you will die if you drink distilled water

[GunnedDownAtrocity]

someone told me recently that you shouldnt buy distilled water as the distillation process basically cooks the electrolytes out of the water and you could actually dehydrate drinking nothing but.

now i'm sketchy on the dehydration thing, but the cooking out of the electrolytes thing makes sense i guess. i don't know much about electrolytes, but if they can be cooked then i guess distillation would do it.

i was just wondering if anyone had any information on this.

[CFT]

I think that this is BS. Distilled water is essentially condensed steam; pretty pure H2O - simple as that.

I'm aware that they put sugar and a little salt into water to make up a rehydration formula for people in drought situations, or for people recovering from diarrhoea. But I think that this is for assisting the rehydration process.

We should get enough "electrolytes" (sugars and salts?) from food normally.

Have you experimented with a "distilled water only" regimen yourself? Would be interested in the results.

[David Jamieson]

gda-

you have really got to stop taking advice from that crazy hobo on the street man. He don't know what he's talking about.

lol

[Becca]

I know you can kill a house plant if you give it nothing but distilled water with no fertilizer. I imagin the same could be said about a person. But you'll die on any kind of water if that is all you ingest (i.e. no food). So strickly speaking, yes. But it isn't 'cause it's distilled water.

[Mr Punch]

Originally posted by Kung Lek
gda-

you have really got to stop taking advice from that crazy hobo on the street man. He don't know what he's talking about.

lol yeah man, you can die from drinking meths you know!

[red5angel]

I bet if the mob gave you concrete shoes and threw you in a big tub full of distilled water it could kill you.

[BM2]

Now this is going to be hard to believe, but pure water is a great insulator and will not conduct electricity. It is the dissolved solids and other impurities that causes the conduction of electricity.
This water is called Di water, di-ionized.
Distilled water is made by heating the water, energy needed to break apart the attraction of the hydrogen and oxygen moloclues to each other. The water vapor rises, steam is invisible, cools(energy removed) and condenses back into water. The impurities are mostly left behind.

[GunnedDownAtrocity]

so what do you guys think is better for you overall?

i have been drinking nothing but distilled for a long long time.

[Shadowboxer]

No, you need the minerals that are in Drinking water.

[The Willow Sword]

Distilled water is what i like to call "dead" water. thats why they suggest that you brew things like coffee and tea in it as the water itself has nothing really in it mineral wise and water that has no mineral content and is distilled tends to leech off of whatever is put in to it. I dont like distilled because in fact it DOES leech minerals out of your body when you drink it,,,the same goes for De-ionized water (which alot of atheletes drink and SHOULDNT)

there was a story once of a marathon runner that complained of having chest pains similar to that of a heart attack. this runner was in the best shape of his life and ate well and watched his diet very closely,,but after he would run and train he would feel like he was going to die. He went to the doctor and after several tests were done it was determinded that the runner had a SERIOUS lack of Potassium in his system(which is vital to healthy heart function and hydration)

When the doctor asked if he drank those sports drinks the runner replied "NO", " all i drink is distilled and DE-Ionized water.
It was determined that the De-I water and the distilled was leeching the minerals out of his body creating that heart attack like effect. when the runner started drinking spring water and a few of the sports drinks the chest pains went away and his potassium levels normalized.

I remember when i used to work at the clean fabs at samsung here in austin several years ago,,we would USE De-Ionized water to clean the plasma residue off of the equipment because the (DE-I) water would bond itself to the minerals in the residue and literally clean them off the quartz parts as well as the other metal and teflon parts that were used in silicone wafer processing.

Now distilled is not as bad as De-I water is but the concept is the same,,the distilled will absorb in to whatever it comes in contact with ie: tea leaves,,coffee,,a human body,,and will draw from the tea leaves,,coffee,,human body.
Thats why all i have EVER drank is Spring water. if you can find a good brand that isnt really municiple city water filtered then i suggest that you drink that instead. Most of the gallon jugs of spring water here come from local well springs in the surrounding area here in central texas(im lucky i guess in that respect).

anyway hope that helps GDA and others here.

PEACE,,TWS

[red5angel]

I drink filtered water.

