There is much misinformation about the detoxifying properties of water and distilled water in particular. Dealing with demineralized water can have adverse effects too. It is not something average people should do if they do not completely understand the entirety of the process first. How many people know that distilled water does not conduct electricity? It even has a different magnetic charge potential than hard water and it is exactly this magnetic charge that can help to some extent with the elimination of toxic substances but the most important issue is not the detoxifying properties of demineralized water. It is, but it is also avoiding all of the toxic load that comes along with regular polluted water. Water purification is a big business.
Also, it is not unnatural. All clouds in the world are distilled water. Rain and snow too. It is not some chemical produced in the lab like Coca Cola. It is just pure water H2O without anything else in it.
In the human body the water functions as a solvent and a medium for the transport of nutrients. It is also a transport mechanism for waste products. It regulates body temperature, lubricants the joints, and has many other biochemical reactions. It is the water, only water H2O not any other dissolved and suspended minerals that do any of these functions. It is just water.
When water is low in TDS (total dissolved solids) that means that it has not too many dissolved minerals in it. If water is distilled, that means that it does not have anything in there but H2O. Total dissolved solids in distilled water are zero. It also has different electrical charge properties that make distilled water unique in that manner that it has the capability to attract inorganic minerals and toxins just by itself.
Distilled water wants to saturate itself sort of speak, and that is a property that can be wary useful if you want to detoxify yourself. It is believed that distilled water can help the detoxification process by washing out excess inorganic minerals and toxins from deposits and other parts of the body.
There is a big difference between inorganic and organic minerals. Realistically, minerals are just inorganic metals, so it makes no difference where you get your minerals. The most important factor when we talk about organic vs. inorganic minerals is not composition, it is the same metal, but it is the size and the form they are in. A plant takes the artificial, inorganic minerals from the soil where it is growing that are big chunks of metal if you like that analogy. When plants take up inorganic minerals from the ground by the roots then they synthesize them, or if you like break them down into a molecular size and form that are small enough to do regular biological functions in the living matter.
Mineral water that comes from the stream is saturated with inorganic molecules. The size of these minerals is not small enough for us to do biological functions so we call them inorganic, not because they are some other molecular substance but just because the size of the molecule is too big. Think of it this way, in mineral water coming from the streams there are also small chunks or rocks that water breaks off, but you cannot see them with the naked eye. They are small but not small enough, at least not small enough to be used as an organic form of minerals.
There is only one way that the human digestive system can break down larger tightly bound minerals into usable ions, and that is with the stomach acid. The food transit time through the stomach is about one hour. If the inorganic mineral ion is not ionized during this small amount of time and the mineral moves from the high acid environment of the stomach no further beneficial breakdown will take place in the small intestines. All further break down ceases. If the inorganic mineral compound is already relatively small like from deep spring water, it might get degraded to smaller monoatomic scale particles by the acid in the stomach and be bioavailable. Once minerals left the acidic environment of the stomach the remainder of the non-ionized minerals are no use for us and are in no way available to do any biological functions inside our body except negative ones. Usually, they will just pass through our GI tract unusable. But If you ingest big chunks of metals called inorganic minerals they might end up in the bloodstream in small quantities. However, they can pass into the bloodstream in large quantities if you have a leaky gut or inflammation in the intestines. They will not be small enough to integrate into cells or do any other biological function and will create deposits in the body if the body does not remove them out.
There is unproven speculation that you will even receive from your regular MD that distilled water is dangerous for your health because it would leech minerals out of the body and can cause some mineral deficiencies.
Speculation is that absorbing extremely purified water, treated by distillation, reverse osmosis, or deionization, leaches minerals from the body.
Because there are minerals in the water in the first place drinking distilled water will make problems in the same manner as removing for example husk from the wheat with all of its minerals and eating just refined flour. They say that minerals in water are a necessary part of our mineral absorption. There were some Russian studies done on this topic and are available through the World Health Organization. The summary was that fluid and electrolytes are better replaced with water containing a minimum of 100 mg/L of TDS. However, this only has relevance in specific situations where the human body was exposed to heavy exertion and sweating. It is the market for sports drinks and there is only one substance glucose, regular sugar, that was added to help muscles to replenish the loss of glycogen quickly and to promote more energy in prolonged exercise. Low TDS or demineralized water has nothing to do with it, and for everyday drinking and cooking purposes, it is the best choice. The body has the mechanisms to regulate within very narrow limits the concentrations of minerals (ions) and water as well in all cells and all organs in the body.
The organ that is most responsible for mineral balancing is the kidneys. They maintain ion concentrations and not just sodium and potassium and calcium but most of the minerals in the normal range during a process of elimination and reabsorption.
There is a process called osmosis or osmotic pressure. When sodium ions outside of the cell and potassium ions inside of the cell are out of balance, then the osmotic pressure is out of balance. That will cause the water to flow across the cell membrane to neutralize the difference in osmotic pressure. Any changes that can happen in a reasonable range of concentration of ions is adjusted in a couple of seconds because water moves quickly through cell membranes. Drinking distilled water (0 to 100 mg/L TDS) has nothing to do with it. If any changes occur in the body, it will be rapidly brought to equilibrium with absolutely no consequence. It is the kidneys that in reality control the overall concentration of the constituents of body fluids and not some minuscule amounts of inorganic minerals in tap water. Kidneys on average men filter about 180 liters of water per day. Over 99% is reabsorbed to the bloodstream, and only 1.0 to 1.5 liters are eliminated as urine. If you drink distilled low ion concentration TDS water, nervous and hormonal feedback mechanisms will cause the kidneys to eliminate extra water that is not needed and thus maintain the ion concentration in the body fluid to normal values. The opposite is also true. If the ion concentration in the fluid to be filtered is higher than normal, the kidney’s homeostatic mechanism will keep fluid osmolality normal by retaining water.
