How to Optimize Your Water Quality & Intake for Health

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.260 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.900 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.900 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.060 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.140 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.060 | Today, we're discussing water.

00:00:17.260 | Now, to some of you, water might seem like a boring topic,

00:00:20.220 | but I assure you that water is anything

00:00:22.060 | but a boring topic.

00:00:22.940 | In fact, water as a substance is incredibly interesting

00:00:26.740 | for a variety of reasons that I'll explain today.

00:00:29.300 | In fact, we are going to discuss

00:00:30.460 | the physics and chemistry of water,

00:00:32.540 | and I promise to make it accessible to anyone and everyone,

00:00:35.840 | regardless of whether or not you have a physics

00:00:37.300 | or chemistry background.

00:00:38.840 | And I will discuss how your body needs and utilizes water,

00:00:42.740 | depending on what type of water you drink,

00:00:45.460 | the temperature of that water, when you drink the water,

00:00:48.720 | and indeed, how you drink that water.

00:00:51.500 | Now, water is actually a pretty controversial topic.

00:00:54.340 | In fact, in preparing for this episode,

00:00:56.140 | which took me several months, in fact,

00:00:58.960 | I ran into highly contradictory information

00:01:02.020 | and had to go on some real deep dives

00:01:03.700 | in order to ferret out the best

00:01:06.060 | and most accurate knowledge for you.

00:01:08.260 | I also found that there are generally two camps

00:01:10.420 | of people out there in terms of how they think about water

00:01:13.740 | and the consumption of water.

00:01:15.400 | One camp, generally speaking,

00:01:16.960 | is of the mind that tap water is completely safe.

00:01:19.980 | Perhaps it needs a little bit of filtering,

00:01:21.600 | but that in most areas of the world,

00:01:23.740 | if it runs out of the tap,

00:01:24.980 | and unless there's a warning sign directly above the faucet,

00:01:27.980 | that you can drink the tap water.

00:01:30.320 | The other camp seems to be the camp

00:01:32.840 | that does not trust anything that comes out of the tap

00:01:36.000 | and is excited by, and in fact,

00:01:38.140 | relies on things like reverse osmosis, deuterium depleted,

00:01:42.120 | hydrogen rich, or other forms of water

00:01:45.240 | that sometimes can be very expensive,

00:01:46.920 | or at least involve some substantial steps

00:01:49.220 | in order to clean, filter, alter the chemistry of,

00:01:52.800 | or in some other way, adjust

00:01:55.240 | before they are willing to consume it.

00:01:57.320 | So today, what we're going to try and do

00:01:59.280 | is to address all the stances around water.

00:02:02.460 | For instance, we will discuss

00:02:03.760 | whether or not tap water is indeed safe,

00:02:06.280 | and I will give you some tools that will allow you

00:02:08.460 | to address whether or not

00:02:09.480 | the water coming out of your tap is safe,

00:02:11.280 | as well as some tools that will allow you to address

00:02:13.780 | how to clean that water

00:02:15.220 | if indeed it does need filtering and cleaning,

00:02:17.720 | in particular for things like fluorides

00:02:19.840 | and endocrine disruptors,

00:02:21.100 | which it turns out are quite prominent in a lot, not all,

00:02:24.800 | but a lot of tap water sources.

00:02:27.200 | I will also talk about

00:02:28.600 | the more quote unquote esoteric forms of water

00:02:31.160 | that I mentioned a few minutes ago.

00:02:32.440 | So I will go systematically through the list

00:02:34.680 | of distilled, reverse osmosis, spring water,

00:02:37.760 | deuterium depleted water, high pH water,

00:02:40.920 | and for those of you that are already screaming out

00:02:42.640 | as you hear this, "Oh no, he's going to tell us

00:02:44.800 | that pH water can alter the pH of our body in helpful ways,"

00:02:47.920 | I'm not going to tell you that,

00:02:49.480 | but I will tell you that the alkalinity

00:02:51.520 | or acidity of the water,

00:02:52.740 | that is the pH of the water that you drink,

00:02:54.840 | has a profound impact on your ability

00:02:56.840 | to absorb and utilize that water

00:02:59.400 | and the impact that those water molecules have

00:03:02.640 | on specific biological systems.

00:03:04.340 | So it turns out pH is very important,

00:03:06.600 | but not for the reasons

00:03:08.060 | that you've probably heard about previously.

00:03:10.480 | I will talk about how the temperature of water

00:03:12.160 | that you drink does indeed turn out to be important

00:03:14.920 | for the rate of absorption of that water

00:03:17.140 | and its impact on the cells, tissues,

00:03:18.920 | and organs of your body and thereby your health.

00:03:20.960 | And I will talk about various zero cost and low cost tools

00:03:24.440 | that you can use in order to get the most

00:03:27.080 | out of the water that you drink.

00:03:28.580 | And finally, I will talk about

00:03:30.000 | when and how to hydrate your body best.

00:03:32.680 | Before we dive into today's topic,

00:03:34.200 | I want to share with you some very interesting results

00:03:36.760 | that were just published

00:03:37.880 | on the use of deliberate cold exposure to benefit fat loss.

00:03:42.240 | Now, deliberate cold exposure is a topic

00:03:44.040 | I've covered before in this podcast.

00:03:45.440 | We have an entire episode about that

00:03:46.900 | that I've linked in the show note captions.

00:03:49.120 | Deliberate cold exposure can be done by way of cold showers

00:03:51.800 | or immersion in cold or ice water up to the neck.

00:03:54.400 | And that's typically the ways that it's done.

00:03:57.320 | It has been shown to reduce inflammation,

00:03:59.780 | to increase metabolism.

00:04:01.640 | And I think some of the most exciting results

00:04:03.600 | that have been published are the results,

00:04:05.260 | certainly in humans showing that deliberate cold exposure

00:04:08.360 | can increase the release of so-called catecholamines,

00:04:11.340 | which are dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine.

00:04:14.440 | And those increases in those three molecules

00:04:17.200 | are quite long lasting and lead to substantial increases

00:04:20.600 | in mood and focus throughout the day.

00:04:23.620 | Now, many people out there hear

00:04:25.380 | about deliberate cold exposure and cringe.

00:04:27.700 | Other people hear about it and cringe

00:04:29.360 | because they've heard that deliberate cold exposure,

00:04:31.540 | especially by way of immersion in water,

00:04:33.660 | can block the adaptation to strength

00:04:36.420 | or hypertrophy training.

00:04:37.420 | What I mean by that is yes, indeed,

00:04:39.520 | there are data showing that if one gets into very cold water

00:04:43.900 | up to the neck in the six hours,

00:04:46.540 | anytime that is in the six hours

00:04:48.080 | after strength or hypertrophy training,

00:04:50.240 | that some of the strength and hypertrophy increases

00:04:52.880 | that one would observe are blocked

00:04:55.040 | by that deliberate cold exposure.

00:04:56.300 | However, after six hours does not seem to be a problem.

00:04:59.280 | So it can be done on other days

00:05:01.000 | besides the strength and hypertrophy training.

00:05:02.740 | It can be done before strength and hypertrophy training.

00:05:04.720 | It can be done after endurance work.

00:05:06.900 | And I should mention that it does not appear

00:05:09.920 | that cold showers disrupt the adaptations

00:05:12.920 | to strength and hypertrophy training,

00:05:14.340 | even if they are done immediately after strength

00:05:16.160 | or hypertrophy training.

00:05:17.240 | Okay, with that said, many people do enjoy the effects

00:05:20.520 | of deliberate cold exposure,

00:05:21.600 | in particular for those increases in mood and alertness

00:05:25.100 | that are the consequence of those increases

00:05:26.740 | in the catecholamines, dopamine, norepinephrine,

00:05:28.800 | and epinephrine.

00:05:30.000 | And again, those increases are very long lasting.

00:05:32.340 | So it's not just during the exposure to cold,

00:05:34.900 | it is for several hours, up to four,

00:05:36.620 | maybe even five or six hours,

00:05:39.080 | depending on how cold and how long

00:05:41.080 | the deliberate cold exposure happens to be.

00:05:43.400 | Again, there's a lot to say and explore

00:05:45.480 | about deliberate cold exposure.

00:05:46.940 | So again, I'll just refer you to the episode

00:05:48.440 | on deliberate cold exposure.

00:05:49.800 | If you want to explore the mechanisms

00:05:51.680 | and the positive health outcomes,

00:05:53.460 | some of the controversies within the data, et cetera,

00:05:55.860 | within that episode.

00:05:57.200 | Meanwhile, I definitely want to share with you the results

00:05:59.380 | of this recent study that just came out.

00:06:01.760 | The title of this study is impact of cold exposure

00:06:04.460 | on life satisfaction and physical composition of soldiers.

00:06:08.480 | The reason this study is very interesting

00:06:10.380 | is that it's one of the few studies that used,

00:06:13.440 | or I should say explored both deliberate cold exposure

00:06:16.360 | by immersion in cold water,

00:06:18.660 | as well as deliberate cold exposure by way of cold showers

00:06:22.000 | as it relates to weight loss.

00:06:24.220 | Now there's already data out there

00:06:25.720 | on the effects of deliberate cold exposure and metabolism.

00:06:28.400 | And here I'm mainly referring to the beautiful work

00:06:30.460 | of Dr. Susanna Soberg and colleagues in Scandinavia

00:06:33.920 | that showed that people that do 11 minutes total

00:06:37.360 | of deliberate cold exposure by immersion in cold water

00:06:39.560 | up to the neck per week.

00:06:40.840 | So 11 minutes per week total,

00:06:42.420 | spread out across some different sessions

00:06:44.040 | by way of getting into water that's uncomfortably cold

00:06:47.820 | up to the neck and then getting out

00:06:49.580 | and then doing that several times per week

00:06:51.020 | to hit that 11 minutes or more threshold.

00:06:53.120 | And, and this is very important,

00:06:54.520 | we'll come up in a moment in the context of this new study,

00:06:57.660 | and warming up, not by getting into a warm shower,

00:07:01.960 | which is frankly what I do after my cold showers

00:07:04.440 | or getting into the ice bath or cold water immersion,

00:07:07.780 | but rather forcing their body to warm up naturally

00:07:12.340 | by using its own metabolic abilities.

00:07:15.760 | In those studies, they observed substantial increases

00:07:19.360 | in brown fat stores, which are fat stores

00:07:21.380 | that you really want around the heart and clavicles,

00:07:23.320 | increases in metabolism that were quite dramatic,

00:07:26.760 | in my opinion, and that could be very beneficial

00:07:29.720 | for allowing people to feel more comfortable

00:07:31.600 | at cold temperatures when they're not in cold water

00:07:34.160 | and on and on.

00:07:35.000 | So lots of benefits shown in that study.

00:07:37.120 | In this study, what I thought was particularly interesting

00:07:39.640 | is again, they explored both immersion in cold water

00:07:42.840 | and cold showers and the duration of cold exposure

00:07:46.560 | that they found led to substantial fat loss,

00:07:49.080 | especially around the abdomen,

00:07:51.120 | was very brief deliberate cold exposure.

00:07:54.440 | Let me give you a few details about this study.

00:07:56.800 | The study involved 49 subjects

00:08:00.120 | that include both males and females.

00:08:02.120 | This is also really important.

00:08:03.240 | The beautiful work of Susanna Soberg and colleagues,

00:08:06.100 | as far as I know, only looked at males.

00:08:09.100 | This study looked at males and females.

00:08:10.740 | They were 19 to 30 years old

00:08:12.900 | and there basically were two groups.

00:08:14.820 | People either were assigned to get deliberate cold exposure

00:08:17.700 | or they were not assigned to deliberate cold exposure.

00:08:21.000 | The form of deliberate cold exposure

00:08:22.980 | involved one session per week of cold immersion

00:08:27.500 | in cold water up to the neck.

00:08:29.520 | And to just give you a sense of how cold it was,

00:08:31.980 | it was three degrees Celsius,

00:08:33.780 | which translates to about 37 1/2 degrees Fahrenheit.

00:08:37.680 | That's pretty darn cold, but it was only for two minutes.

00:08:40.940 | Okay, so one session at three degrees Celsius,

00:08:44.900 | otherwise known as 37.4 degrees Fahrenheit,

00:08:48.580 | for two minutes every week, once a week.

00:08:52.680 | In addition, the same subjects

00:08:54.920 | did five cold showers per week

00:08:57.260 | or a minimum of five cold showers per week.

00:08:59.600 | And those cold showers were slightly warmer

00:09:02.640 | than the immersion in cold water condition.

00:09:05.220 | So they were 10 degrees Celsius approximately

00:09:08.500 | or 50 degrees Fahrenheit, still pretty cold.

00:09:10.840 | And the duration of that cold water exposure in the shower

00:09:15.120 | was just for 30 seconds.

00:09:17.320 | Okay, so this is interesting to me

00:09:19.280 | because many people don't have access

00:09:21.560 | to cold water immersion.

00:09:23.740 | They might not have an ice bath

00:09:24.960 | or any place they can do that,

00:09:25.820 | but most people do have access

00:09:27.500 | to a cold shower of some sort.

00:09:29.580 | Plus I think most people could do

00:09:31.940 | probably one ice bath per week

00:09:33.620 | or find a place where they could get into cold water safely.

00:09:36.140 | Now, I should point out that some people will not do well

00:09:39.580 | going into 37.5 degree Fahrenheit,

00:09:43.140 | AKA three degrees Celsius water,

00:09:45.200 | having never done anything like this before.

00:09:46.960 | So if you're going to try and employ

00:09:48.180 | these sorts of protocols that were used in the study,

00:09:50.420 | I do recommend that you ease into it

00:09:51.940 | over the course of a week or so

00:09:53.580 | and become somewhat adapted

00:09:54.940 | to the shock of cold water exposure.

00:09:57.380 | So maybe start at 50 degrees Fahrenheit,

00:10:00.140 | kind of ease your way back

00:10:01.480 | in terms of the cold water immersion especially.

00:10:04.080 | Now, another critical feature of this study

00:10:06.760 | is as with the beautiful work by Susanna Soburg,

00:10:10.560 | the subjects were told to warm up naturally

00:10:15.360 | after the deliberate cold exposure.

00:10:17.260 | So they basically hung out

00:10:18.520 | outside of the cold water immersion

00:10:19.960 | or outside of the cold shower for 10 minutes

00:10:22.980 | after they were exposed to the cold in their bathing suit

00:10:26.440 | or I'm assuming they were wearing something.

00:10:29.000 | But the point is that you are not going

00:10:32.140 | from deliberate cold exposure directly into a hot shower

00:10:35.180 | or a sauna or something of that sort.

00:10:36.960 | So again, their bodies were forced to heat up again,

00:10:41.060 | naturally after the deliberate cold exposure,

00:10:43.380 | but after the 10 minute period,

00:10:45.100 | they were able to do whatever they wanted,

00:10:47.160 | essentially re-clothe, take a warm shower

00:10:49.500 | and so on and go about their day.

00:10:50.760 | Now, the results of this deliberate cold exposure protocol,

00:10:53.060 | again, two minutes in cold immersion

00:10:56.500 | at three degrees Celsius, 37.5 degrees Fahrenheit,

00:10:59.640 | plus five cold showers per week of two minutes long,

00:11:03.980 | a little bit warmer, 10 degrees Celsius,

00:11:05.980 | 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

00:11:07.180 | Now, the deliberate cold exposure used in this study

00:11:09.500 | caused many different

00:11:10.640 | statistically significant positive changes.

00:11:13.260 | They had a very extensive questionnaire

00:11:15.920 | that related to mood, everything from levels of anxiety

00:11:19.280 | to sexual satisfaction and on and on.

00:11:21.560 | In fact, they saw a statistically significant improvement

00:11:24.740 | in sexual satisfaction in the subjects

00:11:27.120 | that were exposed to deliberate cold exposure,

00:11:29.020 | not in the control group.

00:11:30.420 | Although they didn't look at this,

00:11:31.380 | chances are those improvements in sexual satisfaction

00:11:34.940 | were the downstream consequence of the known increases

00:11:38.380 | in testosterone and free testosterone

00:11:40.700 | that occur in both men and women

00:11:42.780 | who do this sorts of deliberate cold exposure.

00:11:44.980 | Again, testosterone being an important hormone

00:11:47.380 | for libido in both men and women.

00:11:50.660 | They also saw improvements in regulation of anxiety,

00:11:54.900 | which I think is very interesting

00:11:56.320 | given that the deliberate cold exposure

00:11:57.840 | often causes people anxiety,

00:11:59.500 | but here and in other studies,

00:12:01.240 | we've seen it can lead to a better ability

00:12:04.040 | to buffer against anxiety

00:12:05.860 | in the normal happenings of everyday life.

00:12:08.040 | Perhaps the most interesting and significant results

00:12:12.400 | that they found in the study, however,

00:12:14.000 | were that in particular in men,

00:12:16.420 | there was a reduction in waist circumference

00:12:18.460 | following eight weeks of this deliberate cold exposure,

00:12:21.860 | as well as a 5.5% on average,

00:12:25.820 | 5.5% reduction in abdominal fat

00:12:28.060 | that was quite statistically significant

00:12:30.380 | when compared to the other groups.

00:12:31.600 | Now, why there was no observed reduction in abdominal fat

00:12:36.260 | or waist circumference in the female subjects isn't clear,

00:12:39.460 | could have to do with just the way that body fat

00:12:42.420 | is stored and metabolized in females versus males.

00:12:45.640 | That is going to be a topic for future exploration.

00:12:48.160 | So I do think this study is very interesting

00:12:49.880 | because when you look at the landscape of science

00:12:53.020 | and discussion around deliberate cold exposure,

00:12:55.240 | I think there's a general consensus now

00:12:56.820 | that deliberate cold exposure

00:12:58.240 | can change one's sense of mood and wellbeing

00:13:01.300 | through these increases in catecholamines

00:13:03.220 | that I mentioned earlier,

00:13:04.460 | but the impact on metabolism itself

00:13:07.220 | has been somewhat controversial

00:13:08.460 | because the overall changes in metabolism that are observed,

00:13:11.580 | while statistically significant in many studies,

00:13:14.340 | have not ever really been shown to translate

00:13:17.020 | into weight loss or body fat loss

00:13:18.840 | in any kind of specific way.

00:13:20.220 | And of course, a great advantage of this study

00:13:22.280 | is that by exploring soldiers,

00:13:26.300 | they were able to really hold constant

00:13:28.840 | a number of other features

00:13:29.900 | like the amount of daily activity

00:13:31.200 | that those soldiers are exposed to,

00:13:33.400 | their diet, their living conditions,

00:13:35.520 | and so on and so forth.

00:13:36.500 | So at least in so far as human studies are done,

00:13:38.900 | it's a very well-controlled study.

00:13:40.660 | We'll provide a link to the study in the show note captions.

00:13:42.800 | And for those of you that are thinking about

00:13:44.700 | employing the protocol that's used in this particular paper

00:13:48.500 | or combining it with existing

00:13:50.100 | deliberate cold exposure protocols,

00:13:51.820 | to me, it seems pretty straightforward

00:13:53.260 | and a pretty minimal time investment.

00:13:54.920 | Just two minutes of deliberate cold exposure

00:13:57.740 | by way of water immersion up to the neck

00:13:59.900 | and five times a week of 30 seconds each

00:14:03.620 | of deliberate cold exposure by way of cold shower.

00:14:06.020 | And just a quick mention about cold showers.

00:14:07.860 | If you're going to use cold showers

00:14:09.760 | to do deliberate cold exposure,

00:14:11.900 | you're going to want to stand under the shower itself, right?

00:14:15.900 | And essentially have it hit your head,

00:14:18.220 | the back of your neck and your upper back,

00:14:19.760 | which is where most of your brown fat stores

00:14:22.140 | are concentrated.

00:14:22.960 | It turns out that cold exposure

00:14:24.180 | to those regions of the body in particular

00:14:26.260 | are going to trigger the adaptation

00:14:27.700 | of increased brown fat stores,

00:14:29.220 | which involves increases in mitochondria in those fat.

00:14:31.380 | Again, this is not the blubbery fat beneath the skin.

00:14:33.680 | This is the fat that acts as kind of an oil in the furnace

00:14:36.380 | that is your thermogenic properties of your body

00:14:39.320 | to generate heat and burn off so-called white adipose tissue

00:14:42.820 | elsewhere in the body.

00:14:44.000 | Now, anyone that understands the laws of physics

00:14:47.740 | and thermodynamics will be saying,

00:14:49.600 | wait, in order to get fat loss,

00:14:51.040 | you need to have a caloric deficit.

00:14:53.240 | The calories in, calories out still applies.

00:14:55.040 | And yes, that's absolutely true.

00:14:56.920 | We can only conclude on the basis of the results

00:14:59.780 | of this study that the people that lost body fat

00:15:04.540 | were indeed in a caloric deficit,

00:15:06.440 | presumably because all other factors

00:15:08.520 | were held more or less constant in this group of soldiers,

00:15:11.460 | presumably because the deliberate cold exposure itself

00:15:14.860 | elevated metabolism,

00:15:16.060 | thereby increasing the calories out component

00:15:18.640 | of the calories in, calories out equation,

00:15:20.820 | which of course governs the rules of weight loss

00:15:24.260 | and body fat loss as well.

00:15:26.220 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:15:28.820 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:15:31.580 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:15:33.820 | to bring zero cost to consumer information about science

00:15:36.300 | and science-related tools to the general public.

00:15:38.960 | In keeping with that theme,

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00:18:00.180 | Today's episode is also brought to us by HVMN Ketone IQ.

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00:19:09.980 | The Huberman Lab Podcast is now partnered

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00:19:27.360 | Let's talk about water.

00:19:28.580 | And let's start off by answering the question,

00:19:30.500 | what is water?

00:19:31.940 | Water is of course H2O.

00:19:33.820 | Most everybody knows that from an early age.

00:19:36.540 | But what H2O means is that each molecule of water

00:19:40.420 | consists of two hydrogens and one oxygen.

00:19:43.500 | Now the physical arrangement of those two hydrogens

00:19:46.580 | and one oxygen turns out to be really important

00:19:49.220 | for how water functions in the body

00:19:51.220 | and frankly elsewhere in our world and life.

00:19:55.120 | If you were to make a peace symbol,

00:19:57.460 | that is to put up your index finger

00:19:59.740 | and your middle finger simultaneously.

00:20:02.020 | In fact, I'm going to recommend you do that now,

00:20:03.660 | unless you're using your hands for something else important,

00:20:06.540 | in which case do it later.