[GunnedDownAtrocity]

actually yeah that does. so he wasn't completely wrong, just a little off base.

ill start buying spring.

[red5angel]

I'm not a big fan of the ultra clean thing sweeping through our culture. They say kids are getting sick more because they aren't exposed to germs as regularly as they should be. You can't build up an immunity to something you've never experienced. heck, I only filter the water because it taste better then straight out of the tap.

[The Willow Sword]

Utter nonsense. The more minerals in water the more difficult it is for the body to accept it. Most Americans have mineral imbalances in their diets. Too many of some and not enough of others. Minerals are best supplied and absorbed by eating fruits, grains and vegetables grown in proper soil.


This is true but the FACT still remains about distilled and DE-I water. ask yourself this would you rather drink the "clean" and "pure"(and i use those terms loosely) water that will leech out more minerals than you put in to your body by eating those fruits and veggies grown in proper soil? OR would you rather drink a water that has a mineral content that doesnt leech the minerals out and yet still allows for absorbtion with those fruits and veggies you talk about?
trust me Tony this is something that i actually DO know about.
my own research as well as talking with doctors and nutritionists.
not trying to step on your d!ck here but the "utter nonesense" comment is Utter nonesense.;)

PEACE,,TWS

[GunnedDownAtrocity]

Originally posted by red5angel
I'm not a big fan of the ultra clean thing sweeping through our culture. They say kids are getting sick more because they aren't exposed to germs as regularly as they should be. You can't build up an immunity to something you've never experienced. heck, I only filter the water because it taste better then straight out of the tap.

i agree completely and have at least one argument with adora's grandmother about that every singe day.

i just kept getting distilled cause i like the taste better than the spring also. but if spring or drinking water is better for me i could get used to either.

[red5angel]

I actually read some data a while back that showed that kids that were bathed roughly every other day tended to be healthier then kids who were bathed once or more a day.

[GunnedDownAtrocity]

im glad i took adora's doctors advice on the bathing thing then. he said the same thing. she's had baths every other day, with obvious execpetions, as a general rule forever.

[red5angel]

I hear the water in atlantis is nice.

[Fu-Pow]

It's B.S. An urban legend.

Water is water....same chemical formula H20.

Distilled, spring, tap, etc.

It's whats added or not added to the water that you notice.

How could distilled water "leach" anything out of your body?

Somebody explain that chemical process to me.

Its true when someone is extremely dehydrated they give them a very dilute salt/mineral solution but that is because they have usually lost a lot of salt through their skin also.

If your blood electrolyte levels get even a little bit off you can get a coma or even die.

[macaulay]

Distilled water is okay. Tap water and filtered are too. De-ionized water is not suitable for drinking water.

It is however very useful for laboratories and such. Water is a very good solvent for minerals and deionized water will readily leach minerals if given the opportunity. This is why DI water it is not stored in glass containers.

[Fu-Pow]

Originally posted by macaulay
Distilled water is okay. Tap water and filtered are too. De-ionized water is not suitable for drinking water.

Why?




It is however very useful for laboratories and such. Water is a very good solvent for minerals and deionized water will readily leach minerals if given the opportunity. This is why DI water it is not stored in glass containers.

Actually it is. I work in a lab and I'm looking at some right now.

[bamboo_ leaf]

They don't call water the "Universal Solvent" for nothing. Water will attack a lot of things. The reason why it usually doesn't is because it already has plenty of things dissolved in it. DI (de-ionized) water is water that has had a lot of material filtered out of it. I use DI water for salt spray testing.

Since DI water is so clean, it is able to attack things that normal water wouldn't. I am not surprised that the DI water is attacking metal and filters and other things. I don't know if it could attack varnish in particular. Are you supposed to be using DI water for these tasks? If there is no specific reason you need DI water, I suggest you go to normal water. There IS such a thing as TOO CLEAN water.