That is why you bloat when eating too much salt and too little potassium. It is not the sodium that is a problem. It is unopposed sodium because there is a lack of potassium in the body. When a healthy person drinks low TDS water, it should not cause any health issues.
Significant nutritional deficiencies might cause a leaching problem in the long run, which is what MD will argue.
How much of consuming one to two liters of low TDS water on a daily basis cause a leaching problem in reality? We will have to look into this in more detail.
If we count all of the minerals in spring water as organic, they will not be able to compound to more than a couple of percent of total minerals digested. Usually, minerals should come from food, not from water. Drinking pure, pristine spring water from unpolluted earth of the past it would not be a problem. Now it is. And distilled water may have some benefits too. WHO had done experiments on volunteers. Results showed that when people start to drink distilled water, the increased diuresis happens with 20% more body water volume, and also serum sodium concentrations decreasing. So you excrete more water and lose some sodium. The second thing that was observed was the decrease in potassium serum concentration. To sum it up, drinking distilled water increase the elimination of sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium, and magnesium ions from the body. Distilled water interacts with another gastrointestinal tract by osmoreceptors, causing an enhanced movement of sodium ions into the intestinal lumen. This will then cause a slight reduction in osmotic pressure in the blood with the following enhanced discharge of sodium into the blood as an adaptation response. In response volume receptors in the bloodstream are activated, inducing an increase in sodium elimination. Now, this will not be a problem in nature, but especially now it is not because we have our salt shaker on every table and this can be actually beneficial depending on how much salt you eat and how much of distilled water you drink.
There is one other and real issue with demineralized water, and that is why I said you need to know what you are doing. When used for cooking, soft water was found to leech a substantial amount of minerals out of food no matter what that food is. In some cases, losses can reach up to 60 to 90 percent. Numbers for calcium and magnesium are about 60 percent, manganese 70 %, copper 66 %, cobalt 86 %, and so on. This can represent a problem because if you cook with soft or distilled water and then throw away that water, you are going to lose much of your nutrition.
That is why you do not cook with it if the water that is used for cooking is not going to be consumed. When you soak beans, for example, use regular water. When you cook beans use regular water or when you cook anything that is going to be rinsed after use regular water.
In contrast, distilled water capability to leech nutrients from food is turned into a positive thing if you are going to drink that water. When we eat, we do not absorb all of the nutrients that are in the food. We absorbed some of them, but some of them are not absorbed. It is what we absorbed not what we eat sort of a thing. So using soft or distilled water can help us to absorb more from the food. For example, use it to make tea. Or when I want to make a soup or some other dish, I use distilled water because it will leach from the food and help me get more from the same food than regular water and I know it would not have all the polluting chemicals in there. When I eat that soup or drink tea, it is not distilled water anymore. If I want to make soy milk, for example, I am going to use the knowledge of water to my benefit by soaking the beans in regular water and then cooking the beans in regular water that will not leach much of the nutrients from the beans. However, then when I want to blend them into the milk, I will rinse the beans and use distilled water for blending because I want to leech most of the nutrients from the beans to make the milk. So again you need to know what you are doing. I personally don’t drink much water because I drink a lot of vegetable juices throughout the day and I eat a lot of fruits that are mostly water and plus all the water from cooked meals, so I do not have a leaching problem. I like the cleanness and leaching potential of distilled water for detoxification, but again I will drink no more than maybe a glass or two in the day. If you drink 2 liters of water because you do not eat fruit or vegetables and don’t eat cooked meals and are already potassium deficient like 98% of Americans and then go on a diet with gallons of detoxifying distilled water you might get into a more deficient state then the one you are already in. So again I cannot tell you to drink or not to drink it, it is a more complex issue, and you need to do your own research based on the quality of the mineral content of your diet.
Why I drink and cook with it is precisely because of its potential to leach toxins and inorganic minerals out, and regular minerals I get from food or even some time supplements depending on my diet. I usually take iodine and some organic trace minerals solution from time to time. One more thing about leeching minerals. It will not leach any minerals that have already become integrated into the cells. It collects only minerals that have already been rejected or excreted by the cells. Mostly inorganic minerals will be removed. They have a different electrical charge than organic ones and are themselves attracted to the distilled water by the charge. Distilled water will not leach minerals from your tissue cells. I do periodic blood testing to see the levels of electrolytes and other minerals, and I never had a problem.
And one more thing that is important. Some chemicals are not water-soluble. This form of fat-soluble toxins the body cannot eliminate through urine. It must be eliminated through the fiber in the intestines. Fiber is our natural detoxifier for fat-soluble chemicals. Detoxifying without fiber is not complete. The best thing to detoxify is something that has distilled water, all the minerals and vitamins, and fiber. So you can try to do distilled water fasting with psyllium husk and organic mineral solution or just eat a lot of raw organic vegetables and keep in mind that detoxification also depends on the half-life of the substances you have already ingested. Distillation does not remove all of the toxins also. Toxins that can be turned into vapor below 100 degrees Celsius will be distilled with the water. These are usually some of the pesticides. They can be removed and often home distillatory devices have secondary filters made from carbon just because of this. Also, radioactive particles will not vaporize because they have a higher boiling temperature than water. For people who live in the Fukushima area and for all preppers out there to know that when nuclear winter comes you can distill the water and it will lose all of the radioactivity.
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Passages selected from a book: “Go Vegan? Review of Science: Part 1” [Milos Pokimica]
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