HOME WATER DISTILLERS: Unlocking Health Benefits & Vitality

If you’d like to make the most of your health and vitality, I’d like to recommend drinking distilled water. It’s a controversial subject for some people, though facts and experience easily dispel those concerns. Let me show you why I’ve found drinking distilled water to be one of the most effective health strategies you take on.

• VIDEO#1: Why You Should Drink Distilled Water – 8 minutes
• VIDEO#2: Home Water Distiller Tech Tour – 13 minutes

Better Energy & Health

Of the half-dozen small practices in my life that give me more energy and stamina, I’ve found that drinking distilled water is one of the most effective. I’ve written about this before, and that article generated questions about home distillation systems that I’ll answer here.

What is Distilled Water?

When steam from boiling water is condensed back into liquid, the result is distilled water. It’s like pure, homemade rain. Home distillation systems are one of the best ways to make virtually pure drinking water, and there are two reasons this matters.

Drinking distilled water offers two benefits. Besides removing chemical and hormonal contaminants that are measurably present in many municipal water supplies, distilled water is also free of naturally-occurring minerals such as calcium and magnesium. But don’t we need these minerals? Yes, we do, but there are three strikes against getting them as dissolved solids in water.

First, the amount of minerals in even very hard water is insignificant compared to our daily requirements. You’d have to drink a whopping several hundred liters of hard water each day (containing 500 parts per million of dissolved calcium) to get your daily requirement of calcium in that way. Of course, no one can do that, and this is why water provides very little of the minerals we need.

And second, minerals that are present in hard water are in what’s called “non-chelated” form. This makes them more difficult for your body to use, and somewhat troublesome to deal with biologically. Eliminating waterborne minerals that end up as kidney stones and painful joint deposits is the main reason I prefer drinking distilled water. We have distilled water in abundance at our place because of the kind of automatic distiller we use.

The third reason distilled water is helpful is because it’s a much more powerful solvent than non-distilled, and that’s a good thing. One purpose of water in the body is for carrying toxins and waste products out of the body. According to my research, distilled water is at least 25% more powerful as a toxin remover than water with 300 ppm of dissolved solids.

Distilled Water Misinformation

I’ve been writing about the benefits of distilled water, and this always results in the same kind of criticism from some people: “Oh, drinking distilled water will leach minerals from your bones! Good luck with your crazy idead, buddy!” Here’s why that’s not true.

Distilled water, having virtually zero dissolved solids, is chemically unsaturated, so it’s naturally more eager to pick up ions, minerals, and toxins. When it enters your digestive system and then your bloodstream, this increased “solvent potential” offers the following benefits:

• Help dissolve waste byproducts more effectively.
• Assist in mobilizing stored toxins (e.g., in fat cells or tissues).
• Improve cellular hydration, because water with fewer dissolved ions has a lower osmotic burden, making it easier to cross cell membranes in some contexts.

The kidneys — your body’s filtration system — depend on water to flush out urea, excess salts, and toxins. Distilled water helps that process along by being a more “thirsty” solvent, explaining some of the benefits people notice when they drink it regularly.

---

Why The Health Benefits?

Since switching to distilled water about five years ago, I have improved energy and disease resistance, and from what I’ve learned this is due to:

• Improved detoxification: Especially if you were previously exposed to heavy metals, additives, or even just too many dissolved inorganic minerals from hard water.
• Reduced inflammation or joint stiffness: Anecdotally reported by some people after switching to distilled water.
• Better digestion and clarity: The gut microbiome and brain may respond positively to purer hydration.
• Kidney support: Cleaner water reduces the burden on kidneys, potentially preventing minor stone formation or sluggish function.

---

The Common Counterargument — “Leaching Minerals”

You may have read or heard claims that distilled water “leaches minerals from the body.” This is a common concern — but it’s often misunderstood.

Here’s the nuance:

• Distilled water can dissolve minerals it comes into contact with, yes.
• But the body stores and regulates its essential minerals primarily through food and homeostasis, not drinking water.
• Inorganic minerals in water (like calcium carbonate from hard water) are poorly absorbed anyway.
• If you’re consuming a balanced diet, you won’t become mineral-deficient from drinking distilled water.

So the idea of distilled water “robbing” you of nutrients isn’t well-supported if you’re otherwise healthy and well-nourished.

Options for Distillation

When I first discovered that drinking distilled water might have health benefits, I didn’t rush out and buy a distiller. Instead, I bought jugs of distilled water from the grocery store and drank that for 3 months. The benefits I noticed prompted me to get a distilled.

There are two main types of home distillers in the world. Smaller units that cost $200 to $600 and sit on your countertop, much like a coffee maker. You fill it with about 3 liters of tap water, and depending on what model you choose, 4 hours later you’ll have 3 liters of distilled water sitting in a jug. Cost in electricity is less than 50 cents per batch. My daughter has a countertop distiller like this for her family of seven, and she runs it more or less constantly to keep up. It works, but it’s a fair amount of trouble filling and emptying each day. Avoiding this kind of hassle is why there’s such a thing as automatic water distillers. This is the kind I installed at my house and I’m impressed.

Click below for a detailed video tutorial on how an automatic water distiller works, and to see the kind of surprising stuff that a distiller removes.

Automatic distillers are self-contained, floor-mounted units that connect to your home water supply. They fill themselves with tap water whenever necessary, they commence boiling on their own, then they gather the steam and condense it into distilled water before accumulating this purified water into an internal stainless-steel reservoir. Automatic distillation units like this keep on filling and boiling by themselves until the reservoir is full. After that they shut OFF until you draw more water.

As I mentioned in the video above, the automatic distiller we have is an AquaNui 10G. It’s shown second from left in the image above. Everything Aquanui sells is made in the US and the 10G model produces distilled water at a rate of about one and a half liters per hour, with on-board storage for almost 40 liters. So, what’s the advantage compared with countertop distillers? Automatic distillers operate around the clock if needed, without intervention. All you do is draw water from the reservoir directly, or make use of a separate tap connected to a little dedicated pressure pump on the distiller itself. This option delivers distilled water to any sink in your house or your refrigerator. I just connected our distiller to our fridge a while back and it’s very convenient.

Besides being interesting, I love our distiller because it gives my family and I better health and more energy that we can feel. The fact that the inside of our kettle always looks brand new and scale-free is an added bonus. Of all the water distillers out there I prefer the Aquanui line. That’s what we use at our place. I’ve negotiated a 5% discount with Aquanui as a favour for all my subscribers. Click here and use the code stevemaxwell at checkout to claim the discount.