Click here to see the distiller we use and highly recommend!

Since January 2018 we have been drinking distilled water, that we make ourselves at our home in the UK. We use distilled water as our drinking water in our home and when out and about in reusable water bottles.  If you’re wondering, can distilled water be drank, then yes, it can. If you want to know how to make distilled water at home then it’s really straightforward with an at-home distiller. I’ll share why we love the Megahome Water Distiller in this blog post and how simple it is to use. I’ll reveal photos of what’s left in our distiller from tap water too!

It’s really easy to make your own distilled water at home and it has a lot of health benefits.  I will share some distilled water benefits in this blog post, but first, why did we decide to make the switch to distilled water for drinking?

Read on to learn why I drink distilled water and why my family does too.

Can’t wait? Check out the water distiller we use and recommend by clicking here!

Why I decided to switch my family to distilled drinking water

Before changing to distilled water we had started buying bottled mineral water every week to use as drinking water in our household.  Our tap water sometimes had a funny smell and didn’t taste great, so this is what first sparked my curiosity about what was in our tap water.  It didn’t taste clean and the smell was really off-putting when trying to drink it!  The tap water often had a wet dog smell.  Yuck!

Once I started researching what the horrible smell could be, I stumbled across a lot of information online about all the contaminants that could be in our tap water.

I was shocked!

Contrary to popular belief tap water is not ‘clean’.

I already knew that some counties in the UK add fluoride to the water, which I disagree with due to its negative health implications, but I was assured Gloucestershire, where we lived, was not one of them.

Regardless, the water is still contaminated with a lot of chemicals to make it ‘safe’ to drink.  It also contains inorganic minerals, residues of pesticides, fertilizers and medicines, bacteria, organisms, metals and more!

Just think, all those things that get washed into the waterways, all the things we flush away or down the plughole… there are minute traces in the water, even the water that is ‘cleaned’.

Click here to see the distiller we use and highly recommend!

What does tap water contain?

Here are some of the chemicals added to UK tap water to clean it:

• Liquified chlorine
• Fluorosilicic acid
• Aluminium sulphate
• Calcium hydroxide
• Sodium silicofluoride

This cleans the water as much as possible.  Then this water travels through very old pipes, sometimes picking up traces of more substances along the way.  Here are some of the contaminants it can contain:

• Chlorine
• Fluorine compounds
• Trihalomethanes (THMs)
• Salts of:
  • arsenic
  • radium
  • aluminium
  • copper
  • lead
  • mercury
  • cadmium
  • barium
• Hormones
• Nitrates
• Pesticides

Yummy!!!

Click here to see the distiller we use and highly recommend!

Testing our tap water at home with a TDS meter

To test our tap water at home when I first became curious in all this, I purchased a TDS meter which measures the total dissolved solids in water.

A TDS meter measures using ppm which is parts per million.

Our tap water had 200ppm which is 200 dissolved substances.  1 grain is equal to around 17ppm.

How gross is this? 200 traces of dissolved substances in our clean tap water.

I’d love to be able to test further to discover exactly what all these dissolved substances are in our ‘clean’ water.

Click here to see the distiller we use and highly recommend!

Distilled water as drinking water was a no-brainer

So, after some research and a recommendation from a friend, we decided to opt for distilled water instead.

We were concerned about all the plastic waste we were creating from the bottled mineral water anyway and had been looking into a water filter.  But after some research, distilled water seemed to make even more sense than a water filter or bottled mineral water.

We purchased a Megahome water distiller and have been distilling our water for drinking at home and for cooking ever since.  It’s been eight months now and I wouldn’t look back!

And, of course, I tested our distilled water with the TDS meter and it read 2ppm.

What a difference!

I’ll share some of the reasons we chose distilled water below and I also share the story in more depth in my Megahome distiller review which is worth a read.  I wrote that blog post when we first started our distilled water journey and this post is an eight month update.

Here’s what our home water distiller looks like in our kitchen.  We’ve since shortened the lead so there’s no excess behind.

Click here to see the distiller we use and highly recommend!

The sludge left in the distiller from our ‘clean’ tap water

After distilling the water once there is a white residue in the distiller.  This is expected as we have hard water in our area and our kettle was always crusting up from all the limescale buildup.

