Trace mineral deficiency appears metabolically as prediabetes, cognitively related to learning
disabilities, attention disorders, emotionally, by panic attacks, anxiety, depression, and
structurally, noisy joints, arthritis, bone spurs, aneurysms.
This is the True Health Report, where critical appraisal fuels true freedom.
Hello, everyone.
Today, I'm going to introduce, really, the topic of minerals and health, and this is an
area that I have talked about intermittently before.
Many of you know that I do sell a mineral supplement, and I want to give you some perspective
about this issue and how important it is, and, of course, this goes with this month's
book, Dead Doctors Don't Lie, which I'm going to discuss a little bit.
Read some excerpts from.
Now, Dr. Wallach is not the first person that I heard about mineral deficiency from, but
he certainly has a lot of extensive information, and while I don't agree with all of his conclusions
about health and disease, I think we can learn quite a lot from his perspective.
I thought I would start off talking a little bit about that, and it relates to the causes
of disease, because I think Dr. Wallach and I agree on some basic principles that certainly
exposure to toxic substances like pharmaceuticals, for example, and processed food, as well
as environmental pollutants, contribute to a lot of disease.
Obviously, trauma can end your life early, and malnutrition being the other cause.
So we're going to focus on malnutrition, of course, in today's topic.
And what Dr. Wallach says, or what his main thesis is, if we die young, it's probably
because of poisoning or because of trauma.
But if we die at the normal expected age in the current era, that we're actually
dying of malnutrition.
And this relates to the human potential of longevity, which is often quoted to be potentially
between 120 and 150 years.
But there are examples of people living into their 150s and 60s.
So what we have here is, if you look at the highlighted portion, there's an article
in this issue, and this is from January of 1973, a scientist visits some of the world's
oldest people, search for the oldest people every day as a gift when you're over 100.
And this article talks about people from different cultures and different geographic
locations that live well beyond 100, 130s, 140s, and beyond.
And what Dr. Wallach's contention is, is that this is our actual potential in terms
of our lifespan.
And of course, this may play out to other animals like our pets, lifespans as well.
And that the reason we don't live that long is because of nutrient deficiencies.
Now, he does talk about different types of nutrients, including various vitamins.
And we do know about some of these have even entered into the mainstream.
However, from Dr. Wallach's perspective, that we should just use supplements to
turn this problem around.
And I'll explain why I don't fully agree with that.
But let's focus in a little bit on just minerals and let me address the question
of why there are no minerals in us to begin with.
Why do we have deficiencies?
So I'm going to break minerals into two groups.
Okay.
And this is what you'll also see in the scientific and health literature,
although I may use different names.
So I talk about macro minerals and micro minerals, or you could call
the micro nutrients.
And minerals, what they are is they are metallic substances.
So there are other things that we may need in our body element wise, like,
for example, sulfur or boron that are not metals, right?
Those are metalloids.
So I'm not going to be specifically discussing them.
We're really talking about just metallic elements here.
So the macro minerals are ones that you need in very large quantities
in your body, like sodium, magnesium, phosphorus, and a few others.
And then those are well studied and talked about in the medical and research
literature.
And these are things that routine blood chemistry or urine chemistry labs
will assess the level of sodium chloride, sometimes iron, which probably
is kind of halfway between being a macro and a micro nutrient and several others.
But what the medical profession and current state of science in general
with respect to nutrition is unaware of is with respect to the micro nutrients.
And these are things that we need in much smaller amounts.
In fact, there's even some discussion that some of them may be micro,
micro nutrients that we even need in smaller amounts.
And often these are referred to as trace minerals as well,
that we only need trace amounts of them.
And I'm going to, of course, discuss more detail about why we
need them, etc.
But why are we talking about deficiencies?
Why don't we just simply get them from food the way nature intended?
And the reason is because of the agricultural revolution and how modern
food industry grows and distributes the food.
So let's talk about plants, for example, because we know that plants
are said to have a lot of minerals in them.
And of course, plants need minerals to grow and have optimal health as well.
