Posted by Larry Hoover on November 2, 2003, at 7:16:13
In reply to Re: Probiotics - how's it going? » Wolf Dreamer, posted by JLx on October 30, 2003, at 7:28:06
> > I feel better these days, but I'm not sure if its the month of Omega 3 and vitamin B, etc., or the selenium I started taking recently, or the elimination of certain things from my diet, or the candida killing stuff, or the distilled water keeping the oh so evil chlorine away from me.
>
> Or it could be everything working together. I keep trying to eliminate things for cost reasons, but have to admit that I feel better when I am taking the handfuls of stuff.I go with the "everything working together" idea.
> I was drinking distilled water for a long while, but am now drinking tap. (I would prefer bottled spring water but can't afford it at the moment.) One of the things that turned me off distilled water was reading the info from various sources as reported on the Mercola site, such as: http://www.mercola.com/article/water/distilled_water_2.htm
Problem is, that particular article and the links are horribly misleading about the acidity concept.
Water dissolves carbon dioxide from the air. All water does that, not just distilled. It dissolves carbon dioxide until it is in dynamic equilibrium with the atmosphere. That means that the amount being dissolved balances the amount coming out of solution. The total amount in the water is determined by the concentration in the atmosphere. In other words, you can't control this effect. All water has dissolved carbon dioxide in it, except water that has very recently been boiled. Within a couple of hours, it's reached that equilibrium again.
What makes the water acidic is the interaction between carbon dioxide and water.
2H2O + CO2 --> H2O + H2CO3 (carbonic acid) --> (H30+)(charged acidified water) + (HCO3-) (charged bicarbonate ion). Bicarbonate can then go on to lose another proton to another water molecule, but the reaction I've described in detail is the dominant acid-promoting one. Standing water has a pH of about 5.7 or 5.8.
Mercola goes on to say that this is highly acidic. Wrong! It is so slightly acidic that you can't taste the acid (your tongue has acid sensors). I don't care where you get your water from, it has the same pH, unless it has another form of acid added to it (e.g. acid rain, which is in part caused by the interaction of sulphur dioxide and water, H2O + SO2 --> H2SO3, and so on).
Distilled water is not healthy because of the lack of dissolved minerals, not because of the acid.Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:265204
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20031023/msgs/275712.html