To experiment with this we bought a new kettle when we started distilling water and after eight months of daily use, it is still good as new!  No limescale or residue in sight.  It’s amazing.

After a few uses of the distiller, the residue in the tank is disgusting!

A brown sludge.

Here are some photos of our water distiller after we have used it numerous times, here is the residue left in the boiling chamber:

When you start seeing this and realise all this dirt and contaminants are usually going straight into your body and clogging it up, then I can’t believe you’d ever want to go back to drinking normal tap water again.

Wondering how we clean our distiller when it looks like the above? Find out how we deep clean our water distiller here!

Obviously, we don’t 100% drink distilled water.  All our drinking water at home is, but when we go out for a meal we often order a drink and then this won’t be distilled.

On holidays we sometimes drink bottled mineral water and when we eat foods that already contain water or when eating out this is not distilled. However, on camping holidays or UK holidays we travel to by car, we take our water distiller with us and a 5-litre container of distilled water to get us started! I really hate the taste of other water now… even bottled water that used to taste so clean to me now often tastes horrible!

So we are not 100%, but maybe 90% at a guess as we do carry around our own bottled water and Ben my husband takes it to work too.

Do your own research into distilled water to decide if it’s right for you (and don’t believe everything you read)

As with anything health-related and when choosing what you do to your own body, which is your most valuable asset and should be taken care of, I suggest you do your own research.

If you simply Google for the benefits of distilled water or whether you should drink it then you’ll probably be scared off if you discover the article by Mercola which claims early death comes from drinking distilled water!!

Quite a shocking headline, but I tried to find statistics on the number of people who have died from drinking distilled water and I couldn’t find any.

Mercola claims that minerals are leached out of the body when distilled water is drunk regularly, but all other articles claim only inorganic minerals are leached which is a good thing.  Distilled water will not take away the organic minerals that our bodies need to thrive.

In fact, Douglas Hoover who is considered a distilled water expert and who drinks a gallon of the stuff every day and has done for 40 years even offers $10000 cash to anyone who can prove that early death comes from drinking it.  I can’t find anywhere that this has been proven and the cash claimed:

“$10,000 Cash will be paid to anyone who can prove that ‘early death’ comes from drinking distilled water.”  — Douglas Hoover, author of “Distilled Water and Health,”  Founder of Aquamedia Research Group.

Click here to see the distiller we use and highly recommend!

But surely we need the minerals from tap water?

Also, how many minerals do you think you get from water?

More from bottled mineral water of a high quality I’m sure, but from tap water?

Barely any.  Even mineral water provides only minuscule amounts so you are unlikely to become deficient because you start drinking pure water instead.

Plus most people can’t even drink the recommended 8 cups a day of water, so our bodies really aren’t counting on water consumption for our daily minerals to survive!

Our minerals will come from a diet rich in plant based foods and a healthy diet will provide all we need.

In Douglas Hoover’s book he says:

“The minerals in water are so scant that in Boston, Massachusetts, for example, in order to obtain the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA), one would have to drink:
Glasses of Tap water
(RDA) Recommended Daily Allowance:
676 (8-oz./236.5 ml)
Calcium
1,848 (8-oz./236.5 ml)
Magnesuim
848 (8-oz./236.5 ml)
Iron
168,960 (8-oz./236.5 ml)
Phosphorus”

So you can begin to see how ridiculous it is to suggest that we get a substantial amount of our mineral intake from drinking tap water!

Click here to see the distiller we use and highly recommend!

Photo by Sarah Dorweiler

What happened to me after 8 months of drinking distilled water?

It’s been eight months since we started our distilled water journey and I won’t look back.

I love the taste of the water and I’m sure we’re all drinking more water than we used to.  Our tap water at home doesn’t taste great and it gets a wet dog smell which is so off-putting if you’re trying to drink it.  The distilled water is much purer and we enjoy drinking it.

My skin is much clearer than at the start of the year and it could be because of the water. 

From everything I’ve read and watched, both sides of the argument, it just makes sense to me that this pure water is good for us.  Rain, snow, and the water in fruit and vegetables are all distilled by Mother Nature.

Of course, I am always slightly concerned it may be bad, but there are so many claims from people doing this for 40+ years who say they feel better than ever.  Reading the comments on YouTube videos and blog posts about this very topic and there are numerous people claiming they haven’t died early yet and are in perfect health.

