The Importance
of Minerals to Health
by David E. Marsh
Before
biological life was to emerge, to swim in the nurturing nutritious primordial
broth, minerals had been around for a long, long time, having been born in the
thermo-nuclear furnace of a star. In that sense, our bodies are made from particles
of stardust. Apart from (perhaps) our DNA, they are the only part of our physical
presence we can be sure of leaving behind: a few pounds of minerals and trace
elements (Trace elements are also minerals but present only in tiny particles
and tiny amounts in our soil, water and food – sometimes only a fraction
of a part per million).
At a time when we have just begun to
get our minds around the 43 or so "essential nutrients," we are now informed there
may be some 40 more—many of which, unless we were familiar with the list
of the so-called "periodic elements," we barely knew existed.
The
story of the trace element selenium (Se) illustrates the still unfolding mystery
of the significance of minerals. Before 1957 selenium was not considered important
in the diet. But now we know it’s essential. When genes replicate they are
always producing incorrect copies of DNA. However, we have a "DNA correction unit"
that destroys inaccurately replicated DNA.
This process involves
a certain enzyme reaction that requires selenium in order to function. If there’s
not enough selenium available, the unit shuts down and allows faulty DNA to be
released into the system. Selenium deficiency is now linked with cancer (as are
deficiencies in vitamins A, C, E, essential fatty acids, zinc and other minerals).
Many soils in different parts of the world are deficient in selenium.
There
are said to be over 7,000 enzymatic processes involved in body metabolism, many
of them requiring minerals and trace elements.
This article
is about why minerals are essential, where they are found and how they find their
way into our bloodstream. In England and Wales today, statistically 8 out of 10
of us can expect to die of either heart disease or cancer, it is perhaps as good
a time as any to consider the subject in some of its colorful detail.
When
life first began on Earth, the soils were rich in minerals. Now after
thousands of years of weathering, farming, cropping and grazing, most of the minerals
have been removed and have washed back to the oceans.
Two hundred
years of industrial food refining has made the problem worse. What comparatively
few minerals have survived the above processes are often removed from the plate,
not least through our practice of chopping and boiling food and discarding the
water.
Three of the great nutritional pioneers of this century,
Lady Eve Balfour, founder of the British Soil Association; the American dentist
and researcher Weston Price1 and British medical research doctor Sir Robert McCarrison
2,3 all spoke at length about the importance of minerals in soils and the food
chain.
Today, the rapidly growing organic movement is happily
beginning to get the attention it deserves. With roughly 7,000 industrial chemicals
in regular use, the demand for unpolluted food and drink cannot be met. Less often
mentioned by writers on organic produce is that it often contains more nutrients:
vitamins, minerals and trace elements – without genetic modification.
Well
organically-manured soil provides the minerals and trace elements that plants
can take up and use (they cannot make their own), rendering them stronger to fight
disease. The ensuing food from such crops will, as McCarrison stated 60 years
ago, be a more complete food for the humans and animals that eat it.
Livestock
breeders understand cribbing, a disease that causes animals to chew the wooden
doors or hayracks of their stalls. Pregnant ewes will lick clay, as human mums
are sometimes known to eat coal, or children may lick paintwork. All these types
of unusual behavior are caused by a (subconscious) craving for the minerals that
wood, coal, clay and paint contain.
Farmers frequently put mineral salt licks in the fields for their animals: minerals
also get added to their feed. Animals are therefore a good source of minerals
(animal feed has often a better mineral spectrum than baby food).
Vegetarians
have to be more careful in food choice in this regard, or they will suffer from
anemia caused by iron deficiency, or any number of different mineral and trace
mineral deficiencies.
Human mineral availability is being questioned
following recent discoveries of deficiencies connected with cancer, certain types
of heart disorder and cystic fibrosis. Deficiencies are seen most often in bone
problems such as arthritis and osteoporosis.
Examples can be
seen in older people losing several inches of height as calcium is leached out
of the bones; either: (i) through not getting enough calcium in the diet; (ii)
ingesting it in unassimilable forms; (iii) not having the other minerals (including
magnesium, selenium, boron, actinium) and vitamins (e.g. vitamin D) necessary
for its healthy uptake and metabolism; (iv) adverse drug effects; or (v) a diet
too high in processed salt, fiber or protein.