And they can extract the minerals from the soil through a variety of complex
mechanisms, but they're very good at taking them up.
Just like in our body, when we eat food, our body is very, very good
at extracting the iron out of the food.
Even if there are only small amounts, the body is very efficient.
So plants and extracting minerals out of the soil are very similar.
But what we find in modern agriculture is a couple of factors.
And this is really, I think, largely related to switching over to NPK-type
fertilizers, where they focus just on nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium
as the mineral-rich content of the soil.
And what they find is that they can grow crops with that mineral-poor
fertilizer mixture and can get a larger size and yield,
although the plants themselves are not optimally healthy, which is why
they have to use a lot of chemicals.
And if you look at my lecture, Terrain Theory in Your Backyard,
you can learn more about that.
So plants that would normally get all of these trace minerals from the soil
can still grow in soil depleted of these minerals by using these
modern petroleum-based fertilizers with certain minerals.
Now, what happened before agriculture in nature is that all these
minerals would be in the soil.
The plants that grow in that area would extract them and they would
become part of the plant.
And whatever happened to the plant, if it grew to its full potential
and then died and was reduced back to the soil, those minerals
would then be recycled into the soil.
If an animal ate that plant, that animal lived in the local area.
And so when the animal died and when it excreted waste,
those minerals then went back into the soil.
So there was this regenerative cycle where all these variety
of minerals stayed in the food chain.
And this, of course, was true for humans, too, if they were hunter-gatherers
or if they raised their own food like independent agriculture
before it was done on a larger mass scale, then the same thing
that all those minerals would end up recycled back into the soil
and into their food supply.
But what we did with the modern food production and distribution
system is that we grow food in one place and then we move it
to a totally different geographical location where the minerals
that are in that food now don't return back to that local soil.
And in just, I believe, about two seasons of farming this way
and then taking all the food to a different location,
you end up depleting those minerals from the soil.
And because of the modern agricultural practices,
they don't replete those minerals back in the soil.
They just provide the minerals that they can minimally
use to grow the plants and produce another crop.
But this unfortunately makes the food supply deficient in minerals
because they're not in the soil anymore.
They can't go into those crops, and so they're not in the food.
Now, also with the modern sewage systems and such,
even when we eat these minerals when they were still in the food,
we're not putting them back into the soil to be incorporated
in future crops like through using human ore, for example,
or making compost from human waste products.
Instead, they're going into a sewage treatment system
where they could be completely removed
from the surrounding environment,
and perhaps they're present in some of the compost
that come out of those facilities.
But those composts also have lots of toxic chemicals
that have been removed from the sewage and wastewater treatment.
So this is not really a good way
of getting the minerals back in the soil.
And now, interestingly, with respect to this,
because I mostly talked about foods that are grown like plants,
Dr. Wallach himself originally went to agricultural school
and then went to veterinary school and was a veterinarian.
And early on, he realized that when it came to animal husbandry
and raising animals for food, that it's a financial risk,
right, if the animals become sick.
So you want to do everything you can to prevent that
because that is your investment and you'll lose money,
you'll go out of business, et cetera.
So what they do is, is they add minerals to the feed.
And they've done this in a way such that it's specific.
For example, certain mineral deficiencies
may cause congenital abnormalities with the offspring.
So they give certain specific minerals to the animals
that are going to have offspring.
And they do this in a way, right,
that the animals can be as healthy as possible.
And when he observed this, he was like,
why aren't we doing this in humans?
Why aren't human doctors even aware of these issues
and the relationship between minerals and disease?
Now, it occurred to me with respect
to the current carnivore movement
and the amazing health outcomes
that many people are having on the carnivore diet
because finding out that food producers of animal,
agricultural products give these extra nutrients
in their feed to the animals, right?
So the meat is going to contain a lot more
of these minerals than the plants.
And one of the main reasons for many people's
improving health could be related to now getting
more of the minerals from a meat-based diet.
So I think this is quite interesting.
Now, Dr. Wallach, because there is a lot of debate
on which of these trace minerals are essential
versus not being essential.
And there is no consensus.
There's no definitive science whatsoever
to answer this question.