As I follow a mostly-organic plant-based diet rich in fruit and vegetables I am confident I get enough vitamins and minerals from my food.

Benefits of drinking distilled water

Here are just some of the benefits of drinking distilled water I have researched.  You can find so much more online and it’s worth doing the research before you convert to make sure it’s right for you.

• Detoxifying – It will attract and rid your body of all the inorganic minerals and substances it doesn’t need.
• Amazing taste – Lots of sources online that are against distilled water claim it lacks taste, but we’ve found the opposite!  We think it tastes amazing.  So pure and clean and delicious when it’s still warm and freshly distilled.  Tap water now tastes pretty disgusting in comparison.
• Less harmful contaminants – Compared to drinking regular tap water your body will not be receiving any harmful contaminants that could have serious implications on your health and even cause disease
• Reducing the risk of disease – Many waterborne pathogens that cause disease will not survive water distillation.
• Perfect appliances – If your kettle, as mine did, often got super clogged up with limescale, then it won’t at all with distilled water.  Our kettle looks brand new after years of heavy use.
• May treat bladder cancer – According to this journal distilled water was as effective as chemotherapy when destroying bladder cancer cells.  That’s pretty amazing.
• It purifies water naturally – There is no need to add chemicals or questionable filter devices to cleanse the water.  It’s naturally done by boiling water into steam and condensing it back into the water.
• Less plastic waste – We were buying so many bottles of mineral water before distilling and creating a lot of plastic waste.  Having our own water distiller at home to purify our own water is cheaper and creates no plastic waste.
• No additives – Some water supplies add calcium which can be problematic for people with kidney stones.  Distilled water obviously does not have additives and returns water to its pure H2O state.  Drinking distilled water can reduce the risk of developing more kidney stones.

Ultimately, do your own research and give distilled water a try.  For us, it was a no-brainer and we love the pure, clean taste!  Once you see the leftover brown residue in the distiller I’m sure you’ll never look back.

Click here to see the distiller we use and highly recommend!

What happened to me after two years of drinking distilled water?

Just to let you know… I’m still alive after two years of drinking distilled water!

Popping back to update this article on 04.06.20.   I have been drinking distilled water for 2.5 years now and I’m still very healthy and alive!

Still love distilled water and it’s just a normal part of our day now.  We wake up and put the distiller on first thing and again halfway through the day.  It’s just a habit now.

Tap water tastes absolutely horrific now!

Oh, and our kettle still looks good as new!  There’s not a single speck of anything inside it. No limescale or build-up whatsoever.  It’s sparkling inside and out.

What happened to me after three years of drinking distilled water?

Now it’s 17.03.21 and I’ve just popped back into this blog post again to let you know we are still alive and still drinking our distilled water from our Megahome distiller 🙂

We love it and have no plans to ever stop. It’s my favourite type of water. It tastes so clean and I still remain shocked every day at the brown muck and residue left in our distiller from the tap water, which would otherwise be in our bodies.

Click here to see the distiller we use and highly recommend!

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Megahome distiller review

We continue to use our Megahome distiller and are very happy with the quality of the water and the distiller machine itself. It’s a staple on our kitchen side and runs every single day, up to three times a day, so it’s amazing it still lasts. They must be built to last as it gets so much use, yet keeps powering on!

I also love there are colour options as we have a very white and wood theme in our home, so I chose a white distiller to blend in with this, rather than only having the option of black.

We also chose a glass jug container for the water, but you can opt for plastic which is cheaper. I don’t know if it’s in my mind only, but I always feel water tastes fresher out of glass.

Click here to read my full Megahome distiller review on another website to learn even more about our decision to go distilled. 

That article was from the very beginning, January 2018 when we bought our home water distiller, so all the information and reasons we switched were very much fresh in my mind then.

Click here to see the distiller we use and highly recommend!

You may enjoy some of my other blog posts!

Don’t stop there! My blog is filled with healthy living tips from following a vegan diet, to healthy snack ideas, eco-friendly tips and natural beauty.  Here are a few suggestions for what to read next.

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Get a free Abel and Cole organic fruit + vegetable box

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Is the ‘everything in moderation’ diet a load of baloney?

Getting your 5-a-day does not make you healthy

Why I’ll never eat meat again

5 simple ways to reduce waste in the kitchen

7 ways to improve the taste of your water

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