A current leader
in the mineral field, possibly the most vociferous, and certainly the most academically
stimulating, is a highly qualified veterinary surgeon of 30 years practice, who
re-qualified as a doctor of naturopathic medicine, which he practiced for 10 years.
Dr. Joel Wallach’s veterinary work included the discovery of selenium deficiency
heralding the onset of cystic fibrosis in animals. He went on to propose a model
for the onset of cystic fibrosis in humans. It was for this work he was nominated
for the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1991.4 Wallach is a latter day Gayelord Hauser,
having the additional benefit of decades of scientific training and experience
in agriculture, veterinary and human medicine.
Wallach is now
a nutritional consultant, lecturing worldwide, addressing some 300 audiences annually,
in addition to having his own weekly radio program in Palm Springs, California.
His scientific papers, books and collaborations with his Chinese surgeon wife
Ma Lan 5 will put most learned commentators at ease. His somewhat combative approach
may not suit everyone, but he can be seen as coming directly from the stables
of Balfour, McCarrison and Weston Price.
Plant-borne, or colloidal
minerals (colloidal refers to size—with a diameter of less than 0.0002 cm)
are small enough to be absorbed into our digestive system. Minerals are often
present in food in larger particles, particularly in pill type supplements, but
many of these cannot be absorbed.
Current debate centers on:
how many of the 78 known minerals are essential to human health and maintenance
(60 have been found in human blood and are known to be needed in the diet on a
regular basis); what is the best way to get them on a regular basis, and in what
form.
What is essential?
A
hundred years ago the body was believed to consist of 14 elements, 10 of them
minerals: Phosphorus, sulphur, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, chloride,
fluorine, silicon and iron.
By 1950 copper, manganese, zinc
and cobalt were found to be essential, followed shortly by molybdenum, then selenium
(1957). 1975 saw the inclusion of fluorine and silicon (after they had been deleted
from earlier lists); boron followed a few years later.
In 1962
new guidelines were established re-defining "essentiality." These placed elements
into the following four categories:
(i) Main (or constituent);
(ii)
Integrating (essential);
(iii) Facultative (partly essential or beneficial);
(iv) Indifferent (or negative).
Under this new classification
system, previously unresearched elements are now being examined. This has already
resulted in the discovery that depletion of trace elements can occur both in embryonic
development and post-natal periods. Deficiencies of trace elements in sucklers
were discovered in animals being suckled by mothers with trace element deficiencies.
Human milk contains 60 trace elements including aluminum, bromine, vanadium and
nickel, which were previously considered unimportant.
So the
list grows. Professor GN Schrauzer6 admits that "since the number of essential
or beneficial trace elements may be much larger than is presently assumed, the
claim that we need 90 nutrients for health can be rationalized."
Where
do you find them all?
There are many different ways in which
minerals and trace elements can be obtained. Traditional fish and seaweed eating
cultures such as the Japanese would get their supplies from their diet. Mountain
dwellers obtain their minerals from water and food. Organic gardeners obtain theirs
through using good organic manure such as seaweed manure, leaf mould, ground volcanic
rock, etc.
Mineral baths and spas, with highly
mineralized water, were once widely used as mineral sources in Europe. How many
cures at Lourdes may have stemmed not just from faith alone, but by the mineralized
water drunk by pilgrims there, containing micro-nutrients their bodies may have
been starved of for decades?
Many people today rely on supplements,
in pills, powders or liquids. Sources include ready-made drinks, as in organic
vegetable and fruit juice. Seaweeds; algaes such as chlorella and spirulina, and
rigorously tested aphanizomenon flos aquae are also good sources of many trace
elements.
Vitamin and mineral supplements have now become a
big industry (upon which the pharmaceutical giants have their sights). Yet speculation
continues concerning the bioavailabilty and absorption of some of the varied preparations
now on the market. In a recent article Prof. GN Schrauzer 7 explains how "bioavailability
has been defined as ‘the proportion of the nutrient in food that can be
absorbed for use and storage; absorption as the physiological processes which
facilitates transport of nutrients from the intestinal lumen to the body fluids
and tissues.’"8
Schrauzer continues: "Since bioavailability
is a prerequisite of absorption, solid supplements must be soluble in the stomach
fluid. Most supplements are formulated to meet this requirement, but along with
their increasing complexity, this is difficult to achieve.
