Water, Water Everywhere ...

... and so many varieties!

Normally I'm a tap water guy, which results in me not really drinking as much water as I should.

Some time back, Tamara and I were somewhere (I think it was the movie theater) and the brand of bottled water for sale there was Life Water, which has "electrolytes added for taste," and which also comes in a fairly large bottle.

I liked it. And I wanted to get in the habit of drinking more water. But I'm a cheapskate, so instead of paying the Life Water price, I bought a case of Sam's Club Member's Mark Plus+ Alkaline Water. And I liked that too.

I didn't think about the possible health benefits of alkaline water at first. It just tasted good, and it came in 1-liter bottles, and I decided to make a point of drinking two bottles a day. I've pretty much stuck to that for a week or so.

Anecdotally, I just generally "feel better" on days when I drink two liters of alkaline water. But, hell, I might "feel better" if I just drank two liters of tap water a day. For one thing, if I'm drinking water, I'm not drinking diet soda (which I've been cutting down on in favor of coffee anyway). And, concurrently, I've started trying to make a habit of having breakfast (usually a serving of yogurt with fruit) instead of forgetting to eat until the early afternoon.

But I finally did decide to look into any possible health benefits, since it seemed to me that if alkaline water is a thing, there's a reason. Apart from the openly evangelistic stuff, what I found ranged from:

1.  Plain dismissal ("it's a fad with no real foundation")  from doctors / scientists, to
2.  Neutrality, citing possibilities but a lack of evidence as yet for those possibilities, from doctors / scientists,
3.  A link (from one of the evangelistic sites) to an abstract of a study in the Shanghai Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Just the abstract. I'd have to buy a subscription or something to read the whole thing (Tamara has from-work access to some kind of super-frap "supposedly all the journals" subscription thing, but not this journal).

The abstract is intriguing, but without access to the whole piece, hard to judge (and possibly translated poorly):

Blood pressure, blood sugar and blood lipids were assaied respectively pre-and 3 to 6 months after alkaline ionized water was drunk. Results The levels of blood pressure, blood sugar and blood lipids decreased significantly even to normal ranges after alkaline ionized water was drunk. Conclusions Alkaline ionized water may be used as one of the accessory therapeutic methods for essential hypertension, diabetes mellitus and hyperlipidaemia.

So, here's the thing: I'm a poster boy for hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and hyperlipidaemia (bad cholesterol not terribly high, but triglycerides off the charts since my early 20s).

Or at least I was. Last time I had blood work done, a month or so ago, I was only "borderline" diabetic (5.7), down from 9.x at my worst (IIRC). Apparently Ozempic works -- and not just for diabetes. Without going out of my way to exercise or being especially careful with my diet, I've lost weight down to the 220-225 pound range, from the 235-250 range, since starting on it. Which may also help explain the "feeling better."

So anyway, this is  a bleg for help in the comments. A couple of you are obviously interested in and familiar with supplements and so forth and have advised me before. I'd be interested in your opinions on alkaline water. If I'm going to continue using it, I may invest in an ionizer so that I can turn tap or plain bottled water into alkaline water instead of spending ~$10 a week on the bottled product.