magiksam

Hey

Just had an argument with my roomate - an atheist who was a physics major so am surprised. He was arguing that Distilled water is bad for you - i drink nanopure(filtered) distilled in the lab daily and will continue cuz I know Im right. I still havent heard a good reason of how it could be harmful. He still gloats like hes right - i think the effort of proof lies on him since he made the claim first.

Anyway i did some searching and cant find a conclusive link that debunks him. Theres some quack sites that agree with him and some distillation selling sites that say its fine so go figure

Any help would be appreciated

Gurdur

I don't know why your roommate claims this, but he's right, even if only for wrong reasons.
An uninterrupted diet of distilled water may upset your mineral/salts balance, eventually resulting in feelings of lethargy or weakness most likely.

Tap-water has quite a few minerals/salts in it.


A bad basis for anything.

Now you have ?

This at least is correct - all claimants should justify their claims. However, merely making a counter-claim, also unjustified, is not necessarily correct either.

[ December 12, 2002: Message edited by: Gurdur ]</p>

PopeInTheWoods

What Gurdur said about distilled water, though unless you drink it exclusively there's probably very little risk.

But drinking large quantities of de-ionized water is potentially harmful because the H2O will seek to become ionized, and is therefore extremely corrosive. Not only can it "attack" stainless steel, but it could interfere with the absorption of minerals. But it's not poisonous, and small amounts are probably hamless (if ill-tasting).

Andy

Jesse

So would I be better off giving up my Brita filter and drinking straight from the tap?

jj

Unh, err, you were joking, right? I doubt if you're going to affect the ionization potential of water near STP, now.

Deionized water means, and I apologize if you were being humorous, that non-H2O ions are removed, i.e. the SO4, Mg, Fe, etc.

It doesn't mean that you can make the water have less OH and H+.

Now, that would be neat. And scary. And the water might even GLOW momentarily

MortalWombat

An uninterrupted diet of any water (in the absence of drinking or eating anything else) will do the same thing. It's called starvation.

And the food we eat doesn't?

magiksam

Thank you thank you

let me eat one frekin spinach leaf - bet it has more minearls in it than gallons of tap water

Jamie_L

What, specifically, did he argue was bad for you about distilled water? With no specifics, there's no need to dispute him, because he's making assertions.

Jamie

scarmig

I wouldn't say distilled water is *bad* for you, but I also wouldn't say it's good for you either. Distilled water has no mineral or biological hooks to make it easier to digest and absorb. It can be done, because the water mixes with other things you eat/drink and becomes digestable. But on it's own, you're probably expending more energy and time digesting distilled water than drinking normal mineralized water.

magiksam

Well the argument went something like this:

He said something about the tap water not tasting good. I said we should just buy distilled instead of bottled since its a lot cheaper and the mineral content in the bottled isnt worth writing home about - uM and lower - parts per million and ppb. He says that its bad for you.

What? how is it bad for you? He made the claim

You remember in science class about osmosis and swelling/bursting? He then suggested this would happen in the blood.

I said once the distilled hits your stomach its mixed with so much stuff this won't happen at all. The only thing that could happen is it could affect throat mouth cells but cells are not as freely permeable to water as basic biology would have you believe. THere are aquaporins that allow some amount of water to flow freely but cells have many systems to maintain homeostasis. Besides most mucous membranes have "mucous" which for the most part is hydrophobic

Then kept going on about loss of minerals - i said we eat many times more minerals in our food - should clarify that we eat orders of magnitude more.

THen he said it would take Fl or Ca - think he said minerals off your teeth. I said no more than drinking a coke(acidic) would as if distilled water is inheriently more solvating than tap - ok not arguing this point but people look back at solubility rules there isnt much dissolved in tap water and it is no where near saturated so it may not dissolve as much as distilled but the amount difference is inconsequential. Acidic drinks and sugar water and mouth bacteria is what you gotta worry about - still cant wait until they start testing that modified SA to stop tooth decay!

think he went back to the blood but cut him off no real good claims for how it hurts you. Asked him if he still believes its bad for you later and he said that he hasnt heard how its safe so hes not convinced. Dammit

Distilled - just boil the water it evaporates then condenses and is just pure H20 pH 7.00000000000000000000000 and so on unless theres a small amount of acid or base in your equipment or some small amount of organic compounds come over with it - not really a problem in our lab systems. So whats the harm? It will absorb C02 out of the air and make a slight acid but again drink coke - its worse

digestablitiy isnt a problem either - water added to a previous mixture (such as your stomach) dissolves in seconds if not less.

I mean we're set up to take in hypotonic solutions

pz you there?

[ December 13, 2002: Message edited by: magiksam ]

[ December 13, 2002: Message edited by: magiksam ]</p>