[alternativehealth] A Minerial Fact! Something th
Here is a very interesting fact of life to share with everyone
on the list.
Minerals
Nobel Prize winner Dr. Linus Pauling one said that "one could trace
every sickness, every disease and every ailament to mineral deficiency."
While
Dr. Pauling’s rather profound statement can be traced to
the 1960’s, his bold comments were preceded decades earlier by the
words of yet another Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Alexis Carrel.
In 1912 Dr. Carrel wrote,"…minerals from the soil control
the metabalism of cells in plants, in animals, and in man…diseases
are created cheifly by destroying the harmony seiging among mineral
substances present in infinitestimal amounts in air, water, and food,
but most importantly in the soil."
The simple facts are that cells cannot function without enzymes and
many exzymes cannot function without minerals. It is for that reason
that minerals are often called the metabolic spark plug of life.
While our bodies can synthesize some vitamins, no living thing,
plant or animal, is able to manufacture or create minerals. Minerals,
however, are able to bond with other molecules in animal and plants,
giving them different properties without actually changing the
chemical structure of the minerals themselves.
Nature has delveloped a beautiful ecological system for mineral
consumption. Soil provides minerals for plant development and
function. Plants serve as food for animals, which assimilate them,
absorbing their many nutrients. Unfortunely, errosion and farming
methods have made mineral-rich soil a less-common commodity.
The results may not only be mineral-deficent people. This
deficiency is futher componded by the way food is processed, which
can also lead to mineral supplementation a vital part of
many people’s health regime.
Efficient supplemantation is not as simple as it might seem.
Minerals typically are not water soluble by themselves and in this
state are known as "elemental" minerals.
But when elemental minerals are bonded to an organic substance
such as citric acid they become water soluble and in turn "dissolved
ionic minerals" is often used. Since the size of these dissolved
bonded minerals (also refered to as minerial citrate)
molecules is quite small, they are refered to as true solutions and
not colloids.
In the human body, minerals interact with vitamins, enzymes and
many other substances in our metabolism. Today researchers are
awaking to the importance of minerals in total health. Some consider
minerals as part of the foundation of our biochemical life.
While humans can tolerate a deficiency of vitamins for a while,
deficiencies in the level of certain minerals can adversely affect
health. Many vitamins connot function without mineral present.
When you consider that as many as 20 minerals have been reconginzed as
necessary for optimal human health, you can begain to appreciate
the need to eat a variety of foods and supplements for your body to
stay fully functional.
Minerals make up just four percent of body weight, yet are
indispensable for many functions of the body. Minerals as nutritional
elements have been divided into two categories based on the amount
needed by the body. Those that are required in relatively
small amounts are classified as microminerals, or trace minerals.
Discovery of the requirement and role for minerals has advanced in
recent years and continues to expand.
We are all aware of the "big" or "micro" mineral major essential
minerals like calsium, phosphous, sodium, potassium and magnesium.
We need them in large quantities to maintain a properly functioning
body.
Less well known is the body’s need for trace minerals, so called
because the amount needed to maintain health are called
"essential" trace minerals or elements.
These trace minerals-also known as micronutrients are like needles in
a haystack. So small is the amount of these micronutrients in the human
body that to
find them or understand their function requires highly sophisticated
instruments. We know that their absence can adversely affect health,
and that some are every bit as essential as the macronutrients, only
in smaller quanties. For example, in an once of iodine, the thyroid
gland enlarges.
While the body’s requirements for trace minerals are measured in
micrograms (millionths of a gram), and those for major
minerals are mearsured in millgrams (thousandth of grams), it does
not matter weather the amount required is large or small.
The fact remains that a signifcant, prolonged deficiency in ethier
catagory can adversely affect health.
The minute amounts of trace minerals needed means that their
importance eleuded detection until recently. As recently as 1928
just a few trace minerals were reconized to be essential: iron,
which was found to be needed for healthy blood; iodine, shown to
support thyroid health.
In years that followed, additional minerals were found to have roles
as componets of body tissue and fluids, as cofactors for
serveral important enzymes and to participate in blood formation,
harmone and vitamins formation, immunity, muscle function,
nerve signal transmission, and energy production. And recently,
sulfur has been found to have a unique and vastly important role
in tissue structure.
Most trace elements are needed for growth, body maintenance
and repair. Trace minerals are responsible for triggering or
helping to activate enzyme systems in the body. This means each trace
mineral usually helps in more than one system: zinc, for
example, has been identified in serveral systems.
Maintaining good health and preventing disease through adequate
mineral intake should be a natrual result of eating the proper
foods. Given today’s lifestyles, many people do not eat a proper diet.
And, up until the industrial expansion of the 19th century,
the cycle of minerals was mainly undistrubed, as vegetable, meat,
fish and dairy foods remained reliable source of most
minerals.
Today, however, intensive farming, deforrestation, and the refined
and highly processed foods we eat have had the cumulative effect
of depleting some of the natural availabilty of dietary minerals.
Some soils are mineral-poor because of the vargaries of nature,
the chemicalization of farming and fertilzation, and other
reasons. We do not get trace minerals in food, but it still may be
necessary to supplement our diets. The reason is inconsistency
and poor eating habits. It is impossible to be sure how much of any
trace mineral is in a specific type of food because the quantity
depends on local soil conditions, weather, exposure, season
of the year and so on.
A varied diet is necessary to increase the chances of getting enough
trace elements. For example, we need to prevent pernicious anemia.
B12 is found in meat. Mineral are known for their role in catalysts
speeding up chemical reaction in the body. As catalysts, minerals
reduce the energy required for formation or breakdown of substances,
so that processes such as digestion and healing occure more quickly
and efficiently. Trace minerals serve a particular purpose; they act
as catalysts for enzyme systems of other substance necessary for
life and well being.
Thank You for your attention!
John B