Why Minerals Matter
The role of vitamins and minerals in the body - the forgotten key to health.
There is a reason that when people start to eat healthier, their personality shifts. Their relationships change. Their attitude improves. Their focus, concentration, and critical thinking skills sharpen.
This is not a coincidence. The addition of minerals from a nourishing diet is to thank for the mental clarity and physical improvements in a person leading a healthy lifestyle.
Minerals are the basic substance of everything. They make up approximately 5% of the human body by weight, and are critical for every system to function by acting as catalysts for enzymes - which are the spark plugs to life.
All of the functions in our body - from our heart beating to the structure in our bones, require a range of 9,000 enzymes. When the body doesn’t have enough of them though, these functions don’t occur as efficiently as they should and imbalances occur. This translates into an inefficient metabolism, hormonal imbalances, poor quality sleep, low energy, skin problems, and fat storage in places we do not want fat.
We cannot make them on our own as they are inorganic elements that come from water and soil, so we must get them from the foods and beverages we consume.
Good health should be quite simple then, right? Consume food that contains nutrients, and then those nutrients make essential hormones which are responsible for every function in our body. Unfortunately in this day and age, this is not the case.
Mineral depletion is a fact of life. Due to acid rain, toxic fertilizer and tap water, our food supply is not what it used to be. We are consuming food-like substances more than actual food. This has led to an epidemic of vitamin and mineral deficiency in our society. Nearly everyone on the globe has copper dysfunction, iron overload, and severe magnesium deficiency, which is why most people are walking zombies running like a car with no gas in the tank.
One major cause of this is due to the fact that our soils are depleted from being sprayed with chemicals. In America, all of our wheat is sprayed with a weed-killer called glyphosate (which is why I personally prefer gluten-free options). It’s not that the wheat is particularly “bad” for us, but the glyphosate that it is sprayed with quite literally sucks minerals out of us.
Another reason we are all mostly mineral deficient is due to our consumption of processed foods. When a food is processed, techniques such as milling, baking and boiling are used which decrease minerals, vitamins and fiber. Even many of the wheat products we consume are made with white flour. In order to make white flour, the grain is milled to eliminate the germ and in the process the fiber and most of the vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients are destroyed.
Not only is our food being denatured and our soil becoming less nutrient dense, but we are becoming more stressed. Stress (in any form) increases our requirement for nutrients by increasing our mineral burn rate. And our lives are more stressful than they have ever been - whether that’s a hidden stress like a sinus infection or an obvious stress like anxiety, excessive exposure to fluorescent light, and lack of sleep. Stress also decreases thyroid function, and thyroid health and minerals go hand in hand. A poorly functioning thyroid means that your body will not use minerals as efficiently and therefore lead to a deficiency.
So where do we go from here?
Take notes from Dr. Weston Price, who studied traditional cultures who lived in perfect health and ate a robust mineral-rich diet. They had no crime, police, jails or hospitals. Dr. Price began his journey as a dentist, after giving his 10 year old son a root canal treatment who passed away. Shattered by the experience, he embarked on a decade long trip to search for the populations with the healthiest teeth. This snowballed into the discovery of correlation between not only diet and teeth, but diet and longevity, health, and vitality. He knew that when we’re a developing fetus we have 32 buds that then split to 64 buds. 32 of those become our teeth, and the other 32 become our spine. Perfect teeth meant perfect spine, meant perfect health.
What blew him away is that through his discoveries, everyone ate animal protein - from ants in Africa to whale blubber in Alaska. Enormous amounts of Vitamin A and fat-soluble vitamins were 10x higher than in America. This is because animal fats activate the absorption of minerals. Additionally, the diets of healthy indigenous and non-industrialized peoples contain no refined or denatured foods such as refined sugar or corn syrup; white flour; canned foods; pasteurized, homogenized, skim or low-fat milk; refined or hydrogenated vegetable oils; protein powders; artificial vitamins or toxic additives and colorings.
The conclusion here is to eat an ancestral diet made of real food and in season.
Most of the calories we consume should be from nutrient-dense foods that provide calories along with important nutrients like vitamins, minerals, and fiber.
We want to limit the amount of “empty” calories we consume from foods that are high in additives and low in other nutrients.
I recommend centering the diet around superfoods like steak, raw milk, raw cheese, fresh fruit, coconut water, oysters and liver.
How to get more minerals:
Eat nose-to-tail meat.
