MINERAL SUPPLEMENTS

by Dr. Lawrence Wilson

All information in this article is for educational purposes only. It is not for the diagnosis, treatment, prescription or cure of any disease or health condition.

Minerals can be divided into the following groups:

1. Macrominerals – calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, sulfur and phosphorus.

2. Trace and ultra-trace minerals – iron, copper, zinc, manganese, chromium, boron, molybdenum and about two dozen others.

3. Toxic minerals – lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic, aluminum, nickel, and about three dozen others.

Today, most people are starving for the trace minerals, and for calcium and magnesium. Here are ways to increase your mineral intake:

NATURAL MINERAL SOURCES I RECOMMEND

1. Cooked vegetables. These are an excellent source for most vital minerals. Here are the rules for eating vegetables to obtain the most minerals:

a) Cook your vegetables. Vegetables must be cooked until soft in order for our bodies to extract the most minerals from them. Cooking also make them much more yang. Raw salads will not work, and do not count.

b) Take a digestive aid with each meal. The type I recommend the most are those that contain mainly ox bile and pancreatin. These are the more yang, and animal-derived, and best.

c) Always eat cooked vegetables in simple food combinations. Have no more than two or three foods per meal. Mono meals are the best.

d) Avoid drinking much water or any beverage with meals. This will assure the best digestion and absorption of minerals.

e) Follow good eating habits. Eat slowly, chew thoroughly, sit down quietly when you eat, and rest five or ten minutes after meals before resuming your daily activities. A short siesta or nap after a meals is even better.

f) Have some sea salt with your cooked vegetables. Sea salt provides many more minerals, and makes the food more yang, which is also important.

Articles about cooked vegetables are: 50 Reasons for Eating Cooked Vegetables and several others on this site.

2. Sea salt. For details, read Salt.

3. Kelp. Use kelp, as a food supplement, and if you wish, as kelp wraps or kelp applied to the skin daily for about 1 year. For more, read Kelp on this website.

4. Spring water or some carbon-only filtered tap water.

5. Bone broth. For details, read Bone Broth.

6. Raw dairy products. However, this is not required for a development diet.

7. Dried vegetable capsules such as Juice Plus or Endo-Veggies from Endomet Labs. There are many others, as well.

8. 10-12 ounces of carrot juice or a little fresh green juice

WHY NOT ADD SALT TO YOUR DRINKING WATER TO BOOST MINERALS?

1. It is hard to know which minerals to add, and salt is among the worst thing to add. Commercial preparations such as electrolyte solutions and others often do not contain optimal mineral levels for each person. Often they are totally incorrect, in my experience.

For example, adding sea minerals to water may detoxify the body a little, but is a dangerous practice, long term, because the high sodium content unbalances the minerals in the body and competes with the absorption of other vital minerals. Drink salt water, as sailors know, can kill you.

2. Toxic metals. Most mineral preparations are not pure enough and many, such as coral calcium, can contain some toxic minerals as well.

CHELATES, CITRATES, MALATES AND OTHER CHEMICAL FORMS OF MINERAL SUPPLEMENTS

These often work well as placeholders. This is a critical concept in nutritional balancing. It means they are not the forms the body requires. However, taking them in the right amounts for a while can provide a kind of crutch.

This crutch or scaffolding allows the body to utilize the proper form of minerals found in foods. For more on this interesting topic, please read Placeholders on this website.

FOOD-BASED MINERAL SUPPLEMENTS

Some of these are excellent, such as selenium. Others do not work as well. For much more on this topic, please read Food-Based Supplements on this site.

COLLOIDAL, FULVIC AND HUMIC MINERALS

These are not recommended. They tend to contain significant amounts of toxic metals.

MINERAL SUPPLEMENTS I DO NOT RECOMMEND

1. Most green powders and green superfoods if they are in powder form, as they become rancid quickly in some cases. Also, you must drink them in smoothies that are terrible food combinations. For more on this topic, read Raw Foods And Juices.

2. Green powders or superfoods if they contain a lot of spirulina, blue-green algae or chlorella, as these appear to be somewhat toxic. Barley grass and wheat grass, although not as good dried as fresh, also seem to be excellent sources of minerals.

3. Salads. Some health authorities claim these are good sources of minerals for our bodies. My research does not support this. Salads and other raw vegetables are actually poor sources of minerals. Many of the minerals in vegetables are locked inside hard-to-digest vegetable fibers.

Human beings cannot digest cellulose, so the minerals pass through the body and are not absorbed. Vegetables must be cooked until soft to break down the fiber. This alone allows excellent mineral absorption from vegetables, which are rich sources of many vital minerals.

4. Fruits. These all contain toxic potassium, and the balance of the minerals in fruit today is incorrect in some way. Fruit is also too yin and eating it always makes the bodies yin, which is definitely harmful.

5. Fruit drinks such as the juice of Acai, goji berry, pomegranite, noni, mangosteen, or camu camu berries. While these are high in minerals and anti-oxidants, and other nutritious substances, they are quite yin. A very small amount daily is good, but more than this will make the body very yin and is quite harmful, in fact.

6. Sea mineral preparations, or land-based fulvic or humic minerals, also sometimes called colloidal mineral supplements. These are unbalanced and toxic, for the most part, and don’t seem to work well, although they contain many minerals. They are better than nothing, but not optimal.

7. Some “designer” waters that are sold in health food stores and supermarkets. These often have minerals added to them. This is usually not a good idea. I consider water a type of whole food, although the concept may sound unusual. As with most whole foods, when one fools around with the water, adding various substances to it, it usually ruins the balance of minerals and other subtle qualities of the water, diminishing its ability to hydrate and nourish the body.

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