But according to Dr. Wallach,
he says there are 60 essential minerals.
And he also says that there are 900 diseases
that are known to be related to nutrient deficiencies.
And we're going to discuss a few of those.
And those deficiencies include not just trace minerals,
but also macro minerals and vitamins as well.
And of course, many of them are related
to fat soluble vitamins.
If you have been following my natural healing teaching
for a while, you'll know that I often talk
about nutritional deficiencies,
even in people like us who live
in developing countries in fat, right?
As specifically cholesterol, I would say,
but cholesterol represents saturated fat.
And also the fat soluble vitamins related to that,
A, D, E, and K, K1 and K2,
important especially for developing children.
And collagen as being the other major deficiency.
And this is of course true.
But there's a little bit more to the story with collagen
that I'm going to get to in a few minutes.
But I wanted to go and just read
a couple of brief excerpts from Dr. Wallach's book
so that you can get a better idea of the scope of this issue
and what perspective I'm coming from.
So here he talks about what he learned at veterinary school,
which I just summarized.
The most important lesson from veterinary school
was learned early on.
The reason that we put the vitamins, minerals
and trace minerals into animal feeds
was because we don't have health insurance policies
for livestock.
If we used a human type healthcare system for them,
it would be sticker shock for you
when you went to the store
to buy meat, dairy, poultry and eggs.
Hamburger would cost you $275 per pound.
Boneless skinless chicken breasts would be $450 a pound
and a dozen eggs would be $50 just to pay for the healthcare.
We learned that by significantly reducing
or totally eliminating healthcare costs for animals,
we could keep the price of animal products low enough
for the average American to afford them.
So that is of course quite revealing
and we know that the healthcare costs in our nation
are the biggest part of the GDP.
So he's not kidding when he mentions those prices
and of course they'd be even higher now.
The next excerpt talks specifically about a mineral
and I think this is interesting to note.
The mineral selenium was universally thought to be toxic
until 1957 when it was found to be an essential nutrient
in trace amounts in laboratory animals and livestock.
So that's quite interesting
that it was said to be purely toxic
and then all of a sudden it's required for health,
the complete opposite.
I want you to be a little bit open
that this could also be true of other metals
that we might currently think of as toxic,
that they may actually be essential as well
and there are many ways to explain this
that I'll expand upon, but let me continue.
Selenium deficiency causes infertility, miscarriages,
cystic fibrosis of the pancreas,
sudden death infant syndrome in animals,
liver cirrhosis, stiff lamb disease, white muscle disease,
muscular dystrophy, anemias, encephalo,
Malaysia, which is softening of the brain,
cardiomyopathy, heart disease, and mulberry heart disease.
In each case, selenium supplementation
prevented the disease and in many cases
reversed or cured existing diseases
which were all significant causes of animal losses
to the livestock industry.
So you could see when there's a financial incentive
to solve these health problems,
we can actually find a solution
and one that is inexpensive.
Now, Dr. Wallach goes on to talk about
how we clinically manifest these deficiencies
and he breaks it down into three phases
and I'm gonna read you a little bit
about two of these phases.
The first phase is the compensation phase
where the body changes its physiology
to adapt to a deficiency of the mineral
by reducing its physiologic function
but maintaining health, okay?
This eventually exhausts itself
and then you go into the decompensated phase
where some of the functions related to that nutrient
start to break down and it's like a transition
into overt disease state and then the clinical phase.
So let me read.
The decompensated phase of trace element deficiency
follows with the appearance of symptoms or defects.
The body can no longer make up for the shortages.
Trace mineral deficiency appears metabolically
as prediabetes, cognitively related
to learning disabilities, attention disorders,
emotionally, by panic attacks, anxiety, depression
and personality instability essentially.
Developmentally with dyslexia, cleft palate,
down syndrome and structurally noisy joints,
arthritis, bone spurs, aneurysms.
A noticeable lack of stamina and longevity result.
The clinical phase, which is the third phase
and final phase of trace mineral deficiencies
is characterized by the onset of full blown disease,
states and even death.
