this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2025
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Alkaline water won't be alkaline for long after it enters the stomach, so it doesn't really matter
Alkaline water does have a place for LPR sufferers like me because it deactivates the pepsin that has vaporized and deposited itself in my esophagus and throat which when activated by acidic foods will begin to digest my soft tissues. The rest of ways to sell it I agree are completely bunk.
Huh, cool.
Hey fellow LPR person! Ever looked into baclofen? It's an oddball, but it helped me and a friend with our LPR.
No but I will take a look, thanks! Always pursuing any lead on this particular issue ;-).
Edit: took a look, looks like pretty serious stuff, any side effects?
The biggest initial issue for many is that it's pretty sedating, but that lessens with time. I slept like the dead for the first three weeks as baclofen is one of the few drugs that increases the frequency and duration of deep sleep. Now I can take 100 milligrams in a day and not feel a thing. I have literally no side effects.
One downside is sudden cessation is hell. If I miss an entire day, my anxiety gradually increases until it's through the roof until I start taking it again. Two days results in gradually increasing visual hallucinations. All of this completely reverses within an hour of taking a dose. You must taper off this stuff, but doing it isn't hard at all. Just don't go cold turkey.
It's also a medication that people tend not to grow resistant to. It hasn't lost any effectiveness for me despite having taken 60-80mg/day for almost two decades.
I used to have constant burning throat pain and the taste of stomach contents. Not anymore! It reduces the frequency of transient lower esophageal sphincter (LES) relaxation and increases its resting tone. Here's a relevant paper for anyone interested:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9981648/
Bonus: 20 mg for non-users will halt hiccups but will likely also sedate them pretty hard. 10-20 mg will prevent MDMA hyperthermia.
TIL, thank you. It indeed makes perfect sense that it would help for this.
Slightly better for the teeth maybe? And maybe a slight benefit if heartburn is an issue.
Better for the teeth than pH neutral? Nope. For heartburn it might help, but only for a real short time. Non-fat milk would probably be the better choice.
I believe the intended purpose is to reduce the overall acidity of your body, which it will do (negligibly, maybe even immeasuably). Your stomach acid will compensate regardless, but, in doing so, it uses acidic compounds in the process to do so. Whether that is even beneficial in general is debatable at best, though likely not. But mixing in other acids does negate at least some of the alkalinity, which would defeat the entire point, if there is any effect from it.
Edit: Clarified my position a bit. I'm not suggesting that alkaline water is effective at doing anything at all, nor even that its intended purpose would be a health benefit.
Stomach acid is like 10,000,000x more acidic than most alkaline water is basic. Dilution is probably doing an order of magnitude more work than the hydroxide here (meaning just drink more tap water)
I didnt say it would make a significant or even measurable difference. But it will technically drop your overall pH. If I drop any mass of basic material in any volume of acidic material with which it can react, there will be some net change in acidity, even if negligible.
Ahh I see you have forgotten pH buffering solutions.
I was more of a physics nerd. Can't say I've heard of such a thing.
Weak acids/bases tend to not fully convert their potential free ions, stabilizing at particular pHs for relatively large ranges of concentration.
You can use that as a basis for solutions that aren't super-basic but will preserve their pH in response to drips of acid.
Hmm TIL
But please…go on.
The body maintains homeostasis. It cannot afford to change pH. It is capable to buffer pH by neat biochemical mechanisms.
Yes, I know. And to maintain homeostasis, it has means to make adjustments to changes, like pH. Which means you can change the pH of some fluid in the body within reason, and it will correct this change. We are not saying anything different.
Yep, we agree. I was just pointing out the overall pH doen not change, there are ways to avoid that. From the the previous comment it kimd of seemed as though if you put something acidic in, the overall acidity must increase, which is not the case, so I wanted to make sure random readers don't get the wrong idea.
It's not debatable.
It absolutely will not. If it did, it would kill you.
How would a negligible change in your stomach acidity kill you? What do you think tums do?
I never said it does.
Then what does that mean?
They said:
Since alkaline water does not change body pH, it would not necessarily kill the drinker.
Ok. Then they're wrong. The human body's overall pH can vary within to a small degree with little to no effect on your health, let alone kill you. Changing the pH in small amounts, particularly in different areas like the stomach, will not typically harm the body at all. The entire purpose of some medications like antacids is to do that specifically with the stomach, for example.
First, like someone stated above, your stomach pH won't be very much affected by the alkalinity. Basically, your stomach pH is very low, pH 2 is normal. Since pH is a log scale, you would need to make it ten times less acidic to get a pH of 3. Som slightly alkaline water solution won't get it there, especially since the stomach fluid is a buffer which helps maintain a constant pH. Dilution will help more, depending on the volume of stomach fluid. However, your stomach will produce more acid to make up for it.
Second, now you still have to get the pH of the whole body higher, which means raising the pH of the blood. The pH of blood is about 7,4 and it is also a buffer. You have 5 liters of blood, which get constantly pumped around the body. If there were something jacking the pH of your blood (via IV), your kidneys would remove the alkalinity again, right up to the point of kidney failure. This is where you die.
None of what you said contradicts what I said.
I'm not even sure what you are trying to say, you seem to be moving the goal posts a lot between comments. My top comment should be read as alkaline water doesn't do anything special for your body since it's just water when it enters the stomach. The only thing it can help for is for LPR sufferers as @realitista@lemmus.org states in another reply to my top comment.
I wasn't trying to suggest that it (alkaline water) necessarily does anything of significance. I certainly wasnt saying it has any health benefits. I was saying that, at most, adding a small bit of base to the body might make it compensate a bit. That's it.
.
Probably either referring to a non-negligible difference or to how being alkaline enough to make a real difference would make it basically poisonous.
I'm no phlebectomist, so I can't say whether they're right about it or not 🤷🏻
Read what I replied to.
You replied to me, dude. And I said more than one thing. Idk what the hell you're claiming will kill you.
Even if you drink 10 liter and piss all of it out?
If you drink 10L of anything it will kill you.
Depends on how much time you have..
Fair. Ha ha