Will this water give your body pH balance, cure your reflux or acid indigestion? It depends on whether you believe the medical professionals or the happy customers. Photography by Claire Freierman.

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January 2008

Product Reviews / Main Nibbles / Beverages

eVamor Alkaline Water

An Everyday Bottled Water That May Help Acidosis

CAPSULE REPORT: Got reflux? Have an acid stomach? Are you always reaching for the Tums, or supporting an expensive Prilosec habit? Can a water with “pH balance” help balance you? Accredited medical sources say no, and explain why nothing can enter the body and neutralize the pH of the blood or the stomach. Thus, every claim for remedy made by eVamor is pseudoscience; and after making an elaborate case and claims, the company’s own disclaimer states that its product and its own information about the conditions the product can help are “not meant to be used to diagnose, treat or relieve any illness or disease.” But enough people like drinking this specialty water, and testify that it has helped with stomach acidity and reflux problems. So while the medical establishment says nay, if you’re up for drinking two liters a day to see if “taking the waters” restores your balance, it’s worth a shot.

• Overview
• About pH Balance
• Water Profile
• Shopping Information

To paraphrase Sigmund Freud, sometimes a glass of water is just a glass of water, but sometimes it is a functional food. Functional foods are everyday foods enhanced with supplements that help the body beyond normal satiation. Examples include orange juice or chocolate that are enriched with calcium to prevent osteoporosis, dairy products with added probiotic bacteria or omega 3s, or the popular vitamin waters. But some mineral waters have such a high natural level of beneficial mineral content (high TDS) that they can be therapeutic, which is why from prehistoric times, ailing people pilgrimaged to certain mineral springs. The history of centuries past details how people often “took the waters” at Bath, England; Baden-Baden, Germany; Spa, Belgium (the source of the word, spa), Vichy, France. In our own country, spas function at Calistoga Springs, California; Hot Springs, Arkansas; and Steamboat Springs, Colorado, among others. At these towns, which grew up around ancient mineral springs, a combination of both drinking the water (loaded with calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron and a cocktail of other minerals) and bathing in it daily soothed aching joints and mitigated other ills.

eVamor proposes to be the naturally therapeutic, functional food solution for people who have heartburn/acid indigestion, blood pressure issues, low energy, headaches, backaches, weight gain, bone loss, premature aging, and low/high blood sugar. If it is starting to sound like snake oil, some people believe these conditions may link to prolonged internal acidity, or what is known medically as acidosis.  Today, eVamor implies, you can “take the waters” and cure it all by balancing your internal pH. We’ll get back to this in the next section.

The water is drawn by artesian well from an aquifer 1,800 feet below the surface in Louisiana (the exact source is undisclosed), eVamor is 100% naturally alkaline. It has naturally-occurring bicarbonates of calcium, potassium and  sodium and added essential minerals (chromium, germanium, molybdenum, potassium, selenium, vanadium and zinc). It has become a very popular water among a segment of people who believe that the body can achieve a neutral pH balance that engenders better health. We’ll address that as well as give our opinion of eVamor as a bottled water you can drink every day.

About pH Balance

eVamor claims that its water, with its alkaline pH of 9, neutralizes the acid in the body.The pH scale measures from 1 to 14, with 1 being the most acidic and 14 being the most alkaline. eVamor says that it is “100 times more alkaline than most bottled waters,” and based on the many waters we have tasted, it certainly wins the alkalinity award. Why raise your glass to higher alkalinity?
Chart courtesy of Wikipedia.org.

With a record number of Americans taking prescription antacid medications and otherwise popping over-the-counter pills like Prilosec, Tagament and Zantac—plus a record number of people drinking bottled water—eVamor may be on to something. The American diet is chock full of highly- acidic foods, from that morning coffee and/or glass of orange juice to the ever-popular soft drinks, high-carb, processed and spicy foods. According to eVamor, the alkalinity of its water helps combat conditions related to an overly-acidic American diet of “carbonated soft drinks and high carb, processed foods.” (Take a look at the chart at the right: It can be eye-opening that cola is more acidic than vinegar, and just a hair above lemon juice.)

But before you start to reconsider your diet, consider the basic premise of eVamor. Do you need to achieve or maintain the optimal pH balance of your body?

According to THE NIBBLE’s medical consultant, Dr. Jerome Ehrlich, an internist and medical consultant in New York City, water, like anything we ingest, runs through our digestive tract. The acidity in our stomachs comes from the resident hydrochloric acid—meant to break down what we eat and drink. Therefore, water—any water—acts to dilute our stomach acids.  You can help settle your stomach or reflux by drinking any water, even tap. Taking a garden-variety antacid like Tums helps even more.  In essence, says Dr. Ehrlich, dissolving Alka-Seltzer Gold (the non-aspirin formula) should settle your stomach much like eVamor potentially could.  And even a spoonful of baking soda, which has some of the carbonates present in eVamor (as does Alka-Seltzer Gold) could do the trick, dissolved in a glass of water—without tasting as fresh and clean as eVamor.  

Dr. Gabe Mirkin, associate clinical professor of pediatrics at Georgetown University School of Medicine, goes further, stating that anyone who claims that certain foods or supplements can make your stomach or blood acidic does not understand the body or nutrition. The stomach is so acidic, he explains, that an entire bottle of calcium pills or antacids (or a case of eVamor, by extension) could not change its acidity for more than a few minutes. “Taking calcium supplements or drinking alkaline water will not change the pH of your blood,” says Dr. Mirkin. “If you hear someone say that your body is too acidic and you should use their product to make it more alkaline, you would be wise not to believe anything else the person tells you.”

However, many testimonials on the website claim that eVamor has reduced acid reflux, acid stomach and more. Is it the placebo effect? In the four days that we drank a liter of eVamor, our own bothersome acid reflux did not ignite. We believe the doctors, but we wouldn’t discourage any acid reflux sufferers from trying eVamor, especially since, if it works, it offsets the cost of Prilosec and you get all of the health benefits of water. However, be prepared to drink two liters a day, the prescribed *amount.
Photo of pills by Dima Vee | SXC.

*The company discloses that “eVamor and the use of this information [about acidity in the body] is not meant to be use to diagnose, treat or relieve any illness or disease.

Water Profile

So what does the water taste like? Surprisingly, it’s crisp with a very slight bitterness on the finish. If we weren’t looking for a way to differentiate eVamor from the scores of other waters we taste, we would say nothing and few people would find bitterness as a quality. It’s more apparent at room temperature; the colder the water (or any beverage), the more its flavor nuances are suppressed (hence, if you don’t like your tap water, just drink it ice cold).

*TDS =Total Dissolved Solids, ND = not detectable, N/A = not available

EVAMOR MINERAL WATER   500 ml Bottle Suggested Retail Price $0.99 1 Liter Bottle Suggested Retail Price $1.69 1.5 Liter Bottle Suggested Retail Price $2.09 Available in health food and natural food stores nationwide. There’s a store locator on the website. Evamor.com Find reviews of other bottled waters.