Demineralized water is water stripped of nearly all its minerals, and drinking it as your only water can quietly affect your health by lowering how much calcium, magnesium, and other trace minerals you take in each day. It doesn't poison you, but reverse osmosis and distillation remove roughly 92-99% of minerals from water. The World Health Organization documented that low-mineral water raises urine output by almost 20% while pushing more sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium out of your body, a small, steady mineral loss on top of a diet most people are already short on. This article covers what demineralized water is, what it does inside your body, whether it's safe to drink, and exactly how to fix it.

Key takeaways:

·         Reverse osmosis and distillation strip out about 92-99% of the calcium, magnesium, and other minerals, leaving water with almost no minerals (total dissolved solids as low as 1 mg/L).

·         The WHO found low-mineral water increases urine output by nearly 20% and raises the loss of sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium from the body.

·         Cooking vegetables in demineralized water can strip up to 60% of their calcium and magnesium into the pot water.

·         Demineralized water does not chemically pull minerals out of a healthy person's bones. That popular claim is a myth.

·         NIH data show 48% of Americans already get less magnesium than they need, so the minerals water normally adds actually matter.

·         People who switch to only RO or distilled water often describe flat, "dead"-tasting water; putting the minerals back is what reviewers say brings the taste back.

What Is Demineralized Water, and How Is It Different From Distilled and RO Water?

Demineralized water is any water that's had almost all of its dissolved minerals removed, no matter which method did the removing. "Distilled," "deionized," and "reverse osmosis" are simply different ways to reach that same low-mineral result. According to the WHO/Kozisek chapter on demineralized water, the total dissolved solids in this water can drop as low as 1 mg/L, essentially pure H₂O.

Here's the plain-English version. Think of "demineralized" as the destination and distillation, deionization, and reverse osmosis as three different roads that get you there. The table below shows how each one works and what it leaves behind.

The takeaway for a drinker is simple. If your water came from an RO system, a distiller, or a deionizer, it's demineralized water — and it carries the same mineral question no matter the label.

The words people actually use: RO, distilled, and "flat"

Most people who end up worried about this never say "demineralized water." They say they drink "RO water" or "distilled," that their water tastes "flat" or "dead," or that they want to "put the minerals back." Those are all the same thing. If you filter aggressively with reverse osmosis, a distiller, or a zero-TDS pitcher, you're drinking demineralized water, and that flat taste is the mineral loss you can actually notice on your tongue.

Why Demineralized Water Has No Minerals

Demineralized water has no minerals because every purification method that makes it is designed to pull dissolved solids out, and minerals are dissolved solids. The mineral loss isn't a defect or an accident. It's the whole point of the process, done to remove contaminants that happen to travel alongside calcium and magnesium.

Each method strips minerals in its own way:

·         Distillation boils the water into steam and leaves the minerals behind in the boiling pot, then cools the clean steam back into liquid.

·         Reverse osmosis forces water through a membrane with holes so small that calcium, magnesium, and most contaminants can't pass through.

·         Deionization runs water over resin beads that grab charged mineral particles and trade them for hydrogen and hydroxide.

Here's the honest tradeoff. These methods are genuinely good at removing lead, arsenic, nitrates, and other junk you don't want. The catch is that they can't tell a "bad" particle from a "good" mineral, so the calcium and magnesium leave with the contaminants. If you want the full breakdown, our guide on why RO water has no minerals and how to fix it walks through the membrane process in detail.

Demineralized Water Health Effects: What It Actually Does to Your Body

Drinking demineralized water as your main source makes your body flush out more minerals than it would on regular water, creating a small net mineral loss over time. This isn't a scare claim; it's documented physiology. The WHO/Kozisek review measured specific, repeatable effects when people and animals drank low-mineral water.

What the research measures

Here's what the WHO found low-mineral water does inside the body:

·         Raises urine output by almost 20% on average, so you cycle through water and minerals faster.

·         Increases the loss of sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium, and magnesium from the body, tipping you toward an overall negative mineral balance.

·         Lowers potassium levels in the blood.

