permaculture

[Rain Tenaqiya <raincascadia@yahoo.com>]

I don't understand how distilled water will not increase the removal of 
wastes, but does increase the removal of nutrients.  It seems that the 
body-as-filter analogy is being criticized in the first case, but utilized in 
the second.  How can water leach out nutrients if it is not just flowing 
through us?
 
Also, in places like rural Australia where drinking rainwater is common, has 
there been any evidence of nutrient deficiencies (other than from the poor 
soil their crops are grown in)?  And how common is it for people to put 
limestone in their water tanks?
 
I'm especially interested in all this because I've been drinking only 
rainwater for the past four years and plan to continue, but I do have the 
option to drink springwater with a lot of dissolved nutrients in it, 
including lime.
 
Rain



>From toby@patternliteracy.com  Fri Oct  3 14:33:47 2008
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Subject: Re: [permaculture] distilled water
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sinergyinaction@netscape.net wrote:
>  So Toby, from what you and others write, are you implying that you would 
> not drink either solar or machine distilled water or even reverse osmosis 
> for long periods of time or, actually, as your basic water supply?
> If not, then what would the next best solution be (is) , if you have only 
> tap water available (and prefer not to drink it)?

Thinking permaculturally, I'd say: it depends. Drink the best quality
water that is available. What is "best" will depend on who and where you
are and what your beliefs are. Blanket prescriptions are not helpful
here. My own guesstimate is that filtered tapwater is probably healthier
than distilled unless your tapwater is really filthy. Here in Portland,
we have some of the cleanest tapwater of any city in the nation, from a
mountain reservoir near Mount Hood. It's treated only with chlorine and
ammonia. I use a double filter that is supposed to reduce chloramine
content to two orders of magnitude below recommended levels, and I am
comfortable with that. If I weren't comfortable drinking filtered
tapwater, I'd use reverse osmosis, which is not as pure as distilled. If
I weren't in a city I'd use rainwater or find spring or well water that
was clean. I'd really prefer to drink living water that's run through a
flow form or out of a clean stream, but that's a little tough right now.

Why not use Google to find out about trialomethanes? That's how I'd look
it up.

Rain Tenaqiya wrote:
> I don't understand how distilled water will not increase the removal of 
> wastes, but does increase the removal of nutrients.  It seems that the 
> body-as-filter analogy is being criticized in the first case, but utilized 
> in the second.  How can water leach out nutrients if it is not just flowing 
> through us?
>
Excellent, Rain! I saw that potential confusion as I was writing, but
didn't have all day to address it. Some of the water that we drink does
indeed just pass through us as if we were a filter, but not all. By the
time the water we drink is metabolized or passes through our body, it
bears little resemblance to what went in: It's been picking up
metabolites along the way, it's gone repeatedly in and out of cells,
tissues, organs, and membranes, and much of it isn't even the same
molecules that came in--it's H20 that came off of chemical reactions in
our bodies. So I can't see any scientific basis or mechanism for
distilled water being more efficient at removing wastes than other
relatively clean water, such as good spring or tapwater.

But the critical point for me, and the original issue in this thread, is
the large body of evidence showing that distilled water leaches
nutrients. One way that it does that is through messing up the osmotic
pressure around our cells. Water lacking minerals has a higher osmotic
pressure than distilled water. When our cells are bathed in distilled
water, minerals from inside the cells must be excreted out of the cells
to equilibrate the concentration of minerals outside the membrane. The
high osmotic pressure from distilled water forces osmotic pumping of
minerals out of the cells, especially out of critical nutrient
absorption areas like the small and large intestine, where indeed some
of the water we drink does just pass directly through. Tapwater or other
water containing minerals won't force this loss of intracellular
minerals as much.

> I'm especially interested in all this because I've been drinking only 
> rainwater

Remember that rainwater is far from distilled. I've seen several studies
that show hefty concentrations of nutrients in rainwater. One study I
recall showed that a New Hampshire forest was receiving 8 kg/Ha per year
of calcium from rainwater. So drinking rainwater is not at all like
drinking distilled.

Water is truly miraculous stuff (well, I suppose everything is, when you
think about it).

Toby