>Distilled water can flush electrolytes from your body which is not what you want.

This could be a good thing, like for people with hyperkalemia and hypernatremia. Distilled water is usually given to patients with hypernatremia.

https://aspenjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.117...

It is always best to know your body chemistry before listing to such blanket advice. (I suffer mild hyperkalemia and hypernatremia which is why I know this.)

just to clarify for the casual reader, the GP comment talked about adding salt (NaCl sodium chloride) to drinking water, and the parent comment is talking about "not for hypernatremia"

But from the root words, hypernatremia appears to be too much natrium/sodium. Presumably hyperkalemia is too much K potassium? the low sodium salt substitutes you see at the grocery are generally potassium salts.

only pointing this out because the two comments boil down to "you should add sodium to your diet" and "no, not if you have too much sodium" which somehow seems a little simpler

Do people actually drink distilled water? If you want to increase your water consumption, I believe unadulterated tap water will contain sufficient electrolytes. No need to complicate your life by supplementing with additional salt. Obviously, drinking too much tap water will deplete the electrolytes in your blood but it's probably still wise for more people to drink a little more water than they already do even if it doesn't have the perfect salt balance.

Many cities, such as Toronto where I live, still have lead pipes for drinking water. The levels are extremely low, and they have various additives in the water supply to minimize risk, but the safe level of lead consumption is zero. So yeah, I drink distilled water. It’s also handy to have distilled water around for various uses, such as steam irons.

There are many sources of electrolytes, bananas, our endless array of processed food, salt, etc. I can’t imagine anyone in North America needs to worry about their electrolytes, beyond those that do anyway due to medical issues or due to strenuous physical activity.

Our lackadaisical attitude toward pollutants in our drinking water, especially lead never ceases to amaze me. Though we shouldn’t be dumping such large amounts of a pollutant in our waterways, it is wild to see the traction fluoride gets with the paranoid.

Yes, adding to the existing comment, all water I use in the kitchen for internal consumption comes from either an RO filtered tap or a water filter pitcher, both of which remove electrolytes. The purpose of this is to avoid lead and other contaminants.

For any person consuming a healthy balanced diet, how would distilled water flush electrolytes from their system? Their food would be providing them with plenty electrolytes, such as sodium, potassium, etc. Electrolyte supplements are unnecessary for all but more intense longer endurance exercise (same for energy bars). RO (reverse osmosis) water filtration systems are best in class - far better at removing contaminants than pitcher filters - some RO models have a calcium cartridge which is purely meant to improve taste, not save anyone from electrolyte flushing.

Do RO water systems still waste the vast majority of what comes out of the tap? I've wanted to get one, but they seem a bit environmentally gnarly.

The usual cheap RO systems operate from household water pressure only. They fill a pressure tank at the output, allowing the purified water to be dispensed from a faucet. The pressure across the membrane is that input pressure minus the tank pressure. That's relatively low, so the efficiency is poor, wasting perhaps four gallons for every gallon of pure water.

You can improve the efficiency with an electric booster pump, or with a "permeate pump" that recovers energy from the exiting waste water, or by simply filling a pitcher with no pressure tank. I'd expect that even the most wasteful systems are still a small share of a typical household's total water consumption though, assuming they're used only for drinking and cooking water.

Thanks. I suppose there may also be a way to use the excess as grey water.

Use Sodium Bicarbonate or Potassium Bicarbonate instead, it helps as antiacid as well

Note that in the US, all salt can be labeled "sea salt". Other places, like Canada, mined salt can't be.