·         Removes a daily mineral top-off you'd otherwise get, since calcium and magnesium in water are free ions your body absorbs more easily than the bound minerals in food.

Now here's the part that makes this matter. Water is a modest mineral source, so losing it wouldn't be a big deal if your diet were flush with minerals. But NIH data show 48% of Americans get less magnesium than they need, and 39% of people age 4 and up fall short on calcium. Magnesium alone is a cofactor in more than 300 enzyme systems that support muscle, nerve, and heart function, so when your diet runs thin on minerals, the little that water provides stops being optional.

What RO-water drinkers actually report

Beyond the lab data, there's a pattern that shows up over and over in reviews of trace mineral drops, including Anderson's own customers. People who switched to reverse osmosis or distilled water as their only water describe the same thing: water that tastes flat or "dead," and never feeling quite satisfied by it no matter how much they drink. One long-time reverse osmosis reviewer put it bluntly, saying nobody talks about the fact that RO filters clean out everything bad and everything good.

This is customer-reported taste experience, not a medical finding, so treat it as a lived pattern rather than proof of cause. Still, it lines up with the WHO's documented physiology: strip the electrolytes out of your water, drink it all day, and it makes sense that some people notice the difference in taste and satisfaction.

What's striking is how consistent the reports are in their own words. People put the minerals back, and both the flat taste and that unsatisfied feeling let up. That's the felt version of what the WHO measured in a lab.

The Hidden Mineral Loss: Cooking With Demineralized Water 

Cooking food in demineralized water pulls minerals out of the food itself, a loss almost no other article mentions. Low-mineral water is "hungry." With almost nothing dissolved in it, it draws minerals out of whatever you cook, straight into the pot water you pour down the drain. This is a second mineral drain most people never see.

The WHO/Kozisek review, corroborated by the peer-reviewed NIH/PMC "Is it prudent?" analysis, measured how much boiling food in soft, low-mineral water strips away:

·         Up to 60% of calcium and magnesium leaches out of vegetables into the water.

·         About 66% of copper is lost.

·         Around 70% of manganese is lost.

·         Up to 86% of cobalt is lost.

Here's why this changes the math. You're not just missing the minerals the water didn't have; you can also lose a big share of the minerals your vegetables did have. Cooking the same food in mineral-rich water causes far smaller losses. So demineralized water quietly costs you minerals twice: once in the glass, and again in the pot.

Is Demineralized Water Safe to Drink?

Demineralized water is safe to drink for healthy adults, and it does not pull minerals out of your bones. The real concern isn't a single glass or occasional use. It's making stripped, low-mineral water your only water for the long haul without adding minerals back. That's the honest verdict the loudest voices on both sides tend to miss.

The bone-leaching myth

Let's kill the biggest myth directly. You've probably read that demineralized water "leaches minerals from your bones." In a healthy body, that chemical extraction doesn't happen.

Your kidneys and digestion tightly control mineral balance, and most of your minerals come from food, not water. Demineralized water can't reach into your skeleton and dissolve it.

But don't swing to the other extreme either. The concern that is real is a mineral-source loss, not bone leaching:

·         You miss the calcium and magnesium the water would normally supply.

·         You can lose extra minerals through the WHO-documented ~20% jump in urine output and increased electrolyte elimination.

·         You may lose more minerals from food cooked in it.

So the balanced answer is this. Demineralized water won't harm a healthy adult who drinks it now and then. The thing worth fixing is exclusive, long-term, low-mineral intake, and that's easy to fix.

"You can just get minerals from food" — the honest answer

It's worth answering the most common pushback head-on, because it's partly right. If you eat a mineral-rich diet, most of your calcium and magnesium already comes from food, and water is the smaller contributor. For a healthy person who eats well, that's a fair point, and it's worth conceding.

Where it breaks down is in the specifics. People who fast or eat low-carb lose the food source of minerals for stretches at a time. Athletes and heavy sweaters burn through electrolytes faster than a normal diet replaces them.

And the 48% of Americans below the magnesium target aren't getting enough from food to begin with. For someone drinking three liters of RO water a day, the minerals that water no longer provides aren't trivial. The skeptic is right that food matters most, and wrong that water therefore never matters.