"In
liquid supplements, vitamins and minerals are already dissolved and thus immediately
bioavailable. The liquid supplements usually are also acidic; specifically, they
are formulated to contain citric acid, ascorbic acid and other substances which
increase bioavailabilty of minerals, i.e. carbohydrates (glucose, lactose), amino
acids (arginine, lysine, etc) vegetable gum, peptides; emulsifying agents.
Solid
vitamin-mineral preparations instead contain inert excipients and are usually
buffered so as not to cause gastric discomfort on ingestion, although this may
reduce mineral bioavailabilty."
Schrauzer goes on to describe
how "active transport systems have evolved to ensure absorption of minerals and
vitamins; some require specific carrier proteins and co-factors."9 " Carrier proteins,"
he explains, "are often highly specific; but in the case of metals, the same carrier
can bind several different metals with similar ionic radii and charges" (when
a molecule or atom becomes electrically charged, it is known as an ion).
He
describes how "absorption occurs mainly by diffusion and is a non-energy-dependent
process; the driving force is the concentration difference of the ion between
the two sides of the membrane."9
The omnipresence of e-smog
This may interest researchers of biomagnetic medicine, whose
attention has been focused on treatments for cancer, in association with nutritional
medicine. It is easy to forget that electricity has been used for less than a
century.
As all nutrients are transported within the
body as ions, on electrical circuits, our domestic and work-place electromagnetic
environments (EME) could be significant. For EME may be a co-factor, more deeply
involved in our contemporary plague of cancers than is realized. Rates of esophagus,
colon and rectal cancer are currently increasing.
The
widespread use of electricity affects our living environment in so many
ways today that we ignore this at our peril. Ring-wiring in houses, electrical
gadgets such as televisions, computers, microwave ovens, electric blankets and
mobile telephones, to take but a few examples, all affect our immediate electromagnetic
environment and possibly the ionic charges of our cells.
In
the late 18th century, the Societé Royale de Medicine in Paris oversaw
scrupulous research into medical aspects of magnetism. This was the society that
condemned Mesmer’s concept of animal magnetism (and rejected him as a member).
They concluded in 1777 after three years’ research that "the magnet will
one day play as important a role in medicine as it does in physics." Two hundred
and twenty odd years later it looks increasingly as if the wheel will turn full
circle.11
David Marsh is an independent researcher and author.
He is co-author of Nutrition & Evolution (Keats; 1995) and contributor to
The International Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine; Positive
Health; Healthy Eating; The McCarrison Society; Resurgence; The Ecologist, and
other journals. His new book – Magnetic and Energy Therapies: Science, or
Science Fiction – is now available, £8.99 + £1.00 S&H payable
to A & E Publications, 15 Argyll Mansions, London W14 8QG. UK. or email: mail@davidmarsh.org.uk,
Website: www.davidmarsh.org.uk
(References provided upon request)
End note: We were just recently provided a classic example
of how vital and beneficial minerals are to health and well being: About a year
ago a close family member in his mid-50s had the soil on his property analyzed
by a company that then provides the nutrients lacking in the soil sample.
Just
this spring, he mixed the minerals in a wheelbarrow and began broadcasting them
by hand. A few hours later, his whole body was tingling and energized and a few
hours later he experienced an episode of diahrrea that felt purging in a good
way.
A few days before he had done some rough horseback riding
that had caused him to experience some rather severe lower back pain that was
not going away. On a hunch, he took a couple pounds of the mineral mixture and
dissolved them in a bathtub full of water. After soaking in the mineral-laden
water for a time, he got out and went to bed. As he laid there, his lower back
began throbbing with a warm intensity and then the pain he had been suffering
for days just left his body.
From the Idaho Observer: The Idaho Observer
P.O. Box 457 Spirit Lake, Idaho 83869 Phone: 208-255-2307 Email: observer@coldreams.com
Web: http://idaho-observer.com http://proliberty.com/observer/
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