Colloidal Minerals and Trace Elements

How to Restore the Body’s Natural Vitality

© By HUW GRIFFITHS

It has always seemed to me that the role played by minerals and trace elements in human health and well-being has always been relegated to playing second fiddle to vitamins, dietary regimens and other remedies. So it was a breath of fresh air to come across a book by French author and naturopath Marie-France Muller entitled Colloidal Minerals and Trace Elements – How to Restore the Body’s Natural Vitality.

            The book is compact and hard hitting. It covers a lot more ground than most books on dietary minerals and certainly took me into new territory. You will not only learn what the various minerals and trace elements do for us as biological entities, you will learn how their deficiencies contribute to poor health, mood shifts and other negative modes of behaviour.
            You will learn how much of today’s ill health and lack of vitality can be traced to the lack of these vital elements in our diet and how we have mucked up big time by depleting the natural mineral reserves in our diet through modern farming methods and other methods of land abuse. You will also learn how to reverse those deficiencies using some of the most pure and natural products available in the world today, reversing illnesses and restoring our bodies to the vibrant and abundantly healthy state that was our birthright.
            The presence of minerals and trace elements in the right form, balance and amount are not only essential to our on-going health, without them (or even without any single one of them) their absence can threaten our very survival both as individuals and as a race. The scope and depth of Marie-France’s book is a credit to her commitment to natural health and healing.
            Muller divides the book into three parts; firstly ‘Why our diet lacks minerals’  (a history of research and development into dietary minerals going back over the centuries, the role played by soil quality and the lack of mineral intake that the human race currently suffers from as a consequence of a century or more of agricultural abuse).
            In the second part we learn about the natural sources for the minerals we all need (the rich sources of minerals that nature has made available for us and the various earths, soils and waters that punctuate the surface of the earth from the buried sacred clays of North America to the miraculous spring at Lourdes.
            Then, in the third and final part we learn how we can rebuild our health using colloidal minerals, precisely what they do for us, how to recognise the various deficiencies and how and where to obtain the products that may truly help all of us to survive healthily to the age that nature originally intended us to, which according to the book’s hypothesis could be well in excess of one hundred and forty years old.
            If any of this happens to interest you, then I strongly recommend that you get hold of a copy of this book and read it for yourselves. In the meantime however, let me elaborate.
            It’s not widely known that we can lack vitamins, but still manage to make some use of minerals, but without minerals, vitamins are rendered completely useless.
            It is also not widely appreciated that living beings (in the tests mentioned in the book it involved rats) can be fed into a diseased condition and then fed out of it again to perfect health, merely by having specific minerals withheld from their regular diet. Not only were the rats in question bred right down to a third of their natural size over a ten year period, but their intelligence, bone structure, general health and social behaviour all suffered badly as a result of mineral depletion.
            Nor is it generally understood that our diets, whether based on fruits, vegetables or meat all ultimately derive their nutrient content (including minerals) from the land or soil on which it has either been grown or reared and that the millions of acres upon which the world’s food is mainly produced is alarmingly bereft of the minerals that we so crucially need for normal health and well-being.
            Were it not for the fact that the last three random points that I’ve just highlighted were part of a US Senate Document drafted in 1936 it wouldn’t be quite such a shame on us, but the facts are screamingly obvious that if the state of affairs with agriculture and mineral depletion were that bad back then, just imagine what they must be like now after an additional seventy years of ruthless non-replenishing modern farming production methods.
            You will find Muller’s book full of fascinating anecdotes and detail to support her theories that mineral depletion in our regular diet has dipped into the red zone and that we flounder there in peril of extinction if we don’t act to improve matters soon.
            Because mankind has depleted his soils to the extent that he has, and because his cooking methods tend to strip his food of a substantial proportion of vital vitamins and minerals, or, he has processed food out of existence in the name of convenience and profit, we effectively don’t stand a chance of ingesting all that we need in terms of basic life sustaining nutrients. It makes the point that mineral supplementation has become essential for us all!
