I've been using distilled water, mainly because I don't want the fluoride or chloride in tap water. I use filtered tap water for a quick blanch, then do infusions with the distilled.
Before I went to distilled water, I tried to find out the consequences, and what turned up on the Internet is not all favorable.
For one thing, distilled water has no minerals, so there's the possibility that minerals are leached out of your system if you use it too much. Maybe distilled water also extracts taste from tea leaves? To compensate for any loss of minerals, I also drink fruit juices and take a vitamin supplement with minerals. But our main source of minerals is food anyway.
Then there is the issue about taste, because distilled water not only is without minerals but is short on oxygen and electrolytes. Minerals do add something to the taste, I assume, and so does Oxygen. Oxygen does get reabsorbed into distilled water with agitation and time, but I don't know at what rate.
If you want to get the complete picture about tea water and health, I think you have to look at electrolytes, too. Tea is a diuretic, which means it actually causes loss of water in your system. At the cellular level, there is a balancing going on between water within cells and water outside cells that affects your health. This thing about electrolytes is important because, as best I can understand, it refers to certain molecules, mainly potassium, sodium, and chloride that complete an electrical connection in cell walls and nerve passages. There is also something about a person's enzymes and acidic pH balance involved here, but it's over my head.
Get in an ambulance as a patient and one of the first things they do is drip electrolyte into your vein. "Sports drinks," like Gateraid, have electrolytes in them, plus sugar. If you have a first-rate physical examination, they measure the electrolyte balance in your urine.
Basically, I just want to use organic ways of getting my electrolytes, not some over the counter additive, so I'm looking for ways to keep up my electrolytes while using distilled water for tea.
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