Who Should Be Most Careful With Demineralized Water

Some people have more reason to pay attention to demineralized water than the average healthy adult. If your mineral needs are higher or your intake is already low, the minerals that stripped water leaves out matter more for you. The groups below have the strongest reason to add minerals back.

Who should pay closest attention:

·         Infants on reconstituted formula: the WHO documented more severe electrolyte disturbances when infant drinks were mixed with distilled or low-mineral water. Always follow your pediatrician's water guidance for formula.

·         Endurance athletes and heavy sweaters: you lose electrolytes through sweat, so low-mineral water gives back less of what your training burns through, which matters for muscle and nerve function.

·         Older adults focused on bone and hydration: mineral intake and absorption both tend to slip with age, and calcium and magnesium support normal bone structure and muscle function.

·         People with low magnesium intake or malabsorption: if you're already among the 48% of Americans below the magnesium target, removing water's contribution widens the gap.

If you see yourself on this list, you don't need to fear your water. You just have the clearest reason to put the minerals back.

How to Remineralize Demineralized Water

You remineralize demineralized water by adding minerals back into your demineralized water.

Adding minerals back into your water

The simplest way to remineralize is to add Anderson's Trace Mineral Complex straight to your water. Add 1 mL to a 32 oz glass or bottle, stir, and drink. That puts a full spectrum of naturally occurring ionic minerals back into your water, including magnesium, potassium, sodium, chloride, iodine, zinc, selenium, copper, manganese, chromium, molybdenum, and boron. You get the minerals without the sodium load you'd get from trying to do it with salt, and every dose is measured, so it's easy to stay consistent day to day.

How real RO-water drinkers actually dose it

People who remineralize RO water every day tend to settle into one of two habits. Neither is complicated, and the details are where most first-timers go wrong.

Per-container vs. per-glass

Some drinkers add drops to a whole container at once — a gallon jug, a two-liter pitcher, or a stainless bottle they refill through the day. Others add a few drops each time they pour a single glass. The per-container method is more consistent and easier to stick with, which is why "per gallon" is how so many people describe their routine. Whichever you pick, shake or stir after adding, because undispersed concentrate is exactly what people are tasting when they complain about bitterness.

Dosing to a TDS target

The most precise approach is dosing to a total dissolved solids (TDS) number using an inexpensive TDS meter. RO and distilled water start near 0 ppm. Some meticulous drinkers report adding around 15-20 drops of ionic minerals per gallon to bring near-zero water up into the low-hundreds ppm, then nudging it toward the WHO's 250-500 mg/L range to taste. A meter turns "did I add enough?" from a guess into a number, and it's the best single way to avoid both flat water (too little) and a bitter, salty glass (too much).

What makes remineralized water taste bad, and how to avoid it

Almost every complaint about mineral drops traces back to the same short list of mistakes. None of them are the product's fault, and all of them are easy to avoid.

Adding too many drops

The number one cause of bitter or salty water is simply overdoing it. More drops is not better. The serving size printed on the label is a nutritional supplement dose, and pouring that much into a single glass is what produces the "this tastes awful" reaction. Start light and work up.

Tasting the concentrate straight

Ionic mineral concentrate is intensely bitter on its own; it's meant to be diluted into water, never sipped from the bottle. A drop count that vanishes into a full gallon is unnoticeable, while the same concentrate straight on your tongue is not. Serve it cold, too, since an ice cube or chilled water masks the mineral flavor almost entirely.

Confusing the label dose with the remineralizing dose 

This is the subtle one. The dose on the bottle is built to supplement your daily mineral intake as a whole. The dose to simply put back what RO stripped out of your water is usually lower. If your only goal is to un-strip your water rather than fully supplement, you likely need fewer drops than the label suggests, which conveniently solves the taste problem at the same time.

