Is drinking distilled water healthy?

I am not an expert in this area but I think you may need to adjust how you view the distilled vs natural water debate. I really don’t think distilled water leaches necessary minerals from the body more than it does not provide supplementation of the minerals found in natural water supplies. The body demands a certain PH leaning toward the alkaline side and natural water is a tremendous source of these minerals our bodies require to maintain a healthy PH. Strip these minerals out in a distillation process and the body is deprived of these requisite alkaline minerals. This opens the door to our body’s PH drifting towards a more acidic PH which according to all the info I have read is really not good for us in the long haul. Acidic body PH’s are ripe territory for all sorts of ailments that could even lead to a shorter life span.

My 2 cents…encourage you to consult true experts.

Isn’t distilled water just rain water? It is perfectly harmless if drunk in moderation. If you drink too much though you can have problems.

@flutherother Rain water is not distilled, as a raindrop is water molecules that cluster on a molecule of some particulate in the air.

Distilled water is H2O and nothing more.

@zenvelo Rain water is actually fairly devoid of minerals other than pollutants eg. dust and industrial gases it picks up until it hits the ground where there it will pick up a cornucopia of minerals and more human pollutants.

It’s healthy as hell. I have been drinking it for years. I actually like the taste.

It’s fine. I think it tastes like shit, but it’s fine.

It tastes thin to me. Like nothing. It’s too dry to slake my thirst. I think humans are better off drinking natural mineral water. The minerals are important and your diet may not adequately provide them. This may lead to problems down the road. Why screw with something if it’s not broken?

Would you encounter distilled water in nature? Was your body designed in a natural environment over the past eons? See how that doesn’t match up?

I grew up where there was lots of iron in the water. I grew to like the taste. Drinking distilled water isn’t going to kill you or ‘adjust your body’s pH’ (if your pH is off, you’re in the hospital having dialysis or on a liver transplant list) The ‘leeching’ thing sounds like someone learned a bit about osmosis and then tried to apply it to everything. Like all things, it’s more complicated than that. (and if anyone got through BioChem in University with a passing grade, my hat is off to you.. @Rarebear)

Where I live now, the water is amazing. I barely get any soap scum in my bath and I think the water tastes delicious. I’m sure there are traces of calcium and what have you, and we add fluoride to our water because it is SAFE and stops tooth decay.

If your tap water is safe, drink it. There is no reason to buy bottled water unless what comes out of your tap is not potable.

If you have a lot of chlorine in your water you want to filter it.Trihalomethanes are a chlorine byproduct and the effects of are under study. Not everyones tap water is safe, especially in urban areas with aging infrastructure or rural areas with groundwater wells. It’s kind of your responsibility to know if your water is safe. I’m on the fence about flouridation. I filter mine even though I trust it enough to just drink.

You can let your water sit in the fridge and the chlorine will evaporate. I lived in areas of New Zealand that had water that just stunk of chlorine. Some places smelled of a mixture of fish and chlorine. Blah. I filtered my water there or set it in the fridge for a few days and often had to add lime juice just to stomach it. It was horrible showering in the water in Auckland.

My old water had so much chlorine we even filtered the showers (we were close to the treatment plant)

In my high school there was a water distilling apparatus bubbling away in one of the science classrooms most of the time. One of the chemistry teachers claimed he only drank that distilled water. I started buying jugs of distilled water to drink when I lived in a town whose tap water was not very good, but gave that up when I moved. I don’t recall any problems. I didn’t hear about the supposed leaching of minerals until much later. I started thinking about this again last year because I live in Michigan, and the terrible situation in Flint has been on everybody’s mind. I got to wondering whether setting up some kind of home distillery would be practical for people in that situation, and how that would compare to home filtration in terms of health effects and cost.

I used distilled water in my hydration system for years. I’d easily go through two liters in the summer on long bike rides. Never had any problems, you get plenty of minerals from your diet.