So about distilled water...?

Question

I keep reading that it's terrible to only drink distilled water because it leaches minerals out of your body, but a lot of people are adamanat that it only leaches the accumulated inorganic minerals that you get from water that your body never uses because it doesn't uses inorganic minerals asn it's actually good that it removes that waste from our bodies. I don't understand why there isn't a cut and dried answer to this one. Either it's good for you or it's not. Can someone point me to some solid research. I've searched an all I can find is a lot of opinions.

Answer 1

Sorry don't have the research. But drinking distilled water is bad for you.

Think of the stomach/digestive system as a permeable membrane.

If you put two solutions on either side of the membrane then the ions will tend to migrate from the stronger solution to the weaker solution until the solutions equilibrise.

When you drink normal water it contains ions in it. This will reduce/stop any effect of the migration of the ions from the body into the water that has just been drunk. Distilled water contains no ions, so that the water will be equilibrised and pull (leach) ions from the body. Overzealous drinking of distilled water will lead to ion (mineral) deficiencies.

If you look at high end water filtration systems they will filter the water to clean it up and then pass the water through rocks to put the minerals back in.

The leaching will not discriminate between good or bad minerals. The easiest mineral to pass through the digestive system will be the first to be leached. I suspect that these will be the minerals that are actively used by the body; due to the body naturally exchanging theses ions.

This is a brief outline of a very complex subject and I am a chemist not a biologist. To get more info you may want to post in the biology and medical sections.

Of course the other effect will be that the distilled water will tie up any minerals in the food that we eat. This will give less availability to the body of the minerals from our food.

Hope this helps

Answer 2

Perhaps you should have posted this question in the Medicine category.

I don't know where you got the idea that people don't use/need inorganic minerals to survive. A random example: salt. We'd die without it.

Here's a link to part of a book called Home Water Quality and Safety: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/AE/AE00900.pdf
There's a bit about distilled water in there.

You might also look for a journal called Mineral Metabolism

Another book, this time interviewing a doctor:
http://www.acresusa.com/toolbox/reprints/criesforwater_jun99.pdf

Here's a nice one from the World Health Organization:
http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/nutdemineralized.pdf

And another from the International Journal of Toxicology, explaining how drinking distilled, pure water is technically impossible anyway:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/ftinterface?content=a713936588&rt=0&format=pdf

G'night. Hope this helps you out. A few of those links also contain works cited which you can track down and read if you wish.

Answer 3

Dont be fooled by the terminology, just becuase it is inorganic doesnt mean you dont need it.

All minerals are inorganic and you need minerals to survive. Anyone that tells you otherwise is wrong. A good example is Calcium, this is an inorganic mineral that you know you need right?

You get alot of minierals from the natural minerals in your food and water.

Drinking ultra-pure water that has no minerals is not good for you as it effects the supply of minerals that your body has - i.e. less iron for your blood, less calcium for your bones etc.