00:20:08.620 | Well, if you make that peace symbol

00:20:09.620 | and you look at your hand,

00:20:10.940 | you have a pretty good impression

00:20:12.700 | of what an individual water molecule consists of,

00:20:15.260 | which is H2O, two hydrogens and an oxygen.

00:20:18.380 | And with that peace symbol, the fingers,

00:20:22.620 | or the tips of your fingers rather,

00:20:23.860 | are going to represent the hydrogens.

00:20:26.180 | Your fingers, that is the length of each of those fingers,

00:20:28.580 | is going to represent the electron bonds to the oxygen

00:20:32.080 | and the palm of your hand and the fingers that are down

00:20:34.000 | are going to represent the oxygen, okay?

00:20:36.340 | Now what's important about that visual impression

00:20:39.080 | or visual image of the individual water molecule

00:20:42.220 | is that it is polarized.

00:20:44.740 | That is the hydrogens over on one side,

00:20:47.500 | both of them are over on one side

00:20:49.140 | and the oxygen is over on another.

00:20:51.440 | And what's really important about water molecules

00:20:54.180 | being polarized is that they can bind to one another

00:20:57.260 | by way of that polarization.

00:20:58.500 | And this has to do with something that we all kind of learned

00:21:00.660 | in chemistry at one point, but many of us forgot.

00:21:03.340 | Maybe we didn't even understand it the first time around,

00:21:05.720 | which is that positives and negatives attract.

00:21:08.380 | So when you have individual water molecules,

00:21:11.540 | they have the opportunity to interact

00:21:13.900 | and essentially bind to one another

00:21:16.260 | and they bind through what are called covalent bonds.

00:21:18.860 | Covalent bonds are relatively weak bonds.

00:21:22.340 | And so as a consequence, water can change its conformation.

00:21:26.920 | However, covalent bonds are strong enough

00:21:29.660 | that water actually can maintain some structure

00:21:33.360 | and that structure will vary, of course,

00:21:35.500 | depending on its temperature.

00:21:37.960 | So what you need to know about water is that indeed,

00:21:41.120 | it consists of lots of individual H2Os

00:21:43.340 | and those H2Os can arrange themselves in different ways

00:21:45.660 | and that temperature is a strong determinant

00:21:48.460 | of the arrangement of those water molecules.

00:21:50.860 | That is they're bonding to one another.

00:21:52.660 | And in fact, even their spacing between those bonds.

00:21:56.180 | So again, even if you don't have any chemistry,

00:21:58.960 | stay with me because you'll definitely understand this.

00:22:02.500 | Water can exist in at least three forms

00:22:05.400 | and maybe four forms.

00:22:06.660 | We know that it can be liquid, of course.

00:22:08.940 | That's really normally what we think of

00:22:10.600 | when we think of water.

00:22:11.820 | It can be gas, so we think of steam, right?

00:22:14.220 | So if you heat it up, it takes on a,

00:22:17.240 | not a semi-solid or a semi-liquid form,

00:22:19.540 | it takes on this property of steam or gas, okay?

00:22:23.420 | So when you see steam or when you breathe on a cold day

00:22:28.060 | through your mouth or through your nose

00:22:29.080 | and you see your air,

00:22:30.740 | those are water molecules that are condensing,

00:22:32.740 | that is bonding in certain ways

00:22:34.660 | based on differences in temperature

00:22:36.540 | between the inside of your body and the outside air.

00:22:38.740 | And of course it can be a solid, it can be ice.

00:22:41.380 | Now, ice is fascinating and important in understanding

00:22:44.700 | how water works.

00:22:45.860 | And this will become relevant later

00:22:47.020 | when we think about how water works within the body as well,

00:22:49.660 | especially how different temperatures of water

00:22:51.900 | impact the health and behavior of our cells.

00:22:54.940 | And the most important point to understand

00:22:57.360 | about water in its solid state

00:22:59.660 | is that unlike most substances,

00:23:02.140 | when water is in its solid state,

00:23:04.660 | it is actually less dense than when it's in its liquid state.

00:23:07.940 | So just think about that.

00:23:09.260 | Most substances, most metals, for instance,

00:23:12.580 | when they are in a solid state,

00:23:14.500 | they are more dense than when they are in a liquid state.

00:23:17.260 | So for instance, if they're in a solid state,

00:23:19.240 | they will sink in a container

00:23:23.740 | filled with their liquid form, not water.

00:23:26.920 | Water is very interesting because as you cool water

00:23:29.820 | and water transitions from a liquid to a solid,

00:23:33.680 | it still binds, that is it can form bonds

00:23:36.920 | between those different molecules of water,

00:23:39.640 | but the spacing between those H2Os,

00:23:42.400 | so again, those peace symbols with hands,

00:23:44.360 | so if you had a bunch of those,

00:23:45.240 | if you had 1,000 hands all making peace symbols,

00:23:49.160 | they can bond to one another, but when it's cold,

00:23:52.540 | those bonds are actually made

00:23:54.720 | further apart from one another.

00:23:56.240 | And as a consequence, ice, as we all know,

00:23:58.480 | floats in water.

00:23:59.700 | In other words, put very simply,

00:24:01.900 | water is unusual and special in that in its solid form,

00:24:06.800 | ice, it is actually less dense

00:24:08.820 | than when it's in its liquid form,

00:24:10.480 | and that's why ice floats in water.

00:24:13.400 | Now, this is important, not just to our biology,

00:24:16.320 | but to all of life, because if you think about it,

00:24:18.880 | if it were not the case that water is less dense

00:24:22.720 | in its solid form, ice, than it is in its liquid form,

00:24:26.940 | the bottoms of our oceans would be covered

00:24:29.640 | with thick sheets of ice, and if that were the case,

00:24:32.760 | you can be absolutely sure that life would not exist

00:24:36.560 | on our planet the way that it does,

00:24:37.960 | and there's a good chance

00:24:39.520 | that we would not exist as a species,

00:24:41.300 | because so much of what allows us to exist on this planet

00:24:45.680 | and the other animals to exist on this planet

00:24:48.360 | relies on photosynthesis pathways in plants

00:24:51.760 | that are dependent on the sun and interactions

00:24:54.080 | with the oceans and lakes and other bodies of water.

00:24:56.760 | And of course, the ice caps are vitally important,

00:25:00.040 | that is the presence of ice, especially at the poles,

00:25:02.200 | but elsewhere in bodies of water as well,

00:25:04.960 | so called icebergs are a critical part of the ecosystem

00:25:07.880 | that allows for everything from photosynthesis

00:25:10.540 | to the ability of certain animals to extract food

00:25:13.940 | from each other and from their local resources.

00:25:16.480 | Now, there's a whole discussion to be had there,

00:25:18.260 | but the important point for now

00:25:20.400 | is that the physical properties of the bonds between water

00:25:23.520 | that are made and changed depending on temperature

00:25:26.960 | turn out to be essential for us to be present

00:25:29.720 | on this planet at all, and for our cells to function

00:25:33.340 | in the ways that they do for sake of health

00:25:36.160 | and for sake of disease.

00:25:37.840 | And we'll explore this later

00:25:39.220 | when we talk about the critical relationship

00:25:40.920 | between temperature, pH,

00:25:43.280 | which is the relationship between alkalinity,

00:25:46.360 | how basic, or acidity, how acid a given liquid,

00:25:51.120 | or in this case, we're going to be talking about water is,

00:25:53.240 | and the ways that our cells can or can't use water.

00:25:57.200 | So I realize that this is fairly in-depth

00:25:59.740 | for those of you that don't have

00:26:00.820 | much of a background in chemistry.

00:26:02.360 | I've tried to keep it really top contour,

00:26:04.740 | but if you can make a peace symbol,

00:26:06.760 | or if you can just imagine a peace symbol in your mind

00:26:09.320 | and realize that that's a water molecule

00:26:10.980 | and that those water molecules combine to one another

00:26:13.860 | through bonds that are relatively strong,

00:26:16.760 | but weak enough that they can be broken if they need to,

00:26:19.900 | and that the temperature that those water molecules

00:26:22.500 | are exposed to changes the distance between those bonds,

00:26:25.160 | and that's what allows ice to float in water,

00:26:27.900 | then you are going to have no problem

00:26:29.500 | with the remainder of the discussion today.

00:26:31.580 | In fact, you will also have the ability

00:26:34.200 | to understand things that you've observed many times over,

00:26:36.760 | but perhaps have never thought about or really understood,

00:26:39.860 | which are, for instance,

00:26:41.160 | that water has a certain level of surface tension.

00:26:43.840 | For instance, if you've ever been to the ocean

00:26:46.440 | and the waves are coming in,

00:26:47.820 | what you'll notice is if you walk on the dry sand

00:26:50.860 | or gravel, pebbles, that is, of the ocean,

00:26:54.400 | it's very easy, right?

00:26:55.240 | I mean, the pebbles move down or the sand moves down.

00:26:57.380 | It depresses a little bit due to the weight of your body.

00:27:00.140 | But as you get closer to the water,

00:27:01.380 | you're going to sink deeper

00:27:02.300 | because that sand is more saturated with water.

00:27:04.820 | But at some point, you won't be able

00:27:07.220 | to actually walk on top of the water, right?

00:27:09.980 | It has been said that Jesus walked on water.

00:27:11.760 | There's the so-called Jesus Christ lizard,

00:27:14.140 | so named because it can actually walk

00:27:15.660 | on the surface of water.

00:27:17.260 | A leaf can float on the surface of water.

00:27:20.360 | Under some conditions,

00:27:22.180 | a coin can float on the surface of water.

00:27:24.540 | If you make coffee in the morning,

00:27:26.260 | you can actually take a spoonful of that hot coffee

00:27:28.580 | and pour a little bit on the surface of your coffee,

00:27:31.260 | and you'll notice that it will bead up

00:27:32.740 | and you'll get little round spheres of water.

00:27:35.460 | Those are little water molecules bound to one another

00:27:37.500 | that spin on top of the surface before they sink under.

00:27:40.500 | That has everything to do with the bonding between water

00:27:43.140 | that's dependent on temperature,

00:27:44.120 | but also as with the difficulty for essentially everybody

00:27:49.120 | to walk on water or for animals to walk on water,

00:27:54.040 | the surface tension of water allows certain things

00:27:57.700 | to float there or to stay at the surface.

00:28:00.440 | But there's a very thin layer of water molecules

00:28:03.440 | at the surface of water that are more dense

00:28:06.380 | than the water that resides at deeper depths.

00:28:09.020 | And that's why most things, including us, sink in water.

00:28:11.700 | We are more dense than water.

00:28:13.340 | Now, I did mention earlier

00:28:15.020 | that there are three forms of water.

00:28:17.140 | Those are the ones that we all are familiar with,

00:28:19.040 | the solid, liquid, and gas forms of water.

00:28:21.780 | However, there are data mainly

00:28:23.860 | from Gerald Pollack's laboratory

00:28:25.480 | at the University of Washington

00:28:27.300 | that have described the so-called fourth phase of water,

00:28:30.060 | which is structured water.

00:28:31.420 | And we'll get into this a little bit later

00:28:32.580 | because structured water has really been a prominent topic

00:28:35.380 | in the, let's call it the water health aficionados.

00:28:39.500 | It's a heavily debated topic as to whether

00:28:41.340 | or not structured water is somehow better for ourselves

00:28:44.040 | if it exists within our bodies.

00:28:45.540 | We'll get into that in full detail later.

00:28:48.140 | But the whole notion of structured water is

00:28:50.460 | that in the presence of certain solids or certain liquids,

00:28:54.080 | the confirmation of water,

00:28:55.620 | that is the water molecules, actually change somewhat.

00:28:58.260 | This has been demonstrated.

00:28:59.400 | Whether or not it has relevance

00:29:00.380 | to the biological function of our body is a different issue.

00:29:02.860 | But we know that there is this fourth phase

00:29:05.020 | of water called structured water.

00:29:06.800 | Structured water is a fairly complicated topic,

00:29:10.040 | but we can make it very simple

00:29:11.020 | for the sake of today's discussion.

00:29:12.960 | I mentioned earlier that opposite poles attract,

00:29:16.960 | that is, positives and negatives attract,

00:29:18.780 | and typically things that are negatively charged

00:29:21.580 | when presented with another negative charge either repel

00:29:24.140 | or don't attract, things that are positively charged

00:29:26.660 | in the presence of another positive charge

00:29:28.500 | also tend to repel.

00:29:29.420 | This is the basis of magnets either sticking to one another

00:29:33.220 | or repelling from one another.

00:29:34.860 | There's also the idea that human beings

00:29:36.340 | who are opposites attract,

00:29:37.260 | but that's a different episode

00:29:38.620 | that we need to do in the future.

00:29:40.660 | The point here is that structured water

00:29:43.240 | is a unique condition in which the local environment

00:29:47.440 | that these water molecules happen to be in

00:29:50.140 | allows positive charges between different water molecules

00:29:54.540 | to attract one another.

00:29:55.740 | So again, whereas normally it's positive and negatives

00:29:58.980 | that attract, in the configuration

00:30:01.240 | that we call structured water,

00:30:02.960 | positives and positives attract

00:30:06.340 | and form bonds that are stronger than the typical bonds

00:30:09.720 | that would be formed between water molecules.

00:30:12.580 | And just as a kind of prelude to our discussion

00:30:14.960 | about structured water

00:30:15.980 | as it may or may not relate to health later,

00:30:18.860 | there are a number of people that believe

00:30:20.620 | that within the body,

00:30:22.420 | because of the presence of certain liquids and solids,

00:30:25.840 | that the water within our cells

00:30:28.100 | and in particular within the interactions

00:30:30.020 | with so-called organelles.

00:30:31.040 | Organelles are things like mitochondria,

00:30:33.700 | the Golgi apparatus, they have fancy names.

00:30:36.060 | These are the things within cells

00:30:37.600 | that allow cells to do everything from make proteins

00:30:39.860 | to traffic proteins out to the surface of cells,

00:30:41.940 | things like neurotransmitters and receptors and so on.

00:30:44.680 | A lot of people who are interested in structured water

00:30:47.240 | as it relates to biological function

00:30:48.940 | have hypothesized or like to debate rather

00:30:52.060 | whether or not in the body water is not just present

00:30:54.620 | in its liquid form or gaseous form.

00:30:58.180 | We know it's not present in its solid form

00:30:59.940 | unless you gulp down some ice cubes, for instance.

00:31:03.320 | But there is a cohort of people out there,

00:31:05.800 | including some fairly accomplished scientists

00:31:08.460 | that believe that within the body,

00:31:10.840 | the organelles of our cells act as a substrate

00:31:14.280 | for water to exist in this fourth form,

00:31:16.340 | this structured water form.

00:31:18.020 | And that's led to this whole niche industry

00:31:20.620 | of people who are proponents

00:31:22.660 | of consuming so-called structured water.

00:31:25.580 | Again, we'll get to that a little bit later.

00:31:27.140 | So now you know what individual water molecules consist of.

00:31:29.700 | When you hear H2O,

00:31:30.640 | hopefully you'll get that visual image in your mind

00:31:33.300 | of an individual water molecule being the peace symbol

00:31:35.860 | and a bunch of those binding to one another

00:31:37.500 | through these relatively weak bonds,

00:31:39.460 | but strong enough that certain things can take place

00:31:41.580 | like surface tension.

00:31:42.860 | Keep in mind that surface tension of water may relate

00:31:46.060 | to either standard bonds between water or this fourth phase.

00:31:49.320 | And that's heavily debated still,

00:31:51.520 | but we certainly know that, for instance,

00:31:53.980 | if you were to take a piece of wax paper or glass

00:31:56.700 | and you were to pour some water on it,

00:31:58.660 | you would notice that the water would bead up

00:32:00.440 | or kind of aggregate at particular locations.

00:32:02.380 | When you see that beading up

00:32:04.280 | or the aggregation of water molecules

00:32:06.180 | on a particular surface, you're seeing two things.

00:32:08.420 | This is actually kind of fun.

00:32:10.380 | The next time you see it, you'll know that the aggregation,

00:32:13.360 | the beading up of water with itself,

00:32:16.040 | so individual water molecules or many water molecules

00:32:18.660 | kind of aggregating at one location

00:32:19.960 | and making a bead of water, that's due to these bonds,

00:32:23.500 | these covalent bonds occurring between water molecules.

00:32:26.740 | But also you'll notice that on a vertical pane of glass,

00:32:30.200 | say in rain or on your windshield,

00:32:32.160 | that the water will look almost like it's sticking

00:32:34.220 | to the glass.

00:32:35.060 | And that's because there are actually bonds

00:32:36.260 | between the water molecules that have beaded up themselves

00:32:39.580 | and the glass.

00:32:41.460 | So water can not just bind to itself,

00:32:43.860 | it can also bind to certain surfaces.

00:32:46.020 | And the fact that perhaps if you drive your car,

00:32:48.460 | if you were to tap the window,

00:32:50.140 | or if a big enough bead of water formed on a window

00:32:53.860 | that it would start to drip down,

00:32:55.820 | and that's because those bonds with the surface are strong,

00:32:58.740 | but they're not so strong that it stick at that location.

00:33:01.560 | Quite different than water that is in its solid form,

00:33:05.140 | ice, that can actually really adhere.

00:33:07.820 | If you've ever had to scrape ice off a windshield,

00:33:09.780 | so for those of you who live in cold regions,

00:33:12.000 | you're familiar with this,

00:33:12.840 | have to scrape ice off a windshield,

00:33:14.420 | you realize that the bonds between water in its solid form

00:33:17.180 | and different surfaces is quite a bit stronger

00:33:19.500 | than the bonds between different water molecules

00:33:22.180 | with each other,

00:33:23.540 | or the bonds between water and different surfaces

00:33:26.660 | when they are warmer.

00:33:28.500 | So I do realize that for a lot of people listening,

00:33:31.120 | that's going to be a pretty deep dive into the chemistry

00:33:33.900 | and physical properties of water.

00:33:35.660 | But all you really need to know is that these water

00:33:37.780 | molecules are incredibly versatile and can bind

00:33:42.340 | to each other and can bind to different surfaces

00:33:44.560 | and can allow things to float or to sink

00:33:46.660 | or even to move across surfaces of water

00:33:48.660 | based on the three, perhaps four different states

00:33:51.660 | that water can be in.

00:33:53.220 | And that versatility that you observe in the natural world

00:33:56.460 | on window panes and rain and clouds and hail

00:33:59.380 | and ice and snow and scraping ice off your windshield

00:34:02.140 | in the cold of winter and perspiration and so on,

00:34:05.860 | all of that is fine and good,

00:34:08.000 | but realize that almost all of those same sorts

00:34:11.500 | of properties of water become extremely relevant

00:34:15.000 | when thinking about how your body actually utilizes water.

00:34:18.160 | And the key thing here is that temperature

00:34:21.180 | and the so-called alkalinity or acidity,

00:34:23.400 | that is the pH of water,

00:34:24.540 | turn out to be very important determinants

00:34:26.640 | of how water is used by the cells of your body.

00:34:29.260 | In fact, as I'll describe in a moment,

00:34:30.900 | we have entire sets of biological mechanisms

00:34:33.900 | solely devoted to trying to get water into our cells

00:34:38.020 | in very specific ways, including at specific rates

00:34:41.040 | and to use water in different ways,

00:34:43.060 | because as you've probably heard before,

00:34:45.040 | we are mostly water.

00:34:46.560 | What's kind of interesting to me

00:34:47.940 | and what I found researching this episode

00:34:49.660 | is that the percentages of our cells and bodies

00:34:53.160 | that are purported to be water is a pretty broad range.

00:34:56.960 | Some people will say we're 55% water.

00:34:58.600 | Other people will say we're 70% water.

00:35:00.020 | Some people say we're 95% water.

00:35:01.880 | The exact percentage doesn't matter so much

00:35:05.080 | and really just boils down to whether or not

00:35:07.500 | the person that's stating that percentage

00:35:09.500 | is talking about how much water is present

00:35:12.340 | in our cells and body at a given moment

00:35:14.380 | versus how much water was involved in the process

00:35:18.220 | of creating the sorts of proteins

00:35:19.940 | and other things of our body that are required

00:35:22.500 | to have hair cells, skin cells, brain cells, et cetera.

00:35:24.940 | So if you really want a number out there,

00:35:27.020 | I can't give you a single number.

00:35:28.260 | If you want to be accurate, it's going to have to be a range.

00:35:30.380 | And basically we are anywhere from 70% to 90% water

00:35:34.060 | depending on how you define being water.

00:35:37.580 | That is whether or not you're talking about

00:35:39.300 | water being present in cells in its liquid form

00:35:41.860 | or maybe in this fourth structure water form

00:35:43.860 | if you're of the mind that that exists within us

00:35:47.060 | and whether or not you're talking about

00:35:49.900 | water that was used to create a given protein

00:35:52.920 | like a receptor or neurotransmitter

00:35:54.900 | or whether or not you're talking about the water

00:35:56.640 | just being water as H2O.

00:35:59.060 | So again, it's very easy to go down that rabbit hole

00:36:01.500 | and this is part of the reason why

00:36:02.940 | there's such a wide discrepancy of assertions

00:36:05.480 | as to how much of us is water, but let's be direct.

00:36:08.620 | Most of our body is water

00:36:10.300 | and there isn't a single other molecule in the universe

00:36:14.080 | that we can look to and say that it has as important a role

00:36:18.080 | in our health and biology and frankly,

00:36:20.140 | our presence of life on earth at all than water.

00:36:23.340 | I'd like to take a quick break

00:36:24.860 | and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Athletic Greens.

00:36:27.780 | Athletic Greens now called AG1

00:36:30.220 | is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink

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00:36:35.500 | I've been taking Athletic Greens since 2012

00:36:38.180 | so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast.

00:36:40.400 | The reason I started taking Athletic Greens

00:36:41.980 | and the reason I still take Athletic Greens

00:36:44.060 | once or usually twice a day

00:36:46.060 | is that it gets to be the probiotics

00:36:47.980 | that I need for gut health.

00:36:49.660 | Our gut is very important.

00:36:50.820 | It's populated by gut microbiota

00:36:53.300 | that communicate with the brain, the immune system

00:36:55.060 | and basically all the biological systems of our body

00:36:57.460 | to strongly impact our immediate and long-term health

00:37:01.100 | and those probiotics in Athletic Greens are optimal

00:37:04.140 | and vital for microbiota health.

00:37:06.800 | In addition, Athletic Greens contains a number of adaptogens,

00:37:09.380 | vitamins and minerals that make sure

00:37:10.780 | that all of my foundational nutritional needs are met

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00:37:15.620 | If you'd like to try Athletic Greens,

00:37:17.060 | you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman

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00:37:37.820 | Okay, so now at a minimum,

00:37:39.260 | everyone out there should understand

00:37:40.660 | that water has a particular structure.

