Distilled Water

What exactly is Distilled Water?
How is it different to plain old water?
Why do we need it? Do we, in fact, need it?

These questions and more will be looked at further in this article.

What is it?
It's literally water that's been boiled, evaporated and condensed - removing all toxins, chemicals and waste just leaving pure, clean water.  Distillation removes viruses, cysts, bacteria, heavy metals, radionuclides (whatever these are they sound scary), organics and inorganics.

Distillation is the method seen in nature - the sun heats water on the earth's surface, the water evaporates (turned into a vapour) and rises, leaving the bad stuff behind, to form clouds. You know the rest.

This is exactly the process in a water distiller - water from the faucet is heated to boiling which separates the impurities from the water, and the water then becomes vapour or steam. This is then condensed back into liquid form. Pure liquid water.
By the way the remaining impurities don't escape.

How different is it to everyday water?
After water is distilled what remains is just 100% pure, pH balanced water. Everyday or normal water even Bottle Water can't claim that.

Drinking Distilled Water?
Drinking it is fairly common, we just aren't aware of it. Many beverage makers use it to add to their drink's purity and taste.
It comes bottled in some supermarkets.
Water purification, which when it all boils down is distillation, is vital in places where water resources or water from the faucet is not suitable for drinking unless it's boiled or is chemically treated.

Water Distiller versus conventional filtration
There has been a recent tidal wave (pun intended) of household water filtration machines. Most don't actually distill but water distillers and reverse osmosis devices are rising in popularity. Distilling water however is an expensive technology and is cost-prohibitive for most consumers.
The main difference is conventional water filtration machines don't remove the over 75,000 chemical compounds found in municipal water. Now that sounds worse than it actually is. These supplies are heavily regulated to be safe for consumption.
Distillation, however, does eliminate almost all impurities.

Alternative to Distilled Water
Reverse osmosis machines offer the closest system to distillation. They are also more readily available. So are cheaper solar water distillers. Both are well worth researching further.

Why not just drink distilled water all  the time?
There is something to say for drinking municipal water. It has vital minerals that naturally occur. Just drinking distilled or even filtered water may mean you need to supplement your mineral intake.
Plain old water also has some beneficial non-naturally occurring elements, namely fluoride. All municipalities in the U.S. add fluoride ions at water treatment plants.

To distill the facts (sorry another bad pun) Distilled Water is the purest form available. And it's more available than you think.

Enjoy!