Cardiomyopathy, diabetes, cancer, liver cirrhosis.
Most trace mineral deficiencies
in the clinical phase though
are never diagnosed as such by the orthodox physician.
The cure however is often simply a matter
of replacing the missing trace element.
Positive clinical responses using this method
can occur in as little as 48 hours to 30 days.
Only those very few people whose deficiencies
have caused permanent biochemical, chromosomal
or gross physical damage will not return to normal health.
And this is a really significant finding
and I think that Dr. Wallach told a fascinating story
in a different part of the book
that I just want to describe
to help you better understand
how the medical establishment wants to remain
willfully ignorant of these issues.
And this was I believe at Johns Hopkins
when Dr. Wallach was young in his career
and he was doing research
and he also by the way was a pathologist.
So he could look at specimens from autopsies and such
and make very accurate diagnoses
with respect to how valid those diagnoses actually are.
He actually questioned that himself.
And one of the areas he was looking at was cystic fibrosis
which is of course said to be a genetic disease.
However, the actual evidence that it's a genetic disease
is extremely, extremely weak.
And he as a result didn't really consider this
and he was traveling around doing research
in different areas.
He did series of autopsies in nations
where they don't fit at all the genetic profile
of getting cystic fibrosis
which is said to occur essentially in white people
and he found pathology of cystic fibrosis.
So he eventually determined that it was related
to a mineral deficiency as I mentioned of selenium.
And he was able to use laboratory animals
to deplete them of selenium
and they developed cystic fibrosis.
Now this is extremely valuable in research
to have an animal model of the disease.
And he submitted specimens to the pathology department
and they agreed that the animals had cystic fibrosis.
Now at first everyone on the research team
was very excited because having an animal model
was a super important thing
so they could test different clinical interventions.
Of course, when they found out from Dr. Wallach
how the model was developed
and how it could be reversed simply by
providing a selenium supplement
they fired him the next day.
Okay, because this would invalidate all of their research
and their grant funding
and there would now be a solution
and they might be a hero
but they wouldn't be able to make any money
selling selenium.
So this is why many of these things
are really hidden from us
and we can't trust getting our information
from the mainstream medical system.
Okay, so I wanna talk now about the science of this
because it's widely recognized
and I'm not sure how long this has been the case
but at present that metals are very important
for the function of proteins in the body.
Okay, so this is from a paper
on what the field is called metalloproteomics
and this is the study of metalloproteins
and the breadth and scope of them in biological organisms
and this is essentially why we need these minerals
that many of the proteins in our body
require a metal cofactor
to make them work in their biological function
especially enzymes.
Now, many of these we or some of these
at least we already know of, right?
As I've mentioned before like hemoglobin
which is said to be the oxygen binding protein
in the blood that it requires iron.
We also know that even in plants
this is true because chlorophyll has magnesium
in it as a metal cofactor.
So it turns out that there is an unknown
but large amount of proteins in our body
that require some type of metal cofactor
to function properly
and so that's what really the field
of metalloproteomics is about
but here I'm gonna read the highlighted portion
from this paper.
Despite the intense amount of research
into cellular mechanisms,
metalloenzymes have largely been overlooked
yet the metalloproteome
which is the entirety of all metalloproteins in the body
dictates much of the reactivity within a cell.
So what he's saying here is that you can find thousands,
tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of studies
looking at cellular mechanisms
with respect to molecular biology, right?
Enzymes, chemical pathways, et cetera, et cetera.
However, almost none of them consider
that many of these proteins can't work
without having the appropriate metal cofactor.
And it goes on to say that it is estimated
that around one-third of all proteins in the human body
require a metal cofactor for functionality.
Now this one-third number is pretty much pulled out of the air
because they could quantify this with further research.
So this is a wild estimate
but it acknowledges that it is hugely significant
because one-third is a huge fraction of our total proteins.
It goes on to say metals have the ability
to interact with multiple proteins,
all with varying functions located
in every cell of the human body.
So there is the ability for one single metal
to actually have multiple roles
and iron would be a great example of that.
