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Related to another question of mine on "electrolyzed reduced water". There are a number of companies that sell commercial products claiming to produce such water. I'm guessing it's not by adding "platinum nanoparticles" though (as my previous question), so it might not be exactly the same, which is why I'm asking separately.

The more common name for Electrolyzed Reduced Water is Ionized Alkaline Water. The reason water ionizers make electrolyzed reduced water is that a water ionizer puts a negative electrical charge into water, which gives it reduction potential. [...]

It has been demonstrated that alkaline water can help you recover from a hangover. It is able to do this because when you drink too much, hydrogen peroxide builds up in your liver, which damages and kills liver tissue. In lab experiments on rats, scientists have demonstrated that rats intoxicated with alcohol that drank alkaline water had much lower levels of hydrogen peroxide in their livers than rats that drank plain water.

There's no clear paper cited for that claim/experiment though. So is it true that this has been demonstrated experimentally and is the health benefit of drinking alkaline water as obvious as that seems to imply?

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  • Funny, that quote seems to conflate incidental hangover symptoms with long-term liver damage.
    – jeffronicus
    Dec 4, 2021 at 20:44
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    Probably worth noting that your body maintains its own PH and it is very difficult to change it. This is because proteins and such that are body is partially composed of denatures outside a narrow PH range. Hence why acidic or alkaline water intake in general usually has little effect. Putting this as a comment for others to maybe go off of. If alkaline water in general isn’t effective, I don’t see how it could help hangovers.
    – Jarrod Christman
    Dec 5, 2021 at 20:25
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    The statement „puts negative electric charge into water“ must be considered an extremely inaccurate simplification (even in the most friendly interpretation)
    – Hartmut Braun
    Dec 6, 2021 at 11:10
  • Given that one of the effects of drinking alcohol is increased dehydration (and indeed, that is one of the two main causes of hangover symptoms" is the question "does drinking alkaline water help with hangover symptoms" (which I would assume so) or is the question "does drinking alkaline water help with hangover symptoms more than 'normal' water". I.e. are you looking for an answer to the question in the title or the body of your question?
    – sharur
    Dec 7, 2021 at 1:43
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    Drinking NORMAL water helps with the hangover.
    – borjab
    Dec 7, 2021 at 15:09

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It's impossible to prove a study doesn't exist or is being misinterpreted if we don't know what study we're looking for, but the claim does look suspect.

Authors of an article in The Annals of Internal Medicine from 2000 reviewed the limited number of hangover treatment trials they could find at the time and alkaline water was not one of them. A 2019 article in Alcohol and Alcoholism cites a study from the 1970s supporting acid-base balance as one of the several mechanisms suspected to be relevant to causing hangovers. This is also mentioned in a 2021 article in International Archives of Substance Abuse and Rehabilitation. Across these and other relevant articles surveying the subject, I can find no mention of alkaline water as a tested treatment.

There is a single 2009 study suggesting that electrolyzed reduced water might have reduced hangover in rats. My chemistry knowledge is pretty basic (no pun intended) but I don't think that has any relation to alkaline water per se, and I doubt any expert would consider this single study as major evidence for effectiveness in humans.

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