Where Anderson Health Solutions fits

This is where Anderson Health Solutions fits. Anderson's Trace Mineral Complex delivers a full spectrum of ionic minerals, meaning they're dissolved into tiny charged particles your cells can absorb directly. A few measured drops help restore the calcium, magnesium, and trace elements RO removes. For a targeted magnesium boost, Anderson's Sea M.D. adds low-sodium ionic magnesium to help you hit the WHO range without the salt problem. Both draw on Anderson's 50+ years of Great Salt Lake mineral expertise, are third-party tested for purity, and come in glass rather than plastic, which matters to the RO drinkers who filtered their water to avoid contaminants in the first place.

Who should consider Anderson's Trace Mineral Complex:

·         Anyone drinking RO or distilled water as their main daily water.

·         Athletes and heavy sweaters who want steady calcium and magnesium back in their water.

·         Older adults supporting normal bone structure and hydration.

·         People already low on magnesium who want a low-sodium way to close the gap.

·         Families with kids drinking mostly RO or filtered water, who want everyday minerals back in what the whole household drinks.

FAQ

Is demineralized water safe to drink?

Yes, demineralized water is safe for healthy adults to drink. The real concern isn't occasional use. It's relying on low-mineral water as your only source long-term without adding calcium and magnesium back, which the WHO links to increased mineral loss.

Is demineralized water bad for you?

Demineralized water isn't bad for a healthy adult in normal amounts. It's simply missing minerals your body can use, and it can increase how much you flush out. The fix is adding minerals back, not fearing the water.

Does demineralized water leach minerals from your body?

Not in the way people mean. Demineralized water does not chemically pull minerals out of a healthy person's bones or tissues. It does increase urinary mineral loss and removes water's normal mineral contribution, which is a source loss, not bone leaching.

What is the difference between demineralized, distilled, and reverse osmosis water?

Demineralized is the umbrella term for water with nearly all minerals removed. Distilled water is boiled and re-condensed. Reverse osmosis water is pushed through a fine membrane. Distilled and RO water are both types of demineralized water.

Does demineralized water hydrate you?

Yes, demineralized water hydrates you because it's still water. But it lacks the electrolytes that help your body hold onto fluid, so mineral-containing water is retained a bit more efficiently, which matters most for athletes and heavy sweaters.

How many drops of trace minerals should I add per gallon of RO water?

With Anderson's Trace Mineral Complex, a simple starting point is 1 mL per 32 oz, which works out to about 4 mL — roughly a teaspoon — per gallon of RO or distilled water. From there, adjust to taste or to a TDS reading in the low-hundreds ppm. Remember this remineralizing dose is usually lighter than the full supplement dose printed on the label, so start there and nudge it up only if the water still tastes flat.

Why does my remineralized water taste bitter or salty?

Almost always because too much concentrate was added, or it wasn't stirred in. Ionic minerals are potent, so a few drops per glass or 15-20 per gallon is plenty. Shake or stir after adding, serve it cold, and cut the dose if it tastes strong.

Can you drink demineralized water long term?

You can, but the WHO recommends remineralizing low-mineral water for long-term drinking. Long-term reliance on unremineralized water is the genuine concern, since it removes a daily mineral source and increases mineral loss over time.

What are the side effects of drinking demineralized water?

The WHO documented increased urine output of nearly 20%, greater loss of sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium, and lower blood potassium with low-mineral water. It also has a flat taste. These effects grow with exclusive, long-term use.

How do you remineralize demineralized water?

Add calcium and magnesium back to reach WHO ranges: magnesium 20-30 mg/L and calcium 40-80 mg/L. Ionic trace mineral drops are the most controlled, low-sodium option, since reaching those targets with plain salt takes an unhealthy amount of sodium.

The Bottom Line on Demineralized Water Health

The honest verdict on your demineralized water health question is this: the water itself isn't the danger. The missed and lost minerals are, and both are controllable. Reverse osmosis and distillation do a real service by removing contaminants, but they can't tell minerals from junk, so calcium and magnesium leave too. The WHO's own answer isn't to fear your water, it's to put the minerals back, as a final step, not a warning label.

When you're ready to close that gap, Anderson Trace Mineral Complex and Andeson Sea M.D. offer a clean, low-sodium way to restore the ionic minerals RO removes. Both draw on 50+ years of Great Salt Lake mineral expertise and come with a Feel the Difference or 100% Money Back Guarantee.