Now I wanna talk about one particular metalloprotein
to show you about the complexity of this issue
because we're talking about maybe 60, maybe more,
maybe a little bit less trace minerals that are required
but we can't just take each individual mineral
and look at it in isolation
because it interacts with many things.
Even if there is one metal and one protein or enzyme,
that is usually part of a pathway
of several different chemical reactions
that are all required for the function to take place.
And I'll give you an example of that in a moment.
But our first example that I'm gonna describe here
is superoxide dismutase.
Now this is a enzyme that I've mentioned before
and specifically that it requires manganese,
which is not even mentioned in this description
because it requires other minerals as well.
Now superoxide dismutase is important in our bodies
because it can scavenge superoxide free radicals
which are big mediators of toxicity
and tissue damage from various toxins in our body.
Things like, for example, seed oils
that undergo lipid peroxidation
forming these oxygen, reactive oxygen species,
they can be scavenged and rendered harmless
by superoxide dismutase.
And superoxide dismutase requires copper, okay?
So we might think that if we just give copper
that we would be okay
in terms of our superoxide dismutase functioning.
However, it's been found that superoxide dismutase
can actually do the opposite effect.
It can make more superoxides, right?
Which would definitely not be good for our health.
And this happens when there's not enough zinc.
So we can't look at copper in isolation
without also looking at zinc
because if we have enough copper but not enough zinc,
we're gonna actually have health problems
and because of not only the loss of function
of superoxide dismutase,
but that it's gonna actually start working against us.
And there may be a reason
that this actually benefits us in such a way.
But remember that we are adapted or designed
however you wanna look at it
to have these minerals as part of our makeup
for this functioning, all right?
Now on the next paper,
now this paper is actually a metalomics paper.
Now, metalomics is a related field
that just looks at the metals in the body
without taking into account what proteins
that the metals interact with.
This is a field that has some criticism.
They say, well, it doesn't make sense
to try to study the metals in isolation
but I do think it's a good starting point
because it can possibly just identify
what minerals are actually in our body
and then other researchers can look at those things
individually and in combination
to see what type of function they're associating with.
So let me just read a couple
of the highlighted portions here
so you can get an idea of some of the metals
and minerals that we're actually talking about
besides copper and zinc.
And also historically, right,
there's been a lot of confusion
about these minerals over time
and we probably still don't really know
which exactly are the right minerals.
So it says, while functions of chromium
and selenium in animals and humans
were discussed since the 1950s,
there have been no discussion of other trace elements
until 1970s such as vanadium,
now fluorine and silicon are actually not metals.
Fluorine is a halogen, silicon is a metalloid
but they're listing them here.
But nickel, arsenic is also a metalloid and tin.
Now it's interesting they say
that arsenic actually may be important in our health
whereas we think of it as a poison
and I'm gonna get to the differences
a little bit later here.
And then, so at that point,
there was a textbook that said there were 15
essential trace elements.
So you see that number is only a fourth
of Dr. Wallach's number
but there's so much uncertainty around this, right?
And here now we've included more metals
to add molybdenum, manganese, cobalt
and then copper and zinc
which I guess weren't known about earlier, okay?
And then of course, selenium iron
and they talk about iodine as well
which is also not a metal but an essential nutrient.
So molybdenum was added
and because in 1953 they found that it was a constituent
of an enzyme called xanthine oxidase.
So you can see that this research has been slow
to develop and really there is a lack of full knowledge
and agreement on these issues.
So we're gonna look at another specific example here
and this kind of highlights in part the ignorance
about the importance of these metals
because if you wanna think about collagen, right?
Which is something I talked about a lot
that there's a lot of health issues related
to collagen deficiency, for example, aneurysms, right?
Arthritis and many other conditions.
So if you wanna learn about how do I give my body
what it needs to make collagen?
You look at collagen synthesis.
So if you put this search term in,
you're gonna find tons of articles
from various health sources
and if you go to the images section,
you're gonna find tons of images that look like this.
