turns out in Europe, they do very detailed water analysis and that's

present in a number of really high quality scientific publications.

This was a paper published in regulatory toxicology and pharmacology, and they

cite a number of different references in the introduction that, for instance,

in here I'm quoting statistically significant inverse association between

magnesium and cardiovascular mortality.

Now, again, that's a, an association, this is not causal, but higher magnesium

in water, lower cardiovascular mortality.

They go on to say the highest exposure category, which are people consuming

drinking water with magnesium contents of 8.3 to 19.4 milligrams per liter.

Again, when you get your water analysis, you can compare against some of these

values was significantly associated with decreased likelihood of cardiovascular

mortality by 25% compared with people consuming magnesium content

of 2.5 to 8.2 milligrams per liter.

Okay, so what this basically shows, and, and by the way, the reference

to that I'll also provide a link to, in the show note caption.

What this basically states is that higher magnesium containing water,

and it turns out higher magnesium and calcium containing water, so-called

harder water may not taste as good to you, but turns out to be better for you.

Now, whether or not it can prevent you from getting cardiovascular

disease, I don't know.

In fact, I would probably just state no, it probably won't prevent

you from cardiovascular disease.

You still need to do all the other things that are important for

avoiding cardiovascular disease and cerebral vascular disease.

For that and what to do in order to avoid cardiovascular disease.

I strongly encourage you to listen to the episode with Dr.

Peter Attia, that's coming out in a few weeks that gets deep into that

topic and the actionable items for avoiding cardiovascular disease.

But basically, as this study quotes, there is a growing consensus among

epidemiologists and epidemiological evidence along with clinical and

nutritional evidence that's strong enough to suggest that new guidance

should be issued in terms of how these different sources of tap water should

enhance, not deplete the amount of magnesium and calcium in that water.

Now, this ought to raise a very important question in all of your

minds, which is why is it that magnesium and calcium concentrations

are relevant to cardiovascular disease?

Is it something about what magnesium does in cells or what calcium does in cells?

Are we all magnesium and calcium deficient?

Well, it turns out that's not the case.

The major effect by which magnesium and calcium in water are likely to impact

things like blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and other aspects of cellular

function turn out to be somewhat cryptic.

But we can make that cryptic aspect very clear by saying that when we

have more magnesium in particular, but also calcium present in our water,

so-called hard water, you increase the amount of hydrogen in that water.

It becomes what we call hydrogen rich and the pH of that water is increased.

Now again, this does not mean that we are trying to change the pH of the cells of

our body in any kind of meaningful way.

In fact, we don't want to do that.

We want the pH of the cells of our body to stay in particular ranges as

I mentioned earlier, but having more magnesium and more calcium in our water

that is increasing the hardness of our water changes the pH of that water.

And it turns out that the elevated pH of water, that is pH of water that tends

to be somewhere between high sevens.

So we could say 7.9 up to even 9 or 9.2 is going to be more readily absorbed and

is going to more favorably impact the function of our cells than lower pH water.

Again, I wanna restate this because I'm a little bit concerned that

maybe a clip of this is gonna be taken and, and send elsewhere.

And someone will get the impression that I'm saying that we actually want

to drink high pH water, that we all need to buy expensive high pH water.

Turns out that's not the case.

If you are consuming tap water from a location where levels of a magnesium are

sufficiently high in that tap water again, where the level of magnesium is 8.3 to

19.4 milligrams per liter of water, that is, if the water coming out of your tap

is hard enough, well then chances are you don't need to enhance the pH of that water

or change its magnesium concentration.

If, however, the water that you're drinking from the tap filtered or

not, I would hope filtered contains less than 8.3 milligrams per liter of

magnesium, well then chances are the pH of that water is going to be low

enough that it's not going to be lending itself to some of the favorable health

components that higher pH water can.

Notice, I did not say that lower pH aka more acidic water is bad for you.

I didn't say that.

I said that higher pH water can be good for you.

So let's talk about how and why higher pH water can be good for you.

And some of the best, and in fact, very inexpensive sources of higher

pH magnesium enhanced or simply tap water that contains sufficient

magnesium can be used and accessed.

