Every biochemical process in your body requires minerals to proceed. You cannot use energy, oxygen, DNA, RNA, chromosomes, enzymes, vitamins, amino acids, carbohydrates, antioxidants, fatty acids or hormones without the metallic cofactors made from minerals. The trace minerals that our soil was originally created with are required for every living thing on the face of the earth. Some minerals, like calcium and magnesium are required in large amounts and others, like selenium and copper, are required in minute amounts. Regardless of the amount required, the reason they are called essential minerals is because any length of time without them in the body will result in one or more diseases.
The earth was created with a coating of topsoil that contained all the necessary minerals. These minerals were not evenly distributed in the soil like the sugar that you cream into your cookie batter, but were in veins like the fudge in fudge ripple ice cream. A field of wheat or corn or barley could have a plant growing rich in minerals and another plant right next to it that had virtually none. One part of the world could be rich in one mineral and deficient in another and it would be vice versa in another part of the world. There are 90 essential nutrients; 16 vitamins, 12 essential amino acids, 4 essential fatty acids and fats and 60 essential elements or minerals. Plants can produce vitamins, amino acids and fatty acids through photosynthesis, but they cannot produce minerals. If the minerals are not in the soil that the plant is growing in, they will not be in the plant. Farming practices over hundreds of years have resulted in depleted soils. This, in turn, causes depleted minerals in the foods that we eat. You can suffer from malnutrition and have the resulting diseases, no matter how much food you eat! In 1992, the UN Environmental Summit Report documented the decline in mineral values of farm and range lands throughout the earth. Over the past 100 years, the soil in Africa has been degraded by 74%, in Asia by 76%, in Australia by 55%, in Europe by 72%, in South America by 76% and in North America by a whopping 85%. The bowl of spinach that your grandmother ate contained considerably more nutrition that the one you feed to your children.
A deficiency in any one of the 90 essential nutrients will lead to or cause disease or premature death. It is theoretically possible, with a great deal of discipline and effort, to obtain all the amino acids, fatty acids and vitamins you need in your diet. It is impossible to get all the minerals you need regardless of what kind or how much food you eat. Since our food is grown in soils that are greatly depleted of minerals, it is necessary to supplement with minerals and beneficial to supplement with vitamins, fatty acids and amino acids.
Not all minerals are the same. There are three different kinds of minerals available on the market today. They vary greatly in their absorbability and their potential to become toxic.
1. Metallic minerals are found in rocks and soils and are about 10% absorbable. They can build to dangerous levels, accumulating in fat, liver and brain tissue. Most tablets available in the grocery store are of this type.
2. Chelated minerals are metallic minerals that have been bound to an enzyme or an amino acid. This process of binding the metallic molecule with another, more absorbable molecule, increases the absorbability of the mineral to about 35 to 45%. They are usually much more expensive than metallic minerals.
3. Organic colloidal minerals are minerals that have been processed through a plant - ie. drawn up through the roots of the plant, out of the soil and into the plant body itself. They have undergone biochemical changes and been made extremely absorbable - about 90 to 98%. Since we were created to obtain minerals through our food, these minerals are the type that we are able to assimilate and use. “Colloidal” refers to the size of the particle and is not the same as “organic colloidal” which means processed through a plant as well as very small in size. Metallic colloidal minerals are no more absorbable than regular metallic minerals.