I’m curious about the health effects of drinking carbonated water. I’ve heard claims that carbonation supposedly breaks down the calcium in your bones, thus weakening them, and I’ve heard that when considering how much water you should be drinking on a daily basis, that carbonated water “doesn’t count.” But I’m highly suspicious of these claims. I’ve found lots of wacko new-age sites that repeat this sort of information, but nothing convincing to back it up. Anyone got any insight?
To take it a step further: if one were to replace all the water in their diet with, say, unflavored carbonated water, would there be any ill health effects?
The amount of CO2/carbonic acid your body produces every day as you metabolically burn fat and sugar to meet your energy needs is far higher than the small amount of CO2 you ingest with carbonated water. The enzyme carboanhydrase catalyses the reaction H2CO3 <-> CO2+H2O, if your blood contains too much H2CO3 (carbonic acid), your breathing rate increases to get rid of the excess CO2. Actually, this is the prime mechanism by which your body regulates the acidity of your blood.
Thus any potential ill effects of drinking carbonated water would be restricted to effects in the mouth and digestive track: Carbonated water is more acidic than plain water, thus not as gentle to your teeth.
I think water with CO2 dissolved in it, but no sugar or artificial sweetener or dye or other ingredients, often gets wrongly lumped in with sugary “soda pop” like Coca-Cola only because people are imprecise with their terms and call them all “carbonated beverages”.
I suspect this is partly because there are so many terms for water with CO2 and nothing else. “Seltzer”, “Soda water”, and “Soda” are all used to mean water + CO2 only, and also all used to mean other things.