00:37:42.580 | So when you hear H2O, you can kind of imagine that structure

00:37:46.340 | and that the water molecules can change their conformation.

00:37:50.560 | That is, they can bind to other water molecules

00:37:52.740 | and it turns out they can bind to other things

00:37:55.340 | and actually change the conformation of other things.

00:37:58.020 | A good example of that is something we're all familiar with

00:38:01.140 | which is water's ability to dissolve certain substances

00:38:04.860 | like sugar or salt.

00:38:06.920 | And that is because salt molecules or sugar molecules

00:38:11.180 | are what we call hydrophilic, they like water.

00:38:15.080 | And when we say they like water,

00:38:16.960 | it just means that the chemical structure of salt, sodium

00:38:20.320 | or the chemical structure of say sucrose like table sugar

00:38:24.160 | can actually interact with the hydrogens

00:38:26.660 | and oxygens of water and can change those salt molecules

00:38:31.660 | or sugar molecules, turning them from solid into liquid,

00:38:37.160 | essentially creating what are called solutes

00:38:39.500 | which is basically the dissolving of solids

00:38:42.740 | into a liquid solutions.

00:38:44.260 | In fact, water is one of the best solvents on the planet.

00:38:49.260 | In fact, water is better at dissolving many solids

00:38:53.980 | than is acid, right?

00:38:55.660 | That's how incredible water is.

00:38:56.960 | And there are a number of reasons

00:38:57.800 | related to the chemistry of water that can explain that.

00:39:00.360 | But as we transition from talking about the physics

00:39:03.560 | and chemistry of water to how water actually behaves

00:39:07.540 | within our body and contributes to our health

00:39:09.700 | or to disease, depending on the case,

00:39:11.920 | it's important to understand that molecules

00:39:15.620 | such as sugar and salt can be hydrophilic

00:39:18.540 | or as we know, oil and water don't mix.

00:39:22.020 | That's because oils, lipids are so-called hydrophobic.

00:39:26.180 | What's hydrophobic?

00:39:27.020 | We'll just think, ah, phobic.

00:39:28.480 | Certain molecules such as lipids

00:39:32.140 | don't dissolve well in water.

00:39:34.180 | And we all intuitively understand that

00:39:35.680 | if you take some olive oil, for instance,

00:39:37.180 | and you put it into a little glass of water,

00:39:39.380 | it'll likely float or bead up or form a little spherical

00:39:42.300 | or amoeba-like shapes within the water.

00:39:44.380 | And that's because oil lipids are hydrophobic.

00:39:47.760 | So different substances out there

00:39:50.260 | are either going to be more hydrophilic,

00:39:52.340 | that is they are going to have a greater propensity

00:39:56.140 | to interact with water and bind with the different aspects

00:40:00.020 | of the water molecules or hydrophobic

00:40:03.060 | to have less of a propensity to interact with

00:40:06.940 | and bind with water molecules.

00:40:09.380 | And I'm sort of been alluding to this numerous times

00:40:12.540 | throughout this podcast already,

00:40:14.100 | the temperature of water and the pH,

00:40:16.820 | that is the alkalinity or acidity of water

00:40:19.660 | will have a strong impact on whether or not

00:40:21.620 | a hydrophilic or hydrophobic substance

00:40:24.540 | will have a greater or lesser tendency

00:40:27.260 | to interact with water.

00:40:29.700 | You all know this intuitively as well.

00:40:31.900 | If you've ever tried to dissolve, say,

00:40:34.380 | a big tablespoon of sugar in very cold water,

00:40:37.580 | you'll notice that the grains don't dissolve as quickly

00:40:40.700 | as when you take that big tablespoon of sugar

00:40:44.220 | and put it into a warm or hot cup of water.

00:40:47.440 | And that's because the temperature of water

00:40:48.800 | actually changes how well that sugar molecule

00:40:52.100 | is able to change its conformation

00:40:54.400 | and interact with the water molecules.

00:40:57.400 | Likewise, if you want to get something

00:40:59.900 | that's really hydrophilic into an aqueous,

00:41:03.000 | that is a water containing solution,

00:41:05.300 | the temperature is also going to strongly impact that.

00:41:07.980 | Now, there are a near infinite number of examples

00:41:10.860 | of how temperature and pH impact the tendency

00:41:13.580 | of hydrophilic and hydrophobic substances

00:41:15.260 | to dissolve in water or not.

00:41:17.720 | We're not going to go into all those details,

00:41:20.200 | but as we migrate from our discussion

00:41:22.640 | about the physics and chemistry of water

00:41:24.060 | into how water behaves within our body,

00:41:26.620 | which is what we're going to do now,

00:41:27.900 | and then as we continue into the third part

00:41:30.140 | of our discussion, which is why and how certain types

00:41:33.980 | of water that some of you are familiar with,

00:41:36.160 | like different pH water, distilled water,

00:41:38.180 | reverse osmosis water,

00:41:39.460 | why those different types of water are thought to,

00:41:41.900 | and in some cases do in fact change the ways

00:41:44.180 | that our cells function for better or for worse,

00:41:46.520 | all of that will come together and make sense for you.

00:41:49.580 | Okay, so all the cells of your body, every cell,

00:41:52.780 | even your bones, that is the osteoblasts

00:41:56.340 | and the other cells within your bones,

00:41:57.660 | your bone marrow, your red blood cells,

00:41:59.280 | your white blood cells, your neurons, your nerve cells,

00:42:01.820 | your liver cells, your kidney cells,

00:42:03.460 | all of them require water.

00:42:05.580 | In order to get the proper amount of water into those cells,

00:42:09.880 | there are basically two ways

00:42:11.500 | that water can access those cells.

00:42:13.740 | Now, if we zoom out for a second and ask ourselves,

00:42:15.500 | how does water actually get into the body?

00:42:17.600 | Most of us just think,

00:42:18.440 | oh, well, we drink that water into our body.

00:42:20.320 | Of course, that's the main way.

00:42:22.020 | We can also breathe water molecules into our body

00:42:24.220 | through humid air.

00:42:26.200 | When you hydrate your cells,

00:42:27.960 | that is when you're bringing water into your cells,

00:42:31.260 | that water needs to move from your gut

00:42:33.520 | and into the bloodstream

00:42:35.640 | and eventually into the individual cells,

00:42:37.900 | whatever cell type that may be.

00:42:39.620 | And there are basically two ways

00:42:40.660 | that water can access those cells.

00:42:43.140 | The first way has been known about for a very long time,

00:42:45.360 | and that is so-called diffusion.

00:42:47.160 | Now, the outside of most cells

00:42:49.660 | is made up of fatty stuff, lipid.

00:42:52.620 | So for instance, neurons, nerve cells have a lipid bilayer.

00:42:55.900 | It's two layers of fat.

00:42:57.740 | And you already know that fat, lipid, is very hydrophobic.

00:43:02.740 | Now, that turns out to be not a problem,

00:43:07.320 | but a solution for how water

00:43:08.960 | can get across that lipid barrier.

00:43:11.380 | Why?

00:43:12.740 | It is the fact that water can change its conformation

00:43:15.580 | and lipids can change their conformation just enough

00:43:18.380 | so that the bonds between water

00:43:20.120 | and the bonds between those hydrophobic lipids can interact,

00:43:25.120 | allowing the water molecule

00:43:27.000 | to basically pass through the lipid

00:43:28.740 | because it can bond very weakly,

00:43:31.140 | or in some cases, not at all,

00:43:32.160 | but very weakly to those lipids

00:43:33.780 | and then be pushed through to the other side.

00:43:36.080 | Really incredible if you think about it.

00:43:37.500 | If there was too much of a hydrophobic relationship

00:43:40.100 | between the lipid and the water,

00:43:41.840 | the water would come up to the surface

00:43:43.400 | of that fatty outside of our cells

00:43:46.420 | and then would be repelled away from it

00:43:47.940 | or would just stay there right at the surface.

00:43:49.480 | And that would be no good

00:43:50.480 | because we actually need that water

00:43:51.980 | to diffuse across the cell membranes,

00:43:54.080 | where actually it's a double cell membrane,

00:43:55.820 | as I mentioned before, two layers.

00:43:57.880 | So water and lipids of cells can interact

00:44:00.920 | with just enough affinity

00:44:02.800 | that the water molecule can diffuse

00:44:04.600 | across those cell membrane barriers.

00:44:07.220 | But, and this is an important but,

00:44:10.060 | the diffusion of water molecules

00:44:11.820 | across those lipid barriers on the outsides of cells

00:44:15.700 | is a fairly slow process

00:44:17.840 | compared to the other way that water accesses cells.

00:44:21.380 | And this other way that water accesses cells

00:44:23.900 | is really something that was just discovered

00:44:25.440 | about 10 years ago.

00:44:26.620 | So this is a fairly recent discovery,

00:44:28.380 | but it turns out to be a fundamental discovery,

00:44:30.420 | which is the presence of what are called aquaporin channels.

00:44:33.660 | Aquaporin channels are basically portals

00:44:36.740 | through the membrane that allow water molecules

00:44:40.300 | to move very quickly across cell membranes

00:44:43.700 | at a rate of about 1 million H2Os,

00:44:46.740 | 1 million water molecules per second.

00:44:49.580 | And the way that water molecules move across

00:44:52.680 | the cell membrane through those aquaporin channels

00:44:55.540 | is very interesting.

00:44:56.380 | The inside of those channels,

00:44:57.780 | and the way you think of these is they're literally tubes

00:44:59.780 | stuck through the membranes of cells.

00:45:02.720 | The insides of those channels are very hydrophobic,

00:45:06.540 | allowing those water molecules to just jot really quickly,

00:45:10.660 | almost as if in your mind,

00:45:11.740 | you can just imagine as if it was lubricated for the water,

00:45:14.100 | although it's not really lubricated.

00:45:15.620 | The water molecules can move through in single file

00:45:18.380 | [whooshing]

00:45:19.880 | a million per second.

00:45:21.660 | Now, why would you need two ways for water

00:45:25.240 | to get across cell membranes?

00:45:26.940 | One fairly slow through basic diffusion.

00:45:30.460 | And again, diffusion folks is the movement of things

00:45:32.920 | from a gradient of higher concentration

00:45:35.140 | to lower concentration.

00:45:36.620 | We just think about this as things tend to run downhill

00:45:39.300 | from higher concentration to lower concentration.

00:45:41.700 | They try and create equilibrium across space.

00:45:45.100 | So, you know, if you had a bunch of marbles

00:45:46.580 | on one side of a box,

00:45:48.940 | just imagine that these were water molecules.

00:45:51.060 | Because of the charges between those hydrogens and oxygens,

00:45:54.980 | there's a tendency for those marbles to spread out

00:45:57.960 | and essentially take on a fairly even conformation.

00:46:00.780 | That's basically just diffusion across a space.

00:46:04.620 | Water molecules will also move from higher concentration

00:46:07.020 | to lower concentration across cell membranes.

00:46:09.020 | And then you have these portals,

00:46:10.940 | these tubes or these channels as they're called,

00:46:12.940 | these aquaporin channels where water molecules

00:46:14.700 | can move very quickly.

00:46:16.420 | Now, the reason why biology seems to have created

00:46:20.060 | these aquaporin channels,

00:46:21.240 | and again, I wasn't consulted at the design phase,

00:46:23.600 | but the most logical explanation is that

00:46:26.640 | we have many tissues within our body

00:46:28.660 | that often need water very quickly

00:46:32.640 | or need to release water very quickly.

00:46:36.040 | Let's think about a couple of these,

00:46:37.580 | and then let's look at what the actual distribution

00:46:39.880 | of aquaporin channels is throughout the body.

00:46:42.920 | What is an area of your body that on occasion

00:46:46.040 | will need to move water very quickly out of it?

00:46:50.080 | You can use your imagination here,

00:46:51.320 | but I'll just tell you that for instance,

00:46:53.080 | your tear glands or tear ducts

00:46:55.660 | need to release tears very quickly.

00:46:57.780 | So you need to take water that's stored in your body.

00:47:00.580 | If there's an emotional experience,

00:47:02.920 | or if you look at a very bright light, for instance,

00:47:06.340 | or God forbid, if you get some sort of irritants in your eye,

00:47:09.960 | you're going to start to tear up.

00:47:11.260 | And those tears are the release of fluid

00:47:13.160 | from those tear ducts.

00:47:14.840 | And so it's going to be the very rapid release

00:47:17.860 | of water from those tear ducts

00:47:20.120 | through so-called aquaporin channels.

00:47:21.820 | And in fact, aquaporin channels are heavily expressed.

00:47:24.180 | There are many of them in the cells

00:47:26.180 | of the so-called lacrimal glands that release tears.

00:47:30.020 | In addition, we need to absorb water from the gut.

00:47:35.020 | And the gut has a lining, endothelial lining,

00:47:38.400 | and other cell lining, mucosal lining,

00:47:40.280 | and water needs often to move very quickly

00:47:43.200 | from our stomach into the rest of the body.

00:47:46.520 | And one way that is accomplished

00:47:48.240 | is through aquaporin channels

00:47:49.760 | that are expressed all along your gut.

00:47:52.200 | So the discovery of these aquaporin channels

00:47:54.020 | is really highly significant

00:47:55.920 | in terms of understanding the different ways

00:47:57.880 | that water can interact with and get into

00:48:00.780 | the cells of your body.

00:48:02.600 | Now, there are aquaporin channels,

00:48:04.460 | not just in the lacrimal glands that allow for tearing

00:48:07.260 | or within the gut, but in many tissues within your body.

00:48:10.220 | And they even have different distributions

00:48:12.040 | within those tissues.

00:48:13.420 | In fact, as one looks at the expression

00:48:15.540 | of the different aquaporin channels,

00:48:17.040 | 'cause it turns out there are different forms of them,

00:48:19.620 | across all the cells and tissues of the body,

00:48:21.740 | there's really no single tissue within the body

00:48:24.620 | except perhaps the bones of your body.

00:48:27.760 | And perhaps the ligaments to some extent

00:48:30.040 | that don't have these aquaporin channels.

00:48:32.220 | Some of you out there

00:48:33.060 | may have heard of the so-called fascia.

00:48:34.540 | Fascia and sheath muscles,

00:48:37.020 | are unique kind of connective tissue

00:48:39.080 | that gives some pliability and yet some rigidity

00:48:42.780 | that allow for a lot of the physical abilities

00:48:45.200 | of your musculoskeletal system.

00:48:46.540 | It's incredible tissue.

00:48:47.440 | We'll do an entire episode about fascia at some point.

00:48:49.400 | Fascinating, fascinating tissue.

00:48:51.440 | Fascia even contain aquaporin channels.

00:48:54.140 | So the role of aquaporin channels in fascia

00:48:57.240 | probably relates to our specific needs

00:49:00.580 | to be able to use specific muscle groups

00:49:02.580 | in particular ways at particular times.

00:49:04.960 | In other words, if you're sleeping,

00:49:06.260 | you're lying down or sitting,

00:49:07.560 | you're not using your musculoskeletal system

00:49:09.740 | as much as if you're running

00:49:10.860 | or performing some repetitive behavior.

00:49:12.580 | It turns out that the aquaporin channels

00:49:14.060 | in certain tissues like the fascia can be used

00:49:17.460 | when we transition from low mobility states

00:49:20.140 | to high mobility states,

00:49:21.180 | allowing more perfusion or access of water

00:49:24.380 | into particular cells of the body when we need it.

00:49:26.320 | So just fascinating, fascinating channels,

00:49:29.100 | these aquaporin channels.

00:49:30.340 | And again, only discovered fairly recently,

00:49:32.160 | so we're still learning new things

00:49:33.560 | about our biology all the time.

00:49:35.940 | Now, and a very important feature of the aquaporin channel

00:49:40.420 | is that the movement of water molecules

00:49:43.140 | across the cell membrane through those aquaporin channels

00:49:47.200 | is strongly dependent on the temperature of water

00:49:50.180 | and the pH of water.

00:49:51.660 | This becomes especially important in our description

00:49:54.000 | and our deep dive into so-called alkaline water

00:49:57.580 | or higher pH water a little bit later.

00:49:59.900 | But I'll just give you a little teaser for now,

00:50:02.380 | because I'm sure that a number of people

00:50:03.660 | are wondering about this.

00:50:05.900 | If you go into the store or even a convenience store,

00:50:08.380 | you will see pH water.

00:50:11.220 | Now, every water has a pH, right?

00:50:13.300 | Lower numbers mean more acidic,

00:50:15.060 | higher numbers mean more alkaline or more basic.

00:50:17.640 | You'll see pH water that is 7.4.

00:50:21.180 | You'll see 7.8, you'll see 9.8.

00:50:23.540 | You'll see a huge range of these things.

00:50:25.120 | And there are many, many different claims

00:50:26.960 | about how the pH of water is important

00:50:29.740 | for regulating the pH of the body.

00:50:31.860 | Here's the real story.

00:50:34.180 | The pH of your body, that is the pH of the cells

00:50:38.560 | at different locations in your body,

00:50:40.260 | is strongly, strongly homeostatically regulated.

00:50:44.320 | What do I mean by that?

00:50:45.320 | It means it doesn't change that much,

00:50:48.100 | which means that you have

00:50:50.380 | very specific biological mechanisms that ensure

00:50:53.700 | the pH is maintained, for instance,

00:50:56.000 | in the skin cells of your skin,

00:50:58.340 | in the retinal cells of your eye, in your brain cells.

00:51:02.260 | Now, it is true that across the body,

00:51:05.640 | different cells and tissues have fairly widely varying pH.

00:51:10.220 | Now, it has been said that the pH of bodily tissues

00:51:13.260 | is generally between 7.2 and 7.4.

00:51:16.620 | However, if you were to look at the pH of your gut,

00:51:20.700 | and keep in mind that your gut is not just your stomach,

00:51:23.060 | your gut is the entire pathway ranging from your throat

00:51:27.580 | all the way down to where you excrete things

00:51:30.900 | out of your body.

00:51:32.460 | That entire pathway has different pH levels

00:51:35.960 | depending on where you are

00:51:37.140 | along the gut and intestinal pathway.

00:51:39.060 | And in fact, having much lower, that is more acidic pH

00:51:42.040 | at certain locations along your gut pathway,

00:51:43.840 | is what allows those gut microbiota,

00:51:46.540 | those little microorganisms of which you have trillions

00:51:49.900 | that are important for regulating everything

00:51:51.540 | from neurotransmitter production to hormone production

00:51:53.940 | that allow them to flourish and do well.

00:51:56.120 | That said, except under conditions of hemorrhage

00:52:01.820 | or changes in blood volume that are of a dangerous level

00:52:05.680 | that can lead to seizure or even death,

00:52:07.840 | the pH of the rest of the cells of your body

00:52:10.660 | and also those gut cells doesn't change that much

00:52:14.780 | on a moment-to-moment basis.

00:52:16.460 | So if somebody tells you that you should drink alkaline water

00:52:20.120 | or alkalized water, as it's sometimes called,

00:52:22.960 | in order to keep your body more alkaline and less acidic,

00:52:27.860 | there is essentially no basis for that

00:52:30.800 | at a macroscopic level or even at a local level.

00:52:34.900 | Now, what that does not mean is that the pH of the water

00:52:39.500 | that you drink is not important.

00:52:41.260 | In fact, if the pH of the water that you drink is too low,

00:52:45.940 | that is, if the water that you consume is too acidic,

00:52:49.900 | it will not move as quickly from your gut

00:52:53.520 | into the other regions of your body

00:52:56.180 | and therefore the other cells of your body

00:52:57.980 | that require that water will not be able

00:52:59.780 | to access it as readily.

00:53:01.760 | You've probably experienced this

00:53:03.280 | if you've consumed certain water

00:53:05.100 | and it feels like it's sloshing around in your stomach

00:53:07.380 | or it feels like it's just somehow staying there

00:53:11.060 | or you feel its presence more, not just as volume,

00:53:14.380 | but it's almost as if you can feel the little waves of water

00:53:17.080 | along the inside of your gut.

00:53:18.220 | Now, sometimes that can relate to temperature,

00:53:20.000 | but oftentimes that can relate to the pH of that water.

00:53:23.580 | And it turns out it is true that water that is more alkaline,

00:53:28.040 | that is, pHs of 7.4 or higher can move more readily

00:53:33.040 | across the aquaporin channel.

00:53:35.740 | And in terms of absorption of water

00:53:37.840 | from the endothelial lining and the other cell type lining

00:53:41.380 | of your gut into the rest of your body,

00:53:44.160 | it is true that higher pH water,

00:53:46.140 | provided that pH isn't too high,

00:53:48.460 | is going to be absorbed more quickly,

00:53:50.760 | which partially explains why some people have an affinity

00:53:53.900 | for this higher pH water.

00:53:55.340 | Now, this is not to say that you need to consume

00:53:57.160 | high pH water in order to hydrate your body properly.

00:54:00.340 | I want to be very clear about that.

00:54:01.740 | However, if you are interested

00:54:03.940 | in what the value of elevated pH water is,

00:54:08.180 | it largely has to do with this accelerated absorption.

00:54:11.860 | And as we'll talk about a little bit later,

00:54:13.380 | there is also growing evidence

00:54:15.460 | that it can adjust the function of certain cells

00:54:17.820 | that are within your immune system

00:54:20.020 | and thereby reduce certain inflammatory responses.

00:54:23.880 | So I realize, as I'm saying this,

00:54:25.640 | some people out there are probably thinking,

00:54:26.980 | "Oh no, this guy's like a pH water proponent.

00:54:30.100 | He's saying we have to drink alkaline water

00:54:32.400 | or buy very fancy water."

00:54:34.220 | Now, I want to be clear, that is not what I'm saying.

00:54:36.260 | And I'm also not saying that you need

00:54:37.700 | to purchase very expensive water

00:54:39.220 | in order to derive the maximum benefits

00:54:42.460 | from the water that you drink.

00:54:43.500 | It turns out there are a few things that you can do

00:54:45.420 | by way of temperature and by way of filtering water

00:54:48.780 | and a few other tricks that I'll tell you

00:54:50.020 | a little bit later that will allow you

00:54:51.820 | to increase the absorption rate of water in the gut,

00:54:54.620 | which turns out to be a very interesting,

00:54:57.120 | but also potentially important thing to do

00:54:59.860 | for not just reducing inflammation,

00:55:01.660 | but also making sure that you're getting proper hydration

00:55:04.540 | of different cell types in your body,

00:55:06.240 | including rapid hydration of your brain cells,

00:55:09.040 | which, as we'll also talk about in a few moments,

00:55:11.500 | can greatly enhance cognitive function.

