Distilled Water

Aajonus described water itself as "a distilled substance with lots of bacteria" that comes down from the sky, meaning natural rainwater is the original template for what distillation produces. The industrial distillation process attempts to recreate precipitation but produces only the H2O fraction without the bacterial load that makes rainwater biologically meaningful. In that sense, commercially or mechanically distilled water is a degraded version even of rain, because it lacks the high bacteria content Aajonus considered essential.

He explained that distilled water carries no nutrient value whatsoever. Minerals may be present in trace amounts in some heavily mineralized waters, but distilled water eliminates even those. Without ions and without nutrients bonded to the water molecules, the H2O cannot be absorbed intracellularly in any meaningful proportion. His consistent figure was that plain water, including distilled water, is only 8 to 10 percent cellularly absorbable, with the remaining 90 percent entering the system as an unbound solvent that then pulls nutrients out of the body as it passes through. Distilled water, having nothing at all bound to it, operates at the extreme end of this leaching dynamic.

The central harm Aajonus attributed to distilled water, and to all plain water, is aggressive leaching of nutrients from tissues, digestive fluids, the mucous lining of the gastrointestinal tract, and the blood. He described this process in mechanistic terms: because water is a solvent and because distilled water carries no competing ions or nutrients, it reaches into whatever it contacts and begins dissolving and dispersing it. When this happens in the intestinal tract, the consequences include thinning of the mucous membranes lining the esophagus, throat, stomach, intestines, kidneys, bladder, and urethra; dilution of hydrochloric acid; neutralization and destruction of bacteria and their byproducts, which Aajonus regarded as the actual nutrients derived from digestion; and dissolution of the nutrient bonds that carry food compounds to cells.

He noted that people who drink very large quantities of water, such as two gallons per day for weight loss, cannot put on weight because they have so thoroughly dissolved their own digestive capacity. After four or five years of this practice, he said, they can no longer digest anything and must spend considerable time rebuilding. Distilled water, as the most solvent-pure form of water, accelerates this process rather than slowing it.

He also described a dehydration paradox at the core of water consumption: the more water someone drinks, the more water they crave and the drier they become, because the solvent action strips fats and nutrients from tissues, creating a demand signal for more fluid that cannot be satisfied by drinking more of the same solvent. He noted that if you put water on the skin, it dries and cracks, while oil retains moisture, and he used this as an illustration of water's relationship to biological tissue generally.

One of the specific claims Aajonus made about distilled water concerns the assumption that distillation purifies contaminated municipal water. He addressed this directly in the context of fluoride. When water is distilled, fluoride does not stay behind in the residue. Instead, it converts to a gaseous form during the heating process, travels with the water vapor, and then re-crystallizes as the vapor condenses back into water. The fluoride never leaves the water. It transforms from one phase state to another and reconstitutes in the distillate.

He stated that someone in West Palm Beach who believed they were removing fluoride by distilling their water was not removing it at all. They were transferring it through a vapor and gaseous phase and returning it to a crystallized form in the condensed water. The same principle applies to mercury, which he also described as converting to a gaseous and then particulate form during distillation, traveling with the vapor, and returning to the water. His conclusion was that distillation does not solve the problem of fluoride or mercury contamination and cannot be relied upon as a purification strategy for these specific contaminants.

The only form of distilled water Aajonus said he would ever recommend is fresh, unpolluted rainwater with a high bacteria content. He described rainwater as naturally distilled, meaning it has gone through evaporation and condensation as part of the water cycle, but it collects bacteria as it falls through the atmosphere and as it lands, and this bacterial richness is what distinguishes it from mechanically distilled water. The bacteria make it biologically active and give it a form of nutritional context that pure distilled water lacks entirely.

He noted that fresh rainwater may cause diarrhea for a few days, which he characterized as a healthy cleansing process rather than a harm. To balance the effects of that diarrhea, he suggested any or all of the following: raw plain kefir, a little banana, no-salt-added raw cheeses, and what he called the Nut Formula from his book. Rainwater was, in this framing, the most benign form of what is otherwise a problematic substance, but even his endorsement of it was narrow and conditional on it being unpolluted and bacterially active.

He also endorsed drinking algae-rich lake water and water from ponds and streams with high biological activity, including water from reservoirs containing cattle urine and feces, which he said improved his digestion in small quantities and never made him sick. This was consistent with his position that biological richness in water is what makes it usable, and that the chemical sterility achieved by distillation and municipal treatment is the actual problem, not the presence of bacteria.

