This September, Brooke Shields had a rough night at L’Artusi in Manhattan. She’d been preparing for her one-woman show, “Previously Owned by Brooke Shields,” by hydrating. A lot. Shortly after she entered the restaurant, everything started to go black. She was having a grand mal seizure. “I had had too much water,” she told Glamour. “I flooded my system, and I drowned myself.” Luckily, L’Artusi’s sommelier called an ambulance, and Shields made a full recovery at the hospital. “I didn't know. I just kept thinking I was hydrating," she said in a later interview.
You can hardly blame Shields for her overhydration. Drinking more water is good for us we’re always told, and hydration is the key to health. Drinking enough water each day has been a pillar of wellness advice for years, but in 2023, something tipped hydration culture into overdrive. The viral water brand Liquid Death is a cult favorite of Gen Z, and Liquid IV, which bills itself as a “hydration multiplier” and is used as a preemptive hangover cure, claims to be closing in on a billions dollars in net sales. Prime Hydration, the beverage line created by social media giants Logan Paul and KSI, is also on track to pass a billion dollars in sales this year, even as experts raise eyebrows at its caffeine content. A Le Creuset-like fandom has sprung up around those enormous and apparently indestructible Stanley reusable water bottles, and the widely panned AirUp bottle somehow went viral on TikTok, where #WaterTok also surged in popularity. In 2023, it seems we were thirstier than ever.
Plain tap water isn’t enough because it’s not doing enough for us; drinking a glass of tap water only slakes our thirst for a moment. In our endless quest for hydration, we need Water Plus: It must have vibes, or taste like candy, or go through a rebranding process so mind-bending that it self-describes as a “nonalcoholic seltzer.” It’s no longer good enough to drink only when you’re literally thirsty. We’re told to consume our beverages, be they water, electrolyte solutions, or influencer-peddled caffeine bombs, more often and faster than ever. In exchange, we’re promised more energy, a better immune system, better sleep, a better life.
You might know Ophora water—”water for wellness,” as its website proclaims in large letters—from one of several TikToks that went viral this year. It’s sold at Erewhon for a bold $26. It is the ultimate Water Plus, the apex of uber-hydration. It starts with purity: Ophora claims to filter out contaminants like microplastics and potentially harmful chemicals that many other filtered waters still contain. It balances pH to make the water alkaline, and the big sell is its “hyper-oxygenation”—which means oxygen is stabilized in the h2O at a density of 40 parts per million, the company says. Ophora claims to have patents pending for the technology it uses to infuse the water with “high levels of molecular oxygen,” which creates water that allegedly increases energy, decreases inflammation, enhances cell detoxification, and reduces sports recovery time.
Ophora is more than just $26 bottled water: The company will install a complete water filtration system in your home, or set you up with an entire hot tub or pool filled with nothing but Ophora water. “The skin is the largest organ on your body,” a spokesperson says earnestly in one video. “Imagine soaking in a hot tub that's 102 degrees that has 30 parts per million of oxygen penetrating your body.” That’s a lot of penetration. Ophora says drinking and bathing in its water will lead to benefits including more energy and less sickness. Testimonials claim the water has led to weight loss, improved metabolism, and the sensation that “the ocean doesn’t feel as cold.” Meanwhile, water experts are skeptical.
For four days, I only drank Ophora water. Its bold claims of being “the world’s healthiest water” rang in my ears as I hoped that true hydration would be all it’s been promised to be. I had four jugs of 64 ounces that I would drink over four days. Near the cap, each jug had a single loop big enough for one finger to slip in—not ergonomic, but perfect for tilting it up to your mouth for a quick swill. I recorded my weight, body fat percentage, and resting heart rate at the start of my journey, feeling optimistic.
I began day one a dehydrated, hungover shell of a human—let’s say that was on purpose. If I started at rock bottom, maybe a day of sipping Ophora water could bring about especially miraculous results. It was surprisingly difficult to find time during a busy work day to haul out my large glass jug and take a hydration break—maybe I did need to improve my self-care practice? Nevertheless, I dutifully sipped at regular intervals between meetings. For all its talk about purification and wellness, the water didn’t make me feel great. It sat heavy in my stomach and gave me a bit of a stomach ache. As I finished out the first day, I felt sluggish and bloated—hydration heaven was seemingly still a ways away.