Many of you are probably wondering whether or not you can simply boil your tap water

and thereby decontaminate the tap water.

There I want to caution you, it turns out that some of the

contaminants present in water are actually made worse by heating water.

And again, I don't want to open up you know, a whole catalog of different fears.

I, like all of you, I presume, use water to cook pasta, rice, because I'm

an omnivore, I do consume those things.

I confess if I make Yerba Matte or any kind of tea or coffee, I tend to use

a higher quality water source than tap water, even if that tap water is filtered,

because I like the taste far more if I use a really good source of water, and again,

because I'm not consuming those beverages in enormous volumes, that becomes a,

a relatively inexpensive endeavor.

But I would caution people against using boiling or heating of water

as the only method to decontaminate their tap water and instead to

also rely on some of the filtration systems that I talked about before.

And as long as we're talking about the temperature of water, there is

sort of an ongoing debate online.

It's not a huge debate, but a number of people engaged in this debate as

to whether or not drinking really cold water or room temperature water

is better for you or worse for you.

This is a tough one to resolve.

It turns out that if water is very, very cold, that is if you drink it and you can

feel that cold water making its way down to your gut and you can actually feel it

as cold within your gut, that's sort of a, a you know, back of the envelope, , or I

should say direct within the gut measure of cold versus body temperature water,

that it is going to be slower to absorb.

That is you're gonna feel it sloshing around in your stomach for a bit

longer than if you were to consume water that is slightly warmer.

Now, that is not to say that you should ingest warm water

or room temperature water.

However, many people find that when they drink very cold water or ice water,

that indeed it can alter the kind of sensation of the lining of their stomach

in ways that at least to them feel like it's altering their digestion.

And that makes sense.

The cells that line the gut are very temperature sensitive.

You want this so for a number of reasons, including not consuming

food that is excessively hot or cold or damaging your gut.

But in general, most people know the temperature of fluid that

they want to ingest and ingest that temperature of fluid.

So most people, for instance, on a cold day, want a warmer or hot fluid.

Does that mean that you're not going to absorb that warmer hot fluid?

No, of course it doesn't.

You're going to absorb that fluid one way or the other.

So drink fluids at the temperatures that are to your liking in that moment.

In other words, what you desire in that moment and don't worry so much

about trying to avoid cold beverages or trying to make sure that you're

always consuming room temperature water as opposed to cold water.

So now with your understanding of hard water, soft water, magnesium, the

relationship between magnesium, calcium, and the pH of water, and remember our

earlier conversation where we talked about how higher pH water is actually

going to move out of the gut and into the body a bit more readily, and across

those aquaporin channels more readily than lower pH, more acidic water.

Well, that raises the question of whether or not all these different forms

of water that are out there, reverse osmosis water, distilled water, double

distilled water deuterium-depleted water, alkaline water, as it's often

called, whether or not any or all of that has meaningful health outcomes.

Here we can address some of those items pretty quickly.

For instance, distilled water and double distilled water is essentially

distilled of that is it has magnesium and calcium removed from it.

So my recommendation would be to not drink distilled water.

There may be specific circumstances where somebody has very high levels of blood

magnesium or calcium or calcium stores within the body that would necessitate

them drinking only distilled water.

But that seems like a very isolated kind of niche case.

So in general, consuming distilled water is just simply not necessary.

Now in terms of reverse osmosis water, what is reverse osmosis water?

Reverse osmosis water is water that has been passed repeatedly through a

series of filters that are designed to remove the kinds of contaminants

we were talking about earlier.

So some of the basic contaminants like disinfectant byproducts, fluoride, and

some other large and small molecules that leaves the water ideally still

containing magnesium and calcium.

Although there's some evidence that reverse osmosis water can deprive water

of some of the magnesium and calcium.

So if you are going to use reverse osmosis filters and drink reverse

osmosis water, you want to make sure that you're still getting the

magnesium concentrations present in that water that we talked about earlier.

But in general, reverse osmosis water is considered safe, but, and for many

people, this is gonna be an important but but very expensive to access.

The reverse osmosis filters require a lot of changing of the filters.