Now, even if you put in your search term
something like the role of minerals
or the role of metals in collagen synthesis
or even if you take a specific metal
like put copper and collagen synthesis
and look up the articles and images,
you're gonna find that they're essentially the same,
that you're gonna get a lot of images
like the slide that I'm showing you.
Now, this slide outlines the steps, right?
Of collagen synthesis
and it does mention some of the needed raw materials.
Those two gold circles on the top
represent two amino acids
that if you don't have enough of
you can't make enough collagen in your body,
proline and glycine.
And certainly if you eat collagenous foods, right?
Like bone broth, which I often talk about
you're getting those amino acids
because that you're eating collagen, right?
And collagen is made largely of those
so you're getting those.
But notice that it doesn't mention
any other nutritional factors here.
Yet, there are other factors required
and I did eventually find this paper
which talks about copper being used
in the synthesis of collagen
and elastin or related protein.
Now, if we go back to that slide
you'll see there's this enzyme at the second step,
lysyl oxidase, right?
Which oxidizes the amino acid residue lysine
and it's required
and that's the enzyme that requires copper.
So Dr. Wallach approaches this from the point of view
that these health issues
like aneurysms and arthritis
are actually due to copper deficiency
but he recommends that you go to the dumpster
behind KFC and get the buckets of chicken bones
and that you bake them and grind up the bone meal
into capsules to correct the problem.
And right, which says that you're basically eating collagen.
Now that collagen is gonna have copper in it
because the ranchers that raise chickens
know that if they don't supplement them with copper
that they are basically gonna have all of those problems
with their health and they won't make good meat, right?
So this is an example where when you take
the natural food source, right?
Essentially the same material that your body is made of
if the source that you get it from is healthy, right?
Raised in a natural way especially
or in the case of animal husbandry
if it's fortified with these essential minerals for its health
then when you eat that
you're obviously getting all the constituents, right?
Including the copper.
So we can see that this is gonna be largely ignored
or not mentioned but when you take that collagen supplement
you're also getting the copper.
And that may be depending on the rest of your diet
the main thing that you're deficient in.
All right, so I wanted to just give one more example
and this study essentially looks at male hormone problems,
right?
Like people with low testosterone
and it looks at a couple of different ways
of describing testosterone that are all abbreviated
to help you understand this highlighted portion.
So TT is total testosterone,
FT is free testosterone,
SHBG is sex hormone binding globulin
which actually binds the testosterone
so the free testosterone is lower
and FAI which is the free androgen index
and that's calculated from the levels
of the hormones taken from the blood.
Now in this study they looked at a variety of minerals
and what they found is positive correlations
between some of these hormone levels
and some of the minerals.
And so we find that several minerals,
magnesium, iron, molybdenum, tungsten, zinc and calcium
all have positive correlations
with things related to having adequate testosterone.
So in other words, deficiencies of those minerals
can be related to having low testosterone
or a problem with your androgenic output.
So for example here we see zinc
which is one that's talked about a lot
because zinc deficiency is very common
whereas magnesium and iron deficiency much less so
even though I know a lot of natural healing people
talk about magnesium and of course it is important
but we have the free androgen index
is positively correlated with zinc.
So if you have adequate zinc
then you have adequate free androgens.
Okay so this tells you the importance
that in this system to have proper endocrine functioning
of the sex hormones we need multiple
of these different minerals.
It's not just as simple as
well we take a zinc supplement we're good
that may help but we also gonna need enough molybdenum.
So are you getting enough of that?
What about tungsten?
All right tungsten is one that probably
there'd be some people that wouldn't even consider it
a trace mineral.
So let me just mention a few other things
about the science.
One is that of course if you look at the food labels
right the package labeling
you might see that there might report
some minerals on there occasionally
although not always.
However when it does list minerals
there are always macrominerals.
There'd be things like magnesium, calcium
and iron, corusodium is often listed sometimes chloride
but you're never gonna see printed on there
molybdenum levels, manganese levels, copper, et cetera.
And this is because these establishments
that are supposed to guide us on nutrition
are once again willfully ignorant
of the importance of these substances for our functioning.
