Should You Drink Water With Your Meal or Not?
Dr. Berg’s Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast
Dr. Eric Berg
4.7 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2020
⏱️ 4 minutes
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Summary
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In this podcast, Dr. Berg answers the question if should you be drinking water when you eat food. The thought is when you drink too much water, it will dilute the hydrochloric acid in the stomach and is going to weaken the ability to digest food. The purpose of hydrochloric acid in the stomach is to trigger the enzymes to primarily help digest protein, absorb minerals, and kill off microbes.
If you are going to drink water on your meal, add apple cider vinegar to help you keep the pH where it needs to be. Avoid adding calcium carbonate or drinking alkaline water to the meal because it will dilute it. But then, what’s more important is what you are eating or the quality of food you are consuming, and don’t force yourself to drink a lot of water especially when you ate protein because potentially, it can also dilute the HCL and weaken the ability to break down protein. If you are doing a salad with a meal or combining it with protein, you may find that you are thirstier at the end of the meal because a lot of the fiber attracts water and it gels up in the colon, so the body will tell you to drink a little more.
If you have a weak digestive system or your stomach isn’t that strong with a good enough acid, don’t go drink too much water, and start to build it up with betaine hydrochloride, apple cider vinegar, or apple cider vinegar pills.
Dr. Eric Berg DC Bio:
Dr. Berg, 51 years of age is a chiropractor who specializes in weight loss through nutritional & natural methods. His private practice is located in Alexandria, Virginia. His clients include senior officials in the U.S. government & the Justice Department, ambassadors, medical doctors, high-level executives of prominent corporations, scientists, engineers, professors, and other clients from all walks of life. He is the author of The 7 Principles of Fat Burning.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So if you guys have any questions whatsoever about keto or in a minute fasting, |
| 0:04.4 | whether you're starting keto as a new person or just need to debug your program or we have a question about a product. |
| 0:10.5 | Call one of our keto consultants. They'll be able to help you. Call 5405.7. |
| 0:29.0 | Welcome to the Dr. Berg's Healthy Kito and Interminute fasting podcast, where Dr. Berg takes you on the journey for the truth about getting healthy and losing healthy weight. So recently I had a question from someone that wanted to know, should I be drinking water when I'm eating food? |
| 0:49.0 | Okay, so let's just talk about that. There's several points to cover. The thought is that if I drink too |
| 0:56.1 | much water it's going to dilute the hydrochloric acid in my stomach and that's going |
| 0:59.7 | to weaken my ability to digest food. That hydrocloric acid normally is there to then trigger |
| 1:06.5 | enzymes in the stomach to help you digest protein primarily and absorb minerals and kill off microbes. |
| 1:16.7 | Okay, so that's why we need that acid there. |
| 1:19.0 | Now I could not find any human studies that prove that drinking water is going to dilute this and inhibit |
| 1:24.8 | digestion. However, here's my thought on that. If you're doing a complete protein meal, like |
| 1:29.7 | for example, my first meal of the day, which is about one o'clock I'll do all protein |
| 1:33.9 | and fat okay and then I'll do a lot of my salad at the next meal with a little |
| 1:38.6 | protein and a little fat but I do most of the protein and fat at the first meal. |
| 1:43.2 | I just recommend that if you're going to drink water, |
| 1:45.7 | add apple cider vinegar. |
| 1:47.0 | It's going to help you keep the pH where it needs to be. |
| 1:50.2 | But definitely don't do alkaline waters, don't add any calcium carbonate to the meal because that's going to dilute it. |
| 1:58.0 | You wouldn't want to take an anti-acid while you're eating like tums or anything like that. |
| 2:02.0 | That would be very, very very bad and over the |
| 2:04.1 | years some people swear by it they say they digest better with more water some people |
| 2:08.9 | don't so you just have to test the waters So I really think it's a trivial thing. |
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