Avoid Mineral Deficiency Naturally
Ain’t No Sunshine.
I am bringing up the subject of minerals today and inviting you to join me on another fascinating journey, as we explore why we need to care about our mineral intake, what happens when we don’t, and simple ways to make sure the bio electrical unit you inhabit has the correct type and amount of metals and minerals to keep your circuitry conductive, and your neurons merrily firing.
On the road to Somewhere, I have landed in Springfield Missouri. I will be here for another few months, then I’ll be traveling south. In the Autumn and winter months, in this particular region of the country there is great many days without sunshine. I mean, if you find yourself looking around a half deserted city street and wondering if you have accidentally taken up residence in a vampire colony, you might just be in Missouri. One friend of mine described this area in one word. “Gray.” I will extol the virtues, pro’s and con’s of Springfield on another post, but having come here from the unlimited sunshine of Florida, I began to feel weird, and strangely gray. I heard a few references regarding the popularity of people using vitamin D supplements, to make up for the lack of light, and I began to investigate.
Being me, and mostly vegetarian, I obviously don’t drink milk, which might be the second thing you would think of, after direct sunlight, so I started looking into sources for vitamin D, which led me to investigate the different forms of vitamin k, (which is hugely important, as it tells the calcium where to go) and ended up with a renewed respect and more current information on the mineral kingdom inside of me, it’s relationship to my vitamins, and what simply things I could do to make sure I did not join the legions of SADD camo wearing pale skins, shuffling through the isles of Home Depot and Wal Mart, looking for a happy thought. Or power tools and beer. Most likely, the latter.
Minerals: the top essentials
About 20 minerals have so far been identified as essential to human life.
Calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, sodium and chloride are required in amounts of more than 100mg a day.
The rest are known as trace minerals or elements, though some – iron, zinc, selenium, chromium, manganese, iodine and copper – are deemed more important than others, like silicon, molybdenum, and boron.
Sometimes you will see fluoride in that list. It has been a source of much controversy, and may have it’s uses, but it is most certainly not an essential mineral and I am obviously not a big fan of having it added to water sources.
So, sounds simple enough, right? You just eat an incredible variety of fruits, vegetables, Brazil nuts, ethically sourced fish, and related oils, some fermented cruciferous things, get plenty of sunshine, and maybe some pure butter, made only from consenting, grass fed pasture raised cows, lots of shitake mushrooms, and eat your Wheaties, sprinkled liberally with iodized table salt. Right?
Unfortunately, most people can’t create a perfectly balanced diet from available everyday sources. Even those of us who do care about such things, can’t be reasonably certain that any of those plants were grown in soil containing any of the required minerals at all. Soil has become increasingly depleted as it is over farmed, and supplementation has replaced the natural processes in a large percentage of the commercially available food sources. Many of the RDA’s set forth by the FDA date back as far as the 1920’s, and have never been officially questioned in any way.
“The first RDAs for protein, energy, and 8 vitamins and minerals were established in 1941 by the US National Research Council at the request of the National Defense Advisory Commission ” They were periodically updated.
A Precarious Balance
Essential minerals balance out the PH system, so blood and soft tissue do not become too acidic, or alkaline. They aid in transporting nutrients to the cells, regulate hormones, blood pressure, oxygen delivery, and the transmission of neurological signals to the brain, as well as the nervous system in general. The essential vitamins are co dependent on the essential minerals to do their jobs. The actions are inextricably related. For instance, calcium needs to be present to metabolize vitamin C, zinc for A, magnesium for B, selenium for A and D, ect. Your muscular-skeletal system is dependent on it, your brain is dependent on it.
In a perfect world, sunlight drenches the plants and oceans, the plants transform the minerals from the water and the soil into a form that is bio available to our systems, and we ingest them. The problems arise when the supplements and fortifications that are added to the food where these natural processes have been short shifted, are in the wrong form. This is how they have demonized certain minerals like copper, iodine and boron and explains how you can have heavy metal toxicity, and still be mineral deficient. We can’t eat pennies, or re bar, only plants can. We can only utilize a small percentage of minerals that may be offered in incorrect forms, the rest get stored in places they don’t belong, and may start a chain reaction of other issues that may be impossible to reverse engineer back to the root cause of the current distress. For instance, unregulated calcium, and fluorite without vitamin k or boron, will calcify your pineal gland, and other soft tissue, yet not always go to your teeth and bones, where it belongs.
