Health effects

Distillation removes all minerals from water, and the membrane methods of reverse osmosis and
nanofiltration remove most, or virtually all, minerals. This results in demineralized water, which
has not been proven to be healthier than drinking water. The World Health Organization
investigated the health effects of demineralized water in 1980, and its experiments in humans
found that demineralized water increased diuresis and the elimination of electrolytes, with
decreased serum potassium concentration. Magnesium, calcium, and other nutrients in water can
help to protect against nutritional deficiency. Recommendations for magnesium have been put at
a minimum of 10 mg/L with 2030 mg/L optimum; for calcium a 20 mg/L minimum and a 40
80 mg/L optimum, and a total water hardness (adding magnesium and calcium) of 24 mmol/L.
At water hardness above 5 mmol/L, higher incidence of gallstones, kidney stones, urinary stones,
arthrosis, and arthropathies have been observed. For fluoride the concentration recommended for
dental health is 0.51.0 mg/L, with a maximum guideline value of 1.5 mg/L to avoid dental
fluorosis.[17]
Water filtration devices are becoming increasingly common in households.[citation needed] Most of
these devices do not distill water, though there continues to be an increase in consumer-oriented
water distillers and reverse osmosis machines being sold and used. Municipal water supplies
often have minerals added or have trace impurities at levels which are regulated to be safe for
consumption. Much of these additional impurities, such as volatile organic compounds, fluoride,
and an estimated 75,000+ other chemical compounds[18][19][20] are not removed through
conventional filtration; however, distillation and reverse osmosis eliminate nearly all of these
impurities.
The drinking of purified water as a replacement for drinking water has been both advocated and
discouraged for health reasons. Purified water lacks minerals and ions such as calcium that play
key roles in biological functions such as in nervous system homeostasis, and are normally found
in potable water. The lack of naturally-occurring minerals in distilled water has raised some
concerns. The Journal of General Internal Medicine[21] published a study on the mineral contents
of different waters available in the US. The study found that "drinking water sources available to
North Americans may contain high levels of calcium, magnesium, and sodium and may provide
clinically important portions of the recommended dietary intake of these minerals". It
encouraged people to "check the mineral content of their drinking water, whether tap or bottled,
and choose water most appropriate for their needs". Since distilled water is devoid of minerals,
mineral intake through diet is needed to maintain good health.
The consumption of "hard" water (water with minerals) is associated with beneficial
cardiovascular effects. As noted in the American Journal of Epidemiology, consumption of hard
drinking water is negatively correlated with atherosclerotic heart disease.[22]

Why I Do Not Recommend Drinking Distilled Water

Long before natural health enthusiasts began touting the benefits of alkaline water, there were
similarly glowing claims for distilled water.
During distillation, water is boiled and evaporated away from its dissolved minerals, and then the
vapor is condensed and the resulting water droplets collected. Distilled water is an active
absorber, and when it makes contact with air, it quickly absorbs carbon dioxide and becomes
acidic.
Since it is free of dissolved minerals and other particles, it has the ability to absorb toxic
substances from your body and eliminate them. However, although drinking distilled water may
be helpful when detoxifying for a week or two, the longer you drink it, the more likely you'll
develop mineral deficiencies and an acidic state.
You can rapidly lose electrolytes (sodium, potassium, chloride) and trace minerals, which can
cause cardiac irregularities, high blood pressure, and cognitive/emotional disturbances.
In a paper by F. Kozisek of the World Health Organization (WHO), [i] water low in calcium and
magnesium, such as distilled water, is associated with the following health problems:

Cardiovascular disease

Higher risk of bone fracture in children

Neurodegenerative diseases

Motor neuronal diseases

Pre-term births, low birth weights, and preeclampsia

Various types of cancer

Increased risk of "sudden death"

Acute magnesium and calcium deficiency, weakness, fatigue and muscle

cramping

Clearly, changing the water you drink can have profound and potentially disastrous effects on
your health, as this research shows. For these reasons, I've been discouraging people from
drinking distilled water for well over a decade now, but there are other far more problematic
issues with distilled water that make potential mineral deficiencies pale in comparison.

Distilled Water is Only as Pure as the Water You Begin

With...