So I wanna talk about a couple of controversial aspects
to this and then I will tell you
what I think is a good solution.
One is related to heavy metals.
And I'm talking about things here
like cadmium, chromium, lead, arsenic, mercury.
Now when it comes to these substances
there are different forms that these minerals can be in.
As metals we know that there are ionic metals
and then there are neutral metals.
So that's one way and there are also different
oxidation states of the metals
and often they have very different physical
and chemical properties in different oxidation states
like for example, one that we're familiar with
would be steel or iron, okay.
If we ever work with a wrought iron
who had something made of that or steel
like cars for example this often happens with cars
that especially if you live in a winter climate
and there's a lot of salt exposure on the roads
or a lot of moisture and drying that the iron oxidizes
and when it oxidizes it becomes rust
and rust doesn't have the same strength
as the iron or steel that you started with
and then you get holes in the bottom of your car.
So we know that rust and the wrought iron or steel
they're the same exact element
but they're in a different oxidation state
and as such they have very different properties.
So there are different forms of these things
then there are also salts of the metals.
Metals often form salts in their ionic state, right.
So we know about sodium chloride
or potassium chloride being salts
but you can also have lead chloride or mercury sulfate
and these salts may also have different properties
biologically and physically and chemically.
So take something like aluminum
which we know in some forms like an aluminum hydroxide
which is the adjuvant used in vaccines
we know that that's toxic.
It's well studied, right.
It's actually added to it on purpose to be toxic
to induce a reaction of the body to produce antibodies
to try and neutralize it and get rid of it.
However, other forms of aluminum may actually be essential
and there is some literature to support this
and we know that there are trace amounts of aluminum
now it's a different form of aluminum
than that aluminum hydroxide which I mentioned
but are present in plants and animals.
So could it be a similar story to aluminum and selenium
that now it's generally considered to be toxic
but that could be related to the certain chemical form
of the aluminum and the amounts of exposure
and even the root of exposure.
Whereas we may in the future realize that
oh aluminum is actually essential in a certain form
in a certain amount and some of the diseases
now that we know about actually would improve
if we weren't deficient in the appropriate type
of aluminum and the same thing could be true
for lead and mercury, et cetera.
Now I'm not saying that there's evidence
to support all these things but there is some evidence
to suggest that some forms of mercury
may actually not be toxic and it may be useful
in certain ways.
So we don't really know the full answer to this of course
but we do know one thing for sure
that if these minerals are required
for our health and biology that it would be
the natural form that would be in plants and animals
and in the soil that would be the appropriate form
for our bodies, not something synthetic
that is distinct in some important way.
Now the other thing about heavy metals
which is quite interesting is that if our body is deficient
in the mineral it needs ideally for certain protein function
sometimes it can substitute other metals
that are close to it on the periodic table
and this could even include things like lead.
So in other words, during the compensatory phase
of mineral deficiency our body may substitute other metals
even ones that we normally think of as toxic
and they may actually provide us some level of function
for a period of time.
Now I'm not saying that's an ideal type of functioning
and I think once we replenish those minerals
the substituted minerals will go away.
Now there actually is some evidence of this
in the literature, it's not purely theoretical
that these enzymes can use other minerals even toxic ones.
Let me now talk a little bit more about the solution
how do you ensure that your body has adequate minerals
so that you can function well, have optimal health
and maybe even live well beyond 100 years of age
and so I always say that nature provides what we need
but I also described how we have really corrupted nature
in our food system so if we have circumstances
where we're able to produce our own food almost 100%
and we make sure through testing
and through replenishing the soil
that we have the adequate variety and amounts of minerals
that is probably the way nature intended it
but that would be like a very significant effort
and I don't expect there are too many people out there
who will do that but there will be some.
So if you wanna live a modern lifestyle
how do you handle this?
Well I would say first of all it's important
to consider the food sources in their totality
with respect to these minerals because if some foods
like plants are deficient in minerals themselves
they may try to amplify their systems
to extract the minerals from the soil
and one of the ways they do this is through chelating agents
so a chelating agent would grab the minerals out of the soil
and bring it into the plant
and if these are up-regulated
they could actually keep the minerals
from being absorbed in our body when we eat these plants.
