Is it Safe To Drink RO Water?? You'd be surprised..

That was an interesting read.... We drink the culligan water exclusively at home cause our well water is horid. Better start taking those vitamins I bought.

 

Sorry for digging up a old post but... Through homeostasis your body has the ability to regulate the amount of minerals, ions, etc that it releases through its membranes (osmosis). Therefor no matter how neglectful your water is in terms of minerals you will not lose any unless your body says so. And as stated before water is not a primary source of minerals anyways. There are no limits set by any national or world health organization in terms of how low drinking water tds may be for a reason.

 

Yep this is an interesting thread, but full of misunderstandings.

Water poisoning (hyponatremia) is a real clinical condition, and does cause sudden death, but it can be caused by plain old tap water too, and no, it's not like "haha, I'm drinking a glass of distilled water, I'm happy... urk, I'm dead"...

Distilled and RO water are simply pure water, missing certain elements the body needs. Now the body has a certain way of regulating stuff, but needs a balanced mixture input (too much water, too much salts, both is bad).

However, this doesn't mean it's unsafe to drink RO water. It's unsafe to drink RO water over a prolonged period of time, esp. during physical exertion, ON ITS OWN! (Which can also be said about tap water, that's why they invented these sports drinks!)
Ie. what's harmful is going a day or two with NOTHING touching your lips except purified water. What's even more harmful is doing drugs, dancing at the disco, and drinking continuously (the lead cause of amphetamine-related deaths is water poisoning).

Now for all the people who are afraid to drink RO water. Imagine your body. When you eat or drink something, it goes to your stomach. You drink two glasses of RO water, and eat a cookie. Both the cookie and the water go to the same place. The salt and mineral content of the cookie is more than enough to protect you from upsetting your electrolyte balance.
Or, you are drinking TEA or COFFEE made of RO water. The tea leaves or coffee grinds contain lots of minerals, which get washed into the water, "resalting" it.
Cooking soups, let's not even bring that up.

So bottom line. Unless you are some kind of prana freak, I'm pretty sure you EAT regularly. In which case, pure water holds no threat for you.

 

very cool info thanks

 

Basically, drinking pure or distilled water is the opposite of drinking sea water. Nobody has died of drinking sea water, except by not having access to anything BUT sea water.

After drinking sea water (if you manage to keep the thing down), you'll get thirsty, and dry out if you cannot drink anything else for days. After drinking a lot of pure water, you'll find you crave salt (or food).

 

You aren't supposed to use it alone for freshwater too because of this. Salt mix has the needed elements in it. There are freshwater additives that would make it work, but not in any stores that I've seen.

 

Just to point out to any one that stumbles across the thread... water isn't your main source of anything but water. The food you eat contains TONS more *insert everything but water here* than water. The thought that the 200 ppm water you drink (8 glasses a day) would strip your body of the minerals you need to live is a bit silly. The math below demonstrates why using just one cation, calcium.

1 ppm = 1 milligram/liter

~2.5 liters a day (according to Mayo Clinic) water should be drank (average men/women)

Need ~ 1 gram of calcium a day (also recommended)

My water is about 200 ppm. Assume this is ALL calcium. That would then translate to 200 milligrams/liter. At my recommended water intake, I would be at 500 milligrams of calcium, half of my daily recommended calcium.

This would be equivalent to eating 3 slices of american cheese (145 mg Ca2+ each), 1 3/4 cups of milk (a tall glass), 8 oz of yogurt has 452 mg, 1.67 oz of romano cheese, a small bowl of cereal (hold the milk)... or one calcium supplement pill (600 mg, plus has Vitamin D).

Again, this is walking through the math assuming that all of the TDS in my tap water (which is considered "very hard" water) is calcium. This assumption is, of course, ridiculous... meaning that the amount you would get from the water would be lower than that.

Additionally, the World Health Organization recommends the maximum and minimum levels of calcium (40–80 ppm) in drinking water. This means that your daily recommended water should actually only contain ~100 milligrams of calcium, 1/10th your daily recommended amount.

 

tanks

So, what about tank water?

 

Yea, tank water, I wouldn't drink that either.

My family and I have been drinking RO with 0-1 TDS for years.
We do eat food, drink tea, and my kids use water in their grape juice, etc.
Oh, and my ice maker is also RO.

None of us have had HypoNa, HypoK, etc.

Now, if all we drank was RO water, didn't eat, and didn't use it for our coffee, tea, juices, etc.- then maybe it would be a problem.

Reading the thread title again, my answer is YES, and NO, I'm not suprised it is safe to use RO water.

 

Yep, as already stated, your body regulates what minerals, etc get released. Furthermore, the minerals in water are not usable by your system. TDS is exactly that-- dissolved ROCKS.