Days two and three were both characterized by the same sensation: slow, simmering heartburn. Something about this water, my diet, my stress levels, or some combination of all of the above was absolutely tearing my stomach up. It got worse each time I’d take a swig of water. I was drinking lots of water—lots of the right water, so shouldn’t I feel better than ever? Realistically, I hadn’t been expecting tectonic changes, but true hydration, I thought, might help me feel more awake in the mornings, more focused throughout the day, and more level-headed in the face of obstacles. In other words, I’d feel “well.” But I was utterly unchanged, and my weight, resting heart rate, and body fat percentage stayed stubbornly steady.
With a pH level of 8, Ophora water is slightly basic. Studies on the effects of alkaline water on the body have shown mixed results—some studies (funded by companies that sell alkaline water) suggest it could improve hydration in athletes, but experts are doubtful of other claims, like detoxification. Still, I felt vindicated to learn that nausea, stomach aches, and even vomiting are side effects to drinking alkaline water as it can upset the pH balance of your body. Were four days of intense stomach pain simply the price I had to pay for the ocean to feel less chilly?
Pounds had not melted off my body by my fourth day of drinking Ophora, though I suppose it would have been worrisome had that been the case. I’d noticed that I slept more soundly the past couple of nights, but since that wasn’t a benefit Ophora specifically touted, it seemed more likely that I’d just been lucky. The stomach pains had faded somewhat, but I had mysteriously started breaking out. Hyper-oxygenated, contaminant-free water, it seemed, was not for me. I had been promised hydration like I’d never experienced before, and along with it some entry into the gatekept, Goop-ified world of true wellness. But continuing my Ophora journey would require the kind of financials I simply didn’t have access to.
Even if I did, not even Ophora could fill the colossal role we’ve created for hydration. Anistacia Barrak-Barber is a water sommelier (yes, it’s a real thing) and holds a Water Center Certificate from Columbia University—basically, she loves water and has studied its effect on our bodies. Barack-Barber is a great proponent in the supposed healing properties of mineral waters—specifically as it pertains to digestion and the absorption of minerals our body needs, like calcium. (Some mineral waters have been shown to aid in digestion, and have increased bioavailable calcium.) When it comes to Ophora, though, she’s a non-believer. “The scientific testing doesn't really bear out what Ophora promises,” she wrote in an email. Some research seems to agree. A 2006 study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine concluded that “oxygenated water fails both quantitative analysis and practical physiological tests of exercise performance and recovery,” and that “significant intestinal absorption of O2 is unsubstantiated.” In other words, it acted a lot like normal water.
There have always been those who proselytize about the healing effects of water, but bottled water didn’t take off in America until the 1970s, when Perrier essentially created the market. In the 2000s, the big beverage makers Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola got into the bottled water game with familiar brands like Dasani and Aquafina. As more people became distrustful of tap water (rightfully so, in some regions), and diet culture became more prevalent in the American psyche, waters branded as speciality and small-batch, like Fiji Water, became more coveted. In the mid-2010s, brands like SmartWater that offer features like pH balance and added electrolytes defined what optimized water might look like—that is, water formulated for athletic performance. Now, we get our hydration from any number of products, from sports drinks to electrolyte powders to ionized, antioxidant-producing water.
This year, the concept of hydration smoothly flowed into the sinkhole of self-improvement culture that’s characterized so much of our lives in recent years. Part of the appeal of water is in its simplicity and how fundamental it is. Water’s already a necessary element of health, so Water Plus will ascend you to even higher planes of wellness—and it’ll work faster at that, to boot. In a time when we crave more and more streamlined, bio-hacked, optimized solutions to our problems, hydration has become about more than health: It’s been billed as a magic wand that improves our lives, relationships, and anything that ails us. My skin will glow! (Maybe.) I’ll feel less stressed! (Technically.) My whole life will change! (Potentially—you may also give yourself a grand mal seizure.)