Purchasing reverse osmosis water in its stable form within containers,

these are typically glass containers, is going to be pretty expensive

and prohibitive for most people.

That said, there are a number of people out there that really like

the taste of reverse osmosis water.

They report it as feeling more smooth.

They think of reverse osmosis water as "giving them energy".

To be quite honest, there's no direct studies of the subjective sensation

of water in the mouth and in the gut, and its relative health effects.

Again, the smoothness of water as one drinks it and goes down.

The gut really has no direct relationship to the "hardness or softness" of water.

I know that's going to shock a number of you.

You probably think, well, hard water is gonna be hard to drink, and

it turns out that's not the case.

In fact, many people find that with elevated levels of magnesium and

calcium and water, it actually tastes smoother or softer in their mouth.

So hard water tastes smooth or soft.

I know it's all very counterintuitive, but I think it's important to point this

out because a number of times you'll hear or read about filtering water so

that it tastes smoother and better.

And oftentimes that's happening because the "hardness" of water that

is the concentrations of magnesium and calcium are actually increasing.

So if you're somebody who's curious about reverse osmosis water and you can afford

the filters or the reverse osmosis water already pre-filtered please be my guest.

You know, drink it.

I'm certainly not trying to prevent anyone from drinking it, but there's

no peer reviewed evidence that I am aware of that conclusively shows that

drinking reverse osmosis water is far better for us than drinking other types

of water, provided the other types of water are adequately filtered of

fluoride and the sorts of disinfectant byproducts that we talked about earlier.

So what about hydrogen water?

You may have heard of this, or hydrogen enriched water or

electrolyzed reduced water as a way to access hydrogen enriched water.

All this might sound pretty crazy to some of you.

Now, fortunately, for sake of today's discussion, we can take a

number of the different categories of, let's call it unique categories

of water that have been described, including deuterium-depleted water.

And by the way, deuterium is something that relates to the

presence of hydrogen ions in water.

And put very simply, water that is extracted from sources that are closer

to sea level tend to have more deuterium in them than water that is extracted

from sources further from sea level.

So up in the mountains, for instance, and from springs further away from oceans.

As you get closer to sea level, the sources water separate from seawater

tend to have more deuterium, which relates to the enrichment or lack

of hydrogen within that water or free hydrogen within that water.

I warned you this was all gonna sound pretty niche and that we were gonna get

a little bit into the chemistry, but now I'm gonna make it all very simple for

you, at least for the non aficionado.

Electrolyzed reduced water, which is a method of using electricity to alter

the confirmation of the water molecules and their rates of movement as well,

as well as so-called hydrogen rich water, or hydrogen enriched water or

deuterium-depleted water, all have the property of having higher levels of

pH than other forms of water, such as distilled water, reverse osmosis water,

and generally higher pH than the kind of water that comes out of your tap.

Unless you live in a region where your tap water has very high levels of

magnesium in it, which does occur in certain regions of the world, but is not

that common more typically, the water that comes out of your tap does not

have enough magnesium, meaning not as much magnesium in it as you would like.

And this, I believe, explains in a fairly straightforward way why there is

such an appeal of these pH enhanced or alkaline waters or electrolyzed reduced

water or deuterium-depleted water.

There are a couple of reasons, but first of all, anytime someone is

consuming a specialized form of water, chances are it's going to be filtered

of the disinfectant byproducts, fluoride, and the other things that

you really don't want in water.

So already the water is going to be cleaner than would

be coming out of the tap.

So that's going to indirectly explain a number of the so-called health

benefits, both subjective and perhaps even objective as we'll talk about

that can result from consuming these other let's say more esoteric forms of

water, at least not of simple tap water.

However, if you look at hydrogen or hydrogen enriched water, you really need

to take a step back and ask, what is that?

You know, what are we really talking about?

Because it turns out that you can create hydrogen enriched water by putting tablets

of magnesium itself, small amounts of magnesium dissolving those in water.

It will give off a kind of gaseous solution.

You'll see a bunch of bubbling in there.

You certainly want to dilute that tablet and then consume the water.

And yes, it's true what you've heard about and read from these commercial sources.

You do want to consume that water within about, you know, five to 15 minutes

after that tablet completes dissolving.

