Drinking pure H2O isn’t good for you. As far as I know it could even be deadly. But what if you had a pill with all the minerals usually dissolved in water and washed it down with a nice big glass of distilled water? Would it be more or less the same as drinking tap water? Or would you need more time to dissolve the minerals? What if you threw the pill into the H2O and stirred?
Or am I missing something entirely? I think someone on Lemmy even explained to me the other day what is so bad about distilled water. But I’m stupid today and forgot.
The first link was in response to someone implying that hyponatremia is caused by not consuming enough electrolytes in food. The link that I provided said that hyponatremia is more closely related to how much fluid is in your body rather than not getting enough sodium in your diet.
The second link outlines the health risks of demineralized water.
The third and fourth links concern the fact that pure water behaves differently to normal water.
The World Health Organization has a paper which goes into detail regarding the health risks of demineralized water starting from page 148.
https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/43403/9241593989_eng.pdf?sequence=1
No, that was not my implication at all. My implication was that the amount of electrolytes we consume in tap water is miniscule. So little comes from water that even if we were to completely eliminate that source by switching to distilled water, we would not significantly affect the levels in our bodies.
The second link is a fucking ad. It was written by people who majored in sales and marketing, not science or medicine. It’s shit. I’m not going to pick through that cow patty for the few kernels of truth that might be hiding, and I promise you, I won’t find them very appealing after you do the picking.
Your latest link does, indeed, list some health concerns about demineralized water, relating primarily to calcium and magnesium. Where diets are already deficient in these minerals (and thus the trace amounts in water are a high percentage of total intake), switching to distilled water would, indeed, contribute to such deficiency. This is irrelevant if your diet has sufficient calcium and magnesium.
It also suggests that demineralized water can leech toxic heavy metals from plumbing systems, as we saw in Flint, MI, when they switched from a hard water source to a softened water source. This is irrelevant if your plumbing source does not contain toxic metals.
Notably missing from those health risks is “hyponatremia”. I found 9 references to hyponatremia in that paper, and none of them suggest that distilled or demineralized water poses a significant risk over tap water.
However, your link also confirms my argument, on page 43:
The overwhelming source of electrolytes and minerals in the body is from food, not water. Since we do not acquire a significant portion of electrolytes from water, the lack of electrolytes in distilled water is not an important consideration.
I’m not sure how this is relevant to the point I’ve made, since I never said that we obtain a significant portion of electrolytes from water.
From page 151, this was accounted for in rat studies.
*Reduced skeletal ossification was also found in rat foetuses whose dams were given distilled water in a one-year study. Apparently the reduced mineral intake from water was not compensated by their diets, even if the animals were kept on standardized diet that was physiologically adequate in caloric value, nutrients and salt composition. *
From page 152
Regular intake of low-mineral content water could be associated with the progressive evolution of the changes discussed above, possibly without manifestation of symptoms or causal symptoms over the years. Nevertheless, severe acute damage, such as hyponatremic shock or delirium, may occur following intense physical efforts and ingestion of several litres of lowmineral water (10).
“The “intoxication” risk increases with decreasing levels of TDS.”
TDS is an acronym for Total Dissolved Solids. In other words, the purer the water, the higher the chances of developing water intoxication, also known as hyponatremia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybCFHgsq_sU
Normal water will flush out electrolytes if you drink too much of it, distilled water is just more prone to doing this for physics based reasons. What Neil DeGrasse Tyson states in the video is in accordance to what the WHO says.
Ok, it’s a little less intuitive to come at it from the opposite direction, but it’s exactly the same argument: A liter of distilled water “sucks up” just 20mg more salt from the body than a liter of tap water. It “takes” that 20mg of salt from the 42 liters of water in the body.
The effect of the “physics based reasons” you are talking about is 20mg of salt from the entire body. Less than half a milligram of salt per liter of body fluids.
The normal range of serum sodium levels is about 15mg of salt per liter, or 30 times the difference caused by switching from tap to distilled.
In other words, this is an entirely theoretical risk that has zero practical effect on your neighbor’s hyponatremia.
Alrighty then. And I’ll trust what the WHO and Neil DeGrasse Tyson have to say on this topic as its within their field of expertise. The WHO are experts on health and Neil DeGrasse Tyson would be expected to have a better understanding of the physics of equilibrium compared to the average internet forumer.
A
snake oil salesman wouldmineral water salesman did have you fooled.You presented your neighbor’s hyponatremia as a result of drinking distilled water; the WHO did not mention hyponatremia being a risk of distilled water.
I have no idea what Tyson said on the subject. I suspect you’re citing him about as accurately as you cited WHO.
From page 152
“Regular intake of low-mineral content water could be associated with the progressive evolution of the changes discussed above, possibly without manifestation of symptoms or causal symptoms over the years. Nevertheless, severe acute damage, such as hyponatremic shock or delirium, may occur following intense physical efforts and ingestion of several litres of lowmineral water (10).”
“The “intoxication” risk increases with decreasing levels of TDS.” (Bolded for emphasis.)
TDS is an acronym for Total Dissolved Solids. In plain English, the purer the water, the higher the chances of developing water intoxication, also known as hyponatremia. Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s statements are in accordance to what the WHO said.
Bolded the relevant bit for emphasis. It’s the “several liters” part that damages your argument. You also conveniently omitted the very next sentence:
Turns out that ingesting “several liters” of just about anything is going to affect homeostasis faster than the kidneys can correct it.
Go ahead and quantify that risk. When you do the math, you’ll find that 1 liter of chemically pure water poses the same risk of hyponatremia as approximately 1.002 liters of tap water. Which makes the WHO statement technically true, but definitely misleading.
That’s likely true, but you’ve misrepresented WHO, so I’m assuming it likely you’ve misrepresented Tyson as well.
It is recommended by Mayo Clinic that men drink 3.7 litres of water a day and for women that recommendation is 2.7 litres per day, which constitutes “several litres”. https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/water/art-20044256#:~:text=About 15.5 cups (3.7%20liters,fluids%20a%20day%20for%20women
That isn’t my job and neither is it yours. If the WHO says that the risk of water intoxication is greater the purer the water is, then I’m inclined to believe that what they are saying is true, especially given that the topic in which those statements are said in concerns the health risks of drinking demineralized water. The additional risk is significant enough to warrant a mention. The difference between the percentage of H₂O of tap water and ultrapure water is very small and seemingly insignificant, and yet ultrapure water can do things that normal water cannot, such as dissolving metal. So I’m not sure I understand the notion that because there’s a tiny difference chemically, that would translate to a tiny difference in how the solvent behaves physically.
What did I misrepresent?