The Importance Of Minerals
"You can trace every sickness, every disease, every ailment to a mineral deficiency". Dr Linus Pauling. Winner of two Nobel Prizes.
Why do we need minerals?
Minerals are the essential building blocks of life. They are required for the nervous system, proper composition of bodily fluids, and the formation of blood, bones and muscle tone. With vitamins and trace elements they assist the body in energy production, growth and healing. The chemical balance of the body is dependant on the levels of specific minerals in the body, and also the ratio and proportion of one mineral to another.
Where do minerals come from?
Plants absorb minerals from the soil, and by eating plants or animals that have eaten plants, our body takes in minerals. Plants cannot create minerals, they can only take take them from mineral rich soil.
Does our soil and therefore food contain sufficient minerals?
Methods of agriculture have stripped the soil of most minerals, especially the recent use of chemical ferterlisers, pesticides etc. Our body requires 60 minerals for proper functioning and only three minerals: nitrogen, phospherous and calcium are put back on to the land, without which the crop would not even grow. Our food lacks these other 57 minerals, which were purged from the soil years ago. Our farmers may be producing bumper looking crops but they are lacking in minerals and this mineral deficiency is contributing to chronic disease throughout the world.
What illnesses are mineral deficiencies linked to?
Calcium
Osteoparosis, kidney stones, arthritus, hypertension, high blood pressure, insomnia, cramps, twitches, pre-menstural tension, low back pain.
Zinc
Birth defects, infertility, slow healing of wounds, failure of the immune system, anorexia. Tin Hearing loss, baldness.
Copper
Greying hair, henia, varocise veins, thyroid problems, anemia, arthritus, ruptured discs, reduced glucose tolerance, learning difficulties.
Selenium
Heart attacks, palipitations, fatigue, muscular weakness, distrophy, cystic fibrosis, parkinsons disease, m.s., cancer.
What can be done to ensure we are getting sufficient minerals?
It is clear that most soil and food is mineral deficient. For those that wish to make sure they are getting sufficient mineral there are two options. Firstly, one can eat food from an area still rich in minerals. There are several mountainous areas in the world which have low annual rainfall, and whose inhabitants drink and irrigate their crops from glacial mineral-rich streams. These people often live over 100 years of age. Secondly, and more practically we can supplement our diet with minerals.
Mineral supplements: The bad news.
Vitamin and mineral supplents have become very popular as people have realised the need for supplementing their diet. However, many mineral supplements are in a metallic form, and literally go in one end and out the other. The body doesn’t recognise the inorganic form that the minerals are in and thus the bio-availability of minerals to the body is only 5-8%. Some minerals are in a collated form, and can be assimulated up to 40% as the body is "tricked" by the sugar coating of the tablet thinking it is getting food. However for complete absorbtion and bioavailability minerals need to be in an organic, colloidal liquid form.
Mineral supplements: The good news - Colloidal minerals and Fulvic acid.
Sugar will pass through a fine seive, but tennis balls will not. Our cells walls are like a seive, and minerals in a colloidal form have a fine molecular size allowing them to pass into the cells to be distributed throughout the body. Fulvic acid is a recently discovered naturally occuring substance which bonds minerals together allowing them to pass through the cell walls. Fulvic acid forms around the base of plants and trees and although it is destroyed by chemical fetiliserers, it is found in abundance in several areas of the world. Mineral supplements blended with fulvic acid give the highest bio-availability of essential minerals.