00:55:13.860 | Okay, so we've talked about how water can get into cells.

00:55:16.620 | There are two ways, diffusion and movement

00:55:18.340 | through these aquaporin channels.

00:55:20.100 | We've earmarked the discussion that the temperature

00:55:23.000 | and the pH of water, that is the conformation of water.

00:55:26.020 | And here, I really want to embed this in people's minds

00:55:28.300 | that when we talk about temperature of water

00:55:31.620 | and pH of water, we're really talking about the arrangement

00:55:34.800 | of those H2Os, those water molecules.

00:55:36.740 | So keep that in mind.

00:55:38.200 | We've covered how water can get into cells

00:55:39.900 | through those two different ways, diffusion

00:55:41.180 | and through the aquaporin channels.

00:55:43.660 | What we haven't talked about is what happens to water

00:55:46.240 | once it's in cells.

00:55:47.700 | And this is very simple to explain.

00:55:50.120 | Once water is inside of cells,

00:55:51.740 | it's going to be incorporated

00:55:53.180 | into the different proteins and organelles.

00:55:56.020 | Again, organelles are things like mitochondria,

00:55:57.700 | the nucleus of the cells,

00:55:58.780 | which is contained to the DNA and so forth,

00:56:00.920 | in different ways, depending on which proteins are there

00:56:04.300 | and how hydrophilic or hydrophobic those proteins are,

00:56:08.700 | or in some case, aren't.

00:56:11.400 | That's an entire landscape of protein

00:56:16.060 | to water-specific interactions,

00:56:18.300 | none of which we need to go into in any specific detail now.

00:56:21.740 | But the one thing that we do need to realize

00:56:24.060 | and keep in mind as we go forward

00:56:25.900 | is that many of the biological processes in our body

00:56:30.500 | that involve the movement of molecules such as water

00:56:33.060 | and interactions with proteins are going to involve

00:56:36.700 | the bonding or lack of bonding

00:56:39.360 | between water molecules and proteins.

00:56:41.740 | And anytime we're talking about bonding

00:56:43.540 | of one thing to the next at the level of chemistry

00:56:46.820 | or biology for that matter,

00:56:48.040 | 'cause they're really the same thing,

00:56:50.380 | we're talking about whether or not

00:56:51.780 | there are electrons present

00:56:53.900 | or whether or not there are charges that are opposite

00:56:57.180 | or the same and on and on.

00:56:59.180 | If you've ever heard of so-called reactive oxygen species,

00:57:04.580 | what are ROSs or reactive oxygen species,

00:57:07.640 | or so-called free radicals or antioxidants?

00:57:11.820 | All of that is really just describing the presence

00:57:14.580 | or absence of charges that are bound or unbound.

00:57:18.180 | So for instance, if you hear about free radicals,

00:57:21.420 | sounds pretty wild, right?

00:57:22.340 | Free radicals, what are free radicals?

00:57:23.940 | Free radicals can damage cells.

00:57:26.540 | They don't always damage cells,

00:57:27.540 | but they can damage cells

00:57:30.120 | because they are essentially free electrons.

00:57:32.360 | They are a charge that's sitting out there,

00:57:34.640 | not bound to anything,

00:57:36.320 | and therefore can interact with the molecular structure

00:57:41.140 | of certain proteins and change those structures

00:57:43.440 | by binding to them or interfering

00:57:45.140 | with the normal binding processes of those proteins

00:57:48.800 | to water or to other things.

00:57:50.960 | And in that way, cause damage to those proteins

00:57:54.160 | and potentially damage to cells.

00:57:55.860 | Now, fortunately, our cells have ways

00:57:57.200 | to deal with those free radicals,

00:57:59.440 | and those are called antioxidants.

00:58:02.140 | Antioxidants are molecules

00:58:04.760 | that can arrive in different forms.

00:58:06.440 | Sometimes we think of antioxidants as vitamins,

00:58:08.520 | but they are also present in other things as well,

00:58:11.020 | that essentially bind up those free radicals

00:58:15.960 | or repair the bonds between cells

00:58:18.640 | so that the proteins are no longer undergoing these,

00:58:22.180 | let's just call them bad confirmations

00:58:24.900 | that damage the functioning of our cells.

00:58:26.840 | So there are many different theories of aging.

00:58:28.880 | There are many different theories of disease,

00:58:30.700 | but there is not a single disease either of brain or body

00:58:35.700 | that doesn't in some way involve the generation

00:58:39.220 | of what are called reactive oxygen species,

00:58:41.640 | these free radicals and the damaging of cells

00:58:44.700 | at the level of their individual organelles and so forth,

00:58:47.320 | nor is there a single disease of brain or body

00:58:49.620 | that has not been shown to benefit

00:58:51.640 | from having some antioxidant interference

00:58:55.520 | get in the way of that oxidative process.

00:58:58.440 | So I realize today is pretty thick with nomenclature.

00:59:01.440 | For those of you that haven't already realized it,

00:59:03.580 | what you're learning here is organic chemistry.

00:59:05.980 | So you can feel pretty good about the fact

00:59:07.920 | that if you can understand the water molecule

00:59:09.940 | and understand a little bit about what free electron is,

00:59:14.060 | which is basically a charge that's out there

00:59:15.600 | that can potentially do damage,

00:59:17.900 | and the interactions of things like reactive oxygen species

00:59:20.640 | and the ability of stable bonds to buffer against

00:59:24.600 | or repair certain damage to cells,

00:59:26.960 | as we're describing it here,

00:59:29.240 | well, then what you're essentially thinking about

00:59:31.000 | and what we're talking about is organic chemistry.

00:59:32.980 | Now, since this is a discussion about chemistry

00:59:35.520 | as a service to try and understand

00:59:37.600 | the biological effects of water,

00:59:39.840 | keep in mind that water itself, believe it or not,

00:59:44.120 | can act as an antioxidant

00:59:46.280 | provided that it's bonding to things in the proper way,

00:59:49.560 | which requires that it get into cells

00:59:51.280 | in the proper amounts and rates,

00:59:53.160 | which requires that the temperature and pH of that water

00:59:56.160 | be correct, and provided that there's enough water there

01:00:01.160 | and that that water isn't bound to other things,

01:00:04.600 | it's not containing solids that are damaging

01:00:06.360 | and potentially that it's carrying some of the good things,

01:00:08.780 | such as sodium or that there's potassium present,

01:00:12.480 | again, the so-called electrolytes

01:00:13.820 | that allow cells to function well, okay?

01:00:16.160 | So that's a bit of a trench of information

01:00:19.120 | and I don't want people to get overwhelmed or confused.

01:00:21.700 | What I'm trying to do here is paint a picture

01:00:23.440 | of the biology of water,

01:00:25.180 | understanding that when you ingest water, drinking it down,

01:00:29.000 | or when you breathe water vapors in the steam room

01:00:31.060 | or on a humid day, that water is entering your system,

01:00:33.440 | it's accessing your cells through these two mechanisms,

01:00:36.160 | diffusion across cell membranes,

01:00:38.400 | or movement through aquaporin channels,

01:00:39.940 | and then once inside those cells,

01:00:41.880 | it's able to interact with and change the conformation

01:00:44.940 | of different proteins and accelerate or slow down

01:00:48.080 | different cellular reactions,

01:00:49.820 | everything from normal metabolism to blood pressure

01:00:53.700 | to damaged cells, depending on a number of different features

01:00:57.820 | of that water, as well as what the cells happen to be doing

01:01:00.480 | at any given moment.

01:01:01.480 | So with that in mind, I'd like to turn our attention

01:01:04.440 | to how water, depending on its temperature, its pH,

01:01:09.000 | how much we drink or how little we drink,

01:01:11.160 | when we drink that water, et cetera,

01:01:13.560 | how that can impact the health, disease, and repair

01:01:18.080 | of different cells, tissues, and organs of our body.

01:01:20.760 | I'd like to just take a brief moment

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01:02:38.640 | Let's talk about how much water,

01:02:40.760 | or more generally speaking, how much fluid each

01:02:43.840 | and all of us should drink each day,

01:02:46.120 | and how much fluid to drink

01:02:48.360 | depending on our specific activities and environment.

01:02:51.640 | Now, this is perhaps the most commonly asked question

01:02:54.880 | when the topic of water comes up.

01:02:56.240 | How much water do I need to drink?

01:02:57.880 | The other thing that comes up is a question,

01:02:59.780 | which is, can't we just follow our natural thirst?

01:03:03.520 | That is, can't we just pay attention to when we're thirsty

01:03:06.300 | and then drink fluids?

01:03:07.600 | And then that leads to the other question,

01:03:09.140 | which is, does the color of our urine provide any indication

01:03:13.160 | as to whether or not we are under-hydrated,

01:03:15.080 | over-hydrated, or hydrating correctly?

01:03:17.800 | So let me answer each of these things one at a time.

01:03:20.720 | And in the backdrop, I want to highlight the fact

01:03:23.320 | that there are many, many, if not dozens,

01:03:26.400 | hundreds of studies pointing to the fact

01:03:29.660 | that when we are dehydrated,

01:03:32.400 | our brain doesn't function as well

01:03:34.000 | and our body doesn't function as well.

01:03:36.200 | So what I'm attempting to do in that statement

01:03:38.180 | is throw a net around the enormous number of studies

01:03:40.860 | that have shown that even a slight state of dehydration,

01:03:44.520 | even 2% dehydration can lead to a significant

01:03:49.000 | and meaningful impact that is a negative impact

01:03:52.740 | on our ability to, for instance,

01:03:55.320 | carry out endurance type behaviors.

01:03:57.400 | So our ability to run on a treadmill

01:04:00.400 | and stop at the point where we feel that we can't continue

01:04:03.280 | is going to be negatively impacted.

01:04:05.140 | That is, we will be able to perform less work

01:04:08.880 | for less period of time

01:04:10.520 | when we are even slightly dehydrated.

01:04:12.520 | Likewise, our strength is reduced

01:04:14.580 | by even slight dehydration.

01:04:16.120 | Likewise, our cognitive performance,

01:04:18.680 | including memory, focus, creative thinking,

01:04:23.200 | flexible thinking of different kinds

01:04:25.000 | are all significantly impaired

01:04:26.720 | when we are in states of dehydration.

01:04:29.040 | Now that raises an additional question

01:04:30.820 | that deserves attention,

01:04:31.720 | which is how do we actually measure dehydration?

01:04:34.220 | Now you hear different things.

01:04:35.060 | Like if you pinch the skin on the top of your hand

01:04:37.120 | and it takes more than three seconds

01:04:39.280 | to lay down again flat, then you're dehydrated.

01:04:42.140 | You hear that.

01:04:42.980 | You hear, okay, if you are to press on your fingernail

01:04:46.540 | and see a change in the color of the tissue

01:04:49.860 | just below your fingernail, which indeed does happen,

01:04:52.840 | and it does not go back to its original color

01:04:55.960 | within one to three seconds, then you're dehydrated.

01:04:58.460 | You hear things like this.

01:04:59.300 | If your ankles are swollen when you're wearing socks,

01:05:01.440 | you take off the socks

01:05:02.280 | and you can see the imprint of the socks on your lower limbs,

01:05:06.400 | that means you're dehydrated.

01:05:07.240 | You hear this kind of stuff

01:05:08.600 | and you should probably be wondering, is any of that true?

01:05:11.680 | To some extent, it is true,

01:05:13.860 | although it can vary quite a bit by how old you are,

01:05:16.520 | whether or not the skin on the top of your hand

01:05:19.040 | tends to be looser or not,

01:05:20.560 | depending on whether or not you're leaner or not.

01:05:22.860 | So in other words,

01:05:23.700 | those are not absolutely objective measures of dehydration.

01:05:27.640 | Now it is true that if normally

01:05:30.120 | you can pinch the skin on the top of your hand

01:05:31.880 | and it returns to its normal flattened position

01:05:33.880 | within about one to two or three seconds,

01:05:36.540 | and it does not do that within five or more seconds,

01:05:40.520 | there's a decent probability

01:05:42.360 | that you're a little bit dehydrated,

01:05:43.480 | that you need to ingest some fluid,

01:05:45.100 | or that if you press down on your nail

01:05:47.320 | and you see the depression causes a transition

01:05:50.760 | from kind of a pink color to a white color,

01:05:53.720 | and then you release,

01:05:54.880 | and it doesn't go back to its original pinkish color

01:05:58.100 | within a few seconds,

01:05:59.080 | well, then there's a chance that you're dehydrated.

01:06:02.080 | But again, these are not perfect measures of dehydration.

01:06:04.880 | You may be surprised to learn,

01:06:06.080 | and I was surprised to learn,

01:06:07.200 | that most of the basis for these statements

01:06:10.200 | like even a 2% dehydration state

01:06:13.980 | can lead to significant reductions

01:06:15.680 | in cognitive or physical performance

01:06:17.560 | are based on not direct measures of hydration,

01:06:21.080 | but rather on measures of reductions in water intake,

01:06:25.480 | which is a different thing, right?

01:06:27.260 | It's saying that ordinarily

01:06:28.880 | a person of a given body weight

01:06:31.480 | needs X amount of fluid per day.

01:06:34.320 | And when they get even just 2% less

01:06:37.340 | than that amount of fluid,

01:06:38.680 | then their cognitive and/or physical performance is impaired,

01:06:41.900 | rather than focusing on dehydration of tissues.

01:06:46.200 | Now, that might seem like a subtle distinction,

01:06:48.720 | but it's actually a meaningful distinction

01:06:50.340 | when you think about it.

01:06:51.280 | However, it's a meaningful distinction

01:06:53.520 | that we can leverage toward understanding

01:06:55.240 | how much water or fluid we need to drink each day.

01:06:58.680 | Now, there, we can really point to some solid numbers

01:07:01.520 | that, believe it or not,

01:07:02.760 | are fairly independent of body weight.

01:07:04.720 | Now, I say independent of body weight,

01:07:07.400 | I'm referring to the amount of fluid

01:07:09.540 | that most healthy adults need at rest.

01:07:13.160 | What do I mean by at rest?

01:07:14.160 | I mean when not exercising

01:07:15.880 | and when not in extremely hot environments.

01:07:18.600 | So I'm leaving aside you desert ultramarathoners

01:07:22.160 | or people that are doing any kind of movement

01:07:25.560 | or living in environments that are very, very hot.

01:07:28.960 | Here, I'm mainly referring to people

01:07:31.220 | that live most of their daily life in indoor environments.

01:07:35.140 | Could be air conditioned or not air conditioned,

01:07:36.700 | heated or not heated.

01:07:37.900 | What we're trying to arrive at here

01:07:39.120 | are some numbers that can work across the board

01:07:41.540 | because, of course, there are an infinite number

01:07:44.500 | of different conditions

01:07:45.400 | that each and all of you are existing in.

01:07:47.460 | So I'm not going to attempt to give you a body weight

01:07:50.400 | by activity, by environment, by humidity formula calculation.

01:07:54.780 | In fact, no such calculation exists.

01:07:57.160 | However, there are formulas

01:07:59.160 | that can put you into very stable frameworks.

01:08:02.600 | That is levels of water intake for periods of rest

01:08:07.420 | when you're not exercising

01:08:08.740 | and for when you are exercising

01:08:11.560 | that will ensure that you are hydrating

01:08:14.820 | with the one exception being if you are exercising

01:08:17.980 | or if you are living in very, very hot conditions

01:08:21.320 | and you're not heat adapted to those conditions.

01:08:23.640 | So what are those numbers?

01:08:24.720 | In other words, what is the answer to the question

01:08:27.100 | of how much fluid do we need each day?

01:08:29.020 | And here I'm referring to fluid.

01:08:30.440 | I'm not distinguishing between water,

01:08:32.700 | caffeinated beverages, soda, tea, and so on.

01:08:35.020 | I'll discuss that in a moment.

01:08:36.520 | We can reasonably say that for every hour that you are awake

01:08:42.600 | in the first 10 hours of your day, this is important,

01:08:46.580 | in the first 10 hours of your day,

01:08:48.780 | you should consume on average eight ounces of fluid.

01:08:53.780 | Now, for those of you that are using the metric system,

01:08:57.460 | not ounces, eight ounces of fluid is approximately

01:09:00.900 | 236 milliliters of water.

01:09:04.420 | And for those of you that exist in the metric system

01:09:06.700 | and aren't used to thinking about ounces and vice versa,

01:09:09.820 | just thinking about a typical can of soda

01:09:12.060 | in the United States, it's 12 ounces.

01:09:14.860 | In Europe, sometimes the cans of soda

01:09:16.360 | are a little bit smaller.

01:09:17.600 | That's a whole discussion unto itself.

01:09:19.460 | But eight ounces of fluid, that is 236,

01:09:23.020 | let's just say 240 milliliters

01:09:26.620 | 'cause we don't need to be too precise here,

01:09:28.300 | of fluid on average every hour

01:09:32.300 | for the first 10 hours of your day,

01:09:34.280 | which translates to an average of 80 ounces of fluid

01:09:37.180 | for the first 10 hours of your day,

01:09:39.220 | or 2,360 milliliters of water.

01:09:43.820 | In other words, approximately two liters of water

01:09:47.780 | plus a little bit more for the first 10 hours of your day.

01:09:51.900 | Now, I want to be very clear that this does not mean

01:09:54.780 | that you need to ingest eight ounces

01:09:57.280 | or 236 milliliters of fluid on the hour every hour

01:10:00.600 | for the first 10 hours of your day.

01:10:01.780 | I'm certainly not saying that.

01:10:03.180 | And in fact, most people are going to find

01:10:05.580 | that they're going to ingest water in boluses,

01:10:08.500 | that is they're going to have perhaps 16 ounces of water,

01:10:12.500 | 500 milliliters of water at one portion of the day,

01:10:15.200 | and then maybe a couple hours of later

01:10:16.620 | that they'll drink some more water or some more coffee

01:10:19.540 | or soda or some other beverage in another portion of the day.

01:10:23.660 | I do think, however, it's important for most of us

01:10:25.940 | to take a step back and ask ourselves

01:10:28.360 | whether or not independent of any other activity

01:10:30.500 | or environmental conditions,

01:10:31.900 | whether or not we are in fact ingesting 80 ounces

01:10:36.320 | or basically 2.4 liters of water

01:10:41.020 | for that 10 hours of the day

01:10:43.620 | that spans from the time we wake up until 10 hours later.

01:10:48.220 | Now, why am I setting this 10 hour framework?

01:10:51.040 | The reason I'm setting this 10 hour framework

01:10:53.020 | is that it turns out that your fluid requirements,

01:10:55.620 | even just at rest, are vastly different

01:10:58.460 | in the time from when you wake up until about 10 hours later

01:11:03.020 | as compared to the later evening and nighttime.

01:11:05.660 | And here I'm referring to people

01:11:06.740 | that are not doing night shifts,

01:11:08.220 | but if you are requesting a number

01:11:10.300 | of how much fluid to drink,

01:11:11.700 | independent of our needs for fluid for exercise,

01:11:15.000 | that's going to be eight ounces of fluid

01:11:16.880 | or 240 milliliters of fluid on average for every hour

01:11:22.300 | from the time when we wake up until 10 hours later.

01:11:25.120 | That's the simple formulation that should basically ensure

01:11:28.800 | that you're getting sufficient baseline hydration

01:11:31.860 | for the cells and tissues of your body.

01:11:33.760 | Now, if you are engaging in exercise,

01:11:36.620 | whether or not it's endurance exercise

01:11:38.060 | or whether or not it's resistance training exercise,

01:11:40.420 | you are going to need additional fluids

01:11:42.300 | in order to maximize the effects of that exercise

01:11:46.060 | and to avoid dehydration.

01:11:48.140 | And there too, we have some excellent numbers

01:11:50.400 | that we can look to,

01:11:51.240 | excellent because they arrive from research.

01:11:53.820 | And this is largely peeled from the episode

01:11:57.140 | that I did with Dr. Andy Galpin,

01:11:58.440 | professor of kinesiology at Cal State Fullerton.

01:12:00.380 | We did a six episode series all about exercise,

01:12:02.660 | everything from strength training, hypertrophy, endurance,

01:12:05.280 | nutrition, supplementation, recovery,

01:12:06.700 | everything related to exercise.

01:12:08.300 | You can find all of that at hubermanlab.com.

01:12:10.060 | And one of the components of those episodes

01:12:12.880 | that was discussed,

01:12:13.720 | but that some of you may have not heard

01:12:16.140 | is that there is a simple formula

01:12:18.580 | for how much fluid to ingest on average.

01:12:20.760 | Keep in mind, this is on average when you're exercising.

01:12:24.820 | And I refer to this as the so-called Galpin equation.

01:12:29.020 | The Galpin equation states

01:12:30.900 | that you should take your body weight in pounds,

01:12:33.980 | divide that by 30,

01:12:36.100 | and that will give you the number of ounces of fluid

01:12:38.700 | to ingest every 15 to 20 minutes on average while exercising.

01:12:43.700 | Your body weight in pounds divided by 30

01:12:48.420 | equals the number of ounces of fluid to consume on average

01:12:51.840 | every 15 to 20 minutes.

01:12:53.160 | When I say on average, what I mean is,

01:12:55.020 | it is not the case that you need to stop

01:12:57.460 | every 15 or 20 minutes and consume that volume of fluid.

01:13:01.440 | You could sip it from moment to moment.

01:13:03.660 | You could wait half an hour or an hour

01:13:06.220 | and then consume a larger bolus of fluid, a larger amount.

01:13:09.700 | Although it is recommended for performance sake

01:13:13.060 | that you sip or consume beverages

01:13:16.940 | fairly consistently throughout your training,

01:13:20.400 | one's ability to do that is going to depend

01:13:22.180 | on a number of things like gastric emptying time,

01:13:25.000 | whether or not the particular exercise you're doing,

01:13:26.960 | whether or not it's running or jumping

01:13:28.860 | is compatible with ingesting fluid on a regular basis

01:13:31.940 | or whether or not you need to do it

01:13:32.980 | at different intervals than every 15, 20 minutes,

01:13:35.380 | maybe it's every five minutes, maybe it's every half hour,

01:13:37.900 | you have to adjust for you.

01:13:39.020 | But if you were to take the hour of exercise

01:13:41.580 | or the half hour of exercise

01:13:43.620 | or the three hours of exercise

01:13:45.580 | and ask how much fluid to ingest,

01:13:48.020 | it's going to be that Galpin equation

01:13:49.560 | of body weight in pounds divided by 30

01:13:50.900 | equals the number of ounces for every 15 or 20 minutes.

