BIOCHEMISTRY : The Involvement of Minerals and Vitamins in the Biochemistry of our Cells

The importance of vitamins for health is well documented and accepted. Acceptance of the importance of minerals is more recent. Plants make vitamins. There are no vitamins in the soil, only minerals. Plants need minerals to make vitamins. Animals and human need minerals for many purpose. Research on the role of minerals regularly comes up with new functions for already well known minerals and for minerals that until now had no registered role in living organisms.
An example of the latter is lead. Lead was until now only considered as a poisonous heavy metal. Lead could be upgraded to an essential element. A lead-dependent enzyme (L) (the leadzyme) was discovered and described by Sugimoto N (A).
Leadzyme works with an ion (L) (Pb2+) to regulate the transcription of genes (L). The transcription of a gene is like copying a blueprint (the gene) stored in the DNA (L) of the chromosome (L) to make the instructions it contains accessible for the biochemical machinery of our cells.
Another example is Neodymium, a metal and a member of an obscure family of rare earth, the Lanthanide. Neodymium, having no recognized role in biology was until now totally ignored in biochemistry. In 1997, Ohmichi (A) found that Neodymium is working with a lead ion (Pb2+) in leadzyme to regulate the transcription of genes. The two minerals, lead and neodymium have to be present in ratio of one to one to maximize the reaction the enzyme governs.

SCARCITY IN SOILS : Scarcity of Minerals and Vitamins in Our Soils

Intensive farming has depleted the soils of plant absorbable minerals.

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The condition was described in 1936 in the American Senate. The following are citations of U. S. Senate Document 264 :

"The alarming fact is that foods (fruits, vegetables and grains) now being raised on millions of acres of land that no longer contain enough of certain minerals are starving us - no matter how much of them we eat. No man of today can eat enough fruits and vegetables to supply his system with the minerals he requires for perfect health because his stomach isn't big enough to hold them."
"The truth is that our foods vary enormously in value, and some of them aren't worth eating as food...
"Our physical well-being is more directly dependent upon the minerals and the vitamins we take into our systems than upon calories or upon the precise proportions of starch, protein or carbohydrates we consume."

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The Omaha World-Herald published Saturday, January 29, 2000 the article, Veggie Nutrients Dip in Tests. The article cites Alex Jack, a Massachusetts author, editor and advocate of natural food diets. Alex Jack had used numbers of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to prove that actual crops contain less minerals than the crops harvested years ago.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, while acknowledging that its own data indicate a decline, says it is just as likely that testing techniques for measuring vitamins A and C, and calcium and iron, among other nutrients, have simply become more accurate, making the old data wrong.

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At the Longevity Institute we have found a way to bypass the objection of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and to prove that Alex Jack is right. Our food contains fewer minerals than before. Read the full story

SCARCITY IN FOOD :

HISTORY : Minerals in the History of Humanity

Intensive farming is a consequence of the human population increase.

During millions of years, the population of the predecessors of humanity and thereafter the population of our human ancestors remained scarce. During millions of years there was no intensive farming to deplete the soil of minerals because there was no farming at all. During millions of years the predecessors of humanity and thereafter our human ancestors were exposed to more minerals in their food than we are in the present time.

The exposure during millions of years of the predecessors of humanity and thereafter of our human ancestors to the great variety of minerals present in their food resulted in the incorporation of a large variety of minerals in the biochemistry of their body.

We have inherited the biochemistry of our ancestors. As well as in our ancestors, the biochemistry of our cells needs the same choice of minerals to assume health. The difference with our ancestors is that we can no longer extract from our food the variety of minerals that our body needs.

We can only find the minerals we need in appropriated food supplements.

More Information

For a comprehensive text describing the importance of food for good health, please read The Wheel Of Health, an article written some sixty years ago by Wrench, G. T., M.D. (1938), and published then by C.W. Daniel Company Ltd.

The text of that article is so accurate that it was reprinted without any modification in 1960 by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research and in 1990 by Bernard Jensen International, Escondido, CA.

The full text (50 pages) is part of the Longevity Library of Steve Salomon's home page and made available there by permission of C.W. Daniel Company. The Longevity Library contains twelve other articles concerning nutrition and health.

SUPPLEMENTS : Minerals and Vitamins in Food Supplements

We can only find the minerals and the vitamins we need in appropriated food supplements.

Most food supplements contain a variety of vitamins (L) in approximately identical proportions. Many food supplements also contain amino-acids and a choice of minerals and trace-elements (L).

The minerals and trace-element content of a food supplement is what makes the big difference between the various products available on the market.

BEST CHOICE : The Choice of a Food Supplement

Your best choice for a food supplement is a product containing a great variety of minerals in a well absorbable form.