As far as employee health, you should not be concerned as long as nobody is drinking the DI water. DI water will actually suck the vitamins and minerals OUT of your body. Nobody is going to dissolve into a puddle of goo, but imagine drinking DI water as a way of taking a vitamin a day OUT of you. Getting DI water on your skin is fine, just don't drink it.

http://www.finishing.com/4800-4999/4919.html


from this site.

i work in the semiconductor industry, drinking DI water dosnt seem like a good idea to me, i think short trem it wouldnt hurt you but its probbly not something that you would want to do long term.

[mickey]

Greetings,

One of the proponents of distilled water was Dr. Norman Walker. He pioneered juicing and colonic care as well. He died at the age of 109. The guys performing the autopsy could not determine the cause of death (I just heard some wiseuy say that water tends to eveporate).

mickey

[BM2]

Originally posted by red5angel
I actually read some data a while back that showed that kids that were bathed roughly every other day tended to be healthier
then kids who were bathed once or more a day.

What data did they have on kids who were bathed gently every other day rather than roughly?

The DI water is hungry for ions. Water is the universal solvent. Now an engineer at work asked a chemist,also at work, which would rust quicker, DI or tap? Would you believe that the tap rusted faster with the nail in it vs the DI with a nail?

Now I always wondered what would happen with drinking DI and since we don't know where Mickey lives, how about Meat Shake? He drinks out of date water anyway, just for the taste of it.

[macaulay]

Is what you drink going to make your Kung-Fu better? Drink whatever you want.

Fu Pow,
DI water should not be stored in glass. That doesn't mean that it isn't. It will show sodium traces and boron if you run on ICP. This standard ISO 17025 validation protocol stuff, but probably already knew that.

[Ben Gash]

Macauly, what do you store it in then? Glass is less reactive than plastic.
Fu-Pow, I believe the principle they are alluding to is Osmotic pressure and diffusion. However, tap water is highly hypotonic, so I can't see the difference would be that great.
As an aside, if you inject plain water into someone it hurts like hell.
And tap water is a good source of zinc.
And the runner's problem was more likely the diuretics he took to lose weight;)

[Cody]

I'll drink out of the tap, unless the stuff is piped in from something that can be called nature's toilet. On the other hand, I do prefer Brita filtered water, and spring water because of the taste. Interesting thing is that I'll automatically head for the bottled mineral waters on a hot day.
I've heard that overly purified water is not good for you, along the lines of some of what was said here. Haven't researched this because I'm not going there.

(electrolyte. a solution that is a conductor of electricity. Acids, bases and salts are common electrolytes. Ionized salts in blood, tissue fluids and cells, including salts of sodium, potassium, and chlorine.)

Cody

[IronFist]

I was always told not to drink distilled water, not because it's poisonous, but just because it's not as good for you as regular water.

[Vash]

I drink Gatorade more than I breathe.

Speaking of which, I have to pee.

[Losttrak]

You can make distilled water explode and kill you. Distilled waters molecules are soo tightly packed that if you add regular water to it after it is extremely hot, it will expand violently. Dont try this at home unless you want to get a Darwin nomination/award. =D

[BM2]

Originally posted by Losttrak
You can make distilled water explode and kill you. Distilled waters molecules are soo tightly packed that if you add regular water to it after it is extremely hot, it will expand violently. Dont try this at home unless you want to get a Darwin nomination/award. =D

Everyone on here that works with DI water will get a good laugh at that one:p LOL, it even funny reading it for the second time:D
You do know that many of the "Darwin Awards" are false :rolleyes:

[macaulay]

Why learn kung fu?! Just carry distilled and regular water. Instant WMD. :D Ha Ha.


DI water is useful in a laboratory. It is typically stored in Nalgene containers. Glass iand palstic are both reactive, depends on the conditions. Very pure (HPLC grade) solvents are typically stored in glass and pure (ICP grade)acids are stored in plastic.

It does not introduce interference into chemical analysis when used as a diluent. If one is trying to analyze for calcium in a sample, you would not use tap water to dilute the sample, because is typically contains calcium. DI water is chiefly used as an analytical diluent, as a starting point for everything from sterile isotonic saline to reagents. Great stuff to have around the lab, but I wouldn't drink it.

[abobo]

I don't drink distilled water because it's usually not free. But I'm no expert on the subject so I looked up 'health effects of distilled water' on google. The articles that came up seemed biased one way or the other so I couldn't draw any conclusions there.