Our ancestors knew this all along. They would consume the entire animal, letting nothing go to waste. Vary your proteins and add-in gelatinous rich cuts: beef, lamb, venison, rabbit, chicken, white fish, shellfish, oysters, scallops, pastured organic eggs, and raw dairy. All animal proteins are nutrient-rich with fat soluble vitamins, minerals, and B vitamins, easy to digest, and complete protein sources.
Incorporate raw dairy
Raw dairy - milk, cheese, and kefir - is a superfood that provides a number of important nutrients like bioavailable calcium. The NIH conference on lactose intolerance in 2010 concluded that withdrawal of dairy from diet to treat lactose intolerance leads to potential threats to bone health.
Cow’s milk is much more nutritious than plant milks (calcium, odd chain fatty acids, stearic acid, phytanic acid, riboflavin etc.). Raw dairy means that the milk has not been pasteurized (aka heated). Pasteurization denatures the beneficial gut bacteria and enzymes present in the dairy. If you do not have access to raw milk or dairy in your state, go to Real Milk Finder to locate the nearest local farm, or look for a grass fed, lightly pasteurized cow’s or goat’s milk.
Our demonization of dairy is greatly morphed by a poor system of dairy farming and policies to add synthetic vitamins and gut irritants into our milk. An intolerance to dairy is extremely common but it’s actually really hard to come by someone who is indeed allergic to dairy. Those who do have autoimmune issues are triggered by pasteurized, homogenized milk.
If you truly don’t tolerate animal milks due to lactose intolerance, try fermenting them into kefir or look for a good yogurt.
HYDRATE PROPERLY! Stop guzzling gallons of tap water and stick to optimal hydration. (Another post to come on this).
Drinking plain water does not provide you with the electrolytes or minerals your cells need to stay hydrated. Electrolytes are essential minerals (Sodium, Potassium, Magnesium) that contribute to fluid balance and regulation, and so play an important role in regulating hydration status by balancing fluids inside and outside your cells.
Choose structured water or add minerals like salt and magnesium bicarbonate to it. Drink mineral rich teas like nettle, coconut water, bone broth, fresh juice, raw milk, and adrenal cocktails.
Eat all the fruit - local and in season.
Nature’s candy and superfood, these miraculous bundles of life have gotten such a bad rap when all Mother Nature does is provide us with cellular nutrition. Fruit is packaged with fiber, antioxidants, and phytonutrients. There is a reason they are beautiful and bright - it is the part of the plant that wants to be eaten! Aim to eat a few cups a day.
Add borox and Epsom salts to baths.
Borox aids in the synthesis of ceruloplasmin and regulates iron. The boron helps magnesium stay in the cells. Magnesium helps the body perform hundreds of actions and helps us have energy. No energy = no magnesium. Boron also helps transfer minerals such as calcium away from the tissues (where it doesn’t belong) back into the bones where it does belong.
Eat oysters!
Oysters are one of the richest sources of nutrients on this earth, and considered the liver of the sea. They are loaded with protein, DHA, B12, zinc, vitamin A, calcium, and copper - all of which we need to thrive and survive.
Oysters give life to this earth. They are sustainable and farming them only improves ocean marine life. If you are abstaining from animal products but your health is suffering oysters may be a good option for you, as consuming them is without bloodshed and they don’t have a nervous system.
If you can’t get them raw, try them smoked. A brand that doesn’t soak them in PUFA oil is Crown Prince. I still wash the olive oil off because I’m not sure how high the quality is. But it’s still a better alternative than none!
Lastly, supplement!
Supplementation has become essential because our soils are depleted of these precious minerals, which means our food as well as our water is polluted.
The only blanket recommendation I can provide for everyone is to supplement with Magnesium. 50% of Americans do NOT get the minimum recommended daily amount (RDA) of magnesium as we burn through it at an exponential rate. It is an important co-factor in over 600 enzymes, so it is crucial that we are maintaining healthy levels of it in our bodies.
Shilajit is also a golden savior. It forms as moisture slowly runs down the Tibetan and Himalayan mountains collecting minerals, organic acids and nutrients. It is said that these organic compounds are over 300 million years old. Shilajit is essentially a fossilized concentration of plant derived super minerals that cannot be replicated, even in a lab. It nourishes every aspect of cell function by providing energy and oxygenating cells. Shilajit provides a number of minerals, amino acids, fatty acids, and other organic compounds (humic acid, fulvic acid, and carbon- 60, among others) that play relevant roles in the enhancement of the body’s metabolism.
These are just a few of the basic guidelines I try to follow on a daily basis to support my body on a cellular level. When my mindset shifted from focusing on macronutrients to micronutrients, my health and relationship with food improved dramatically. Always, always, always - minerals first.