By itself, water does not trigger Digestion. Water has no calories, and so is allowed to pass directly through the stomach without triggering digestion if you drink it without food. Because of this, water is the perfect medium to bring hydrogen antioxidants and pH-buffers to your body and cells.
Ionized water benefits digestion in many ways
The colon likes to be alkaline. Drinking ionized water between meals can help maintain a perfect pH-balance of the colon. Experts, such as Dr. Shinya, the inventor of the colonoscopy (who has performed over 350,000 colonoscopies) advise their patients to drink alkaline ionized water throughout the day to help heal their colons.
Some experts advise that during meals (with meat), or for 20 minutes after, you should drink a more neutral water. The stomach is trying to trigger the right enzymes to digest the meat at that time.
Ionized Water has Proven Positive Effects on Gastrointestinal Tract
Ionized water is very healthy for the gastrointestinal tract and this fact has been proven many times over by Dr. Shinya. Drinking ionized water can help eliminate GI troubles if you have them.
What is the Gastro-Intestinal Tract?
The GI tract can be considered to be all of the organs involved with eating and elimination. The GI tract releases hormones to help signal the release of the proper enzymes. From the time a food substance [something with calories in it] enters your mouth, the pH of that substance is a factor used to trigger certain hormones.
PH is a key factor in your stomach knowing which hormones to activate.
Food needs enzymes to assist in proper digestion, and without enzymes functioning properly digestion would be sluggish. Sluggish digestion can cause health problems to arise [such as acid reflux, ulcers, gas, etc.]. Hormones associated with enzymes can sense the pH in each organ and if the pH is right for the enzyme that hormone controls, the enzymes are signaled to become active and do their job properly.
Stomach
The stomach is the only organ in the entire digestive system that requires a low acid pH level from time to time (during meals) in order to do its job, and it produces it all by itself by injecting HCL, or hydrochloric acid, into the stomach as food arrives.
The stomach, when dormant, will only have a tiny bit of acid in it, but when digestion is stimulated gastric acid, containing mostly HCL, is produced on demand to handle the load. HCL’s pH is 1-1.5.
- Organisms in the food are likely to be killed by the low acid of the stomach juices. This makes it part of the body’s immune system.
- The acid in the stomach is not going to break down the food, but rather the low pH environment is conducive to the enzymes doing their job to break down of the protein walls.
Does Alkaline Ionized water upset the HCL balance in the stomach?
No. HCL is a strong acid, creating a low acid pH in the stomach during digestion, but unless you’re actively eating, there isn’t much of it [or much need for it] in the stomach. Water, by itself, does not trigger the production of HCL or digestion, so is allowed to pass through the stomach quickly and undigested without upsetting the overall pH balance of the stomach.
Duodenum
The duodenum is the top portion of the small intestine, just below the stomach, and it is significant in the digestion process. The duodenum injects bicarbonate and other buffering “juices” in order to raise the pH to its preferred level of 8, which is alkaline.
The duodenum likes this high pH, because it is more suitable for digesting fats [which come into the duodenum undigested]
Small Intestine
Maintaining an alkaline balance in the intestines can make a great contribution to a person’s colon health as well as their overall health and well-being. The small intestine is significant in the absorption of nutrients from the food. The mucosa of the small intestine is about 8.5 pH. All the way along the intestines, more enzymes are added and more food is absorbed until, by the time the hime, digested food, reaches the large intestine, 95% of the nutrients should have been absorbed. The nutrients go into the blood, then straight to the liver for filtering before entering the regular circulatory system. Ionized water is very beneficial in the small intestine for many reasons.
- It assists the small intestines to maintain a healthy 8.5 pH so as to inhibit the growth of parasites, funguses, and other undesirable microorganisms. Parasites going unchecked are often a large contributor to mal-nourishment and weight-management problems.
- Proper pH stimulates proper enzymes to digest whatever food hasn’t been broken down thoroughly enough by now.
Ionized water, being absorbed all the way along the GI tract, is healthy for you in many ways. The anti-oxidants will go to the liver and help to detoxify and anti-oxidize it [then will go to the rest of the cells in the body to do the same]. Also, the micro-clustered water will enable better absorption of water into the body and so keep the body hydrated better. This will put less demand on the large intestine for water, and so will help stools be softer, bigger, and move faster through the colon.
The Large Intestine
In the large intestine the main job is the absorption of water into the body, production of B and K vitamins, absorption of a few more nutrients, and then quickly eliminating the waste.
A good, healthy, alkaline pH level in the large intestine helps to inhibit the growth of bad-bacteria and maintain the proper balance of good bacteria [intestinal flora].
Alkaline ionized water helps to promote good elimination through the colon. If we don’t eliminate properly, we reabsorb toxins into our bodies from our bowels.