The Benefits of Minerals in Your Body

I've learned a lot about the benefits of minerals over the last year or so. I'm sure you've heard from a lot of people that we all need minerals in our diet, but I've noticed that no one seems to say what kind of minerals we need.

Notice I said "what kind" of minerals, not "which ones" (we actually need all of them in balance).

The biggest thing I found missing when I was researching this for my own health was that almost no one talked about the difference between organic and inorganic minerals.

This goes for trace elements too, like copper, zinc, silver, gold, platinum, etc. - They are all very important.

What's the Difference?

Inorganic minerals are what you find in the ground and in salt.

So many people are recommending using sea salt or Himalayan salt for mineral intake. That's not where our bodies are going to get most of their minerals.

We do need salt in our diet, but the best sodium we can get is the kind that has already been converted into organic salts - and...

Guess what's amazing at converting inorganic minerals and trace elements into organic ones...?

Plants.

It makes perfect sense. Plants take up inorganic minerals from the soil and convert them into organic minerals by attaching a carbon atom.

Here's the amazing thing. When you try to fertilize a plant with organic minerals like what's commonly used in organic farming (I've noticed that using sea kelp and manure is a common practice these days) the poor plant cannot absorb it directly, just like we can't absorb inorganic minerals.

So in order for the plant to absorb any minerals from what you gave it, it has to wait for microbes in the soil to convert the organic minerals into inorganic minerals.

This process uses up some of the minerals and elements and is much less efficient than just fertilizing with inorganic minerals to start with. It also upsets the balance of what's available to the plant. (We use a sea water solution - you can find out more about it by clicking here.)

This amazing relationship between plant and human is quite simple. We need minerals that are organic, they need the inorganic ones. They convert these inorganic minerals into organic minerals and then we eat them.

The Benefits of Minerals in Your Diet

Minerals and trace elements are used by the body for every single process.

Yes, for Everything.

There are trillions of processes going on at any given moment. Every chemical reaction, every electrical pulse, every thought you have and every cell in your body must use minerals and trace elements in order to function.

When your body isn't getting the benefits of minerals from what you eat and drink, it gets them from somewhere in the body. It has to, or you would die.

The best place to steal minerals from is your bones, but wherever it can get them, it will.

This starts a cascade of imbalance that leads to things like Arthritis, Osteoporosis, Alzheimer's, Heart Disease, allergies, skin conditions and any other condition that's considered common these days.

Getting Enough...

In order to get the benefits of minerals in your diet, you need to either:

Eat (or juice) a lot of vegetables everyday, especially the green leafy ones. They need to be organically grown without chemicals of any kind AND they must have been grown in soil or water that has every available mineral available to it.

---Side Note---

A plant will grow and fruit on a lot fewer minerals than it has the ability to take up, but you'll know when there aren't very many minerals and trace elements in what you're eating because it'll be flavorless - like eating cardboard.

---Side Note---

You can grow and juice your own wheat grass, barley grass etc. These grasses actually pick up more than 90 minerals and trace elements if they're available to the plant to begin with. Sea kelp only picks up around 60 in comparison to wheat grass.

We chose the second option for a couple of reasons. First - it's less expensive to hydroponically grow your own wheatgrass, and it's quite easy once you get the hang of it. (Check out our growing operation by clicking here.)

Second - we know what we're putting in it - meaning we know what we're using as fertilizer, and we know we're growing it without chemicals. There's no doubt that it's healthy. We know we're getting all of the benefits of minerals that we can.

If you'd like to see what it takes to grow and juice your own wheatgrass, check out this page to see what we've been doing.

If you've already gathered all the supplies you need to grow wheatgrass, click here for the instructions page.