Distill or not Distill, That is the Question

And thou camest forth with thy rivers, and troubledst the waters with thy feet, and fouledst their rivers.   --Ezekiel 32:2

We wouldn't have brought it up, of course, if the answer was "Not distill".  But we have a history of taking a strong opinion on subjects where science has been woefully silent.  Best compost practices are our favorite example.

Distilled water is another.  There are all sorts of pseudo-scientific claims about "potential death" from drinking distilled water, much of it (like the linked article) based on fanciful thought experiments which, even if they were true, would be easily mitigated by simple precautions.  Take the "acidity" claim, for example.  Distilled water supposedly acidifies with contact with the air.  Okay, if that's true... then maybe I should keep my distilled water in a glass container?  Hmmm?  Anybody think of that?

The real problem, of course, is that nobody has studied it.

We have a lot of anecdotal evidence of medical professionals saying there are "trace elements in tap water that you need in order to be healthy."  Really?  Which ones?  Why aren't they in my food or air?  What's so special about tap water?

On the other hand, the very "acidity" claim linked above is based on one of the most fundamental characteristics of distilled water that make it so beneficial -- stuff breaks down easier in distilled water.  Do you have any idea how much extraneous crap gets into your body?  From "trace elements" in tap water, to heavy metals poisoning, even when regulations exist, it doesn't help.

So what are we supposed to do?  Sit passively and just accept?

No.  That's not the Myrtle way.

We don't have any studies to back us; as indicated, nobody is taking the question seriously enough to do good science on it.  All we have is anecdotal evidence:

• For 10 years, we were unable to get pregnant.  Six months after starting to distill our own water at home, and one month after giving up, we conceived our son.
• Both of us have been very overweight in spite of eating well and exercising.  A year and a half after starting to distill our own water at home, and making very few other changes, we have both lost considerable amounts of body fat.
• For 20 years, we have been fighting allergies; some of that time medicated, some of that time, not.  A year and a half after starting to distill our own water at home, we don't seem to have as many allergy related problems (though, to be far, pulling up the carpet the minute we moved into our new home certainly helped as well).
• The salt crystals formed at the bottom of each container we distill are significant; frequently, for 2 1/2 gallons, we get two tablespoonfuls of "trace elements".  How much is chlorine?  How much is "other"?  We don't know; we just know it makes a good replacement for Ajax.
  

How much of that is quantifiably related to drinking water?  Your guess is as good as ours.  Commercially distilling water and storing it in glass (not plastic!) is prohibitively costly, so no company is going to do it.  There is simply no profit motive in studying the proper preparation and storage of drinking water, so expecting our profit-oriented system of university research to come up with good data on this (and many other) essential health question is just whistling dixie.

You want real health-care reform?  Start thinking about these kinds of questions, and taking matters into your own hands.

Happy farming!