How to Optimize Your Water Quality & Intake for Health

Huberman Lab

Scicomm Media

Science, Health & Fitness, Life Sciences

4.8 • 26.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2023

⏱️ 142 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, I discuss our body’s most vital and essential nutrient—water. I explain the structure of water and how it is used by the cells and tissues of our body, how much water we each need to drink and when in order to optimize our mental focus and physical performance; and I include how exercise, humidity, heat, and caffeine affect our hydration needs. I explain how temperature and pH influence water’s physical properties and if there is any scientific basis for drinking so-called “pH water” or “alkalized water” to improve health. I explain how to test your tap water for contaminants (e.g., endocrine disruptors) and the documented problems with fluoride in drinking water. I provide options for filtering drinking water and describe different water types (e.g., reverse osmosis, hydrogen-enriched, electrolyzed reduced, deuterium depleted, etc.). Since the human body is mostly water (55-80% depending on one’s age) and water has essential roles in health, disease and cellular function, everyone ought to benefit from understanding how best to clean our tap water, hydrate effectively and in some cases, adjust the type of water we drink to allow our brain and body to function optimally in regard to health and performance. For recommended water filters, tests and the full show notes, please visit hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1 (Athletic Greens): https://athleticgreens.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Thesis: https://takethesis.com/huberman HVMN: https://hvmn.com/huberman InsideTracker: https://www.insidetracker.com/huberman Supplements from Momentous https://www.livemomentous.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Water (00:03:33) Tool Deliberate Cold Exposure, Immersion & Showers Mood & Fat Loss (00:15:26) Sponsors: LMNT, Thesis, HVMN, Momentous (00:19:27) Water: Physical Properties & Chemistry (00:26:32) Bonds & Water Phases, “Structured Water” (00:34:07) Body, Cells & Water (00:36:22) Sponsor: AG1 (Athletic Greens) (00:37:37) Water as a Solvent, Temperature & pH (00:41:49) Water Transport in Cells, Aquaporin Channels (00:49:46) Alkaline/pH Water; Temperature, pH & Water Transport (00:55:14) Water Cellular Function, Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) & Antioxidants (01:01:20) Sponsor: InsideTracker (01:02:38) Tool: Baseline Hydration (01:11:35) Tool: Hydration & Exercise, Galpin Equation (01:15:40) Tool: Hydration, Sauna, Humidity & Sweat; Thirst, Caffeine (01:19:15) Hydration; Cognitive & Physical Performance (01:23:53) Tool: Water Filtration; Nighttime Urination (01:29:35) Tap Water Tests, Disinfection Byproducts (DBPs), Fluoride & Thyroid Health (01:37:18) Tool: Water Filters (01:44:18) Tool: Resting Tap Water & Sediment (01:48:13) Tool: “Hard Water”; Magnesium, Calcium & Cardiovascular Health (01:53:40) Water Temperature (01:56:42) Water Types: Distilled, Reverse Osmosis, Hydrogen-Enriched (02:03:26) Hydrogen-Enriched Water, Magnesium, Optimize Hydration (02:11:13) Tool: Molecular Hydrogen Tablets, Water pH (02:14:05) Structured Water (02:16:39) Tool: Water Pipes, Faucet Filter (02:19:42) Zero-Cost Support, Spotify & Apple Reviews, YouTube Feedback, Sponsors, Momentous, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter Title Card Photo Credit: Mike Blabac Disclaimer

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
0:08.6	I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and
0:12.2	Ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today we're discussing water. Now to some of you water might seem like a boring topic
0:19.8	But I assure you that water is anything but a boring topic. In fact, water as a substance is
0:24.6	Incredibly interesting for a variety of reasons that I'll explain today
0:29.2	In fact, we are going to discuss the physics and chemistry of water and I promise to make it accessible to anyone and everyone
0:35.7	Regardless of whether or not you have a physics or chemistry background and I will discuss how your body
0:40.4	Needs and utilizes water depending on what type of water you drink the temperature of that water when you drink the water and
0:48.7	Indeed, how you drink that water?
0:51.5	Water is actually a pretty controversial topic in fact in preparing for this episode which took me several months in fact
0:58.2	I ran into highly contradictory
1:01.1	Information and had to go on some real deep dives in order to ferret out the best and most accurate knowledge for you
1:07.7	I also found that there are generally two camps of people out there in terms of how they think about water and the
1:13.9	Consumption of water one camp generally speaking is of the mind that tap water is completely safe
1:19.7	Perhaps it needs a little bit of filtering but that in most areas of the world if it runs out of the tap and unless there's a warning sign
1:26.3	Directly above the faucet that you can drink the tap water
1:29.9	The other camp seems to be the camp that does not trust anything that comes out of the tap and is excited by and in fact relies on things like
1:39.5	Reverse osmosis, deuterium depleted, hydrogen rich or other forms of water that sometimes can be very expensive or at least
1:47.3	Involve some substantial steps in order to clean filter
1:51.1	Altered the chemistry of or in some other way adjust before they are willing to consume it
1:57.0	So today what we're going to try and do is to address all the stances around water for instance
2:02.9	We will discuss whether or not tap water is indeed safe and I will give you some tools that will allow you to address whether or not the water coming out of your tap is safe as well as some
	...

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