Metal Trace Minerals. Their use in Humans. Essay #2. Background.

Whenever we talk about these essential oils, minerals and a vast array of other “nutrient” related materials, we always have new questions. Asking questions is always a good thing. Many times these “asked” questions will spur on other questions that lead to new topics of discussion. This is a good thing. In the discussions that I lead, I try to simplify the ideas into comparative, usually comparative to what most people are familiar with. As a general rule, most people learn by comparing a new idea, concept, observation, etc., to what they already know. This is an effective way of understanding new things learned and what is more it tends to be retained more clearly and is much more easily and accurately assessed at a later date. 

One of the things that I have been looking at is a lot of the “Nutrients” that are not usually talked about. For the most part these are either classified as trace minerals or with some, extremely trace minerals. These types of extreme trace minerals are just that, necessary, but used by the human/animal in extreme small amounts. Minerals are at the very core of human/animal and plant life. All of these other things like enzymes, hormones, well, you name it, are all based on minerals. Even most pharma medicines are largely based on minerals,although many are isolated to a single element many times, and mostly made up of the man made versions of the said element. So my thrust here is to help us to understand what this looks like in real life. So let's look at some of the ideas here.

Organic vr. Inorganic. With this idea we are not talking about “Organic” in the usual sense. We are not talking about putting bio-degradable substances in or on the soil. We are talking about the terms in the concept of Inorganic and Organic with chemistry in mind. In this sense, you can take an inorganic substance and turn this into an organic substance by attaching a Carbon molecule to it. This changes the substance into a biodegradable substance. The usually way this is done is by applying the inorganic substance to the soil, or find it already in the soil and then planting a plant in the soil and the plant uptakes the substance and within the plant the placement of the Carbon molecule takes place and it is then turned into a an organic “Nutrient”. As a general rule, biological entities are not able to utilize an “Inorganic” substance. By some accounts you can, but the process is very inefficient. IE; you get very little value when compared to an Organic substance. 

 As a general rule it is claimed that this idea of converting an inorganic substance into an organic substance can only happen through a plant. But recent studies have shown that this can also take place in the gut/stomach of humans and animals. Although it doesn’t happen with all inorganic substances, it does happen. They have found that it happens fairly often with mammals, especially with Ruminates. Usually this requires a special balance of Nitrogen and the Nitrogen “Entourage” as I call it. This would consist of the Nitrogen with its support staff of other nutrients in balanced ratios. However, it also happens the other way as well, in the gut/stomach system of mammals. For this to happen you would need to see a particular makeup of Sulfur and Oxygen and that  mixture would remove or force out the Carbon molecule that made the material Organic.  

 Last year in one of my discussions about gardening, I threw out the idea that due to the local conditions of many areas, we are discovering that with all of the legitimate soil testing that Sulfur is becoming such an issue, as in a lack thereof, that the big 3 of the fertlizers, namely; Nitrogen, Phosphate and Potassium, IE: NPK, should by many accounts have the 4th. letter added, IE: it should read NPKS. with the reason being Sulfur. Sulfur is becoming a common element in almost all soil assessments. So based on the idea in the previous paragraph, of Sulfur being a factor in converting the Organic into In-organic, becomes a non issue. Sulfur and Oxygen will degrade the Carbon molecule attachment. So no Sulfur, no degrading, at least in this respect. But what I suggested was to add fine coal dust as an all purpose garden fertilizer. Why? Because coal by definition is Organic, about as organic as you can get and it is full of critical nutrients. These critical nutrients are many of the Trace Elements and Super Trace Elements that can be extremely difficult to obtain in any other way. 

 The most widely used form of coal used in biological activity and agricultural use is Lignite. Lignite is a low quality form of coal, usually called brown coal. Another type of Lignite is Leonardite. You might better understand the difference by seeing the one form at one end of the scale and the other form at the other end of the scale as we consider the range of “Brown Coal”. While it is common to find this class of coal being used for agricultural use, such as a biological agent used as a soil amendment to control plant pests, we also see it being used as a human nutrition supplement. Many people will know it as Plant Derived Minerals. What this PDM consists of is a liquid that is obtained from leaching the minerals from the Lignite or Leonardite, whichever type it might be and then formulated and packaged for human use. If the full strength solution is used, then it can produce remarkable results. The typical watered down solution that people buy…, not so remarkable results. Other products along this line are used as well. 

 I mention this coal thing because of the qualities that are produced by using them for human health. These are products that see very little processing, so the quality of them are not degraded like we see with highly processed materials that we see after processing. But lets move on to other trace elements. 

