Re: potassium book

im not giving doctors a pass on any of this. they know or could if it mattered to them. i know and i didnt even finish pre-med.

youre welcome.

http://www.thedoctorwithin.com/minerals/minerals/



HISTORY OF MINERALS

The necessity for minerals is a recent historical discovery, only about 150 years old. In the 1850s, Pasteur’s contemporary, Claude Bernard, learned about iron. Copper came about 10 years later, and zinc about the turn of the century.

With the discovery of Vitamin A in 1912, minerals were downplayed for about 50 years in favor of vitamin research. By 1950, after about 14 vitamins had been discovered, attention returned once more to minerals when it was shown that they were necessary co-factors in order for vitamins to operate. Minerals are co-factors for most biological reactions. Soon the individual functions of minerals in the body were demonstrated:

Structural: bones, teeth, ligaments
Solutes and electrolytes in the blood
Enzyme actions
Energy production from food breakdown
Nerve transmission
Muscle action

For several years now, even mainstream medicine has acknowledged the incontrovertible importance of mineral supplementation. An example: In an article appearing in JAMA, the top American medical journal, 24 Dec 1996, a controlled study of selenium use for cancer patients was written up. [24] Selenium as you remember, effects powerful antioxidant activity, neutralizing free radicals, which are rampant in the presence of cancer. In this study, 1312 subjects were divided into groups. Some were given selenium; others the placebo.

There was a decrease of 63% with prostate cancer, and 46% with lung cancer in the selenium group. The results were so blatant that the designers actually terminated the study early so that everyone could begin to benefit from selenium.

This is just one example of the research that is currently being done on mineral supplementation. The problem is, if the results of studies economically threaten a current drug protocol, like chemotherapy, it is unlikely that an inexpensive natural supplement like selenium would be promoted by oncologists as a replacement any time soon.

TABLE OF MINERAL FUNCTION

Calcium

Muscle contraction
Bone building

Sodium

Cell life
Waste removal

Potassium

Nerve transmission
Cell life
Normal blood pressure
Muscle contraction

Phosphorus

Bone formation
Cell energy
Magnesium
Muscle contraction
Nerve transmission
Calcium metabolism
Enzyme cofactor

Chlorine

Digestion
Normal blood pressure

Sulfur

Protein synthesis
Collagen cross-linking, bone and ligament structure

Copper

Immune system
Artery strength
Forms hemoglobin from iron

Chromium

Insulin action
Immune function

Iron

Hemoglobin formation
Immune function

Zinc

antioxidant production
cofactor for over 80 enzymes
wound healing
fat metabolism
myelin
insulin function
tissue repair
skin health

Selenium

Immune stimulant
Fight free radicals
Activates Vit E

Nickel
Immune regulation
Brain development
DNA synthesis

Iodine

Thyroid function

Vanadium
Circulation
Sugar metabolism

Molybdenum

Enzyme action

Silicon

Enzyme action
Connective tissue

Tin

Enzyme action

Manganese

Enzyme action

Fluorine

Teeth enamel

- Larry Berger, PhD and Parris Kidd, PhD [21]
(Erasmus p 172) [30]

Mineral deficiency means that some of these jobs will not get done. The body is capable of prodigious degrees of adaptation, and can operate for long periods of time with deficiencies of many of the above. But someday those checks will have to be cashed. When that happens: premature aging. Cell breakdown.

Without minerals, vitamins have little or no effect. Minerals are co-factors – triggers for thousands of essential enzyme reactions in the body. No trigger – no reaction. Without enzyme reactions, caloric intake is meaningless, and the same for protein, fat, and carbohydrate intake. Minerals trigger the vitamins and enzymes to act; the 3 legs of a stool.