There's actually no hard evidence of this being deadly or dangerous, just people saying you won't get your essential minerals... but drinking water isn't a significant source of minerals. We get our minerals from food, because in food they are in compounds that make them bio-available to us, which isn't the case with water. Others say that since it has no minerals, it will damage your organs by leaching all the water-soluble minerals and compounds of them. I've even heard that one's stomach can implode and cause internal bleeding.
What? no I didn't mean any of that, those all are just urban legends.
I meant you will get water intoxication quicker due to it having less solutes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication
and it has nothing to do with "leeching minerals from cells", its water that will enter cells via osmosis, increasing the pressure of water in your brain.
I work at an infant formula and pharmaceutical nutrition plant in the chem lab, and we use DI, RO, and Milli-Q water for many things.
its GREAT to use for making things, but when you do it is no longer DI water. Do you drink it straight?
We've looked into this and it turns out no, it's not dangerous. The concentration of minerals in even tap water, or distilled/filtered bottled water, which millions of people drink daily, is so very hypotonic compared to every single cell in your digestive system that would interact with this water
1. Bottled water is not distilled water, or if it has been distilled, salts are added back in.
2. Your intestines are not at risk. It is simply a case of smaller amount needs to be consumed to become water-intoxicated.
that if RO water would have these supposed negative effects on you, then tap water would be 90-something percent as damaging as RO water supposedly is.
It is, drink enough tap water and you will drop dead. most people don't do that unless they do a "Drinking contest" or heavily excercise and drink throughout the excercise without eating anything or otherwise replenishing their electrolytes, but it is far easier to get into the water intoxication state then it is to get water poisoned. And that is perfectly doable with tap water. It is just exasperated by drinking pure water.
So if you are indeed correct about the 90% figure, then if it takes a specific person (individual amounts vary) drinking a gallon of tap water with no food to die of water intoxication, then it will take that same person 0.9 gallons of DI water. Note that if said person is merely intoxicated, he could still die from having a car accident.
Your cells won't lose all their nutrients to RO/Distilled/DI water
of course they wouldn't, the cell membrane prevents them from passing, it is water that will enter the cell. Eventually it could cause cells to lyse, but that will only occur in a laboratory, in a human body, you will die from increased pressure on the brain before any cells will actually lyse.
it only makes it easier for cells to rid themselves of waste molecules and minerals. There's no research study I'm aware of indicating that this kind of water is dangerous, just speculation on the internets. We've tried to find this evidence, because one of the ladies in the lab was absolutely convinced that drinking RO water could kill you, but to no avail.
It is really quite simple, find out the amount of solutes in DI water, find out the amount of solutes in tap water, find out how much tap water it takes for a person to die of water poisoning and you can easily calculate how much DI water it will take.
It is however quite possible that the difference between the two is insignificant; I have not actually done the math, I am making an educated guess here.
BTW, the advertising point of energy drinks for athletes like gator is that you could drink buckets of them and not die from water poisoning. because death by water intoxication is a very real issue for athletes.