(Secretos de salud) Dating back to the beginning of the last century, mineral depletion in our soils, and thus in the food we eat, has been on the increase– and it has gotten much worse in recent decades. This is because we are stripping the top eight feet of soil throughout the world of its vital major minerals and up to 80 trace minerals. These minerals are what man has adapted to for thousands of years, and they are essential for optimal health.
The way nature works in a more or less “natural” state is that tree roots go deep in the soil and bring up vital minerals that are then released in the upper layers of soil as these trees die and decompose. In addition, minerals eaten by animals and contained in their bodies return to the soil when the animals die and decompose. Similarly, animal and human waste matter is returned to the soil.
In modern times, we have disrupted the natural cycle of mineral replenishment by clear-cutting the forests and trees to make crop land, removing most of the waste and dead animals, and over-farming virtually all of our soil without allowing time for micro-organisms to convert the remaining minerals into usable forms for plants. Thanks to the advent of petro-chemical fertilizers in 1908, we have primarily returned to the soil only petroleum derived nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus – which produce lush growth but nutrient-poor plants.
Para empeorar las cosas, we have applied pesticides and herbicides that have killed off vital micro-organisms that help convert remaining soil minerals to usable forms.
Thanks to the extended use of fertilizers and “maximum yield” farming methods, the soil in the North American continent has had an average of 85% mineral depletion over the past 100 años, the worst of any country in the world.
The end result is that the bowl of spinach most of us eat today contains perhaps 1/8th the nutrition of the bowl of spinach our grandparents and great grandparents ate.
Why minerals are so important to your health
The role of minerals in human health is immense, yet seldom recognized. Two time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling went so far as to state unequivocally “You can trace every sickness, every disease, and every ailment to a mineral deficiency.”
Many people who advocate natural health and proper diet and nutrition agree with Dr. Pauling, because minerals are the most basic of building blocks for proper nutrition and health. Quite simply, without minerals, nothing else works. Amino acids and enzymes don’t work and vitamins and other nutrients don’t get broken down and absorbed properly, and we end up with major deficiencies in both vitamins and minerals. The end result is a chain reaction of poor health where nothing works as it should.
As a researcher and MD, Dr. Charles Northern stated, “In the absence of minerals, vitamins have no function. Lacking vitamins, the system can make use of the minerals, but lacking minerals, vitamins are useless.”
Another major area where mineral deficiency manifests itself, in addition to poor health and immune system support, is obesity. Similar to the cats and dogs one sees eating grass when they instinctively know they are either deficient in vitamins and minerals or need extra ones to combat an illness or infection, the human body also sends such instinctive signals at times that it is missing vital nutrients, but we no longer recognize what it is our bodies are telling us and where to find what we need to silence the signals.
Such confused signals often lead to cravings, and so we eat and eat to try to satisfy them, but what we really crave is missing nutrition. Instead of turning to a nutritious diet or other healthy way to furnish minerals, such as taking a food based mineral supplement, we turn to the standard American diet of fast foods, nuked meals, sweets, junk food, and so forth, usually to no avail. Perhaps many of us can relate to that familiar quandary of eating and eating to the point of being gorged, and yet still feeling hungry for “something.” That something very often is likely to be minerals.
Para más información:
http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/minerals.html