01:13:53.540 | And of course, I can already hear screaming from the back,

01:13:56.080 | what about for those of us who follow the metric system?

01:13:59.140 | And there, there's a simple translation

01:14:01.160 | of the Galpin equation,

01:14:02.340 | which is that you need approximately two milliliters of water

01:14:06.900 | per kilogram of body weight every 15 to 20 minutes.

01:14:10.140 | Again, the Galpin equation converted into the metric system

01:14:13.620 | is going to be two milliliters of water

01:14:15.540 | per kilogram of body weight every 15 to 20 minutes on average.

01:14:19.620 | I'm sure a number of you are asking

01:14:20.900 | whether or not hydration prior to exercise

01:14:23.480 | is also important, it absolutely is.

01:14:25.140 | And if you follow the numbers that I talked about before,

01:14:28.220 | approximately eight ounces or 240 milliliters

01:14:32.100 | of fluid intake per hour in the first 10 hours of waking,

01:14:37.000 | that should establish a good baseline of hydration

01:14:39.860 | heading into exercise,

01:14:41.380 | which then prompts the next question I often get,

01:14:43.780 | which is, is the amount of water that needs to be consumed

01:14:47.180 | according to the Galpin equation during exercise

01:14:49.540 | on top of or separate from that?

01:14:52.480 | That is, does it replace the amount of fluid

01:14:54.120 | that one needs at a basic level,

01:14:57.520 | that eight ounces or 240 milliliters?

01:14:59.460 | And there, the answer sort of goes both ways.

01:15:02.220 | I think if you're going to exercise,

01:15:04.220 | then obviously follow the Galpin equation in some way.

01:15:08.520 | Again, you don't need to be ultra specific about this.

01:15:10.980 | These are ballpark figures that will ensure hydration.

01:15:13.780 | So we've set them a little bit higher,

01:15:15.380 | perhaps than needed to ensure more hydration

01:15:18.200 | rather than less.

01:15:19.760 | But basically the short answer is,

01:15:22.060 | if you're exercising for about an hour,

01:15:23.680 | most people are exercising for an hour or two,

01:15:25.640 | probably not more than that.

01:15:26.580 | Most of my workouts are,

01:15:28.160 | certainly the resistance training workouts

01:15:29.700 | last about an hour.

01:15:31.080 | Well, then you can replace the eight ounces

01:15:33.480 | or the 240 milliliters of water

01:15:35.420 | that's required at baseline with what you consume

01:15:37.660 | according to the Galpin equation

01:15:39.300 | during that bout of exercise.

01:15:41.180 | A common question is if you are exercising

01:15:43.620 | in a heated environment, indoor or outdoor,

01:15:46.620 | or you are somebody who tends to sweat a lot.

01:15:48.840 | And by the way,

01:15:49.680 | we can all get better at sweating by sweating more.

01:15:51.700 | Sweat is an adaptation.

01:15:53.100 | So if you sit in the sauna more,

01:15:54.420 | you're going to get better at sweating.

01:15:55.860 | If you exercise more, especially if you wear more layers,

01:15:58.540 | or if you do it in hotter temperatures

01:16:00.020 | or more humid temperatures,

01:16:01.100 | you're going to get better at sweating over time.

01:16:03.380 | And sweating is an adaptation that helps cool your body.

01:16:06.660 | If you are sweating a lot or you're in heat,

01:16:09.180 | how much fluid should you ingest?

01:16:11.520 | In general, I think it's safe to say

01:16:13.640 | that you may want to increase the values

01:16:17.020 | on the Galpin equation by about 50 to 100%.

01:16:19.540 | So either increase by 50% or double those numbers

01:16:22.140 | if you're in a very hot environment

01:16:23.500 | or sweating an awful lot.

01:16:25.620 | If you are sitting in the sauna,

01:16:26.900 | I highly recommend consuming at least eight ounces

01:16:30.200 | and probably more like 16 ounces of fluid.

01:16:33.100 | So that translates again to about 240 or about 480.

01:16:36.180 | Let's just round up 500 milliliters of fluid

01:16:39.460 | for every 20 to 30 minutes that you are in a hot sauna.

01:16:44.460 | And then of course people ask, well, how hot?

01:16:46.500 | And it, okay, that starts getting really detailed

01:16:48.840 | and we can't distinguish between dry saunas and wet saunas.

01:16:51.380 | And again, too many variables,

01:16:53.020 | but I would double your fluid intake

01:16:55.740 | for that hot environment exercise

01:16:59.380 | or for that hot environment sauna sit.

01:17:02.180 | Also, if you are feeling dehydrated, okay,

01:17:04.720 | what does feeling dehydrated mean?

01:17:06.420 | That actually has a definition

01:17:08.120 | that we can get into a little bit later,

01:17:09.300 | but what we're really talking about here

01:17:10.980 | is if you are feeling as if your throat is dry,

01:17:13.400 | you are quote unquote parched or you're very thirsty.

01:17:17.140 | Well, then there's absolutely no problem

01:17:18.700 | with ingesting more fluids,

01:17:20.400 | so 16 ounces of fluid or 500 milliliters of fluid per hour

01:17:24.780 | while you're feeling parched.

01:17:25.980 | My read of the literature is that thirst

01:17:27.900 | is a reasonable guide for when we tend to be dehydrated.

01:17:32.300 | However, it is the case that our thirst

01:17:35.320 | doesn't really keep up with our body's level of dehydration.

01:17:38.360 | And we know that based on some really nice studies

01:17:40.600 | that have explored the amount of fluid intake

01:17:43.000 | compared to the amount of urination,

01:17:44.780 | compared to the amount of physical output,

01:17:46.900 | compared to the environment that one happens to be in.

01:17:49.600 | These are sort of older studies in the realm of physiology,

01:17:52.820 | but here's the basic rule of thumb

01:17:54.560 | that's going to work for most people.

01:17:56.020 | If you are feeling parched, consume fluids.

01:17:59.300 | Ideally, you consume fluids that don't contain caffeine

01:18:02.360 | or other diuretics, diuretics being substances

01:18:06.500 | that cause the release,

01:18:08.420 | the urination of fluid from the body.

01:18:10.820 | And/or if you are consuming caffeine either prior to

01:18:14.180 | or after bouts of exercise or even just at work,

01:18:17.220 | or you work in a air conditioned or otherwise dry,

01:18:20.220 | cool or hot environment,

01:18:22.200 | that you try and include some sodium

01:18:24.340 | and ideally sodium, potassium, magnesium,

01:18:25.980 | the electrolytes in that beverage.

01:18:28.100 | So it could be a little pinch of sea salt with some lemon

01:18:30.380 | to adjust the taste a little bit.

01:18:31.940 | It could be an electrolyte drink of element

01:18:34.020 | or some other sort.

01:18:34.860 | There are a lot of different types out there.

01:18:36.580 | For most people drinking pure water,

01:18:38.620 | and I realize that many people do

01:18:39.980 | just like the taste of pure water,

01:18:42.120 | chances are you're going to have enough electrolytes

01:18:44.740 | unless you're sweating quite a bit

01:18:46.040 | or you're exercising quite a lot.

01:18:47.760 | And under conditions where you're consuming

01:18:49.820 | very few carbohydrates, you're going to excrete more fluid.

01:18:52.340 | If you are ingesting caffeine,

01:18:54.540 | whether or not it's from tea or coffee,

01:18:55.860 | I highly recommend increasing your non-caffeine fluid intake

01:19:00.060 | about two to one for every volume of caffeine.

01:19:03.140 | So in other words,

01:19:04.400 | if you have a six ounces or eight ounces of coffee,

01:19:06.720 | you're going to want 12 to 16 ounces of fluid,

01:19:10.500 | ideally fluid with electrolytes or a little pinch of salt

01:19:13.040 | in order to offset that dehydration.

01:19:14.960 | Hopefully those will provide good rules of thumb

01:19:18.100 | for what people want to do

01:19:19.180 | when they're just moving about their day.

01:19:20.540 | Again, underscored by the fact

01:19:22.220 | that even slight levels of dehydration

01:19:24.140 | can really impair our cognitive and physical performance

01:19:27.060 | largely by creating fatigue,

01:19:29.360 | but more often than not by creating brain fog.

01:19:33.180 | I get so many questions about brain fog.

01:19:34.940 | Why do I have brain fog?

01:19:35.940 | Why do I have brain fog?

01:19:36.960 | There is a vast literature showing that quality hydration,

01:19:41.500 | meaning hydration that matches the demands of humidity

01:19:43.960 | and output as described in the equations

01:19:46.360 | that we went over a little bit before,

01:19:48.180 | really can enhance clarity of focus and overall energy.

01:19:51.860 | And we'll talk about why that is,

01:19:53.060 | but I'll just allude to it a little bit here.

01:19:55.260 | The reason why ingesting sufficient fluids

01:19:58.020 | can enhance our ability to focus

01:20:00.260 | and in fact can reduce brain fog

01:20:02.580 | and can increase physical vigor and output

01:20:04.960 | is not mysterious to us.

01:20:06.780 | We know that there are two mechanisms

01:20:09.220 | by which fluid intake triggers elevated levels of alertness.

01:20:13.380 | And it all has to do with the so-called sympathetic arm

01:20:16.120 | of the autonomic nervous system, which is a real mouthful,

01:20:18.660 | but basically the sympathetic arm

01:20:19.900 | of the autonomic nervous system,

01:20:21.180 | as many of you heard me talk about before,

01:20:23.620 | is the aspect of your nervous system

01:20:25.400 | that makes you more alert.

01:20:26.240 | It has nothing to do with emotional sympathy.

01:20:28.060 | It has to do with a bunch of neurons

01:20:29.300 | in the middle of your spinal cord

01:20:30.500 | called the sympathetic chain ganglia

01:20:32.060 | and some other related neural networks in your body,

01:20:34.640 | as well as regions of your brain,

01:20:36.300 | like the locus coeruleus that release things

01:20:38.620 | like epinephrine and norepinephrine and make you more alert.

01:20:41.860 | And in a kind of magnificent arrangement,

01:20:44.980 | or I think magnificent arrangement,

01:20:47.100 | when we have fluid in our gut

01:20:50.220 | and when our cells are well hydrated,

01:20:52.940 | and believe it or not,

01:20:54.660 | when our bladder contains fluid within it,

01:20:57.580 | there is an elevation in activity

01:20:59.700 | of the sympathetic nervous system by way of two pathways.

01:21:02.840 | One is mechanical.

01:21:04.040 | In fact, we have so-called stretch receptors

01:21:06.640 | in our bladder and in our gut.

01:21:08.640 | These stretch receptors have fancy names

01:21:10.220 | like TRP, trip channels as they're called, or piezo,

01:21:14.020 | which are these stretch sensing channels.

01:21:16.900 | This is the beautiful work of many laboratories,

01:21:18.840 | but in particular, David Julius and Ardham Petapuchen.

01:21:23.120 | David Julius is at UC San Francisco.

01:21:25.200 | Ardham is at the Scripps Institute.

01:21:28.080 | They've discovered a bunch of channels in cells

01:21:30.440 | that sends things from cold

01:21:32.580 | to different mechanical pressure,

01:21:34.940 | including expansion of tissues, so-called mechanosensation.

01:21:39.240 | And basically what it all boils down to

01:21:41.380 | is that when our bladder has some fluid in it,

01:21:43.980 | when our stomach has some fluid in it,

01:21:45.840 | and when our cells are sufficiently hydrated,

01:21:48.060 | they send information about the mechanical presence

01:21:51.260 | of that distension.

01:21:52.540 | And here I'm not talking about being like overly full

01:21:54.820 | or full chock-a-block full of fluid

01:21:57.580 | or your bladder feeling really, really full.

01:21:59.840 | We'll talk about that in a moment.

01:22:01.180 | But when we are sufficiently hydrated,

01:22:02.780 | there's a mechanical signature of that,

01:22:05.460 | which is the expansion of our tissues

01:22:06.860 | 'cause it has more fluid in it.

01:22:08.340 | And there are chemical signals as well,

01:22:10.660 | which is the movement of water

01:22:12.140 | across those aquaporin channels is actually understood

01:22:15.760 | at a biological level by our cells.

01:22:18.000 | And sends information to the areas of the brain

01:22:20.740 | that are associated with so-called sympathetic arousal

01:22:23.260 | and makes us more alert.

01:22:24.460 | This is actually what wakes us up

01:22:26.340 | in the middle of the night.

01:22:27.940 | If we have consumed too much fluid prior to sleep

01:22:31.020 | and we need to urinate, we wake up.

01:22:32.300 | This is a mechanism that is not adequately developed

01:22:36.060 | in babies and young children.

01:22:37.540 | This is why babies, young children often will wet their bed.

01:22:41.420 | And believe it or not, in both humans and in dogs,

01:22:44.860 | our ability to control urination voluntarily

01:22:47.740 | is something that we actually learn.

01:22:48.980 | Babies just pee in their diaper.

01:22:50.540 | Dogs just pee on the floor until they're housebroken

01:22:53.220 | or until a child learns to hold onto their urine

01:22:56.800 | until they go to the bathroom,

01:22:58.280 | in the bathroom or the particularly appropriate location,

01:23:01.840 | outdoors or otherwise.

01:23:03.860 | The point is that hydration of the body

01:23:06.300 | is signaled to the brain.

01:23:08.060 | When we have enough fluid in the tissues of our body,

01:23:10.740 | when we consumed enough fluid,

01:23:12.060 | even if it hasn't already arrived to the cells

01:23:14.100 | and tissues of our body,

01:23:15.480 | that is signaled to the brain in the form of alertness.

01:23:18.420 | And that alertness is what translates

01:23:20.920 | to the enhanced cognitive abilities that we have

01:23:23.440 | when we are well hydrated.

01:23:24.740 | It's also what translates to our enhanced physical abilities

01:23:28.140 | when we are challenged with physical tasks.

01:23:29.760 | So when you look out on the landscape of all these studies

01:23:32.140 | that have shown impairments in physical

01:23:34.260 | or cognitive performance

01:23:35.740 | under conditions of even slight dehydration,

01:23:38.780 | that all makes sense because our cells need fluid

01:23:41.500 | and we need water, but it also prompts the question of,

01:23:45.060 | well, does being well hydrated

01:23:46.600 | actually make our brain and body function better

01:23:49.340 | in the context of physical and cognitive performance?

01:23:51.300 | And indeed the answer is yes.

01:23:53.500 | Now, earlier we were talking about these equations

01:23:55.520 | that you can apply.

01:23:56.940 | And here again, I really want to emphasize

01:23:59.380 | that these equations were not meant to be followed

01:24:02.120 | down to the decimal point.

01:24:03.820 | They were really meant and are meant as crude

01:24:07.340 | but sufficient guides for you to make sure

01:24:10.440 | that you're getting enough hydration,

01:24:12.140 | depending on your levels of activity and at rest.

01:24:15.160 | If you recall, when we talked about those equations,

01:24:17.900 | I said you need about eight ounces or 240 milliliters

01:24:21.620 | of fluid per hour for the first 10 hours of your day

01:24:25.640 | after waking.

01:24:26.540 | Now, why did I say for the first 10 hours?

01:24:28.120 | Well, it turns out that the filtration of fluids

01:24:30.700 | from your body, which is accomplished, of course,

01:24:33.460 | by your kidneys and by way of your bladder

01:24:36.740 | and the excretion of fluid out urethra, so-called urination,

01:24:40.860 | is strongly, strongly circadian dependent,

01:24:44.340 | meaning the cells of your kidney

01:24:46.940 | and the cells even of your gut,

01:24:48.660 | in fact, all the cells of your body,

01:24:49.980 | but especially the cells of your kidney,

01:24:51.940 | which filter the fluid that comes into your body

01:24:54.820 | and that makes certain hormones like vasopressin,

01:24:57.460 | which is anti-diuretic hormone,

01:24:59.780 | all of that functioning of the kidney

01:25:01.980 | is under strong regulation

01:25:03.940 | by so-called circadian clock genes.

01:25:06.180 | Circadian clock genes are genes that are expressed

01:25:07.820 | in every cell, but that in certain cells of the body,

01:25:11.180 | very strongly impact whether or not that organ,

01:25:13.900 | in this case, the kidney, is going to be activated,

01:25:17.540 | meaning functioning, at a very high level

01:25:20.300 | or at a reduced level.

01:25:21.660 | And we can make all of this very simple

01:25:23.340 | by simply stating what's contained in this beautiful review

01:25:26.320 | that I'll provide a link to if you want to learn more

01:25:28.020 | called circadian rhythms in the kidney.

01:25:30.420 | And basically what is known

01:25:32.340 | is that for the first 10 hours after waking,

01:25:34.220 | your kidney is filtering fluid within your body

01:25:36.840 | at a very rapid rate.

01:25:38.420 | There are a number of different cell types that do that,

01:25:40.660 | but they are basically taking that fluid,

01:25:42.840 | pulling out any contaminants,

01:25:45.460 | using hormones such as anti-diuretic hormone, vasopressin,

01:25:48.860 | to adjust whether or not you're going to hold on to fluid

01:25:51.240 | or release more fluid from your body in the form of urine,

01:25:53.500 | depending on the salt concentration,

01:25:55.980 | depending on how much fluid you need, your work output,

01:26:00.180 | the conditions you're in, all of that.

01:26:02.080 | However, at about 10 hours after waking,

01:26:06.220 | your kidney really starts to reduce

01:26:08.560 | its overall level of functioning.

01:26:10.080 | Now that doesn't mean that your kidney cannot filter fluid

01:26:13.380 | 11 or 12 or 16 hours after waking,

01:26:15.380 | but it becomes far less efficient at doing so.

01:26:17.880 | And thank goodness it does

01:26:19.040 | because you do not want your kidney filtering fluid

01:26:22.440 | at the same rate at midnight,

01:26:26.080 | assuming you wake up at say seven or eight or 9 a.m.,

01:26:28.880 | that it was filtering fluid at 10 a.m.

01:26:33.660 | In fact, we can say that if you want to reduce

01:26:37.640 | your nighttime waking in order to urinate,

01:26:40.180 | which is a common, common question and concern

01:26:42.920 | that many people have,

01:26:43.760 | how can I avoid waking up in the middle of the night

01:26:45.400 | to urinate?

01:26:46.240 | And there I say, it's perfectly normal to wake up once,

01:26:49.460 | maybe twice each night to urinate.

01:26:51.380 | But if you want to reduce the number of times

01:26:53.920 | that you wake up in order to urinate across the night,

01:26:56.780 | maybe even make that number zero times,

01:26:59.420 | you will greatly benefit by doing three things.

01:27:02.460 | First of all, make sure that you're hydrating sufficiently

01:27:05.620 | during the daytime per the equations

01:27:08.260 | that we talked about earlier.

01:27:09.700 | That will ensure that you are not excessively thirsty

01:27:13.960 | in the evening and therefore consuming a lot more fluid.

01:27:17.240 | Second, and related to that first point,

01:27:20.420 | is that you do want to reduce your fluid intake at night,

01:27:23.620 | provided you hydrated sufficiently throughout the day.

01:27:27.340 | And believe it or not,

01:27:29.060 | the rate at which fluid moves from your gut

01:27:32.460 | and into the cells and tissues of your body,

01:27:34.460 | and then from your bladder into urine,

01:27:37.180 | is determined not just by the volume of fluid you ingest,

01:27:40.540 | but also the rate at which you ingest that fluid.

01:27:43.700 | And you might be thinking, that's crazy.

01:27:45.380 | That makes no sense at all, right?

01:27:46.900 | If I drink a ton of fluid slowly,

01:27:48.680 | doesn't it still mean that I'm going to urinate a ton?

01:27:51.540 | Yes and no.

01:27:52.780 | It also stands to reason that you might ask,

01:27:55.860 | if I ingest very little fluid, but I do it very fast,

01:27:59.500 | is it going to be the case

01:28:00.460 | that I'm going to urinate it out very quickly?

01:28:02.260 | Well, yes and no.

01:28:03.660 | The point is that the fluid filtration systems of your body

01:28:07.620 | that range from the gut to the bladder

01:28:09.300 | and include the kidney of course,

01:28:10.900 | depend not just on the volume,

01:28:13.380 | but on the rate of fluid that you ingest.

01:28:16.580 | Because of those mechanosensors that we talked about earlier,

01:28:19.700 | if you gulp down a bunch of fluids,

01:28:22.180 | you are going to excrete those fluids more quickly

01:28:24.340 | than if you sip them slowly, excuse me, sip them slowly.

01:28:28.340 | So here's what I recommend.

01:28:29.680 | Throughout the day when you're trying

01:28:30.900 | to get your adequate yield of water or other beverages,

01:28:35.780 | feel free to gulp that fluid or sip it.

01:28:39.580 | I'm a gulper, not a sipper,

01:28:42.380 | but many of you are going to be sippers, not gulpers.

01:28:45.240 | Consume fluid at the rate that feels right to you,

01:28:47.600 | but feel comfortable gulping that fluid.

01:28:49.260 | However, in the evening,

01:28:51.220 | if you are somebody who has challenges

01:28:52.700 | with waking up excessively in the middle of the night,

01:28:55.020 | reduce your fluid intake,

01:28:56.360 | provided you've hydrated properly throughout the day.

01:28:58.820 | And I suggest consuming no more than five,

01:29:01.980 | maybe eight ounces of fluid

01:29:04.280 | between the time of 10 hours after waking

01:29:06.640 | and when you go to sleep.

01:29:07.980 | Again, if you're very thirsty or you're under hydrated

01:29:10.220 | or it's very hot, feel free to ingest more fluid, please.

01:29:14.080 | But most people will find

01:29:15.180 | that if they reduce their fluid intake

01:29:16.640 | to about five ounces or less of fluid

01:29:19.220 | in that later part of the day,

01:29:20.940 | after 10 hours of having woken up and before sleep,

01:29:25.300 | and they sip those beverages as opposed to gulping them,

01:29:28.580 | that they will have fewer bouts

01:29:31.100 | of waking up in the middle of the night

01:29:32.280 | to go to the restroom and ideally zero.

01:29:35.420 | Let's talk about tap water.

01:29:37.140 | And here I have to take a deep breath,

01:29:39.380 | not a deep gulp, but a deep breath

01:29:41.900 | because in researching tap water

01:29:44.260 | and what's contained in tap water in different regions,

01:29:48.220 | not just in the US, but around the world,

01:29:50.580 | I confess the picture is a pretty scary one.