One of the primary benefits commonly attributed to distilled water is its lack of contaminants.
However, this usually turns out to be far from true... Why? There are two primary reasons why
your distilled water may not be as pure as you'd like to think:
1. Any contaminant in the water that vaporizes at a lower temperature than the
water, such as volatile organic compounds, such as disinfection byproducts that
are thousands of times as toxic as chlorine, will be condensed and actually
concentrated in the finished distilled water. So what you end up with is water that
contains even more dangerous contaminants than what you started with.
2. Because the water is acidic and demineralized, it will pull contaminants out of
whatever container you put it in. Many distillers on the market are made of metal,
which will actually add certain toxic metals like nickel back into the water. And if
you use a distiller with a plastic bottle, you have a number of plastic chemicals to
contend with many of which we now know are extremely toxic.

The Most Shocking Fact About Distilled Water

In recent years we've learned a lot about the dangers of disinfection byproducts (DBPs) found in
most treated water supplies, such as trihalomethanes (THMs) and haloacetic acids (HAAs).
These DBPs form when water treatment disinfectants such as chlorine, chloramines, and chlorine
dioxide react with natural organic matter in the source water.
Researchers have now discovered that DBPs are over 1,000 times more toxic than chlorine,
and out of all the other toxins and contaminations present in your water, such as fluoride and
miscellaneous pharmaceutical drugs, DBPs may be the absolute worst.
Trihalomethanes (THMs), for example, are Cancer Group B carcinogens, meaning they've been
shown to cause cancer in laboratory animals. They've also been linked to reproductive problems
in both animals and humans, and human studies suggest that lifetime consumption of chlorinetreated water can more than double the risk of bladder and rectal cancers in certain individuals.
The process of distilling actually worsens the presence of these extremely toxic contaminants in
your water because anything that vaporizes at a lower temperature than water, such as volatile
organic compounds (VOC's and trihalomethanes (THM's), will also be boiled and condensed.
Sure, the heavy metals are left behind. Lead, for example, will not vaporize. But chlorine will
change into chloroform during the distillation process, and will be present in your distilled water.

Distilled Water is Actually MORE Toxic than Municipal Tap

Water
So, not only will distillation not remove one of the most significant toxins in water, which are the
DBPs, it may actually deliver a more concentrated dose of them. AND, you're also drinking
whatever chemical or metal contaminants the water has dissolved out of the container it's stored
in! Talk about a double-whammy of toxic contamination! This fact alone should be reason

enough to ditch the idea that distilled water might be good for you, unless you start with entirely
pure water to begin with, which defeats the whole purpose of distilling it.
Remember that every municipal water supply is treated with chlorine or chlorine like substance
that will induce the formation of disinfection byproducts in your water supply. So unless you are
using the distiller on well water, you need to be very concerned about this.
A volatile organic compound is a chemical that vaporizes at a lower temperature than water and
has carbon in it. And there are hundreds of thousands of volatile organic compounds out there,
including benzenes, trihalomethanes, and trichloroethylene. Exactly what and how much of these
toxic compounds are in your source water will naturally vary from one location to another.
Many of these are industrial organic solvents that are very destructive to the human body. Many
if not most of them are carcinogenic at extremely low levels. DBPs, for example, are measured in
parts per BILLION, and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets the goal for some
of these byproducts at zero because they are so dangerous. Unfortunately the EPA goal is
impossible to enforce. Still, the maximum annual average of THMs in your local water supply
cannot exceed 80 ppb (parts-per-billion), and the maximum annual average of HAAs permitted
by EPA regulations is 60 ppb. It goes without saying that if distilling were to concentrate these
contaminants just a little bit, the consequences to your health could be quite severe.

The Drawbacks Clearly Outweigh Any Potential Benefits

So, in the end, distilled water:

Is expensive

Is energy intensive

Doesn't remove VOC's and DBPs

Is ineffective at removing toxic fluoride

Draws out chemicals and metal contaminants from whatever container it's stored
in

Leaches minerals from your body which can lead to health problems

On the positive side, it may help draw out toxins during a short-term detoxification program, but
all in all, I believe the drawbacks are stacked quite high and clearly outweigh any perceived
benefit.

