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Comment by ivanhoe | Hacker News Reader

Do you remineralize that water before drinking?

Besides flavor, does it matter? If it's not for the flavor you can eat like three almonds to make up for the loss of minerals.

It's very bad for your teeth.

Wouldn't it then suffice to brush your teeth? Am I missing something?

It leeches minerals out of your teeth. Nothing to do with leaving a coating behind.

It will sap minerals from bones too, prompting osteoporosis. We need the minerals in water:

http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/nutrientschap...

WHO seem to think it matters.

http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/nutrientschap...

Thank you, that link is very clear and informative.

Water entering your body with a trace mineral deficit will dilute the mineral content of your body, and you'll excrete these minerals every day in your urine.

One day or one week doing this is no big deal, but if it's your main water source and you do it all the time, you will start demineralizing your body and you'll be short of electrolytes which is known as hyponatremia.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyponatremia

It can also cause bone density issues during child development.

People tend to get a lot of sodium from their diets making the sodium content in their water a non issue. The same is generally true of most other minerals, unless your diet is horrid the water you drink is not going to make a meaningful difference.

There seems to be a difference between minerals already dissolved in water, and taking dry minerals straight.

Part of this may simply be the combination of other minerals and foreign mater in the water that somehow helps the body absorb correctly.

Just like eating whole vegetables vs eating isolated plant supplement extracts.

Our house came with a ridiculous reverse osmosis filter on the kitchen sink, and the included TDS meter showed < 5 ppm. It seemed great at first, but we grew concerned about the potential for mineral deficit for our kids, so I disconnected it. But, we could find no definitive source of info on this topic.

It's hard to take the water fanatics seriously: the manual talks about how the filter "reprograms" the water so that "the water is imprinted with the far-infrared frequencies." And: "the water molecules are shaken by the special field in a way that, for a short time, the clusters and the hydrogen bridges are broken up", and "the water is carried forward in an s-pattern movement, identical to that of water in nature".

Then again, I'm the guy who disconnected it out of possibly baseless fear of demineralization, so I'm not in a position to throw stones.

I've been drinking non-remineralized RO water almost exclusively since literally conception and I'm just fine. My daughter has done the same and she is fine.

Water is potentially a source of minerals but a varied diet works just as well. The situation may be different for people in developing countries with very limited diets but in rich nations with access to year-round fruits, etc it's not a problem.

you'll be short of electrolytes which is known as hyponatremia

The endurance scene is full of people banging on about hyponatremia but I'll wager 1000 people have gotten dehydrated trying to avoid it for every 1 that was affected.

Water is not a significant source of minerals. To get your daily needs you would need to drink around a bathtub full of water daily.

Yes, with his bone structure.

No I do not. The amount of minerals in water is tiny compared to food.

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