Nightmare

If the label gives one of these chelates, it means the mineral is bound
either too strongly or not tightly enough, and will be released at the
wrong time and the wrong place. Chelation of minerals in nutrient
supplements is a very precise science, yielding chelates superior to
those occurring naturally in foods.
Intact absorption is faster, easier, and requires less metabolic energy,
provided the chelate is about 1500 daltons.
To compare chelated and ionic minerals, once the research is presented,
there is really not much of a dispute about which is absorbed faster,
ionic minerals or dipeptide-like amino acid chelates. Meticulous isotope
testing has shown the following increases in percent absorption of
chelates, as compared with ionic:
Iron 490% greater
Copper 580% greater
Magnesium 410% greater
Calcium 421% greater
Manganese 340% greater
Journal of Applied Nutrition 1970; 22: 42
Again, this is just the briefest glance at the prodigious amount of
research comparing ionic with chelated minerals, but the results are
uniform. The winner of the bioavailability contest is: chelated
minerals, provided the chelate was maintained as small as possible,
generally using glycine as the amino acid ligands, at a total weight of
about 1500 daltons.
Food-bound chelated minerals. Often you will hear this or that company
claiming that "organic" minerals contained in food are the best, cannot
be improved upon, and are superior to all possible types of mineral
supplements. This is almost true. The only exception is glycine-chelated
minerals, for two reasons:
- the exact amount of minerals in any food is extremely variable and
difficult to measure, even if there is high mineral content of the soil.
Pesticides destroy root organisms in the soil. These bugs play a major
role in selective mineral absorption into the plant. (Jensen p 55)
- the ligands that bind the mineral in the food chelate may be too
strong or too weak to dissociate at exactly the right time for maximum
absorption in the human digestive tract. Glycine chelates are uniform
and easily measurable. No question about dosage.
Marketing is a wonderful thing - two different companies are now
attributing the longevity of the Hunza tribe in Pakistan to two entirely
different properties of their water: one, the minerals; the other,
molecular configuration. A classic error in logic is described as "post
hoc, ergo propter hoc" - after this, therefore because of this. Maybe it
was the weather that made the Hunzas live longer, or their diet, or
their grains, or the absence of toothpaste or webservers or... Marketing
is the art of persuasion by suspending logic.
The average lifespan of an American is about 75 years. No one has ever
proven that taking mineral supplements will extend life. Many old people
never took a mineral or a vitamin in their life. It really comes down to
quality of life. Incidence of disease during the lifespan. For how many
days or months of the total lifespan was the person ill? We are the
walking petri dishes of Alexis Carrel, remember? Carrel was the French
biochemist, a Nobel prize winner, who did the famous experiment in which
he kept chicken heart cells alive in a petri dish for 28 years just by
changing the solutes every day. Could've gone longer, but figured he'd
proven his point. Mineral content factors largely in the quality of our
solutes: the blood - the milieu interior, the biological terrain.
The U.S. has the highest incidence of degenerative diseases of any
developed country on earth. In addition, the infectious diseases are
coming back; antibiotics are getting less effective every year.
Americans' confidence in prescription drugs is weakening. Allow me to
disabuse you of unfounded hopes: cancer and AIDS will never be cured by
the discovery of some new drug. It's not going to happen. There probably
will never be another Alexander Fleming - turns out penicillin was just
a brief detour anyway. Bacteria have had 50 billion years to figure out
ways to adapt. The only way that anyone recovers from any illness is
when the immune system overcomes the problem. Allergy shots never cured
an allergy - people who take allergy shots always have allergies.
Our only hope of better health is to do everything possible to build up
our natural immune system. One of these preventative measures is
nutritional supplementation. It may not be dramatic, but daily deposits
to the immune system bank account will pay off down the road. Healthy
people don't get sick.
With respect to minerals, then, what are our goals? My opinion is that
having once realized the necessity for mineral supplementation, our
objectives should be simple:
Take only the minerals we absolutely need
Take the smallest amounts possible
Nothing left over ( no metabolic residue)
Some of the above ideas may seem strange and difficult to understand, on
first reading. But it is truly a very simplified version of what
actually takes place. Most of the technical details were omitted for the
sake of clarity and brevity. However, the correctness of the above basic
framework is verifiable. The reader is encouraged to flesh things out a
little by consulting the attached reference list.
We are living in the age of the Junk Science Hustle. Everybody's an
expert, often quoting shaky sources, shaky facts, and shaky claims which
may have no foundation in physical reality. Seems there's a formula:
Get a product
Get a marketing company (preferably in Utah or Texas)
Get some university MD endorsements
Get some miraculous testimonials
Get a downline