The Minerals: A Personal Story

"The next major advance in the health of the American people will be determined by what the individual is willing to do for himself."

~John Knowles

Two years ago the term 'colloidal mineral' meant nothing to me. Since then I have come to know not only the meaning of the term but also the importance and power of the minerals themselves. For anyone interested in living a full, productive and joyous life, for anyone interested in achieving optimal sustainable health, for anyone whose business it is to guide others to the very best in nutritional/health tools, learning about the minerals, using them and experiencing them is a must.

Much of what I have learned about colloidal minerals has come to me from listening to Dr. Joel Wallach. Most of you are familiar with his, now classic, lecture, "Dead Doctors Don't Lie."  The Doc has a fascinating background. He started out as a veterinarian, worked in Africa for a time and then spent a number of years at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It was at the NIH where much of his work involved doing thousands of autopsies on humans and zoo animals, that he made the startling discovery that nearly 99% of all humans and animals who die of so called 'natural' causes die of nutritional deficiency disease. Again and again he found a direct correlation between the lack of a particular nutrient or set of nutrients in a given organ or organ system and the ultimate failure of that organ or organ system. For example, the heart tissue of organisms succumbing to cardio-myopathy heart disease were consistently deficient in selenium. Brain tissue of animals who died of brain cancer were consistently deficient in gallium. Autopsies revealing arthritis also revealed the lack of a whole host of elements: calcium, boron, magnesium, manganese, strontium, etc. These findings, as I say, were startling but at that time, in the 1960's, neither the public or the medical community was much interested in a nutrition based approach to health.

It is 1997 now. The Wallach message is finding a wider and wider audience. People following his common sense approach are harvesting marvelous benefits. So what is his approach in a nut shell? What is his message and why should we pay attention to it?

Basically, Dr. Wallach believes that we can achieve optimum sustainable health and live to our full genetic potential of 120 to 130 years if and only if we lay down a solid nutrition foundation. There are 90 nutrients which have been proven to be essential to human health. They cannot be manufactured in the body and so must be taken in consistently and regularly from outside sources. These include the essential amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, minor minerals, trace minerals and rare earths or micro minerals. Dr. Wallach estimates that for every nutrient we go without for a sustained period of time we subject ourselves, on average, to ten separate degenerative diseases.

Our bodies are vast, complex, bio-chemical organisms. We are like walking chemistry sets. Every function we perform is accomplished through chemical, material manipulation. Compounds are disassembled into molecules. One element is joined to another. Every second millions of bio-chemical events allow us to do everything from fight disease to build tissue to scratch our head. However, for the body to function at peak, it needs a full palate to work with, a full shelf of ingredients. Many ingredients we get from the food we eat, the air we breathe and the water we drink. Yet, due to the sort of agriculture which has been practiced the last 100 years or so, many of the nutrients we need, particularly some of the trace elements and rare earths, are now absent from our food.

We are creatures of this earth. We come from the soil, from 'clay' as the Bible says. Think back to chemistry class and the Periodic Table. The elements it lists are the building blocks, the components, the ingredients of all matter. All known matter, including our bodies, is composed of various arrangements of various sets of elements. For our body to function the way it was designed to function, for us to do the job of living and do it well, we must supply it with a full range of elements. Sure, we can 'get by' without this or that but, ultimately, we pay the price: we lose our health, our vigor, our ability to thrive.

We need ninety nutrients every day. Plants can make amino acids, they can make some lipids, vitamins, carbohydrates, etc. but they cannot manufacture minerals. They must get the minerals from the soil. Unfortunately, in most of the world, range and crop soils are sorely depleted of these very nutrients we need. Many of the papers which came out of the ECO summit in Rio a few years back also document this sad state of affairs.

So, if we cannot find the minerals we need in our food, where do we turn? Do we trot down to the local health food store and load up on tablet form minerals? If we did we would be wasting money. To do a proper job of it the best choice is to supplement with full spectrum organically bound colloidal minerals.

There is a vast difference between the salt or metallic based minerals one finds in a tablet form (often the label on such a product reads: "from sea clay" or "oyster shells"), and the plant derived, liquid, colloidal minerals. Colloidal minerals are 98% absorbable whereas tablet for m minerals, once one hits age forty, are only 5-10% absorbable. Our bodies are designed to recognize and use minerals as they come to us from plants not from rocks or clay or shells.

Colloids are extremely small particles. Some are 700 times smaller than a red blood cell. One factor which accounts for their absorbability is that their small size gives them a huge surface to mass ratio. Proportionally they have more surface to rub up against and be worked on by, for example, the villa in our small intestines. A second factor which contributes to the high bio-availability of colloids is the fact that each particle is negatively charged. The linings of our small intestines are positively charged. Thus there is a magnetic gradient present which locks these nutrients in. Metallic minerals, in comparison, are positive charged and can actually do harm once they build up to toxic levels.

Four years ago at age 42 my wife, Gwen, began exhibiting what we later found out to be the classic symptoms of osteo arthritis. She would wake in the morning and feel as if she had been beaten up the night before. Every muscle and bone would hurt for a time. She began losing flexibility and limberness in some of her joints, particularly her shoulders and hands. Also, she would be visited by horrible bouts of fatigue. I would come home at two or three in the afternoon and see her absolutely wiped out, sitting on the couch. This was a stark contrast to the energetic and active person I have always known Gwen to be. All this happened gradually, of course, over several years. Besides arthritis Gwen also suffered from TMJ, a deteriorated jaw joint.

We tried everything to turn things around for Gwen but nothing worked until we listened to the Wallach message. Gwen used his famous "Pig Pack" with the colloidal minerals. It took about fourteen weeks but in that time, and I bore witness to it, my wife went through a rather magnificent transformation. Now there is bounce in her step, the color has returned to her face, the weight has dropped off, she has complete flexibility in her joints and no muscle pain. I had not realized how much of my wife I had lost.

Although most people do not realize it, osteo arthritis, as well as literally hundreds of other afflictions, is really just a consequence of the body lacking a group of certain key elements. In many cases, once one begins to re-supply the body with the raw materials it needs to perform, repair can be effected.

As if breaking the shackles of degenerative arthritis were not enough, the minerals did even more for Gwen. When we learned about the minerals she was under the care of a local dentist for her TMJ problem. He had her wearing a plastic splint in her mouth 24 hours a day. At one point he told her that to correct the problem for good she would need surgery followed by years of braces. We went to Dr. Wallach. He said that to gain the maximum in bone regrowth and cartilage replacement she needed to stick with the formula for a full twelve months. This she did. To make a long story short, she avoided both surgery and braces. Now she does not even wear the splint.

Although we think of America as a nation of plenty, due to the condition of our soils most of us are actually starving and dying, slowly, of malnutrition. We simply are not getting the 90 essential nutrients per day our bodies require. Imagine how much more productive, how much more vigorous a society we would have were everyone to begin supplementing with colloidal minerals! Imagine the savings we would realize on health care in this country! Imagine the reduction in pain and suffering!

Please use these minerals. Find out what they can do for you. Then tell your friends and neighbors about them. It will be the greatest gift you can give them.

~  Stu Hunt (1997)