 As a general rule, many of the Trace Minerals/Trace Elements that most people are familiar with are within the 4 basic levels of electrical charge. But when it moves on past the 4 basic charge levels, up into the 5 through 7 charge levels, not much is talked about there. There are 7 basic levels of electrical charges. Yes, minerals do carry an electrical charge. They have polarity, as in Positive and Negative charges. Just like the battery on your car. This is usually associated with another technical aspect and that is Oxidative Stress. This is basically when oxygen interacts with the element. From a technical aspect, Oxygen can be very corrosive and destructive. Although Oxygen is vital, the air we breathe is, on average, about 18% Oxygen and 78% Nitrogen. The other 4% is made up of everything else. Sometimes the Oxidative Stress will change the polarity of the electrical charge of the element, sometimes it doesn’t change it at all. Keep in mind that Polarity is simply the direction of the electrical  charge, IE: the direction it is traveling. So some elements can change their polarity, some don’t depending on this Oxidative stress being thrust up on it. Just how the element performs can depend to a large degree on the polarity. For example with Essential Oils. Basil can have its main chemical profile be changed depending on the soil characteristics it is grown in. In a positively charged Potassium rich soil it will produce a Linalool, which is a positively charged, dominant Basil oil. While the same Basil plant growing in a negatively charged, Nitrogen rich soil will produce a Basil Chavicol type oil. Both are great oils, just that they serve different purposes. The Nitrogen rich soil is operating on a charge level of 2. The  Potassium rich soil is operating on a charge level of 1. This is how the electrical polarity can influence a plant’s chemical properties. 

Anyway, back to the charge levels and the ones within the charge levels of 5, 6 and 7. These elements are usually talked about in terms of, “Parts Per Billion” or  “Parts Per Quadrillion”. This would make it extremely difficult to focus on them specifically and then package and sell that to you. Plus the learning and by extension, even having an understanding of how they apply to human nutrition is not there, or well, hasn’t been there. The research on these elements hasn’t really had much attention until maybe 5 or 6 years ago. Most of these elements are metal or metalloid type elements and in the past generally have carried a toxic footnote to them. Up until that 5 or 6 year ago time frame all of the work done with them ventured around the industrial version of them and not the nutritional form of them. I guess most people didn’t understand that there was a difference. Well there is a difference and usually the Carbon molecule is at the center of it all. Anyway, the charge levels 1 through 4 are usually talked about in terms of “Parts per Thousand” or “Parts Per Million”. So you can see there is a clear difference when it comes to volume.

A large part of this research and new insights have centered around the critical importance of these metal type elements in biological life forms well being.In general terms, one must have these metal type elements in order for the non-metal elements to work properly. A big area of cancer research is centered around using these metal type elements in working with cancer.patients. What is really good is that they are having some remarkable results, IE; actually curing cancer in these people, after other forms of treatments, such as chemo, has failed to respond for the patients. Of course when they take it a step further, as in Nanoemulsion of these metal elements. This is as the term suggests, nano sizing the element particle size, then administrating the product to the patients. I will have to go into a different discussion to even go there. So hang in there with that idea. 

 I find that it is interesting that for the most part, as it applies to cropping and even biological applications that these over 5 charge level ones usually are all positively charged and in many cases will apply on all dominant roles of the positively charged side. So to make them work you would need to look at balancing them with negatively charged, passive factors.  

 So what are these upper level elements? Well first off there are too many to list here, but just to name a few. Have you heard of Uranium? .I am not talking about the concentrated, split up, industrial stuff that everyone knows about, but I am talking about the nutritional form. This is vital to many factors, such as the whole vitamin B stuff, especially B-12. In cropping situations where you have Natural Uranium functioning, you don’t need to use as much Nitrogen fertilizer. Which is a huge factor with agricultural runoff pollution. Researchers have been using the nutritional form of Uranium to work with Dementia patients. You know what?  They are turning their lights back on. They are recovering, it is a recovery situation and not just a “managed” or managing the decline deal. I am sure many of you have used the “Silver” solution. Need I say more there? Works, doesn’t it? Zinc is another huge deal. I am going to do a big essay on this one. Huge impacts in Human health here, people, heap, big deal.  Lastly, because I have to shut this essay down, as in getting too long, but Gold. Did you know that Gold is a vital element? The nutritional form plays a big role. It operates on all 7 positive charge levels in the dominant position. Oh, I can’t leave out the big bad one, Mercury. All we hear about with Mercury is BAD! BAD! And more BAD!, right ? Guess who manages and coaches the whole Selenium entourage? Yes, the nutritional form of Mercury. If you don’t have Mercury managing the Selenium complex, then all of this Selenium that you take won’t do you a whole lot of good. Without Mercury, Selenium has a tendency to go rogue. This is just how important that these elements are when used in their natural form and in proper ratios. This isn’t just me, but a lot of really good researchers around the world that are uncovering this information and really, discovering the facts.In some cases, they are just in reality, just understanding what was known in the past and was discounted because some freakazoids, somewhere figured that a synthetic was the better way to go.  

So over the next little while we'll be looking at some of these and discussing the current research and how we can use this understanding to better ourselves. 

Stay tuned. KK.

_________________________________________________________________________