Olwen Anderson's Blog

They’re easily overlooked, but they’re so important. Minerals are the vital players in a multitude of processes in your body, including building immunity, digesting food, and creating neurotransmitters for a happy, calm mood. Our modern diets are often deficient in minerals; partly from our food choices, and partly from demineralised soil.

The smooth running of your body’s biochemical processes relies heavily on the right materials being present in at the right time in the right quantities. Without all the vital ingredients, processes like the creation of enzymes can occur too slowly, in smaller quantities than needed, or not happen at all. This can have negative effects: poor digestion, reduced immunity, a tendency to gain weight, and mood disorders like anxiety and depression.

How did our modern diet become deficient in minerals? There are several contributing factors:

1. Eating low value foods made from white flour and white sugar. It may fill you up, but won’t give you much value in return.
2. Some food is grown in poor soil, creating poor value plants
3. Some farmed animals are fed on this poor value food, creating low value meat.

There are lots of minerals that your body needs; some obscure, some well-known. Here are the major mineral deficiencies I see in the clinic:

Iodine: The mineral from the sea that will help create hormones, regulate the speed of your metabolism, and shunt energy storage to muscle production rather than fat. For infants, iodine is essential for brain development.

Magnesium: The muscle relaxer. Your muscles use calcium to contract, and magnesium to relax. People low in magnesium often have chronically tight muscles.

Zinc: It takes part in a multitude of body processes; but most importantly in immunity, digestion and mood.

It seems easy to take a supplement if you think you’re low in minerals, but there’s a catch. Some minerals compete for absorption, so dosing up on one can create a deficiency in another. For example, calcium competes with magnesium for absorption; Iron and Zinc compete, as do Fluoride and iodine.  Professional advice can help here. In the meantime, you can give your body a mineral boost, naturally and easily, by choosing mineral-rich foods:

-          A useful rule of thumb for food shopping: The darker the colour, the more rich in minerals that food is.

-          Organically grown food may be more mineral-rich, as the soil it is grown in is richer (although the scientific community is yet to agree on this.)

-          Game meat (like kangaroo) and wild seafood are naturally higher in minerals than farmed meat and farmed seafood.

-          Using celtic (also known as ‘grey’ or ‘macrobiotic’) salt will provide a wide spectrum of trace minerals. Kelp (a sea vegetable) is valuable too.

-          Nuts and seeds are naturally rich in minerals, as they contain the materials needed to create a new plant.

Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink |  
Subscribe to RSS Feeds   | Subscribe to Email Updates

Bothered by leg cramps? Here’s your home checklist to help you discover the cause.

But first, a brief lesson in anatomy and biochemistry.  At a molecular level, your muscles look rather like a series of rods bundled together with overlapping ends. To contract (pull together) a muscle, biochemical reactions cause the rods to grip each other and slide together. To relax or lengthen a muscle, the reverse happens.

Making this reaction happen requires the presence of two important minerals: calcium and magnesium, in the right proportions. Its calcium that helps a muscle contract and magnesium that helps it relax. It’s unlikely that you’ll suffer from a lack of calcium in your muscles, as your body rigorously maintains your blood calcium level, and will cheerfully rob your bones of calcium to maintain a steady blood level. But your muscles can run short of magnesium and find it difficult to loosen up.

That’s why magnesium is known as ‘the relaxation mineral’.

But before you reach for the magnesium supplement, consider your circulation first.

People with reduced circulation are more susceptible to cramping, because their blood capillaries just can’t supply enough nutrients and oxygen. The more you move, the better your circulation; that’s why some people experience leg cramps only at night when their body is still. Diabetics are particularly susceptible to reduced circulation; the basement membrane of blood vessels tends to thicken in diabetics, reducing the diameter of capillaries and making them even more susceptible to the problems caused by poor circulation.

Some medications can deplete your body of magnesium too; so it’s a good idea to check with your health professional if you suspect your medication may be contributing to your cramping.

If you’re taking a calcium supplement, it’s important to take magnesium with it in the right proportions, as calcium and magnesium compete for absorption in your digestive tract. But the best way to get your magnesium and calcium is through diet, where mother nature will supply important minerals like these in a form that your body can easily absorb. (By the way, people with kidney disorders like kidney stones should not take mineral supplements without professional direction, as your body may turn that supplement into a painful kidney stone.)

The best food sources of magnesium are seafood, whole grains, nuts, molasses and green leafy vegetables. Remember the handy rule of thumb when shopping: the darker the green vegetable, the more packed it is with vitamins and minerals.  So dark green silverbeet is ideal.

There’s your checklist for solving your cramping problem:

-          Check that you’re exercising (and exercising enough!)

-          Check that you’re including magnesium-rich foods in your diet

-          If you take a calcium supplement, make sure it includes magnesium too

-          Check with your health professional if you’re taking prescribed medication.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also enjoy natural remedies for sports injuries

Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink |  
Subscribe to RSS Feeds   | Subscribe to Email Updates

When you’ve been prescribed nutritional supplements, you want to make the most of them, so they can do the most for you. But some people are taking their supplements in a way that prevents their absorption from their digestive system to their bloodstream. And this could mean the difference between getting a result from your nutritional treatment, or not.

Here’s a routine that may be familiar to you: Lining up your nutritional and fibre supplements on the kitchen bench before breakfast then taking them all at once. It has become a familiar practice that ensures you remember to take them. Then you sit down to a high fibre breakfast that includes a  of tea. 

So what’s wrong with that? Lets look at what can get in the way, particularly in the case of mineral supplements.

Your body has natural mechanisms in place to make sure you don’t absorb too much of any particular nutrient all at once; or that more of a especially needed nutrient is absorbed. (For example, when your body believes it needs more zinc, perhaps to boost your immunity, it instructs your bowel cells to make zinc absorption a priority over other minerals like iron).
- Sometimes nutrients can’t get through because there’s a lack of available enzymes and carrier molecules to transport nutrients across your bowel wall into your bloodstream.
- Sometimes individual minerals must compete for the available transporter molecules. (For example, iron and zinc compete for absorption; so do calcium and magnesium.)

Whichever way your body chooses to handle them, only a certain amount of the nutrients you ingest will get in; the rest will travel out of your body, wasted. This is one reason why some supplement labels advise you to take small frequent doses rather than one mega-dose. The manufacturers know that more will get in that way.

Because your body has built-in mechanisms to ensure a balanced mineral uptake, its important not to take large doses of ‘competing’ minerals at the one time. 

Some natural food substances like to bind minerals to them, and won’t let go. That means your body can’t access those minerals at all. Tannin in tea is one of them. So if your morning routine includes making a pot of tea, arrange to take your supplements a few hours later. Fibre supplements like Psyllium husks can interfere with absorption too.

Some people who eat an extremely high fibre diet, like vegans, can be at risk of mineral deficiency as the high amount of phytates and oxalates in the fibre can bind too many minerals to them before they can be absorbed.

By the way, the absorption and effectiveness of some medications can be affected by fibre supplements too; check with your practitioner.

If you’re unsure whether you’re taking your nutritional supplements effectively, check with me.

Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink |  
Subscribe to RSS Feeds   | Subscribe to Email Updates