Make Mine Distilled Water
by Anna Hart
Filed under Choose Your Drinking Water Carefully
Distilled water comes to you having had all dissolved salts removed from it. It has been boiled, and then condensed, with all solids remaining behind. It has been stripped of all organic materials and inorganic materials. It has, in other words, been purified.
What Is H20?
If you look up a definition of water, you will find that it is, when pure, a tasteless, odorless liquid. It does not contain chlorine to make it pure. It does not contain fluoride or other additives. Pure water contains nothing other than two parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen. Many believe that makes distilled water the only truly pure water available.
Distilling Water
* Pros: A growing number of people believe that drinking distilled water is beneficial to the health. Drinking distilled water, they claim, is a means of hydrating your body without contamination. Distillation kills and removes bacteria, cysts, and viruses. It also eliminate heavy metals, inorganics, organics, particulates, and most of all: radionuclides. Since we get the minerals we need from food, we are safe in removing those, too. In fact, distilled water will pick up unused minerals as it circulates in the body, and remove them through the kidneys. Drinking distilled water is good for you, and is the purest water you can drink, say its proponents.
* Cons: Those who oppose drinking distilled water say that distilled water, since it contains no minerals, leaches minerals from the body. They offer no proof. Drinking distilled water is sacrificing taste, they say. They are accustomed to the taste of water containing minerals, and find distilled water lacking. They have grown accustomed to the taste of chlorine, fluoride, and other additives.
Drinking Distilled Water
The U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) states “Boiling water is the best extra measure you may wish to take to be sure your water is free of cryptosporidium and any other germs.”
Some believe the CDC means distilling water. However, boiling water is not the same as distilling water. As seen above, distilled water is condensed after boiling.
Others, arguing that drinking distilled water is the best option, point to the dangers of bottled water. Consider this statement quoted by some who argue in favor of drinking distilled water.
“In one recent EPA check of 25 bottling plants, serious problems with cleanliness was found at every one.” from 8 Weeks to Optimum Health, Andrew Weil, M.D., 1997
While the statement is meant to point out the potential for contamination in bottled drinking water, it does nothing to support drinking distilled water. After all, most who are drinking distilled water purchase it bottled at one of those same plants.
Drinking distilled water may or may not be best for you. It is an individual choice. Get all the information you need before making that choice.
For all it’s worth, here’s my story about the danger of drinking distilled water –
If I could start by explaining that I’m a skeptic when it comes to “modern science”, and that includes everything from the last 50 years. The science is only as good as the accuracy of the application. You’ve got alot of people misleading others for the sake of the mighty dollar. Global warming is nothing more than a 5th Avenue marketing scam.
Anyway… I am a brain-cancer survivor who made it through a life-threatening massive lymphoma, that should have killed me. I guess this should earn me some respect for being able to even be able to type this story… The gist of the story is this – I wanted to live a “healthier” lifestyle when I finally got my life back together. Simple enough huh? Water seems like the easiest thing to figure out, for health conscientious people like myself. So I started drinking bottled water. When I thought that the cost would be less expensive to just make it myself, that’s when things got interesting. I decided to buy a WaterWise distiller. The guy who delivered my bottled water warned me that someone that he knew had done the same thing and had multiple broken bones as a result of his decision. I just thought that was an isolated incident. The advice came with a warning. “Just make sure you take extra minerals and especially calcium”. Fair enough.
The chemotherapy that I had was an innovative new procedure called Blood Brain Barrier Disruption – This is where the variables to my case get exponential – I had been exercising rigorously (more than anytime in my 41 years) and taking all the vitamins and supplements I could. The only thing that was different with my water intake was that I had switched from the bottled water to the distiller somewhere in the middle of my sixth year out from the exposure to the chemo.
Things started going bad with my hip. My joints started aching. I could barely do 5 pull-ups because of my shoulder pain. My jogging routine was cut down to 40 minutes, at the most.
The doctors at OHSU in Portland assured me I was fine according to my monthly check-ups. By the time the hip pain got so bad I could barely walk, let alone get a good nights sleep, they scheduled me for a hip replacement. Stating that this was a side-effect of the type of chemo that I was exposed to and with only a “make sure you take extra minerals and calcium”, I continued on.
I started breaking the bones in my feet. The first was when I kicked a wall. That is “normal” I thought. The next when I tried to jog down a steep slope. Not so normal. The third time I broke a bone in my other foot I was just walking. OK this is getting strange. The forth time, I was standing in my kitchen when I leaned to one side and heard the familiar “pop”. I broke one more bone then I remembered what I had been warned about – that was the last day that I drank even one more glass of distilled water.
All of the conditions that would lead to such a conclusion that drinking distilled water could cause such results, could be speculative and my condition was extraordinary, but I was warned by the bottled water delivery guy. They should be paid at little better for their advice… or maybe just take it off my doctor’s bill.