01:29:53.860 | I want to be clear, I'm not somebody

01:29:55.060 | who naturally orients towards fear or conspiracy theories.

01:29:58.500 | However, in researching tap water for this episode,

01:30:02.780 | by way of looking at the peer-reviewed research,

01:30:04.700 | meta-analyses, reviews, specific research articles

01:30:08.740 | where specific hypotheses were tested,

01:30:10.540 | and in talking with experts in toxicology and so on,

01:30:14.940 | it's a pretty grim picture, frankly,

01:30:17.020 | when one looks at what's contained in most tap water

01:30:21.700 | and whether or not the compounds

01:30:23.860 | that are contained in tap water

01:30:25.200 | are present in sufficient concentrations

01:30:27.540 | to negatively impact our health.

01:30:29.660 | And the bad news is that much, if not all tap water,

01:30:34.300 | believe it or not, much if not all tap water

01:30:36.680 | contains things that are bad for the biology of our cells.

01:30:40.300 | There is a silver lining, however,

01:30:41.640 | and the silver lining is that very simple steps

01:30:44.260 | that are very inexpensive can be used

01:30:46.780 | to adjust that tap water to make it not just safe to drink,

01:30:51.140 | but that makes it perfectly fine to drink.

01:30:53.020 | So that's the good news, and we'll get to that in a moment.

01:30:55.540 | If you are somebody who is interested

01:30:57.020 | in whether or not tap water

01:30:58.900 | contains things like endocrine disruptors,

01:31:00.780 | hormone disruptors that can negatively impact

01:31:02.820 | reproductive health in males or females or both,

01:31:06.340 | there's a wonderful review,

01:31:07.540 | wonderful because it's so thorough,

01:31:10.080 | although the news isn't great,

01:31:11.300 | it's very thorough, which is great,

01:31:13.340 | which is entitled "Endocrine Disruptors in Water

01:31:15.260 | "and Their Effects on the Reproductive System."

01:31:16.880 | This is a review from 2020 that analyzes water

01:31:20.500 | from a bunch of different sources within the world

01:31:23.540 | and essentially focuses on a few key components.

01:31:28.300 | First of all, it focuses on the concentration of minerals,

01:31:30.960 | that is magnesium and calcium within water.

01:31:33.000 | Many people don't realize this, but so-called hard water,

01:31:36.060 | sounds terrible, right?

01:31:36.940 | But hard water is water that contains magnesium and calcium,

01:31:40.280 | which turns out to be a good thing.

01:31:42.660 | Some water contains more magnesium and calcium.

01:31:45.200 | Other water contains less.

01:31:46.860 | They looked at the presence of magnesium and calcium

01:31:49.360 | because that is going to impact the pH of water.

01:31:52.500 | In general, the higher concentrations of magnesium

01:31:55.120 | and calcium in water, the higher the pH,

01:31:57.300 | that is the more alkaline that water is,

01:31:59.460 | and the lower levels of magnesium and calcium,

01:32:02.100 | the more acidic or lower pH that water tends to be.

01:32:05.260 | The other thing that this review addresses

01:32:09.260 | is the concentration of so-called DBPs,

01:32:12.260 | dog, bulldog, porcupines, DBPs,

01:32:16.120 | which are disinfection byproducts contained in water.

01:32:19.780 | So obviously local governments, the government,

01:32:22.740 | wants your drinking water to be clean.

01:32:24.760 | They don't want contaminants in it.

01:32:26.120 | They don't want sewage in that water.

01:32:28.120 | They don't want chemical contaminants

01:32:30.460 | that are going to make people immediately sick.

01:32:32.400 | So they treat water, water treatment plants,

01:32:34.800 | treat water with disinfection products,

01:32:37.560 | and those disinfection products

01:32:39.000 | create things called disinfection byproducts.

01:32:41.600 | And the presence of those DBPs

01:32:43.160 | or disinfectant byproducts can strongly impact the pH

01:32:48.160 | of water by way of changing the concentrations

01:32:50.920 | of magnesium and calcium.

01:32:52.460 | Put differently, I do believe that governments

01:32:54.680 | are trying to provide people with clean water,

01:32:56.800 | but in doing so, oftentimes we'll introduce things

01:32:59.800 | to that water that are not good for us.

01:33:02.320 | Now it's very clear that DBPs can cause endocrine disruption

01:33:06.240 | in ways that are not good for reproductive health.

01:33:08.400 | I did a very long, in fact, four and a half hour episode

01:33:11.560 | on fertility and vitality.

01:33:13.360 | That was male and female fertility, by the way,

01:33:15.880 | and vitality that, again, you can find at hubermanlab.com

01:33:19.480 | that talks about all the biological processes involved

01:33:22.000 | in the generation of healthy eggs and sperm

01:33:24.240 | and creating healthy embryos,

01:33:26.780 | implantation of embryos and so forth.

01:33:29.000 | It's very clear that DBPs have been shown

01:33:32.380 | to disrupt ovarian function, spermatogenesis,

01:33:34.800 | and fertility outcomes, even at concentrations of DBPs

01:33:39.320 | that are present in drinking water

01:33:41.200 | that comes from the tap.

01:33:42.080 | Now, does that mean that you shouldn't drink tap water?

01:33:44.160 | Well, the answer to that is a, it depends.

01:33:47.320 | What does it depend on?

01:33:48.520 | Well, it depends on several things.

01:33:49.640 | First of all, I highly recommend that everybody go online

01:33:54.320 | and put in your zip code and ask for a water analysis

01:33:58.000 | of water that comes out of the tap in that zip code.

01:34:01.360 | This is something that is readily available online,

01:34:04.980 | at least to my knowledge, and unfortunately,

01:34:06.960 | there's no specific one site that I can send everyone to

01:34:10.660 | to get an in-depth analysis of the drinking water

01:34:13.960 | that comes out of your tap.

01:34:15.560 | However, I highly recommend that you go online

01:34:19.300 | and put in your zip code or municipal area code

01:34:23.260 | and figure out whether or not your water contains

01:34:26.380 | X amount of DBPs or Y amount of DBPs.

01:34:29.200 | Now, of course, you're going to get a bunch of values back

01:34:31.000 | and unless you're a toxicologist,

01:34:33.540 | probably not going to know what those values mean,

01:34:35.540 | but what you're really looking for is whether or not

01:34:38.820 | there are high, low, or moderate levels of fluoride

01:34:43.520 | in that drinking water.

01:34:44.480 | Why do I say that?

01:34:45.520 | Well, there are studies that show that the concentration

01:34:50.040 | of fluoride in drinking water is of particular concern

01:34:53.320 | for the thyroid hormone system of the body.

01:34:56.400 | Now, thyroid hormone has a lot of different roles

01:34:58.240 | in brain and body, and thyroid hormone is very important

01:35:02.460 | for everything from metabolism to levels of energy,

01:35:05.780 | when thyroid levels are disrupted

01:35:07.300 | or if thyroid receptors are disrupted,

01:35:09.340 | it can lead to depression.

01:35:10.780 | When thyroid hormones are optimized,

01:35:12.520 | it can lead to optimal mood if there is such a thing,

01:35:15.700 | but in other words, it helps keep your mood elevated.

01:35:19.120 | It relates to everything from sleep to reproduction.

01:35:21.300 | Thyroid hormone is involved in many, many things,

01:35:23.180 | including bone health and tissue health generally.

01:35:25.040 | So essentially every biological process in your body

01:35:27.760 | is impacted by thyroid hormone.

01:35:29.760 | And there's a study that I'd like to highlight,

01:35:32.160 | which was published in 2018,

01:35:33.740 | and the title of the study is "Impact of Drinking Water

01:35:36.020 | Fluoride on Human Thyroid Hormones."

01:35:38.000 | This was a case control study,

01:35:39.400 | so this is not an extensive analysis of many individuals.

01:35:43.100 | However, what it shows is that fluoride

01:35:46.380 | negatively impacts thyroid stimulating hormone

01:35:49.120 | and so-called T3 levels.

01:35:50.640 | So you have thyroid hormone T3 and T4,

01:35:54.220 | even in the standard concentrations that are present of,

01:35:57.140 | and here's an important number,

01:35:58.060 | 0.5 milligrams per liter, okay?

01:36:01.420 | So if you can get ahold of the fluoride concentrations

01:36:04.180 | in your tap water and find out whether or not

01:36:06.940 | the concentrations are at, below,

01:36:09.700 | or exceed 0.5 milligrams per liter,

01:36:13.500 | what you will find is that even just 0.5 milligrams

01:36:17.340 | per liter of water can disrupt thyroid function.

01:36:21.060 | And this is going to be a particular concern

01:36:22.900 | for people to have familial,

01:36:24.700 | so genetically related thyroid issues,

01:36:27.540 | or that are concerned with keeping

01:36:29.380 | your thyroid hormone levels healthy,

01:36:31.420 | which I think is everybody.

01:36:32.780 | So I am telling you that you should try

01:36:34.140 | and get ahold of some data about the water

01:36:35.880 | that comes out of your tap if you intend

01:36:37.340 | on drinking tap water, and probably even if you don't,

01:36:39.660 | just know what's in your drinking water.

01:36:40.900 | Your local government should provide that information

01:36:43.340 | and/or it should be readily available online.

01:36:45.340 | And in particular, I think it's worthwhile

01:36:48.200 | to address how much fluoride is present

01:36:50.500 | in your drinking water.

01:36:52.140 | Again, I don't want to create a lot of scare.

01:36:55.220 | I'm not trying to trigger fear here.

01:36:57.260 | I do think, however, by way of reading this review,

01:37:00.860 | by way of reading the paper that I just referred

01:37:03.660 | to a moment ago, again, links to these are going

01:37:06.060 | to be provided in the show note captions,

01:37:08.200 | that there is extensive evidence that elevated levels

01:37:11.120 | of fluoride in drinking water are simply not good for us.

01:37:13.860 | Now, that could open a whole discussion

01:37:15.060 | of why fluoride is in our drinking water

01:37:16.820 | in the first place at all, but leaving that aside,

01:37:20.060 | it seems to me that most everybody should know

01:37:22.620 | how much fluoride is in their drinking water.

01:37:24.900 | And ideally, everybody, yes, everybody,

01:37:28.660 | is filtering their drinking water.

01:37:30.660 | Now, that raises the question

01:37:32.520 | of how best to filter drinking water.

01:37:34.560 | And that brings an answer of,

01:37:36.620 | it depends on a couple of things.

01:37:38.580 | First of all, how healthy or unhealthy

01:37:40.900 | do you know yourself to be?

01:37:42.600 | So if you're somebody who has no health issues,

01:37:44.780 | you have plenty of vigor, you're sleeping well at night,

01:37:46.780 | you have no autoimmune disease,

01:37:48.660 | you're not aware of any health concern, minor or major,

01:37:51.940 | well then perhaps you're somebody

01:37:53.500 | that doesn't want to filter your water.

01:37:55.100 | I would argue that why wouldn't you employ some very low

01:37:59.580 | or even zero-cost approach to filtering your water?

01:38:03.380 | There are going to be other individuals

01:38:04.740 | who are suffering particular ailments of brain or body,

01:38:07.980 | or both, that absolutely should be filtering

01:38:11.800 | their drinking water if they're getting

01:38:13.460 | their drinking water from their tap,

01:38:15.260 | because it is pretty well established now

01:38:17.520 | that tap water contains a lot

01:38:19.300 | of these disinfectant byproducts,

01:38:21.100 | as well as in most cases, exceeding the threshold of fluoride

01:38:25.340 | that we know to be healthy for us.

01:38:27.060 | How should you filter your tap water?

01:38:29.180 | Well, you have everything ranging

01:38:31.260 | from the so-called Brita-type filters,

01:38:33.460 | so these are going to be carbon-type filters

01:38:34.980 | or other filters that you essentially put over a container

01:38:38.060 | or a compartment where you can pour the water over it

01:38:39.780 | and it goes into the compartment below.

01:38:41.440 | Will those work?

01:38:42.860 | Are they sufficient to filter out

01:38:44.820 | the disinfectant byproducts?

01:38:46.820 | The general answer is yes,

01:38:48.380 | provided you change the filters often enough.

01:38:50.580 | However, it is not thought, unfortunately not thought,

01:38:54.360 | that they filter out sufficient fluoride.

01:38:56.020 | So what I highly recommend is, depending on your budget,

01:38:59.940 | that you go online and you search for at-home water filters

01:39:04.860 | that can filter out fluoride.

01:39:06.520 | There are a number of straightforward

01:39:07.660 | and inexpensive tools to do that.

01:39:09.660 | And here, I don't have any relationship

01:39:11.160 | to any of the water filters

01:39:13.080 | or things that I'm going to mention now.

01:39:14.460 | I want to be very clear about that.

01:39:15.420 | There's no brand code or affiliation here.

01:39:18.140 | I'm simply trying to direct you to resources

01:39:20.500 | that will allow you to filter your tap water

01:39:22.980 | for it to be more safe for you to consume

01:39:25.220 | in a way that meets your budget with the understanding

01:39:28.080 | that people have very different disposable incomes.

01:39:30.940 | So the range of costs here is going to be pretty tremendous.

01:39:33.380 | I just want to get that out of the way first.

01:39:35.380 | There are water filters that you can use repeatedly.

01:39:38.460 | So these are what I'll refer to as pitcher filters

01:39:41.100 | that are less than $100.

01:39:43.260 | Now, keep in mind that that's a one-time purchase

01:39:45.360 | except for the replacement of the filters,

01:39:47.700 | which fortunately doesn't have to be done too often.

01:39:50.940 | So there are different filters.

01:39:52.220 | I'll provide a link to one that I found

01:39:54.060 | that is at least by my read of the lowest possible cost.

01:39:56.780 | So this is the so-called clearly filtered water pitcher

01:39:59.360 | with affinity filtration.

01:40:00.960 | So this is a filter that can adequately remove fluoride,

01:40:04.020 | lead, BPAs, glyphosate, hormones,

01:40:07.340 | and some of the other harmful things

01:40:08.840 | that are contained in most tap water.

01:40:10.620 | Again, I do realize that for some people,

01:40:13.680 | even an 80 US dollar cost is going to be prohibitive,

01:40:16.840 | but do realize that what you're doing here

01:40:19.460 | is you're purchasing a unit

01:40:21.180 | that can be used repeatedly over and over.

01:40:23.700 | The reason why it's lower cost

01:40:25.380 | than some of the different filtration approaches

01:40:27.420 | that I'll talk about in a moment

01:40:28.380 | are that you can't really put all the drinking water

01:40:31.700 | that you would use say for an entire week

01:40:33.260 | or for an entire month in one pitcher.

01:40:35.340 | You're going to have to repeatedly pour water

01:40:37.900 | into the pitcher in order to filter it.

01:40:41.500 | Now, as I mentioned before,

01:40:42.740 | the range on water filter costs for filters

01:40:45.140 | that can adequately remove fluoride

01:40:46.780 | and all the other things that you want

01:40:47.740 | out of your tap water is immense.

01:40:49.780 | In fact, you can find whole house water filters

01:40:53.360 | that are $2,000 or more.

01:40:56.100 | Again, these are going to be filters

01:40:57.140 | that are going to be in your garage

01:40:58.260 | or in a laundry room that are going to basically pull

01:41:00.940 | from the piping system of your house

01:41:03.420 | and deliver purified water.

01:41:06.240 | Technically it's not purified,

01:41:07.400 | but that's removing these contaminants and fluoride

01:41:10.200 | from all the sinks in your house

01:41:11.420 | so you can effectively drink

01:41:12.340 | from any or all things in your house.

01:41:14.060 | That's what explains the higher cost.

01:41:15.580 | I think most people are probably not going

01:41:18.100 | to have the disposable income

01:41:19.340 | or have the opportunity to include

01:41:21.940 | one of these whole house filters.

01:41:23.000 | Although if you do have the means

01:41:25.120 | and it's important to you, you could do that.

01:41:26.620 | And then there are going to be

01:41:27.660 | what I would call intermediate systems.

01:41:29.140 | So systems that cost somewhere between 200 and $500.

01:41:34.140 | Probably one of the more common ones

01:41:36.100 | or popular ones is a so-called Berkey filter system.

01:41:39.540 | These are filter systems that again,

01:41:40.860 | remove the things that you want removed from your tap water

01:41:43.260 | and they can do it at higher volumes

01:41:44.780 | and they're typically countertop units.

01:41:47.380 | They don't require any plug-in typically,

01:41:49.800 | or they only require brief plug-in and electricity.

01:41:53.460 | And they're going to filter out many, many liters

01:41:55.580 | or tens of liters of water

01:41:56.700 | so that you can always have access

01:41:58.280 | to that clean filtered water at any time or day or night

01:42:01.060 | without having to pour over into the pitcher.

01:42:03.160 | So I mentioned these different options because again,

01:42:05.660 | I realized that people have different levels

01:42:07.000 | of disposable income.

01:42:08.600 | As far as I know, there's no tablet or simple mechanism

01:42:13.600 | that can be purchased as a transportable pill

01:42:18.300 | that you can just simply throw in water

01:42:19.780 | and remove the contaminants.

01:42:20.920 | If anyone is aware of one that can adequately remove fluoride

01:42:24.420 | and other contaminants,

01:42:25.340 | please put in the comment section on YouTube.

01:42:27.980 | That'd be the best place

01:42:29.520 | so that I and everyone else can see it.

01:42:31.300 | But hopefully the mention

01:42:32.140 | of the different filtration systems that I mentioned

01:42:35.140 | will give you some choices that I would hope would fall

01:42:37.900 | within the range that one could potentially afford.

01:42:40.540 | An important note about filtration.

01:42:43.020 | Just as in our body,

01:42:44.620 | there are mechanisms to signal mechanical changes

01:42:48.120 | and chemical changes that occur in our gut,

01:42:50.420 | in our brain, et cetera, elsewhere.

01:42:51.720 | And in general, both mechanical and chemical changes

01:42:54.580 | are signaled across the body to invoke different changes,

01:42:57.640 | whether or not those are a response of the immune system

01:43:00.980 | or to make us more alert or more asleep, et cetera.

01:43:03.580 | So too filtration capitalizes

01:43:06.180 | on mechanical and chemical filtration.

01:43:09.440 | What I mean by that is when you run a fluid,

01:43:11.900 | water or any other fluid through a filter,

01:43:14.740 | those filters are doing two things.

01:43:16.700 | They are physically constraining

01:43:18.300 | which molecules can go through by creating portals, pores,

01:43:23.300 | that allow certain size molecules to go through

01:43:26.740 | and not others.

01:43:27.680 | And almost always they contain

01:43:30.260 | certain chemicals themselves, right?

01:43:32.540 | Those filters have been treated with certain chemicals

01:43:34.280 | that neutralize certain other chemicals, okay?

01:43:37.700 | So you may be wondering how when you filter water,

01:43:40.940 | magnesium and calcium could get through,

01:43:42.420 | but fluoride doesn't.

01:43:43.540 | And that's because these filters

01:43:44.640 | have been very cleverly designed

01:43:46.700 | in order to neutralize fluoride

01:43:49.060 | or to prevent large molecules such as sediment and dirt,

01:43:53.520 | which is kind of easy to imagine being filtered,

01:43:55.460 | but also to allow certain small molecules like calcium,

01:43:59.560 | which is smallish or magnesium, which is smallish,

01:44:02.040 | to still pass through into our drinking water.

01:44:04.400 | And this is wonderful because what it means

01:44:05.800 | is that by filtering our water using any of the methods

01:44:07.880 | that we talked about before,

01:44:09.160 | you're still going to get whatever magnesium and calcium

01:44:11.840 | was present in that water while still adequately removing

01:44:15.720 | the fluoride and other disinfectant byproducts.

01:44:18.420 | Now, what if you can't afford any of those options?

01:44:20.460 | Okay, well, here you have an interesting zero cost option.

01:44:23.740 | It's not as good as the other ones of filtering that water,

01:44:26.400 | but it is an option.

01:44:28.100 | And I do think it's important to give options

01:44:29.680 | to people who don't have any disposable income

01:44:31.700 | for the purpose of filtering their water,

01:44:33.960 | which is to draw a gallon or five gallons

01:44:38.660 | or maybe even more tap water out of the tap

01:44:41.560 | and put it into some container, some vessel.

01:44:45.520 | So it could be one gallon, five gallon,

01:44:46.840 | 10 gallon container.

01:44:48.160 | And then to let that tap water sit for some period of time

01:44:51.720 | to allow some of the sediment to drop to the bottom.

01:44:55.320 | Now you might say, well, there's no sediment.

01:44:56.760 | There's nothing contained in that tap water

01:44:58.900 | and isn't fluoride diluted in the water?

01:45:01.360 | And indeed the answer to that is yes.

01:45:02.780 | However, there is some evidence that letting tap water sit

01:45:06.080 | out at room temperature and outside the pipes

01:45:08.560 | that deliver that water can help remove some,

01:45:11.060 | not all of the contaminants in that water.

01:45:13.320 | If, however, you are filtering the water

01:45:15.860 | using any of the methods that I talked about

01:45:17.960 | a few moments ago, you do not need to do this, okay?

01:45:21.000 | I realize there's a whole world out there

01:45:22.920 | of people who insist on putting their water in the sun

01:45:25.000 | or only keeping it in certain containers

01:45:26.960 | and putting it out for a few days before they ingest it.

01:45:29.300 | That to me seems a bit extreme.

01:45:30.680 | If you want to do that, be my guest,

01:45:32.240 | but I don't think most people need to do that.

01:45:33.680 | However, I do believe that for people

01:45:35.560 | who have zero disposable income to devote

01:45:38.080 | to paying for any kind of filtration system

01:45:40.360 | for their tap water, they're taking that tap water

01:45:42.620 | and putting it into some container at room temperature

01:45:45.460 | and keeping it at room temperature for a half day

01:45:47.940 | or a day or more, and then pouring off the top two thirds

01:45:52.940 | of that water into another container

01:45:55.280 | and consuming the water from that second container

01:45:58.300 | is going to remove some, not all of the contaminants

01:46:01.000 | that one would need to be concerned about.

01:46:02.620 | And here I should mention something that I neglected

01:46:04.380 | to mention a few moments ago.

01:46:05.680 | If you were going to do this zero cost option

01:46:09.360 | and let the water sit out for a bit,

01:46:10.860 | you would want that water to sit uncapped.

01:46:13.520 | Sorry, I should have mentioned that before, uncapped.

01:46:16.460 | Of course, trying to keep things

01:46:17.800 | from falling into that water.

01:46:18.960 | In fact, you could even put a little bit of cloth above it.

01:46:22.720 | So you don't want things falling into that water,

01:46:24.340 | but you want certain things to be able to evaporate off.