Now, why would you do this?

And I should say that I have now started doing this not because I necessarily think

that it's so necessary or so beneficial.

I'll talk about my experience in a moment.

I did it in anticipation of this episode because I was researching

water and hydrogen enrich water and all these alkaline waters.

And what became very clear to me based on reading a fantastic two-part

review, it's a very extensive review entitled, or at least the first part

is entitled: Electrolyzed Reduced Water Molecular Hydrogen is the Exclusive Agent

Responsible for the Therapeutic Effects.

And then there's a second part to this review.

This is how extensive it is, entitled: Electrolyzed Reduced Water number

two, safety Concerns and Effectiveness as a source of Hydrogen Water.

What this review, which we've linked to in the show notes, points to is that

all of the health benefits of these different forms of water that you hear

about out there, deuterium-depleted, hydrogen enrich, etc., all seem

to boil down, no pun intended, no boiling included, I should say, to the

elevation in hydrogen that translates into, and here's the really meaningful

change, the elevation in pH that occurs when you hydrogen enrich water.

Now, there are not a lot of clinical studies looking at hydrogen

enriched water, but there are starting to be more than a few.

And one that I'd like to point out and that we'll link to, was published

fairly recently, which is entitled Hydrogen-rich water reduces inflammatory

responses and prevents apoptosis.

Apoptosis is a naturally occurring cell death during development and is generally

used to describe cell death of the body.

Sometimes this can be good cell death, by the way, removing

cells that need to be removed.

Again, the title of the paper is: Hydrogen-Rich water reduces inflammatory

responses and prevents apoptosis of peripheral blood cells in healthy Adults.

A randomized double blind controlled trial.

Now this paper looked at the effects of drinking 1.5 liters per day of hydrogen

enriched water for a period of four weeks.

They did find significant positive benefits of reduced inflammation, and

they found these changes by way of analyzing things like interleukin 6

and some of the other interleukins, which are markers of inflammation.

They controlled very nicely for the fact that people were still consuming

other forms of water and liquid and coffee, etc., although they made

sure that they weren't consuming too much coffee and soda in addition

to this hydrogen enriched water.

But what this paper shows is that indeed, increasing the free hydrogen

in water can improve certain health metrics in these cells.

And this is in keeping with some of the subjective reports that people have stated

out there, and that I myself experience, I have to say that by drinking hydrogen

rich water, which I'll tell you how to do fairly inexpensively in a moment,

you do get the subjective experience of having more energy, of "feeling better".

Now, keep in mind, of course, the placebo effect is a very real and powerful

effect, so it could just be placebo, although in this paper they did of

course include a placebo group, so people didn't know if they were getting hydrogen

rich water or non hydrogen rich water.

I should also mention that the improvements in health metrics that they

observed in this study were only observed for individuals older than 30 years old.

Why that is, I don't know, the conclusions these authors came to in terms of how

these individuals older than 30 achieved lower levels, or I should say reduced

levels of inflammation and improved markers of other aspects of biological

function is that the hydrogen water improved the biological antioxidant

potential of certain cell types.

And again, the cell types that they mainly focus on were these peripheral

blood cells in this particular study.

Now, how could this be?

Why would this be?

Well, this goes back to our earlier discussion about reduction in

reactive oxygen species, so-called ROSs, and reductions in free

radicals that can damage cells.

So if all of this is sounding very convoluted, I can understand why.

However, what I like about this study and the two reviews that

I mentioned a moment ago is that these studies don't really say that

hydrogen-rich water is what's essential.

What these studies really point to is that the changes in pH of water that

enhancing the hydrogen in water can create, is what leads to the enhanced

either absorption and or ability of cells to utilize that higher pH water.

Again, not by changing the pH of the body or of cells, but simply because higher pH

water or we could perhaps more accurately state less acidic water, that is harder

water that contains more magnesium and calcium, seems to be more readily used

by the cells of the body and therefore it's very likely that the individuals

in this study were achieving higher or more efficient levels of hydration.

Okay, so if any of this is confusing, let me be very clear.

I do not believe that we all need to drink deuterium-depleted water or that

we all need to drink electrolyzed reduced water, nor do I necessarily believe that

we all need to drink hydrogen rich water.

