Re: Digestive system and pH level

Hi Neo -

The sulfation part surprised me. I knew that the digestive tract is 9.9% sulphur but I had no idea that so many digestive enzymes depend on it. Coincidentally, I had already started taking MSM two months before I did this research. You would be surprised about how many systems require sulfation and methylation. (MSM - methylsulfonylmethane)

Before last fall, I ascribed to the view that we should be able to get all vitamins and minerals from whole foods. [But as you saw, there is a kind of a catch-22... it may be that if you don't have enough sulphur, you can't digest food well enough to get enough sulphur.] But frankly, for a lot of bad reasons (sheer fatigue being the main one), we weren't really eating a healthy, whole-foods based diet. What happened next is a really long story, but after a lot of research on vitamins and minerals, I started taking a multi-mineral and an iron supplement. I started feeling better and better. But three weeks later dramatic things started happening, and they were not for the better. Mood swings, irritability, confusion, severe fatigue. The Iodine my doctor had me taking for the previous year was suddenly my worst enemy, and I became severely hyperthyroid.

That forced me back into research mode again. Slowly I came to realize that the bad symptoms were probably a mineral detox process. Right minerals in, wrong minerals out. But it kept going on and on. Now I realize I was taking too much. Eventually I learned that cysteine, methionine, metallothionien [sp], and taurine are all involved in mineral chelation and they are all sulphur-based. That's when I started to take MSM. Over the next month, the bad mineral detox symptoms gradually went away.

I joined CureZone about the same time as I started taking MSM (two months ago). During my research in the fall, I had originally thought that "righting" my pH level must have caused the dramatic changes, but by December more research led me to dismiss that idea. But when I joined Curezone in February, there was the pH level thing again and I came back around to thinking that maybe there really was something to it. Maybe adequate mineral absorption really is all about the right pH level after all. (But by this point, I was already feeling pretty well and wasn't about to take a risk with some strange concoction.)

That sent me back to more research again. If the multi-mineral I was taking "righted" my pH level, how did it do it, and how does pH level play a role? So what you are seeing are the results of that research.

I will leave it up to you whether this research supports the alkali mineral/pH level approach. The Moreless drink seems to cover all the minerals described in this research (which may not be an entirely complete list) but the drink does seem to be heavy on calcium. Moreless considers sulphur an acid mineral. But sulphur compounds involving sodium or potassium are slightly alkali.

My mineral detox was so awful I hesitate to give advice. If your amino acid levels are low that would seem to say your bile and/or pancreatic enzymes aren't operating well, since that is the stage where peptides get broken down into amino acids. To me, that would suggest MSM and zinc.

Best delivery system... hmm... I can't say. My multi-mineral is a tablet, and the MSM I take is a capsule with a powder in it (500 mg to 1000 mg a day). Perhaps in a liquid, these minerals would be easier for the body to take up, but I have no experience there and I never had a reason to research that.

I would not take the digestive aids though, due to dependency issues over the long run. Tweet