01:46:26.920 | And you also want some of the sediment to drop down.

01:46:29.120 | And the reason why this process of letting water sit out

01:46:33.260 | would work at all is because many of the contaminants

01:46:36.620 | contained within water are not present

01:46:38.200 | because of the source of that water

01:46:40.240 | or even the treatment of that water,

01:46:41.920 | but rather because of the pipes that that water arrives

01:46:44.960 | to your glass or the pot that you have from.

01:46:49.160 | Okay, and here again,

01:46:50.300 | there's an infinite number of variables.

01:46:52.620 | So some people are living in buildings

01:46:53.960 | for which the pipes are very, very old,

01:46:55.960 | but very, very clean, believe it or not.

01:46:58.600 | Some people are living in newer buildings and structures

01:47:01.400 | that have new pipes,

01:47:02.600 | but for which the seals between those pipes

01:47:05.160 | contain things that are not good for you to consume.

01:47:07.960 | So by letting water sit out for a while,

01:47:11.360 | you're able to remove some of the contaminants

01:47:13.420 | present within the pipes of your home and the building,

01:47:16.640 | and even the pipes that lead to your home or apartment.

01:47:19.320 | Now, some people get really obsessed

01:47:21.120 | with this whole tap water thing,

01:47:22.200 | and really want to find out all the details about the pipes

01:47:25.160 | and what sorts of hard metals and how much magnesium

01:47:28.360 | and how much calcium are present in their water.

01:47:30.440 | There are ways that you can test your drinking water

01:47:32.200 | for those sorts of things.

01:47:33.240 | Most people I realize, including myself,

01:47:35.000 | are simply not going to do that.

01:47:37.120 | If you want to know what I do,

01:47:38.900 | I tend to drink water that is filtered

01:47:41.020 | through one of these lower cost filters,

01:47:43.080 | or if I'm going to be consuming a lot of fluid,

01:47:45.280 | I will drink certain kinds of fluid

01:47:47.520 | that later I'll tell you I've been doing an experiment

01:47:50.360 | for sake of this episode,

01:47:51.600 | looking at so-called molecular hydrogen water,

01:47:53.680 | which sounds very fancy and esoteric

01:47:55.680 | and almost a little wacky,

01:47:57.660 | but it turns out it has largely to do

01:47:59.500 | with the amount of magnesium and calcium

01:48:00.880 | and the pH of that water.

01:48:02.200 | So if you are somebody who has a very low budget

01:48:04.180 | or simply just wants to spend a very small amount of money

01:48:06.960 | and try and still drink tap water,

01:48:08.680 | there is absolutely a way to do that safely,

01:48:11.000 | but it does require a few of these steps.

01:48:13.500 | So on the topic of magnesium and calcium,

01:48:17.120 | this relates, as I mentioned earlier,

01:48:18.560 | to the "hardness of water."

01:48:21.280 | So what of the hardness of water?

01:48:23.760 | Is it better to have more magnesium

01:48:25.260 | and calcium in your water or less?

01:48:27.960 | Some people don't like the taste of hard water.

01:48:30.420 | They prefer the taste of water

01:48:32.200 | that has less magnesium and calcium.

01:48:34.520 | However, there I would encourage you

01:48:36.920 | to take a step back and consider some of the literature.

01:48:39.280 | In fact, I'll mention a paper

01:48:40.640 | in particular now published in 2019,

01:48:42.880 | which describes the, quote,

01:48:44.220 | "Regulations for calcium, magnesium,

01:48:45.920 | "or hardness in drinking water

01:48:47.220 | "in the European Union member states."

01:48:49.320 | Turns out in Europe, they do very detailed water analysis,

01:48:52.800 | and that's present in a number

01:48:53.920 | of really high-quality scientific publications.

01:48:56.760 | This was a paper published

01:48:58.020 | in "Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology,"

01:49:00.680 | and they cite a number of different references

01:49:03.120 | in the introduction that, for instance,

01:49:04.700 | and here I'm quoting, "Statistically significant

01:49:07.780 | "inverse association between magnesium

01:49:10.020 | "and cardiovascular mortality."

01:49:11.800 | Now, again, that's an association.

01:49:13.780 | This is not causal, but higher magnesium in water,

01:49:17.120 | lower cardiovascular mortality.

01:49:19.920 | They go on to say, "The highest exposure category,"

01:49:23.540 | which are people consuming drinking water

01:49:25.160 | with magnesium contents of 8.3 to 19.4 milligrams per liter,

01:49:29.560 | again, when you get your water analysis,

01:49:31.320 | you can compare against some of these values,

01:49:33.420 | "was significantly associated with decreased likelihood

01:49:35.880 | "of cardiovascular mortality by 25%

01:49:39.240 | "compared with people consuming magnesium content

01:49:41.720 | "of 2.5 to 8.2 milligrams per liter."

01:49:46.280 | Okay, so what this basically shows,

01:49:48.320 | and by the way, the reference to that,

01:49:50.320 | I'll also provide a link to in the show note caption.

01:49:52.640 | What this basically states is that

01:49:54.800 | higher magnesium-containing water,

01:49:57.280 | and it turns out higher magnesium

01:49:58.600 | and calcium-containing water, so-called harder water,

01:50:01.600 | may not taste as good to you,

01:50:03.120 | but turns out to be better for you.

01:50:04.740 | Now, whether or not it can prevent you

01:50:05.820 | from getting cardiovascular disease, I don't know.

01:50:08.240 | In fact, I would probably just state no.

01:50:11.020 | It probably won't prevent you from cardiovascular disease.

01:50:13.640 | You still need to do all the other things

01:50:15.020 | that are important for avoiding cardiovascular disease

01:50:17.360 | and cerebrovascular disease.

01:50:19.760 | For that and what to do

01:50:22.220 | in order to avoid cardiovascular disease,

01:50:23.860 | I strongly encourage you to listen to the episode

01:50:26.020 | with Dr. Peter Attia that's coming out in a few weeks

01:50:28.440 | that gets deep into that topic and the actionable items

01:50:31.000 | for avoiding cardiovascular disease.

01:50:33.500 | But basically, as this study quotes,

01:50:36.640 | there is a growing consensus among epidemiologists

01:50:39.800 | and epidemiological evidence,

01:50:41.280 | along with clinical and nutritional evidence,

01:50:43.280 | that's strong enough to suggest

01:50:45.000 | that new guidance should be issued

01:50:46.640 | in terms of how these different sources of tap water

01:50:49.820 | should enhance, not deplete,

01:50:51.720 | the amount of magnesium and calcium in that water.

01:50:54.600 | Now, this ought to raise a very important question

01:50:57.680 | in all of your minds, which is,

01:50:58.760 | why is it that magnesium and calcium concentrations

01:51:01.380 | are relevant to cardiovascular disease?

01:51:03.480 | Is it something about what magnesium does in cells

01:51:06.120 | or what calcium does in cells?

01:51:07.400 | Are we all magnesium and calcium deficient?

01:51:09.560 | Well, it turns out that's not the case.

01:51:11.560 | The major effect by which magnesium and calcium in water

01:51:16.560 | are likely to impact things like blood pressure,

01:51:19.760 | cardiovascular disease,

01:51:20.800 | and other aspects of cellular function

01:51:22.740 | turn out to be somewhat cryptic,

01:51:26.120 | but we can make that cryptic aspect very clear

01:51:29.220 | by saying that when we have more magnesium in particular,

01:51:32.740 | but also calcium present in our water, so-called hard water,

01:51:36.760 | you increase the amount of hydrogen in that water,

01:51:39.520 | it becomes what we call hydrogen rich,

01:51:41.560 | and the pH of that water is increased.

01:51:44.480 | Now, again, this does not mean

01:51:46.760 | that we are trying to change the pH of the cells of our body

01:51:49.920 | in any kind of meaningful way.

01:51:51.240 | In fact, we don't want to do that.

01:51:52.460 | We want the pH of the cells of our body

01:51:54.700 | to stay in particular ranges, as I mentioned earlier,

01:51:57.460 | but having more magnesium and more calcium in our water,

01:52:01.480 | that is increasing the hardness of our water,

01:52:03.240 | changes the pH of that water,

01:52:04.740 | and it turns out that the elevated pH of water,

01:52:08.120 | that is pH of water that tends to be

01:52:11.520 | somewhere between high sevens, so we could say 7.9

01:52:16.040 | up to even nine or 9.2,

01:52:19.160 | is going to be more readily absorbed

01:52:22.500 | and is going to more favorably impact

01:52:25.240 | the function of our cells than lower pH water.

01:52:28.600 | Again, I want to restate this

01:52:29.840 | because I'm a little bit concerned

01:52:31.440 | that maybe a clip of this is going to be taken

01:52:34.000 | and sent elsewhere, and someone will get the impression

01:52:36.780 | that I'm saying that we actually want to drink high pH water

01:52:39.800 | that we all need to buy expensive high pH water.

01:52:41.640 | Turns out that's not the case.

01:52:43.580 | If you're consuming tap water from a location

01:52:47.720 | where levels of a magnesium

01:52:49.280 | are sufficiently high in that tap water,

01:52:51.440 | again, where the level of magnesium

01:52:53.180 | is 8.3 to 19.4 milligrams per liter of water,

01:52:57.340 | that is if the water coming out of your tap is hard enough,

01:53:00.620 | well then chances are you don't need

01:53:02.540 | to enhance the pH of that water

01:53:04.340 | or change its magnesium concentration.

01:53:06.000 | If however, the water that you're drinking from the tap,

01:53:08.860 | filtered or not, I would hope filtered,

01:53:11.320 | contains less than 8.3 milligrams per liter of magnesium,

01:53:17.560 | well then chances are the pH of that water

01:53:20.900 | is going to be low enough

01:53:23.460 | that it's not going to be lending itself

01:53:26.060 | to some of the favorable health components

01:53:28.760 | that higher pH water can.

01:53:30.420 | Notice I did not say that lower pH,

01:53:33.500 | AKA more acidic water is bad for you.

01:53:35.940 | I didn't say that.

01:53:37.100 | I said that higher pH water can be good for you.

01:53:40.700 | So let's talk about how and why higher pH water

01:53:43.140 | can be good for you and some of the best

01:53:44.980 | and in fact very inexpensive sources

01:53:47.300 | of higher pH magnesium enhanced

01:53:49.560 | or simply tap water that contains sufficient magnesium

01:53:53.440 | can be used and accessed.

01:53:55.300 | Many of you are probably wondering

01:53:56.520 | whether or not you can simply boil your tap water

01:53:59.340 | and thereby decontaminate the tap water.

01:54:03.100 | There I want to caution you.

01:54:04.460 | It turns out that some of the contaminants present in water

01:54:06.980 | are actually made worse by heating water.

01:54:09.780 | And again, I don't want to open up

01:54:12.100 | a whole catalog of different fears.

01:54:14.660 | I like all of you I presume use water to cook,

01:54:18.460 | pasta, rice, because I'm an omnivore.

01:54:20.140 | I do consume those things.

01:54:21.560 | I confess if I make yerba mate or any kind of tea or coffee,

01:54:25.400 | I tend to use a higher quality water source than tap water

01:54:29.520 | even if that top water is filtered

01:54:31.440 | because I like the taste far more

01:54:33.660 | if I use a really good source of water.

01:54:35.740 | And again, because I'm not consuming those beverages

01:54:37.640 | in enormous volumes,

01:54:38.980 | that becomes a relatively inexpensive endeavor.

01:54:42.180 | But I would caution people against using boiling

01:54:46.340 | or heating of water as the only method

01:54:48.580 | to decontaminate their tap water

01:54:50.460 | and instead to also rely on some of the filtration systems

01:54:53.580 | that I talked about before.

01:54:55.000 | And as long as we're talking about the temperature of water,

01:54:57.980 | there is sort of an ongoing debate online.

01:55:01.220 | It's not a huge debate,

01:55:02.100 | but a number of people engaged in this debate

01:55:03.740 | as to whether or not drinking really cold water

01:55:06.220 | or room temperature water is better for you or worse for you.

01:55:10.280 | This is a tough one to resolve.

01:55:12.620 | It turns out that if water is very, very cold,

01:55:15.960 | that is if you drink it and you can feel that cold water

01:55:19.320 | making its way down to your gut

01:55:21.460 | and you can actually feel it as cold within your gut,

01:55:23.500 | and that's sort of a back of the envelope,

01:55:27.120 | or I should say direct within the gut measure

01:55:29.880 | of cold versus body temperature water,

01:55:33.080 | that it is going to be slower to absorb.

01:55:35.540 | That is, you're going to feel it sloshing around

01:55:37.220 | in your stomach for a bit longer

01:55:39.200 | than if you were to consume water that is slightly warmer.

01:55:42.580 | Now, that is not to say that you should ingest warm water

01:55:45.820 | or room temperature water.

01:55:47.480 | However, many people find that when they drink

01:55:50.580 | very cold water or ice water,

01:55:52.740 | that indeed it can alter the kind of sensation

01:55:56.800 | of the lining of their stomach

01:55:58.060 | in ways that at least to them

01:55:59.800 | feel like it's altering their digestion.

01:56:01.720 | And that makes sense.

01:56:02.560 | The cells that line the gut are very temperature sensitive.

01:56:05.380 | You want this, so for a number of reasons,

01:56:08.440 | including not consuming food that is excessively hot or cold

01:56:12.060 | or damaging your gut.

01:56:13.740 | But in general, most people know the temperature of fluid

01:56:17.360 | that they want to ingest,

01:56:18.460 | and ingest that temperature of fluid.

01:56:19.940 | So most people, for instance, on a cold day

01:56:22.100 | want a warm or hot fluid.

01:56:24.060 | Does that mean that you're not going to absorb

01:56:25.500 | that warm or hot fluid?

01:56:26.380 | No, of course it doesn't.

01:56:27.580 | You're going to absorb that fluid one way or the other.

01:56:29.960 | So drink fluids at the temperatures

01:56:31.420 | that are to your liking in that moment.

01:56:33.280 | In other words, what you desire in that moment.

01:56:34.860 | And don't worry so much about trying to avoid cold beverages

01:56:38.460 | or trying to make sure that you're always consuming

01:56:41.020 | room temperature water as opposed to cold water.

01:56:43.020 | So now with your understanding of hard water,

01:56:45.580 | soft water, magnesium,

01:56:46.740 | the relationship between magnesium, calcium,

01:56:48.340 | and the pH of water.

01:56:49.260 | And remember our earlier conversation

01:56:50.860 | where we talked about how higher pH water

01:56:54.460 | is actually going to move out of the gut

01:56:56.700 | and into the body a bit more readily

01:56:59.160 | and across those aquaporin channels more readily

01:57:01.780 | than lower pH, more acidic water.

01:57:04.140 | Well, that raises the question of whether or not

01:57:05.560 | all these different forms of water that are out there,

01:57:07.980 | reverse osmosis water, distilled water,

01:57:10.460 | double distilled water.

01:57:12.860 | Deuterium depleted water, alkaline water,

01:57:15.660 | as it's often called.

01:57:16.880 | Whether or not any or all of that

01:57:18.920 | has meaningful health outcomes.

01:57:21.900 | Here we can address some of those items pretty quickly.

01:57:24.580 | For instance, distilled water and double distilled water

01:57:29.140 | is essentially distilled of,

01:57:31.360 | that is it has magnesium and calcium removed from it.

01:57:35.800 | So my recommendation would be to not drink distilled water.

01:57:39.740 | There may be specific circumstances

01:57:41.540 | where somebody has very high levels of blood magnesium

01:57:44.780 | or calcium or calcium stores within the body

01:57:46.940 | that would necessitate them drinking only distilled water.

01:57:49.740 | But that seems like a very isolated kind of niche case.

01:57:52.820 | So in general, consuming distilled water

01:57:55.060 | is just simply not necessary.

01:57:57.620 | Now, in terms of reverse osmosis water,

01:58:00.020 | what is reverse osmosis water?

01:58:01.500 | Reverse osmosis water is water

01:58:03.540 | that has been passed repeatedly

01:58:06.020 | through a series of filters

01:58:08.360 | that are designed to remove the kinds of contaminants

01:58:10.740 | we were talking about earlier.

01:58:11.820 | So some of the basic contaminants

01:58:13.540 | like disinfectant byproducts, fluoride,

01:58:16.740 | and some other large and small molecules

01:58:19.640 | that leaves the water

01:58:20.940 | ideally still containing magnesium and calcium.

01:58:23.580 | Although there's some evidence that reverse osmosis water

01:58:25.780 | can deprive water of some of the magnesium and calcium.

01:58:28.700 | So if you are going to use reverse osmosis filters

01:58:32.080 | and drink reverse osmosis water,

01:58:34.300 | you want to make sure that you're still getting

01:58:35.860 | the magnesium concentrations present in that water

01:58:38.340 | that we talked about earlier.

01:58:40.100 | But in general,

01:58:41.580 | reverse osmosis water is considered safe,

01:58:43.780 | but, and for many people,

01:58:45.500 | this is going to be an important but,

01:58:47.180 | but very expensive to access.

01:58:49.180 | The reverse osmosis filters

01:58:50.840 | require a lot of changing of the filters,

01:58:52.620 | purchasing reverse osmosis water

01:58:54.680 | in its stable form within containers,

01:58:57.020 | these are typically glass containers,

01:58:58.540 | is going to be pretty expensive

01:59:01.120 | and prohibitive for most people.

01:59:02.980 | That said, there are a number of people out there

01:59:04.860 | that really like the taste of reverse osmosis water.

01:59:08.160 | They report it as feeling more smooth.

01:59:11.060 | They think of reverse osmosis water as quote unquote,

01:59:13.620 | giving them energy.

01:59:15.180 | To be quite honest,

01:59:16.200 | there's no direct studies of the subjective sensation

01:59:20.840 | of water in the mouth and in the gut

01:59:23.040 | and its relative health effects.

01:59:24.880 | Again, the smoothness of water as one drinks it

01:59:28.640 | and goes down the gut,

01:59:31.020 | really has no direct relationship to the quote unquote,

01:59:34.200 | hardness or softness of water.

01:59:36.140 | I know that's going to shock a number of you.

01:59:37.520 | You probably think,

01:59:38.360 | well, hard water is going to be hard to drink.

01:59:39.780 | And it turns out that's not the case.

01:59:41.180 | In fact, many people find that with elevated levels

01:59:44.000 | of magnesium and calcium and water,

01:59:45.480 | it actually tastes smoother or softer in their mouth.

01:59:48.760 | So hard water tastes smooth or soft.

01:59:51.460 | I know it's all very counterintuitive,

01:59:53.680 | but I think it's important to point this out

01:59:55.880 | because a number of times you'll hear

01:59:58.180 | or read about filtering water

01:59:59.900 | so that it tastes smoother and better.

02:00:01.540 | And oftentimes that's happening

02:00:03.060 | because the quote unquote, hardness of water,

02:00:05.780 | that is the concentrations of magnesium and calcium

02:00:07.700 | are actually increasing.

02:00:09.340 | So if you're somebody who's curious

02:00:10.720 | about reverse osmosis water and you can afford the filters

02:00:14.020 | or the reverse osmosis water already pre-filtered,

02:00:17.040 | please be my guest, drink it.

02:00:18.500 | I'm certainly not trying to prevent anyone from drinking it,

02:00:20.600 | but there's no peer reviewed evidence that I am aware of

02:00:23.200 | that conclusively shows that drinking reverse osmosis water

02:00:26.400 | is far better for us than drinking other types of water

02:00:29.520 | provided the other types of water

02:00:31.100 | are adequately filtered of fluoride

02:00:33.140 | and the sorts of disinfectant byproducts

02:00:34.940 | that we talked about earlier.

02:00:36.200 | So what about hydrogen water?

02:00:37.620 | You may have heard of this or hydrogen enriched water

02:00:40.340 | or electrolyzed reduced water

02:00:43.280 | as a way to access hydrogen enriched water.

02:00:46.160 | All this might sound pretty crazy to some of you.

02:00:48.540 | Now, fortunately for sake of today's discussion,

02:00:52.220 | we can take a number of the different categories

02:00:55.020 | of let's call it unique categories of water

02:00:58.940 | that have been described, including deuterium depleted water.

02:01:01.500 | And by the way, deuterium is something that relates

02:01:03.900 | to the presence of hydrogen ions in water.

02:01:07.020 | And put very simply, water that is extracted from sources

02:01:11.340 | that are closer to sea level

02:01:13.000 | tend to have more deuterium in them

02:01:15.420 | than water that is extracted from sources

02:01:17.900 | further from sea level.

02:01:18.980 | So up in the mountains, for instance,

02:01:20.460 | and from springs further away from oceans.

02:01:23.580 | As you get closer to sea level,

02:01:24.620 | the sources of water separate from sea water

02:01:28.300 | tend to have more deuterium,

02:01:29.500 | which relates to the enrichment or lack of hydrogen

02:01:34.500 | within that water or free hydrogen within that water.

02:01:37.340 | I warned you, this was all going to sound pretty niche

02:01:40.620 | and that we were going to get a little bit into the chemistry

02:01:42.180 | but now I'm going to make it all very simple for you.

02:01:44.340 | At least for the non-efficinado.

02:01:47.380 | Electrolyzed reduced water,

02:01:51.180 | which is a method of using electricity

02:01:53.560 | to alter the confirmation of the water molecules

02:01:57.740 | and their rates of movement as well,

02:02:00.320 | as well as so-called hydrogen rich water

02:02:03.420 | or hydrogen enriched water or deuterium depleted water,

02:02:08.420 | all have the property of having higher levels of pH

02:02:12.960 | than other forms of water,

02:02:14.260 | such as distilled water, reverse osmosis water,

02:02:17.740 | and generally higher pH than the kind of water

02:02:20.500 | that comes out of your tap,

02:02:21.580 | unless you live in a region where your tap water

02:02:24.700 | has very high levels of magnesium in it,

02:02:27.820 | which does occur in certain regions of the world

02:02:30.060 | but is not that common.

02:02:31.380 | More typically, the water that comes out of your tap

02:02:33.860 | does not have enough magnesium,

02:02:37.080 | meaning not as much magnesium in it as you would like.

02:02:39.980 | And this I believe explains in a fairly straightforward way

02:02:44.000 | why there is such an appeal of these pH enhanced

02:02:47.580 | or alkaline waters or electrolyzed reduced water

02:02:51.140 | or deuterium depleted water.