            Taking two simple staple foods as examples, Muller draws on a recent analysis to demonstrate that modern flour, when compared to the flour of forty years ago, now contains 60 percent of its calcium, 77 percent of its potassium, 78 percent of its zinc, 85 percent of its magnesium (by no means all of what remains being bio-available), and that the humble carrot, once a major source of magnesium in our diet, can only be found with a tiny trace of this immensely important mineral these days.
            Also cleared up with refreshing clarity is the question of what exactly a ‘colloidal’ mineral is, as opposed to an ‘ordinary’ one (for years I fooled myself that I knew the answer to this one, but I didn’t!). Colloidal minerals refer to elements that are suspended in a state of fine dispersion and in a fluid medium. They can occur chemically (as in electrolysis) or naturally (as in absorbed by plants and converted into an organic and more readily bio-available form).
            What makes colloids so special is that there is virtually no wastage; 98 percent of the minerals in colloids are, or should be able to be, absorbed by the body. This can happen for two reasons. Firstly colloidal particles are negatively charged whilst the stomach lining is positively charged, thus creating a complementary and mutually attractive environment for absorption. Secondly, the suspended colloidal particles are incredibly small, 0.001 micrometer in fact, or less than one seven thousandth the size of a red blood cell.
            The secret to healthy living is to avoid the path of excess. ‘More’ does not mean ‘better’. Moderation and balance are the order of the day. Indeed self-diagnosis can be one of the most damaging forms of approach, which if faulty (which it often is) can lead to supplemental prescriptions that can be more debilitating to a patient than an original deficiency. As Muller is at pains to emphasise, if you think you are suffering from a mineral deficiency (or trace mineral – which is defined as present in volumes of less than 1 mg per litre of internal bodily fluid), then seek the advise of a trained professional.
            That said, some of the symptoms of mineral deficiencies make for fascinating reading. For example:
            Boron – osteoporosis.
            Calcium – Cramping, insomnia, anxiety.
            Zinc – Sterility, impotence and depression.
            Chromium – Weakness, decreased glucose tolerance.
            Copper – Premature hair graying, sterility, wrinkling of the skin.
            Iodine – Thyroid imbalance, reduced fertility.
            Lithium – Emotional problems, psychotic episodes in children, depression.
            Magnesium – Confusion, nervousness, seeing floaters in the eyes, constipation.
            Selenium – Premature aging, slow recovery from illness.
            This is by no means an exhaustive list (the book has a whole section on them), but do they sound familiar or what?
            Even more tantalising is the odd reference to several of the ultra-trace elements, which are so difficult to isolate that no human studies have yet been conducted on them, but which when carried out on animals (presumably small ones) appear to double their life expectancies.
            The book engrossed me and I emerged at a point of far greater understanding and appreciation for the role of minerals and trace minerals and how they can be made to work for us across a range of supplements than I was at before I started.
            You will be familiar with the principals that underpin the use of Dr. Schussler’s Tissue Salts, and with the De-Chelating Lithotherapy developed by Doctors Tetan and Bergeret, as well as the basic homeopathic principals introduced by Hahnermann over 250 years ago, and how they relate to mineral therapy.
            The final sections though, are the most practical, if all you want to know is where you can obtain an affordable and effective supplement that delivers all the minerals and trace elements you need from a single, potent, natural and unpolluted source. The book delivers on this too!
            Muller takes us through the history of T.J. Clarke’s Colloidal Minerals (otherwise known as ‘the buried treasure of the Paiute Indians) and Quinton’s Marine Plasma (the sea water with amazing healing properties). It is nevertheless at the very end of the book, in Appendix 2, where I felt like I hit gold (white gold in fact). We read of Himalayan Crystal Salt which, like both Clarke’s and Quinton’s products, contain at least 84 of the minerals and trace elements needed by the body for health and longevity.
            The Appendix which is short, compelling and full of ways to utilise the crystal salt, is followed by a really handy resources section that provides some quick and easy information on where this ‘miracle of nature’ can be obtained.
            I confess that within a week of returning home from the Christmas camping break my entire family was on  a regular dose of Himalayan Sole (the brine mixture that you need to make up from the raw salt). I know I’m an optimist by nature, but with a bit of luck I’m hoping to be able to write a follow up article to this one sometime around 2090. Fingers crossed!
            Meantime “Good Health.”

HUW GRIFFITHS is a British-born naturopath who came to Australia in the early 90s with his wife and two sons. His interest and passion for natural and traditional health therapies was developed and nurtured alongside an international career in marketing and communications. Currently on an overseas assignment, he can be contacted by emailing New Dawn Magazine.

The above article appears in
New Dawn No. 101  (Mar-Apr 2007)

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