However, it's very clear to me that all these different forms of water are

better absorbed and therefore lead to better and more efficient hydration, and

therefore can reduce inflammation, blood pressure, and improve a number of other

health metrics because of the elevated pH that all of these different purification

or water treatment methods achieve.

And that elevated pH, again, is not changing the pH of the cells and

tissues and organs of your body.

You actually don't want that, rather that elevated pH is simply making the water

less acidic than it would be otherwise.

So the simple takeaway is this, if your tap water contains sufficient

magnesium per the values that we talked about earlier, I don't think

you need to hydrogen enrich your water.

I do however, suggest that you at least analyze your water or look at some of

the professional analysis of water that you can achieve online and filter out

disinfectant byproducts and fluorides, etc., from that magnesium, or I should say

sufficiently magnesium containing water.

Okay?

Put simply, if your tap water has enough magnesium, filter it, but drink

it and I think you're doing just fine.

If, however, the levels of magnesium in your tap water are not above that value

that we talked about earlier in that case, I do think, and I can completely

understand why enriching the amount of hydrogen in that water can make that

water not only more palatable, right?

Give you the sensation that it's softer or smoother or more enjoyable to

drink than more acidic water would be.

But also that that water is going to be far more effective in being

absorbed and hydrating in the cells and tissues of your body, which turns out

to be very important for an enormous range, perhaps every biological

function within your brain and body.

So how can you hydrogen enrich your water?

That actually can be done fairly inexpensively.

I've been doing that as I mentioned earlier, as part of an experiment in

preparation for this episode, because it turns out that the water that comes

out of my tap has very little magnesium in it and very little calcium as well.

The way to create hydrogen-rich water is you can simply purchase molecular

hydrogen tablets, which in reality are just magnesium tablets that dissolve in

water and create a free hydrogen that can interact with the other water molecules.

Now, the chemistry behind it has been substantiated, and I'll provide

a link in the show note captions to a paper that gets into some fairly

extensive detail about the way that having an additional hydrogen in your

water can adjust the flow of electrons and the adjustment of free radicals.

But keep in mind, again, this is all through increases in the pH of your water,

and please keep in mind that you can't simply take any other or any old magnesium

tablet or capsule and put it into water.

The configuration of the magnesium in these capsules and tablets is such

that it allows a rapid dissolving of the tablet and the activation

of the free hydrogen that can interact with the water molecules.

Again, there are only a few scientific studies exploring

the real biological effects of these activated hydrogen waters.

The dissolvable tablets are the far less expensive way to go than purchasing

pre-packaged and sealed hydrogen water.

In fact, I don't recommend those brands because they are quite expensive and

it's not clear how stable the activated or free hydrogen is in those waters.

In any case, this is certainly not something that everyone needs to do.

I mention it because I have had a good experience with it myself.

I also will mention again that I have no business or affiliation

to any of these products.

I'll provide a link to a few of them in the show note captions for those

of you that want to experiment.

And indeed, that's why I'm telling you this, for those of you that want

to experiment with raising the pH of your water without having to purchase

what is ordinarily quite expensive, higher pH water, you can do this with

these dissolvable magnesium tablet.

My experience with them has been quite good.

In fact, I plan to continue to use them once or twice a day.

This is not the sort of thing that you need to do in all

the water that you drink.

I want to repeat, even if you go down this path and you find that you really

like the activated hydrogen tablet approach, it is not the case that you

want to put these in all of your water, and you certainly don't want to put

them in carbonated waters of any kind.

That will lead to a lot of gastric discomfort, nor do you want to put

them into hot liquids of any kind.

So again, this is the sort of thing that you do once or twice, maybe three

times a day, and you can find out for yourself and sort of measure subjectively

whether or not you like the experience and whether or not you "feel better".

Now, earlier in the episode we were discussing structured water

or this fourth phase of water.

I know a number of people out there are curious as to whether or not ingesting

structured water is somehow better for us than ingesting non-structured water.

All I can say about this is that it is a very controversial thing to suggest

that structured water is somehow more biologically effective or better

for us than non-structured water.