T
Sidenote: Water. A huge villain in the heavy metal toxicity story is tap water. Often pipes or the sources themselves are terribly unsafe and overloaded with all manner of metals and other pathogens. If you can avoid it, don’t drink straight tap water. Most grocery stores have refill stations that offer filtered or RO water for just a few cents.
Solutions, Always A Solution
The best solution is obviously to eat a balanced diet.
Food grown as organically as possible from healthy soil, and minimally packaged. If you eat animals, choose fish and meat that live as normal an animal lifestyle as possible, which includes grazing on it’s native food sources, so the circle of life can function as nature intended. Avoid processed foods, and just because something has an impressive list of added vitamins and minerals, don’t assume they are in the correct forms to be assimilated.
There is a young Englishman featured in Food and Wine magazine, Henry Hargreaves, who drags a magnet through some cereals, and pulls out all the iron filings. Frightening! This is clearly not what we need in the way of additives. The irony, so to speak, is that people are warned away from copper, which helps with inflammation, arthritis, histamine tolerance, adrenaline regulation, and brain health, whereas excess iron causes inflammation, system stress, and reduces liver function. We do need iron, but not in the form of metal bits! That only works with plants. Copper also aids in the absorption and distribution of other minerals, including iron, so if you are low in copper, you can eat a bowl of filings, and still be mineral deficient, as well as toxic.
Other metals found in cereal include arsenic, mercury, lead and aluminum. These are NOT minerals meant to be ingested. Why are they in our food? (quote sources)
Find a reputable brand of a multi mineral liquid. There are several kinds on the market, depending on your personal needs, but most often these offer minerals in a form and amount that your body can process without unnecessary stress, build up or excess.
Sea Salt Water. This is by far the cheapest and easiest way to get a leg up on your mineral balance. Get some Himalayan pink sea salt, or any good mineral salt, mix a couple of teaspoons of it with filtered water, and take a few sips every morning. Sea salt can contain numerous trace elements. These elements exist in minute concentrations but work with other minerals to maintain optimal functions in your body. Trace minerals you may find in sea salt include phosphorus, bromine, boron, zinc, iron, manganese, copper and silicon. Your body uses some of these minerals, such as iron and zinc, to make enzymes involved in metabolism. Although phosphorus typically occurs in trace amounts in sea salt, it is actually an essential macro-mineral. Your body uses it as a structural component of bones, teeth and cell membranes, as well as for energy production.
Control the Things You Can. Obviously we live in the world we are presented with, but you can minimize the toxic metals in your life, like aluminum, lead, cambium, fluorite, and mercury, by minimizing the use of products that contain them. The most obvious being cooking utensils, coated pots and pans, cheap toys, cleaning chemicals, industrial chemicals, commercially produced cigarettes, questionable water, pre packaging on food items, pesticides, cosmetics, and the list goes on…..
Actual Metal should never be eaten in it’s elemental form. But, wearing silver, gold, copper, platinum, or titanium, can transmit trace molecules in small amounts that can be beneficial. (Why do you think Royalty wore all that gold?)
If you know for a fact that you are deficient in something particular, you might investigate colloidal minerals, which is a form that is already bio available and easily integrated into the system. This is not a blanket statement, however, and if you want some really good science, please read this article, by Dr. John Switzer.https://ein-langes-leben.de/resources-english/56-colloidal-minerals-fact-and-myth. As always, check your sources, ask for credentials, and make sure your hard earned money isn’t buying empty promises. If you are an amateur scientist and investigator like myself, there are many tutorials regarding making your own. Don’t experiment on your friends, and buzz words are just trends. The internet has become a politically skewed dumpsite, but the science is still out there.
I hope you found this article helpful, and not at all hysterical or depressing. Because no one wants to be SADD.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/precious-metals-
https://healthfree.com/celtic_sea_salt.html
youtube.com/watch?vqjYowj-pUKg
https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS860
https://www.safewaterblog.com/home/2016/12/18/top-5-heavy-metals-in-your-tap-water
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10955048
