Science and Health Series
Distilled Water and RO Filtered Water

by Sang Whang

Water is a strong solvent; therefore, it carries many invisible substances: minerals, oxygen, nutrients, waste products, pollutants, etc. Pure water without any substance is as un-natural as a pocket of vacuum within a normal atmosphere. A pocket of vacuum will suck in any and everything around it until the pressure becomes equal to the surrounding.

Likewise, pure water will leach out any and every substance that it can dissolve from the substances that it comes into contact with, until its content is homogeneous with its surrounding or the water is saturated with substances so that it can no longer dissolve anymore substances.

Since the creation of this planet, rainwater has been washing down minerals from the mountains into the ocean. Ocean water has been saturated for a long time with specific minerals, yet rivers continue to carry down the minerals. The result is that at the bottom of the ocean there are tons of mineral deposits precipitated. If we knew how to recover the minerals from the bottom of the ocean, we would be very rich.

Distilled water and RO (reverse osmosis) filtered water contain no minerals, simulating close to pure water. This pure water should be neutral with a pH value of 7. However, it measures acid pH! The reason for this phenomenon is that pure water sucks in carbon dioxides from the atmosphere. Although it measures acid pH, there are no acid minerals in that water. If pure water is stored in plastic bottle, the water smells plastic.

For this reason, distilled water or RO filtered water should be stored in glass bottles or special plastic bottles that can block carbon dioxide penetration. Coca Cola was bottled originally in glass bottles only. Then came the plastic bottle and it lost the fizzles. Then better plastic bottles came out that didn't lose carbon dioxides; still plastic-bottled Coca Cola has to have expiration dates. Carbon dioxides penetrate through plastics, making pure water acidic.

In the1980s and 1990s, the health food industry recommended that people eat certain types of healthy food and exclude other types of unhealthy food. Initially, people noticed a marked improvement of their health. However, staying with this healthy diet for several years, people suffered from nutritional deficiency syndrome, which the health food industry concluded as a sickness caused by pollutants in the drinking water. The health food industry began to sell distillers and RO filters to protect people. To me, this is a case of arriving at an erroneous conclusion because they totally misunderstood the facts..

In the 1950s distilled water was sold in drug stores with the label "Not for drinking!" Distilled water was used to fill car batteries and steam irons. Distilled water is not healthy because it will leach out valuable alkaline minerals from our body. However, I realize that I cannot change some people's mind. I am often asked if it is OK to add AlkaLife® to distilled water. I wish people would not drink distilled water; however, if one must drink distilled water, it is better to add AlkaLife® than not to add.

The question is how many drops of AlkaLife® to add to distilled water. For a glass of ordinary drinking water, I recommend two drops and typically, the pH value increases from 7.5 to 10. However, two drops of AlkaLife® in distilled water does not bring the pH value up to an alkaline value. Sometimes, one may have to put more than 10 drops to make distilled water alkaline. This is caused by the presence of carbonic acid in "pure" water, so, how many drops should one put in? My answer is 2 drops.

In two drops of AlkaLife®, the number of hydroxyl ions (OH-) is 1 followed by 20 to 21 zeros, and they are mated with potassium and sodium. In the presence of carbonic acids (H₂O + CO₂ = H₂CO₃ = H+ + HCO₃-) the hydroxyl ions combines with H+ ions (H+ + OH- = H₂O) and potassium+ and sodium+ ions combine with HCO₃- ions and become potassium bicarbonate (KHCO3) and sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO₃) which are alkaline buffer. When CO₂ are removed from these bicarbonates by the lungs, the original KOH and NaOH in AlkaLife® are restored. When we are dealing with carbon dioxides, the pH value can be confusing. What is important is the number of OH- ions in the water that will neutralize H+ ions in the body acid. For this reason I recommend 2 drops of AlkaLife® in a glass of distilled or RO filtered water and ignore the pH value.