A Special Note on Removing Fluoride from Your Drinking

Water

Distillation also will not effectively remove fluoride, another dangerous element added to most
water supplies. Distillation can remove an estimated 55-60 percent of fluoride, but the rest will
get transferred. A reverse osmosis system is slightly more effective, capable of removing about
80 percent of fluoride. Currently, the only commercially viable way to get non-detectable levels
of fluoride (in water that is been treated with fluoride) that I know of is using an activated
aluminum filtration system. However, I'm not convinced it will remove all volatile compounds
The real solution is to convince the US to stop water fluoridation altogether, a campaign I'm
currently waging together with the Fluoride Action Network. I urge you to join us and get
involved at any level you can. If this is a topic that interests you, I would strongly encourage you
to sign up for their site as we are shortly going to launch a social networking strategy that will
allow you to network with those in your local community so you can initiate the process to have
fluoride removed from your water supply. This is clearly the best solution and it will also
produce an improvement in the public health of your community, so you would be doing a major
service for your uninformed and deceived neighbors.

Why I'm Changing My Stance on Reverse Osmosis...

I've recommended reverse osmosis (R/O) as the water treatment system of choice for some time
now, because I was convinced it was the best solution on the market. It's the system I've used in
my own home, primarily to reduce the salt content of my water as I had initially installed a water
softener. However, lately I've begun to rethink my stance on reverse osmosis. Reverse osmosis,
like distillation, creates fairly acidic water, and it also strips the water of minerals. Additionally,
some contend that R/O destabilized the structure of the water, and the system has other
drawbacks as well.
It's expensive, and it wastes water. According to Houston, depending on the system it can use
anywhere between two to 10 gallons of water to produce one gallon of drinking water. Another
concern is that most of the systems have a holding tank that must be cleaned out regularly to
prevent growth of bacteria. Still, R/O has certain benefits, and there are ways to circumvent some
of its drawbacks.

Benefits and Drawbacks of Reverse Osmosis

On the plus side, R/O is excellent for removing all sorts of contaminants, including herbicides,
pesticides, lead, fluoride, disinfection byproducts (DBP's) and even all but the smallest viruses or
protozoan cysts. Some hormones will slip through, but overall, it does a remarkable job of
filtering out some of the absolute worst water contaminants. It does, however, also create water
that is both slightly acidic and demineralized. One way to ameliorate this is to re-introduce
minerals to the water. I add about teaspoon of Himalayan salt per gallon of water to
compensate for the minerals lost.
To restructure the water, you can store it in a large round glass jar. Before placing it in the fridge,
create a vortex in the container using a large mixing spoon. I believe this restructures the water
closer to its natural state, and if nothing else it helps aerate it. There are vortex machines that you

can purchase for $400-500 but they use electric motors and I don't believe they do a much better
job than merely swirling the water around with a spoon. Keeping it cold, around 39 degrees
Fahrenheit, also greatly helps to impart the natural restructure back to the water.
Prior to using my current whole house carbon-based water filtration system I used R/O to purify
my water. I still use R/O when I travel in the winter, but I put the filtered water into glass jug
rather than a metal holding tank. I also use it as the final stage in my whole house system to
remove any possible contamination that occurs in the water after the purified water leaves the
filter and travels through the pipes.

Aim for Living Water

In the end, what you want is pure, clean, well-balanced water that is neither too alkaline nor too
acidic. Ideally, the pH of your water should be close to 7, which is neutral. Somewhere between
6.5 to 7.5 is likely fine. Some of the mountain springs have water in the 6.5 pH range, which
would be my preference if it were readily available. You CAN actually collect your own water
from natural springs, and if this is something that interests you, take a look at FindaSpring.com.
Natural spring water is "living water," in the same way that raw food is "living food" which is
why it's some of the most healthful water on the planet.
As for tweaking your body's pH, I don't recommend going overboard in either direction by
drinking either alkaline or distilled water. Most people simply need to normalize their pH
because their diet has already made them unbalanced. A great way to normalize your pH
naturally is by juicing vegetables. You can't find higher quality living water than that extracted
from fresh veggies! If this is new to you and you are interested in more information you can
review my juicing manual for free.