02:02:53.320 | There are a couple of reasons,

02:02:54.300 | but first of all,

02:02:55.460 | anytime someone is consuming a specialized form of water,

02:02:58.540 | chances are it's going to be filtered

02:03:00.340 | of the disinfectant byproducts, fluoride,

02:03:03.220 | and the other things that you really don't want in water.

02:03:04.860 | So already the water is going to be cleaner

02:03:06.660 | than would be coming out of the tap.

02:03:08.340 | So that's going to indirectly explain

02:03:11.300 | a number of the so-called health benefits,

02:03:13.420 | both subjective and perhaps even objective

02:03:15.240 | as we'll talk about,

02:03:16.120 | that can result from consuming these other,

02:03:19.000 | let's say more esoteric forms of water,

02:03:22.660 | at least not of simple tap water.

02:03:25.140 | However, if you look at hydrogen or hydrogen enriched water,

02:03:30.000 | you really need to take a step back and ask, what is that?

02:03:32.900 | What are we really talking about?

02:03:34.420 | Because it turns out that you can create

02:03:35.940 | hydrogen enriched water

02:03:37.380 | by putting tablets of magnesium itself,

02:03:41.160 | small amounts of magnesium, dissolving those in water.

02:03:43.700 | It will give off a kind of gaseous solution.

02:03:45.940 | You'll see a bunch of bubbling in there.

02:03:47.220 | You certainly want to dilute that tablet

02:03:50.360 | and then consume the water.

02:03:52.140 | And yes, it's true what you've heard about and read

02:03:54.580 | from these commercial sources.

02:03:55.820 | You do want to consume that water

02:03:57.520 | within about five to 15 minutes

02:04:00.180 | after that tablet completes dissolving.

02:04:03.060 | Now, why would you do this?

02:04:04.340 | And I should say that I have now started doing this,

02:04:08.020 | not because I necessarily think

02:04:09.980 | that it's so necessary or so beneficial.

02:04:13.340 | I'll talk about my experience in a moment.

02:04:14.620 | I did it in anticipation of this episode

02:04:17.060 | because I was researching water and hydrogen enriched water

02:04:19.800 | and all these alkaline waters.

02:04:21.100 | And what became very clear to me

02:04:23.060 | based on reading a fantastic two-part review,

02:04:26.040 | it's a very extensive review entitled,

02:04:28.900 | or at least the first part is entitled

02:04:30.140 | Electrolyzed Reduced Water.

02:04:32.180 | Molecular hydrogen is the exclusive agent responsible

02:04:35.500 | for the therapeutic effects.

02:04:36.720 | And then there's a second part to this review.

02:04:38.340 | This is how extensive is entitled

02:04:40.380 | Electrolyzed Reduced Water.

02:04:42.340 | Number two, safety concerns and effectiveness

02:04:44.700 | as a source of hydrogen water.

02:04:46.460 | What this review, which we've linked to in the show notes,

02:04:49.500 | points to is that all of the health benefits

02:04:52.100 | of these different forms of water

02:04:53.460 | that you hear about out there,

02:04:55.380 | deuterium depleted, hydrogen enriched, et cetera,

02:04:58.660 | all seem to boil down, no pun intended,

02:05:01.860 | no boiling included, I should say,

02:05:03.780 | to the elevation in hydrogen that translates into,

02:05:08.520 | and here's the really meaningful change,

02:05:10.420 | the elevation in pH that occurs

02:05:12.840 | when you hydrogen enrich water.

02:05:15.060 | Now, there are not a lot of clinical studies

02:05:18.560 | looking at hydrogen enriched water,

02:05:20.140 | but there are starting to be more than a few.

02:05:23.180 | And one that I'd like to point out and that we'll link to

02:05:26.000 | was published fairly recently,

02:05:28.400 | which is entitled hydrogen-rich water

02:05:30.380 | reduces inflammatory responses and prevents apoptosis.

02:05:33.460 | Apotosis is a naturally occurring cell death

02:05:36.180 | during development and is generally used

02:05:38.220 | to describe cell death of the body.

02:05:40.220 | Sometimes this can be good cell death, by the way,

02:05:41.920 | removing cells that need to be removed.

02:05:44.120 | Again, the title of the paper is hydrogen-rich water

02:05:46.220 | reduces inflammatory responses and prevents apoptosis

02:05:49.000 | of peripheral blood cells in healthy adults,

02:05:51.120 | a randomized double-blind control trial.

02:05:54.180 | Now, this paper looked at the effects

02:05:57.220 | of drinking 1.5 liters per day of hydrogen enriched water

02:06:02.220 | for a period of four weeks.

02:06:04.580 | They did find significant positive benefits

02:06:09.240 | of reduced inflammation, and they found these changes

02:06:12.560 | by way of analyzing things like interleukin-6

02:06:15.520 | and some of the other interleukins,

02:06:16.840 | which are markers of inflammation.

02:06:18.600 | They controlled very nicely for the fact

02:06:20.800 | that people were still consuming other forms of water

02:06:23.220 | and liquid and coffee, et cetera,

02:06:24.500 | although they made sure that they weren't consuming

02:06:26.380 | too much coffee and soda

02:06:28.240 | in addition to this hydrogen enriched water.

02:06:30.960 | But what this paper shows is that indeed,

02:06:35.000 | increasing the free hydrogen in water

02:06:36.700 | can improve certain health metrics in these cells.

02:06:40.720 | And this is in keeping with some of the subjective reports

02:06:44.600 | that people have stated out there

02:06:47.200 | and that I myself experienced.

02:06:48.600 | I have to say that by drinking hydrogen rich water,

02:06:52.400 | which I'll tell you how to do fairly inexpensively

02:06:54.400 | in a moment, you do get the subjective experience

02:06:57.460 | of having more energy, of feeling better, quote unquote.

02:07:01.960 | Now, keep in mind, of course, the placebo effect

02:07:03.940 | is a very real and powerful effect,

02:07:06.260 | so it could just be placebo.

02:07:07.760 | Although in this paper, they did, of course,

02:07:09.220 | include a placebo group, so people didn't know

02:07:11.020 | if they were getting hydrogen rich water

02:07:13.080 | or non-hydrogen rich water.

02:07:15.080 | I should also mention that the improvements

02:07:17.960 | in health metrics that they observed in this study

02:07:20.400 | were only observed for individuals older than 30 years old.

02:07:25.120 | Why that is, I don't know.

02:07:26.680 | The conclusions these authors came to

02:07:28.320 | in terms of how these individuals older than 30

02:07:31.960 | achieved lower levels, or I should say,

02:07:34.280 | reduced levels of inflammation and improved markers

02:07:38.120 | of other aspects of biological function

02:07:40.440 | is that the hydrogen water improved

02:07:43.640 | the biological antioxidant potential of certain cell types.

02:07:48.460 | And again, the cell types that they mainly focused on

02:07:50.280 | were these peripheral blood cells in this particular study.

02:07:53.340 | Now, how could this be?

02:07:54.480 | Why would this be?

02:07:55.300 | Well, this goes back to our earlier discussion

02:07:57.280 | about reduction in reactive oxygen species,

02:08:00.640 | so-called ROSs, and reductions in free radicals

02:08:04.120 | that can damage cells.

02:08:05.520 | So if all of this is sounding very convoluted,

02:08:08.320 | I can understand why.

02:08:09.800 | However, what I like about this study

02:08:11.980 | and the two reviews that I mentioned a moment ago

02:08:14.720 | is that these studies don't really say

02:08:16.960 | that hydrogen rich water is what's essential.

02:08:20.200 | What these studies really point to

02:08:22.100 | is that the changes in pH of water

02:08:25.340 | that enhancing the hydrogen in water can create

02:08:29.340 | is what leads to the enhanced either absorption

02:08:34.180 | and/or ability of cells to utilize that higher pH water,

02:08:38.360 | again, not by changing the pH of the body or of cells,

02:08:42.680 | but simply because higher pH water,

02:08:45.800 | or we could perhaps more accurately state less acidic water,

02:08:50.440 | that is harder water that contains more magnesium and calcium

02:08:53.820 | seems to be more readily used by the cells of the body,

02:08:57.300 | and therefore, it's very likely that the individuals

02:08:59.960 | in this study were achieving higher

02:09:02.720 | or more efficient levels of hydration.

02:09:05.440 | Okay, so if any of this is confusing,

02:09:07.680 | let me be very clear.

02:09:09.240 | I do not believe that we all need

02:09:11.800 | to drink deuterium depleted water,

02:09:13.920 | or that we all need to drink electrolyzed reduced water,

02:09:18.280 | nor do I necessarily believe

02:09:19.820 | that we all need to drink hydrogen rich water.

02:09:22.680 | However, it's very clear to me

02:09:24.460 | that all these different forms of water are better absorbed

02:09:28.540 | and therefore lead to better and more efficient hydration,

02:09:32.200 | and therefore can reduce inflammation, blood pressure,

02:09:35.560 | and improve a number of other health metrics

02:09:38.200 | because of the elevated pH

02:09:40.440 | that all of these different purification

02:09:42.540 | or water treatment methods achieve,

02:09:44.980 | and that elevated pH, again,

02:09:46.440 | is not changing the pH of the cells and tissues

02:09:48.920 | and organs of your body.

02:09:49.820 | You actually don't want that.

02:09:51.280 | Rather, that elevated pH is simply making the water

02:09:54.760 | less acidic than it would be otherwise.

02:09:57.400 | So the simple takeaway is this.

02:09:59.680 | If your tap water contains sufficient magnesium

02:10:02.520 | per the values that we talked about earlier,

02:10:05.240 | I don't think you need to hydrogen enrich your water.

02:10:07.640 | I do, however, suggest that you at least analyze your water

02:10:11.620 | or look at some of the professional analysis of water

02:10:15.640 | that you can achieve online

02:10:17.240 | and filter out disinfectant byproducts and fluorides,

02:10:21.960 | et cetera, from that magnesium,

02:10:24.920 | or I should say sufficiently magnesium containing water.

02:10:27.800 | Put simply, if your tap water has enough magnesium,

02:10:30.760 | filter it, but drink it, and I think you're doing just fine.

02:10:34.000 | If, however, the levels of magnesium in your tap water

02:10:36.720 | are not above that value that we talked about earlier,

02:10:41.240 | in that case, I do think,

02:10:43.400 | and I can completely understand why,

02:10:46.440 | enriching the amount of hydrogen in that water

02:10:48.780 | can make that water not only more palatable, right,

02:10:52.940 | give you the sensation that it's softer or smoother

02:10:55.880 | or more enjoyable to drink than more acidic water would be,

02:11:00.160 | but also that that water is going to be far more effective

02:11:03.520 | in being absorbed and hydrating the cells

02:11:06.040 | and tissues of your body,

02:11:06.920 | which turns out to be very important for an enormous range,

02:11:10.280 | perhaps every biological function within your brain and body.

02:11:13.760 | So how can you hydrogen enrich your water?

02:11:17.000 | That actually can be done fairly inexpensively.

02:11:20.000 | I've been doing that, as I mentioned earlier,

02:11:21.720 | as part of an experiment in preparation for this episode,

02:11:24.460 | because it turns out that the water that comes out of my tap

02:11:26.720 | has very little magnesium in it

02:11:28.400 | and very little calcium as well.

02:11:31.640 | The way to create hydrogen rich water

02:11:33.840 | is you can simply purchase molecular hydrogen tablets,

02:11:36.840 | which in reality are just magnesium tablets

02:11:39.680 | that dissolve in water and create a free hydrogen

02:11:43.020 | that can interact with the other water molecules.

02:11:45.640 | Now, the chemistry behind it has been substantiated

02:11:48.480 | and I'll provide a link in the show note captions

02:11:50.540 | to a paper that gets into some fairly extensive detail

02:11:54.000 | about the way that having an additional hydrogen

02:11:57.000 | in your water can adjust the flow of electrons

02:12:00.240 | and the adjustment of free radicals.

02:12:02.240 | But keep in mind, again, this is all through increases

02:12:04.880 | in the pH of your water.

02:12:06.520 | And please keep in mind that you can't simply take any other

02:12:09.980 | or any old magnesium tablet or capsule

02:12:12.960 | and put it into water.

02:12:14.320 | The configuration of the magnesium in these capsules

02:12:17.080 | and tablets is such that it allows a rapid dissolving

02:12:21.120 | of the tablet and the activation of the free hydrogen

02:12:24.640 | that can interact with the water molecules.

02:12:26.620 | Again, there are only a few scientific studies

02:12:28.860 | exploring the real biological effects

02:12:31.520 | of these activated hydrogen waters.

02:12:34.560 | The dissolvable tablets are the far less expensive way to go

02:12:38.380 | than purchasing pre-packaged and sealed hydrogen water.

02:12:42.920 | In fact, I don't recommend those brands

02:12:45.060 | because they are quite expensive

02:12:47.800 | and it's not clear how stable the activated

02:12:50.520 | or free hydrogen is in those waters.

02:12:53.500 | In any case, this is certainly not something

02:12:55.820 | that everyone needs to do.

02:12:57.500 | I mention it because I have had a good experience

02:13:00.400 | with it myself.

02:13:01.240 | I also will mention again that I have no business

02:13:04.680 | or affiliation to any of these products.

02:13:06.300 | I'll provide a link to a few of them

02:13:07.580 | in the show note captions for those of you

02:13:09.280 | that want to experiment.

02:13:10.240 | And indeed, that's why I'm telling you this.

02:13:11.640 | For those of you that want to experiment

02:13:13.280 | with raising the pH of your water

02:13:15.440 | without having to purchase what is ordinarily

02:13:18.160 | quite expensive higher pH water,

02:13:20.840 | you can do this with these dissolvable magnesium tablets.

02:13:23.800 | My experience with them has been quite good.

02:13:26.260 | In fact, I plan to continue to use them once or twice a day.

02:13:29.820 | This is not the sort of thing that you need to do

02:13:32.000 | in all the water that you drink.

02:13:33.660 | I want to repeat, even if you go down this path

02:13:36.080 | and you find that you really like

02:13:37.640 | the activated hydrogen tablet approach,

02:13:40.260 | it is not the case that you want to put these

02:13:42.220 | in all of your water.

02:13:43.520 | And you certainly don't want to put them

02:13:45.080 | in carbonated waters of any kind.

02:13:47.300 | That will lead to a lot of gastric discomfort,

02:13:49.580 | nor do you want to put them into hot liquids of any kind.

02:13:52.280 | So again, this is the sort of thing that you do once

02:13:54.340 | or twice, maybe three times a day.

02:13:57.100 | And you can find out for yourself

02:13:58.540 | and sort of measure subjectively whether or not

02:14:01.200 | you like the experience and whether or not

02:14:02.920 | you quote unquote feel better.

02:14:04.840 | Now, earlier in the episode,

02:14:06.000 | we were discussing structured water

02:14:08.280 | or this fourth phase of water.

02:14:10.520 | I know a number of people out there are curious

02:14:12.320 | as to whether or not ingesting structured water

02:14:15.160 | is somehow better for us

02:14:17.320 | than ingesting non-structured water.

02:14:20.640 | All I can say about this is that

02:14:22.460 | it is a very controversial thing

02:14:24.760 | to suggest that structured water

02:14:26.440 | is somehow more biologically effective

02:14:29.040 | or better for us than non-structured water.

02:14:32.300 | There are a number of different ways

02:14:33.640 | that one can create structured water.

02:14:36.280 | They involve some pretty extensive

02:14:38.040 | and expensive at-home systems,

02:14:40.960 | ranging anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars

02:14:43.060 | to a couple of thousand dollars or more.

02:14:45.400 | To be quite direct,

02:14:46.600 | when one goes into the peer-reviewed scientific literature,

02:14:49.780 | one will not find that is there is essentially

02:14:53.000 | no real evidence that ingesting structured water

02:14:56.860 | leads to any specific desired biological outcomes.

02:15:01.400 | As I say that, I'm sure there are people out there

02:15:04.000 | who have still had tremendous experiences

02:15:06.480 | ingesting structured water,

02:15:08.040 | whether or not that's due to a placebo effect

02:15:09.740 | or a real effect of ingesting structured water,

02:15:11.960 | isn't it clear?

02:15:13.340 | Just to give you a sense of what my stance is

02:15:15.200 | on things like structured water,

02:15:16.760 | I think that they are interesting and intriguing,

02:15:18.880 | but as a scientist,

02:15:20.260 | in the absence of any quality peer-reviewed data at present,

02:15:23.800 | I can't really suggest that people go out

02:15:25.680 | and start ingesting structured water,

02:15:27.820 | nor that they adhere to the claims

02:15:30.720 | that structured water is going to be really,

02:15:33.060 | really good for them compared to other forms of water.

02:15:35.280 | That said, I do think that there's an interesting

02:15:38.240 | and open space for further exploration

02:15:40.520 | of the biological effects of structured water,

02:15:42.820 | given the fact that structured water does exist,

02:15:45.760 | I don't think anyone debates that,

02:15:47.440 | and the fact that the different structures of water

02:15:49.760 | in this fourth phase of water, as we're calling it,

02:15:52.220 | has been shown to interface with solids

02:15:54.360 | and other aspects of liquids,

02:15:57.580 | and can do so within organelles of cells,

02:16:00.520 | so different components of cells

02:16:02.320 | that control different functions, including mitochondria.

02:16:04.660 | I think there's a potential there,

02:16:06.360 | whether or not there's a promise there

02:16:08.000 | is another question entirely.

02:16:10.600 | So I don't want to shut the door on structured water.

02:16:13.200 | I think this is an open question

02:16:14.600 | that I hope there will be more data

02:16:17.020 | to answer those questions in the not too distant future.

02:16:20.280 | And meanwhile, if any of you are aware

02:16:22.120 | of good clinical studies exploring the biological effects

02:16:25.560 | of structured water in either animal models or humans,

02:16:28.600 | please put those references in the comments on YouTube,

02:16:32.240 | because I'm very curious as to how this area

02:16:34.680 | of biological effects of structured water

02:16:36.880 | is evolving and continues to evolve.

02:16:39.320 | So today we discussed water,

02:16:40.920 | and admittedly, we went into a lot of detail

02:16:43.960 | about the physics and chemistry of water in its various forms

02:16:47.220 | and we talked about hydration,

02:16:48.980 | because I think that's the main reason

02:16:50.320 | why many of you are interested in or concerned about water.

02:16:54.100 | We also talked about contaminants in tap water,

02:16:56.040 | which unfortunately do exist and are very prominent

02:16:59.800 | in essentially all regions of the world.

02:17:01.800 | So please do get some information

02:17:03.600 | about what's coming out of your tap.

02:17:05.180 | I also want to throw in one other piece of information

02:17:07.780 | that's really critical that I learned about

02:17:09.640 | when researching this episode,

02:17:10.780 | which is the quality of water that comes out of your tap

02:17:14.380 | is not just dictated by the source that it comes from

02:17:16.880 | external to your home or apartment,

02:17:19.220 | your pipes are also important,

02:17:21.000 | and that filter or that little mesh

02:17:24.540 | that sits at the faucet head is also very important.

02:17:28.060 | Most people don't pay attention to that,

02:17:29.620 | but it turns out that a lot of debris and contaminants

02:17:32.820 | can be derived from that little filter

02:17:36.740 | that most people just simply aren't cleaning often enough.

02:17:39.820 | So here, I'm not trying to tell you that the metal

02:17:43.460 | or the plastic that that filter is made of is a problem.

02:17:46.780 | More often than not, contaminants are showing up in water

02:17:50.000 | because people aren't cleaning those filters often enough.

02:17:52.940 | And in fact, prior to researching this episode,

02:17:55.120 | I didn't ever think to clean that filter.

02:17:57.940 | I looked underneath my faucet

02:17:59.420 | and while that filter didn't look

02:18:01.700 | particularly filled with debris,

02:18:03.920 | I did find that when I took it off

02:18:05.100 | and I looked at the other side,

02:18:06.400 | there was quite a lot of debris.

02:18:07.900 | So if you are going to consume tap water,

02:18:09.580 | you definitely want to consider the source,

02:18:11.460 | the pipes in your building or your apartment,

02:18:13.400 | the ones that lead right up to your glass or jug

02:18:17.660 | that you would put that water into,

02:18:18.780 | and also that mesh that that water passes through

02:18:21.420 | as it goes into that glass or jug.

02:18:23.980 | We also talked about how much water to drink.

02:18:26.620 | I hope that we finally resolve that question

02:18:28.980 | for those of you that have been wondering about that.

02:18:31.060 | The Galpin equation is a wonderful approach

02:18:33.380 | to how much water to consume during exercise.

02:18:36.660 | And by providing these other formulas

02:18:38.900 | of about eight ounces or 240 milliliters of water per hour

02:18:42.920 | for the 10 hours from waking until post-waking on average,

02:18:47.260 | remember it's averages,

02:18:48.100 | you don't have to consume them every hour on the hour

02:18:50.340 | and no need to be neurotic.

02:18:52.340 | Hopefully you can achieve better levels of hydration

02:18:54.620 | which we know can lead to reductions in blood pressure,

02:18:57.920 | improvements in appetite, mood, and focus.

02:19:00.420 | And I really think that it's the improvements

02:19:02.540 | in cognitive focus and physical ability,

02:19:06.900 | both endurance, strength, and other forms of kind of

02:19:09.500 | readiness in the body,

02:19:10.660 | readiness to perform work in the body

02:19:12.480 | that really are best supported by the hydration literature.

02:19:15.700 | And then of course,

02:19:16.520 | we went through the different forms of water

02:19:18.060 | that you hear about out there and addressed

02:19:20.540 | which ones are going to be beneficial or not,

02:19:22.700 | and perhaps more importantly,

02:19:24.160 | why any of them would be beneficial.

02:19:26.700 | Thinking about that from the perspective of biologists

02:19:29.780 | and the chemistry of water.

02:19:31.380 | And I do hope that by arriving at this point

02:19:33.660 | in the episode now that you have a much better understanding

02:19:36.500 | of the chemistry and physics of water

02:19:38.620 | and the way that water can powerfully impact your biology.

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02:20:54.300 | of individual ingredients, to alternate days

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02:20:57.740 | to cycle them, and so forth.

02:20:59.860 | In addition, Momentous Supplements

02:21:01.600 | are available internationally,

02:21:03.340 | which many other supplements are not.

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02:21:06.820 | on the Huberman Lab Podcast,

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02:22:05.600 | Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion,

02:22:07.900 | all about the science,

02:22:08.900 | including the chemistry, physics, and biology of water,

02:22:11.700 | and how your body utilizes water.

02:22:14.200 | And last, but certainly not least,

02:22:16.360 | thank you for your interest in science.

02:22:18.120 | [upbeat music]

02:22:20.700 | (upbeat music)

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

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