I found these by looking up "distilled water" on Medline:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12515903

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15151549

[The Willow Sword]

This is a good thread in my opinion.

Water is the life blood of everything on this planet. But too much of it in excess will do harm to you. Water in the system causes a flush of the system. water also provides the minerals that your body needs. now the minerals are not all absorbed at once. if that were the case then we would all be p!ssing mineral deposits and i hear that hurts like nothing you have ever experienced.

The reason i only drink Bottled spring water has largely in part to do with the flouridation process that goes in to the municiple city water supply. The standards set down by the fda requires that water in large supply be treated with these chemicles so as to get rid of the "harmful bacteria" and "phyto-sporidia(spelling?)
and other harmful things that make you wish you were never born if you get sick by it. But the chemical treatment of city water in my opinion is more harmful to you as flouride is poisionous to the system, as well as the other things the water is treated with.

AT least spring water that is bottled is filtered and pure(to an extent) so as not to have those chemicles in it.
There is also a brand of water that i like that is called "Smart water" it is a distilled water that has electrolytes put back in the water and i drink this(though not all the time) when i train and sweat or when i am hiking in the wilds of the world and need a boost of electrolyte balance.
Drinking those sprts drinks are good if you are just sapped of energy when training hard and sweating hard,,,but as a MAIN source of "balancing" of your system i would hardly recommend to anyone. it is basically sugar water with some salt put in it and then the food coloring. Gatorade finally has a food coloring free drink that i will consume on occasion.
Anyway glad to see a decent subject come up here.


PEACE,,,TWS

[GunnedDownAtrocity]

Anyway glad to see a decent subject come up here.

and it was me of all people who posted it. the wonders of the universe will never cease.

[Fu-Pow]

Originally posted by macaulay
Is what you drink going to make your Kung-Fu better? Drink whatever you want.

Fu Pow,
DI water should not be stored in glass. That doesn't mean that it isn't. It will show sodium traces and boron if you run on ICP. This standard ISO 17025 validation protocol stuff, but probably already knew that.

Maybe those trace elements don't interfere with the molecular bio stuff that I do. Where as in an O Chem lab it might be more important where purity is super important.

Hmmm...learn something new everyday.

[Fu-Pow]

Originally posted by Ben Gash
Fu-Pow, I believe the principle they are alluding to is Osmotic pressure and diffusion. However, tap water is highly hypotonic, so I can't see the difference would be that great.


Drinking "pure" H20 like distilled or de-ionized is not gonna do anything to you. Pure H20 is totally neutral. It has a pH of 7.
You drink it, it is absorbed into your blood stream. Your kidneys are gonna regulate your blood so that it doesn't become too dilute or too concentrated.

Its not like it is going to set up an osmotic gradient between your blood and the surrounding tissue where your minerals are "leached" out of your cells.

Most of us walk around dehydrated anyways so adding more water to the mix is only gonna be beneficial...pure or not.

BTW, I just talked to some of my colleagues in the lab. They have never heard that DI water leaches things out of glass. But again maybe it happens at such a small scale that it isn't relevant to what we do.

The main reason I wouldn't drink the DI water out of the filter we have here is that there are so many other chemicals around that I don't know what has been touching the end of that spout.

Otherwise, it would probably be totally fine.

[Mutant]

Don't drink DI water, it is true that it will leach out the minerals in your body and would eventually kill you. A little bit is not going to hurt you, but its not going to be of any benefit either, and will actually deplete your body a little.
Some of the chem. majors here seem to have covered the technicalities, listen to them, theyre not b.s'ing you.

[Becca]

Originally posted by IronFist
I was always told not to drink distilled water, not because it's poisonous, but just because it's not as good for you as regular water.
Yep. Althogh there are times it is recomended. Most pediatritions recomend you use it to mix infant formula, because the floride, lead, and heavy metals common in tap water can be very harmful to a very small baby. I use it in my steam iron beacuse my city's water supply is pretty hard and the minirals clog the vents. I also use it to water my African Violettes 'cause they won't bloom if I give them anything else. But for everything elso, I use a Britta filter.