Sometimes these chelating agents are referred
to as anti-nutrients and one relatively famous example
is from kale that if people overeat kale
it can pull iodine out of the body.
Now iodine isn't a metal right
but nevertheless this is such a well-known example
I wanted to bring it up and then people can develop
iodine deficiency and conditions like nontoxic quarter
as a result of that.
So if the food that you're eating
has a certain mineral content
you don't know if those minerals
are actually gonna get absorbed into your body necessarily
and this is information that's largely missing
from nutrition and nutritional labeling
they say how much of a nutrient is in the food
but they don't say how much of it your body will absorb
and I'll go back to aluminum to give you an example
because if you eat aluminum
your body absorbs less than 1% of it.
Now if you inject it like with a vaccine
100% of it gets into your body right
that's why the small amounts used in vaccines
are so significant compared to what we might eat
in our food if we store it in aluminum foil
or things like that.
So the same thing is true with essential minerals
that we depending on the source that we eat
we may only be able to absorb a certain amount.
Now I did mention earlier that we're very good
at extracting iron and we need a lot more iron
than we need of most of these trace minerals
but we may not have the same kind of systems
for other minerals so how bioavailable is it from the food
and is it actually in the food is very important
and I think for most people even carnivores
because they don't give 60 different minerals
to their livestock they give the most important ones
at the most important times in the life cycle
to get the outcome they want
because remember they don't want their animals
to live a long life they want them
to live a healthy short life.
So that's a little bit different than our goals
so I think it's more important for us
to get the full compliment of all these minerals.
Now we can if we get the most important ones
are the ones that we need in the biggest amounts
we definitely will have improvements in health
but will this allow us to live our full lifespan
and this is why I found started using myself
and decided ultimately to sell shilajit
because in my opinion there is not a better source
of these minerals that you can find
and there are several reasons for that one
is because it is produced naturally
through time, heat and pressure
from ancient decomposed plants
that existed and lived at a time
when the mineral recycling system in nature
was completely intact so they have these minerals
because of the chemical processes that occur over time
and because of the purification of this material
to make a final product that we can ingest
those other anti-nutrients are really not present
and the minerals are generally keelated to fulvic acid
and fulvic acid is very compatible with our biology
that the minerals in this fulvic form are highly absorbable.
Now there are preparations called fulvic minerals
which are harvested from a little bit of a different ore
and those are also a reasonable way to get minerals
they are from nature, they are mined
but generally they don't have 60 minerals
they usually have in the teens or 20s
in terms of the spectrum of minerals they contain
whereas shilajit generally has over 50
sometimes even up to the 70s and 80s
in terms of the number of different trace minerals contained
so you can be sure by using shilajit
that you're getting all of the essential minerals
or as sure as you can be
without actually having definitive knowledge
of exactly which trace minerals we do need
and in what amounts and there is a good amount
of clinical data showing a lot of positive benefits
both from mineral repletion in veterinary
and human studies and even specifically from shilajit itself.
So there also are other forms
of mineral supplements and they are generally speaking
made into factories artificially by human manufacturing
and not mined from nature and minimally processed
like fulvic minerals and shilajit are.
So but they can still be very bioavailable
and improve health like they do in animal livestock
but in my opinion maybe are not fully optimal
or the best option but I think colloidal minerals
in a colloidal form are the most bioavailable
or absorbable and so that would be an alternative
for people who would like a solution like that
and those are available also as individual minerals
if you want to try to make up your own custom combination
to address your specific health condition
but I have kind of highlighted a little bit
of Dr. Wallach's work talked about the true lifespan
of humans, framed the problem of why we're even facing
this issue of mineral deficiencies,
went through some of the science mostly to highlight
that it's in the very early stages
there's not a lot of definitive evidence
and how the medical and health system
kind of willfully ignore this information
when it comes to human health largely
because it doesn't fit within their profit driven system
and then lastly I talked about foods, minerals,
heavy metals and what are the ways
that you can optimize your health.