Minerals: The Sparks of Life

article by SHANNON DAHLUM

Roughly 70% of your body’s weight is water and the remainder is made up of minerals. This means that approximately 30% of your bodyweight consists of essential and trace minerals from calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium, to chromium, zinc, phosphorus, selenium, and numerous others. Technically, many are elements, but to keep things simple, we’ll refer to all of them as minerals. There are around 76 of these minerals in your body that not only make up its structure, but are utilized for every single function.
When minerals are dissolved in water, they carry an electrical charge, and this is why we call them electrolytes. Minerals are dissolved in the water within your body, which allows that water to conduct electricity. This electricity is how communication travels through your body. The minerals act like spark plugs which are needed for every single function, whether biochemical, electrical, chemical, or physiological. Put simply, minerals are needed for creating energy, so if you’re deficient in minerals, you’re deficient in energy production. Decreased energy means your body can’t properly carry out all the functions needed for optimal health.

Sadly, humans have become increasingly deficient in these life giving minerals over many years. In 1936, based on research conducted at prestigious academic institutions along with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Senate stated that U.S. soil was seriously depleted of minerals. One of the lead researchers warned that, “Countless human ills stem from the fact that the impoverished soil of America no longer provides plant foods with mineral elements essential to human nourishment and health.” Decades later, two-time Nobel prize winner Dr. Linus Pauling said, “You can trace every sickness, every disease, and every ailment to a mineral deficiency.”

Since that time, our mineral decline has only grown. In 1999, a study from Rutgers University revealed the mineral content of commercial fruits and vegetables was less than 16% compared to vine-ripened organic produce, and trace elements necessary for the production of vitamins in the body were completely absent. Not only is our food sadly lacking in minerals, but each generation is born with greater mineral deficiency, because babies are born with their mother’s “mineral fingerprint.”

Not only is our food lacking in the minerals we desperately need, but our lifestyles also cause us to increasingly “use up” what we do have at a rapid pace. When any sort of stress response is triggered in the body, stress hormones are released. Among those hormones is aldosterone, which causes the body to retain sodium. Sodium is the body’s most potent solvent, and it’s necessary for dissolving other minerals so your body can properly absorb and utilize them. When sodium is in excess, however, other needed minerals are overly dissolved and lost from the body. As sodium increases with stress, potassium and magnesium are the first to go. Boron is typically lost next, and since magnesium and boron are two important cofactors needed for keeping calcium in the bones, calcium then becomes lost from bone and can begin to accumulate in the soft tissues of the body. This creates more inflammation, which leads to more stress, which continues to enhance mineral loss. This is only one link in long chain of mineral loss events that leads to chronic illness.

The earth’s oceans and salt beds contain every single mineral needed by your body in the exact proportions required for healthy functioning. Before the days of refrigeration, meats were preserved in this mineral rich sea salt. Flood waters replenished the minerals in the soil, which then grew mineral rich plants. Humans ate these plants themselves and the animal products consumed came from animals who also ate these mineral rich plants. In animals, the organ meats accumulated most of the minerals, and our ancestors ate these in abundance along with the animal fats, which contained the fat soluble vitamins needed to enhance their ability to properly use those minerals, like vitamins A, D, and K.

With the advent of refrigeration, salt curing wasn’t necessary, so the exposure to the minerals provided in the natural salt declined. Additionally, to maintain more control of the water on farmlands, dams were built to prevent flooding and the soil no longer received mineral replenishment from those waters. Lastly, because mineral rich sea salt or rock salt can get clumpy when exposed to moisture, people began refining salt so it would be more shelf stable and flow more easily, stripping it of all 76 trace minerals except for sodium chloride. Instead of an important trace mineral supplement that provided the body with all the minerals needed, refined salt contributed to elevating sodium levels in the body and causing a loss of other vital ones. Eventually, iodine was added back in because the damaging effects of iodine deficiency were realized. Unfortunately, the realization that all of the other minerals were also needed didn’t happen.

There have been countless other changes to our food system over time that have tragically diminished our consumption of minerals. To put it simply, the turn away from mother nature’s mineral rich provisions toward man-made (or “man-enhanced”) food products has led to our current nutrient poor diets. Add to that the stress inducing on-the-go lifestyle that’s become the norm and we have a perfect recipe for mineral and energy deficiency and resulting chronic disease.

While completely overhauling the way you eat may be ideal for repairing your mineral status and your health, it’s also bit overwhelming. Instead of setting unrealistic expectations, there are two simple changes that can make a pretty big long term impact; changing the salt you use and where you buy at least some of your produce.

Replacing all refined salt in your home with natural sea or rock salt is a simple way to increase your consumption of trace minerals. Refined salt is the white salt you buy in the grocery store.
It may simply say “salt” or it may even say “sea salt” on the label. If it’s pure white, or if it says “iodized,” it has been refined and stripped of all the other trace minerals you need. It will raise sodium levels in your body and diminish the others. Unrefined salt that still has all its naturally occurring minerals will be gray or pink in color. Celtic Sea Salt and Redmonds Real Salt are both excellent choices. Himalayan Pink Salt is a good choice for mineral content, too, but some sources reveal that it can often contain heavy metals, as well. Using only good quality salt at home will ensure you’re getting small doses of needed minerals on a regular basis. Locally, you can find these options at Fiesta on Eighteenth and For His Temple Family Foods. Keep in mind that packaged and restaurant foods will contain high amounts of refined salt, so the more you eat your own food at home, the better.

When it comes to produce, fruits and vegetables that are allowed to ripen on the vine can have up to a whopping 84% higher mineral content than commercially available options. Instead of buying produce in the grocery store that was picked well before ripe so it could travel thousands of miles to get to you, seek out locally grown options. Visit the West Monroe Farmer’s Market year round on Monday through Saturday from 7am to 5pm. The Monroe Farmer’s Market is also open Monday through Saturday from 6am to noon, and the Ruston Farmer’s Market is open on Saturdays from 9am to 1pm. Even just adding in a few locally grown vegetables or fruits to your diet each week will help!

Remember that improving your health doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing endeavor. Small, incremental, affordable changes that you can adhere to will have a much greater impact in the long run than making large scale changes you can only stick with short term.