There are a number of different ways that one can create structured water.

They involve some pretty extensive and expensive at-home systems ranging anywhere

from a couple of hundred dollars to a couple of thousand dollars or more.

To be quite direct, when one goes into the peer reviewed scientific literature,

one will not find that is there is essentially no real evidence that

ingesting structured water leads to any specific desired biological outcomes.

Now, as I say that, I'm sure there are people out there who have still

had tremendous experiences ingesting structured water, whether or not that's

due to a placebo effect or a real effect of ingesting structured water isn't clear.

Just to give you a sense of what my stance is on things like structured

water, I think that they are interesting and intriguing, but as a scientist, in

the absence of any quality peer review data at present, I can't really suggest

that people go out and start ingesting structured water nor that they adhere

to the claims that structured water is going to be really, really good for

them compared to other forms of water.

That said, I do think that there's an interesting and open space for

further exploration of the biological effects of structured water given the

fact that structured water does exist.

I don't think anyone debates that, and the fact that the different

structures of water in this fourth phase of water as we're calling it,

has been shown to interface with solids and other aspects of liquids and can

do so within organelles of cells.

So different components of cells that control different

functions, including mitochondria.

I think there's a potential there, whether or not there's a promise

there, is a another question entirely.

So I don't wanna shut the door on structured water.

I think this is an open question that I hope there will be more

data to answer those questions in the not too distant future.

And meanwhile, if any of you are aware of good clinical studies exploring

the biological effects of structured water in either animal models or

humans, please put those references in the comments on YouTube because I'm

very curious as to how this area of biological effects of structured water

is evolving and continues to evolve.

So today we discussed water, and admittedly we went into a lot of

detail about the physics and chemistry of water in its various forms.

And we talked about hydration because I think that's the main reason

why many of you are interested in or concerned about water.

We also talked about contaminants and tap water, which unfortunately

do exist and are very prominent in essentially all regions of the world.

So please do get some information about what's coming out of your tap.

I also wanna throw in one other piece of information that's really critical that

I learned about when researching this episode, which is the quality of water

that comes out of your tap is not just dictated by the source that it comes

from external to your home or apartment, your pipes are also important, and that

filter, or that little mesh that sits at the faucet head is also very important.

Most people don't pay attention to that, but it turns out that a lot of debris

and contaminants can be derived from that little filter that most people just

simply aren't cleaning often enough.

So here, I'm not trying to tell you that the metal or the plastic that

that filter is made of is a problem.

More often than not, contaminants are showing up in water because people aren't

cleaning those filters often enough.

And in fact, prior to researching this episode, I didn't ever

think to clean that filter.

I looked underneath my faucet and while that filter didn't look particularly

filled with debris, I did find that when I took it off and I looked at the other

sign, there was quite a lot of debris.

So if you are going to consume tap water, you definitely want to consider

the source, the pipes in your building or apartment, the ones that lead right

up to your glass or jug that you would put that water into, and also that

mesh that that water passes through as it goes into that glass or jug.

We also talked about how much water to drink.

I hope that we finally resolve that question.

For those of you that have been wondering about that.

The Galpin equation is a wonderful approach to how much water

to consume during exercise.

And by providing these other formulas of about 8 ounces or 240 milliliters

of water per hour for the 10 hours from waking until post waking on

average, remember it's averages.

You don't have to consume them every hour on the hour, and no need to be neurotic.

Hopefully you can achieve better levels of hydration, which we know can

lead to reductions in blood pressure improvements in appetite, mood, and focus.

And I really think that it's the improvements in cognitive focus and

physical ability, both endurance strength and other forms of kind of readiness

in the body, readiness to perform work in the body that really are best

supported by the hydration literature.

And then of course, we went through the different forms of water that you hear

about out there and addressed which ones are going to be beneficial or not and

perhaps more importantly, why any of them would be beneficial thinking about

that from the perspective of biologists and the chemistry of water, and I do

hope that by arriving at this point in the episode, now that you have a much

better understanding of the chemistry and physics of water and the way that

water can powerfully impact your biology.

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Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion all about the

science, including the chemistry, physics, and biology of water,

and how your body utilizes water.

And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

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