I know of two family members who were recommended by doctors to drink pure distilled water with certain medication. they could drink normal water a few hours before or after medication but were specifically advised to drink pharmaceutical grade distilled water only with these medications.

One was to do with thyroid medication and the other was medication for some heart related condition if I remember correctly. I believe they were told chemicals in the drinking water could interfere with the effectiveness of the thyroid medication and that there was an issue with calcium levels in the normal drinking water effecting the heart medication. (something like that!)

can't remember the exact details but it was the medical recommendation by the respective consultants at the time. This was in Ireland and the people involved were able to buy the water quite easily in local pharmacists. I imagine it's probably the same in Switzerland? Good luck

and tastes disgusting.....

I didn't want to post the link - but the person in question wasn't Mr Mercola, rather Zoltan P. Rona MD MSc. - who is actually, I find, a bloke. I just read the name "Rona" and thought it was a lady.

The M in Joseph M Mercola probably stands for "Making money out of the easily gulled and frightened". The "P" for Zoltan is what he is extracting.

Thanks all! A lot of aspects of factors there about drinking distilled water.

Thanks, great idea!

Is the distilled water just in order to take some sort of medicine?

That may make some kind of sense if there's something in tap water that would inactivate the medicine. It's feasible that particularly with the very hard water sometimes found here it could bind with e.g. iodine to make in unabsorbable by the body.

Did you ask in the pharmacy? If you just need a couple of glasses a day it may not be too outrageously expensive.

Maybe the doc could even prescribe it so the insurance pays

Of course it's drinkable.

Tom

It wouldn't be of much use in irons, radiators, etc. if it had impurities, distilling it is to remove them all.

Tom

I definitely wouldn't assume that!

Even if the water is, the container is probably not food quality and could leech all sorts of crap into the water.

Personally, for mouthful a day to take some pills I'd probably drink it, but not much more.

Distilling does not remove all impurities. For radiators, irons etc. you use distilled water so that they don't calc up. But if the water source contained small amounts of ethanol, for example, normal distillation won't remove that, but it'll be fine in your iron. Even distilled water will still contain some of the minerals from the original water. Just not very many.

If distillation was the perfect purifier, then chemists etc. wouldn't use double (even triple) distilled water for when really pure water is needed. Nor would the semiconductor industry pay for expensive ultrapure water if distillation delivered the goods.

__________________
Down with racism. Long live miscegenation!

...and even the purest distilled water stored in the cleaniest container...will be distilled water anymore while and after flowing through human's mounth?

Asking a pharmacist if is there is any reason would solve this problem.

I import my distilled water directly from Scotland - it's not completely pure and does contain some natural additives, but as it's recommended to drink in small quantities only, it isn't too much of a problem.

Probably cheaper than buying the "pure" stuff from a Swiss pharmacy!

Maybe pedantic, but of course it's watered down again after maturing in the cask, and I don't think with more distilled water.

Of course if you're buying it cask strength ... please tell me where

Only if it's FOREIGN water.

Swiss water is pure to begin with, distilled it becomes ultra-pure!

Tom

Ah, uisge beatha, the water of life. Now, there's a proper distilled water! And no problem at all!

Is this going to end up in the thread on why everything costs more in Switzerland because of the superior high quality?

I'm a big fan of drinking stuff that's been distilled. But not water.

Do you mean milk? The white stuff...or both?

Distilled water kills!

Is the water that bodybuilders drink ONLY in the last days before competition to remove the last water retention from the body.

Drink it regularly and you will see how dry you get. *joke*

Without any salts and ions in it, the body tries to compensate by osmosis the low/cero content of salt taking out the whole water from the cells that are exposed to distilled water.... and lastly they start to die. We need water and salt in the cells to live!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Membrane_transport

I'm pretty sure that water isn't our only source of salt

Speaking as a scientist, drinking distilled lab water is strongly discouraged. I'd image there's reasons for it. If you think about it, drinking distilled water is going to put more strain on your kidneys, or alternatively cost you minerals in your urine. The kidneys need to continuously pump salts back into the body, so if you're drinking unbuffered water.

Here is a World Health Organization report on demineralized waters:

http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_...hap12.pdf?ua=1

A quote,

Results of experiments in human volunteers evaluated by researchers for the WHO report (3) are in agreement with those in animal experiments and suggest the basic mechanism of the effects of water low in TDS (e.g. < 100 mg/L) on water and mineral homeostasis. Low-mineral water markedly: 1.) increased diuresis (almost by 20%, on average), body water volume, and
serum sodium concentrations, 2.) decreased serum potassium concentration, and 3.) increased the elimination of sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium and magnesium ions from the body. It was thought that low-mineral water acts on osmoreceptors of the gastrointestinal tract, causing an increased flow of sodium ions into the intestinal lumen and slight reduction in osmotic pressure in the portal venous system with subsequent enhanced release of sodium into the blood as an adaptation response.

To answer the question about desalinated water, no it's not distilled and yes it has minerals added back in.