Aajonus repeatedly contrasted the absorptive efficiency of water in food versus water consumed as a beverage. Raw meat, he said, is 45 to 70 percent water, and that water is 100 percent cellularly absorbable because it is bound within the cellular matrix of the meat along with minerals, fats, proteins, and enzymes. Milk is 86 percent water, similarly bound with nutrients. Fruits are 90 to 93 percent water. Vegetable juice is approximately 96 percent water. In each case, the water reaches the cell carried by ions and nutrients that provide the electrochemical bond needed for the H2O to enter the cell and be utilized.

Distilled water has none of this. Without the ion activity that raw food provides, the water cannot form the bond needed for intracellular absorption. Only 8 to 10 percent of plain water, and this figure applies to distilled water in particular, is absorbed at the cellular level. The other 90 percent circulates through the body as a loose solvent, pulling out whatever it can before being excreted. He framed this as a form of systemic damage that accumulates over time and worsens with increased water intake.

He described the situation in terms of dehydration caused by water itself: because the body cannot absorb the water at the cellular level, the cells signal thirst even as water is being consumed in quantity. The body then retains fluid outside the cells, causing bloating and swelling, while the cells themselves remain dry and undernourished. He noted this applies even to structured water and other processed forms.

Aajonus's position on water consumption generally set a ceiling of about half a cup per day for sedentary people on the Primal Diet, and up to a cup and a half per day for athletes. His own consumption in fall and winter was described as virtually nothing, sometimes two ounces in a month, sometimes a cup total for the entire season. In summer, he said he might drink a cup a week to a cup and a half a week, never in gulps, always in sips, one tablespoon at a time.

For water that he did drink, he preferred naturally carbonated mineral water, particularly Gerolsteiner, because the carbon dioxide comes from the same well as the water and is pumped together with it rather than being synthetically added. He described naturally sparkling mineral water as having natural cleansing and dissolving properties and as increasing nitrogen in the intestines and oxygen in the blood, making it preferable to still water when some solvent activity is needed. He also noted that San Pellegrino and Perrier had changed their practices in ways he did not endorse.

He was explicit that Kangen water, reverse osmosis water, and other processed or alkaline waters are no better than any other processed water and offered no advantage over naturally mineralized water. All water leaches nutrients, he said, and processing it differently does not change its fundamental nature as a solvent.

When Aajonus needed to drink water and had no milk available, his approach was to add fats and other nutrients to the water to give the H2O something to bond with before it entered the body. He described a specific instance when he had no milk and took water from his well, which also had bacteria in it from recent rains, and blended it with coconut cream, dairy cream, honey, lemon juice, and a peeled cucumber. This reconstituted the water by providing ions and nutrients that would allow a higher proportion of the H2O to be absorbed intracellularly rather than circulating as a free solvent.

He also referenced the idea that cottage cheese blended with honey or fruit can reconstitute water, not to 100 percent but enough to shift it toward nourishing rather than dehydrating the body. This is consistent with his general instruction that gulping any fluid sends most of it directly to the kidneys for excretion, leaving the cells without the water they needed, while sipping allows the water time to bond with surrounding nutrients before reaching the kidneys.

He suggested that anyone who is very thirsty for water should recognize this as a signal of something being wrong nutritionally rather than a signal to drink more water. The craving for water specifically, he said, is almost always a sign that the person is not eating properly, not that they need more of the solvent itself.

Aajonus acknowledged that some solvent activity in the body is necessary, particularly for people who have accumulated significant toxicity from cooked food, medications, chemicals, and other industrial exposures. In that context, a very small amount of water, including water that has been purified to some degree, can help dissolve hardened or trapped toxins that fats and other foods cannot reach on their own. But he framed this as a concession to the toxicity of modern life rather than a recommendation of water as health-promoting.

His concern with distilled water in this context was that it causes more stress during detoxification than it resolves. Because it leaches nutrients so aggressively and so quickly, it can pull beneficial compounds out of the body faster than the body can manage, overwhelming the detoxification process rather than supporting it. He contrasted this with the slower, more controlled action of water delivered through raw foods, where the nutrient matrix modulates how and where the water's solvent action is directed.

He also noted that distilled water makes all problems worse in the long run, characterizing it as "the hungriest water" that begins by leaching nutrients from the digestive tract and blood, then progresses to leaching from the rest of the body. He observed that some people lose a little weight when drinking distilled water and falsely believe this is a healthy sign, when in fact the weight loss represents nutrient depletion and tissue wasting rather than productive cleansing.