President, National Health
Federation
April/June 2004
Relying on the media
for your information is like
relying on Hostess Twinkies
for your nutritional needs. When the media feeds us new
information on nutrition we get it like our food — simplified,
sanitized, misleading and pasteurized — call it junk
information.
This is especially true of news reports about minerals.
When doctors learned that some people needed iron,
we all needed iron. When doctors learned we needed
calcium for bones, we all needed calcium. What is continually
left out is the whole picture of how minerals work
together. Too much of one can be dangerous because nature
always seeks a balance, and will withdraw from our
supply of other minerals in order to utilize it properly.
Look at the way God ordered nature. In nature all
the minerals occur together. Never does He create minerals
in isolation. When taken in supplements, minerals
need to be taken together to fulfill the thousands of
interactions
between minerals.
Yesterday’s Magic Pill Was Iron
It wasn’t that long ago that iron was the ‘magic pill’
to fight fatigue and increase strength. Iron poor blood
was blamed for everything from depression to chronic
fatigue. As I was growing up, I remember doctors giving
iron out like popcorn. Billboards featured a photo of
iron supplemented
Wonder Bread above a kid flexing his six year-
old muscles. Now we know that iron is poison for
children.
How many of today’s diseases are a result of our
ignorance? The prestigious Bucks Institute in Novato,
California has a heavy hitting team of over 90 Ph.D.
scientists
- all brilliant, innovative, and esteemed in their
field. In 2003, a team of these scientists, experimenting
on rats, found that iron is a causative agent in the
development
of Parkinson’s.
A provocative study by Finnish researchers, published
in the American Heart Association’s scientific journal
Circulation, concluded that the amount of stored iron
in the body ranks second only to smoking as the strongest
risk factor for heart disease and heart attacks.
The same symptoms previously attributed to iron deficiency
anemia - weakness, fatigue, achy joints, and
decreased sexual desire - can be attributed to iron overload.
Iron overload is associated with so many problems
that doctors have pulled away from prescribing it
like candy, and pharmaceutical companies no longer advocate
iron supplements to their aged customers.
According to the Tufts University Diet & Nutrition
Letter, iron-deficiency anemia has been over-diagnosed
in the U.S. A survey of people with iron overload revealed
that one in three had met with more than 11 doctors
before getting a correct diagnosis.
Serious overload typically goes undiagnosed until
somewhere in mid-life, when iron stores are five to
50 times the norm. By then the iron has affected the
internal organs to such a degree that liver disease,
congestive
heart failure, diabetes, arthritis, and, without
early enough intervention, death can result.
How can you tell that you may have too much
stored iron? Only certain blood tests, two of which are
the serum-ferritin test and the transferring-saturation
test, provide the answer.
Today’s Magic Pill is calcium.
Iron and calcium are minerals, essential to the functions
of thousands of reactions and interactions in the
body.
The first signs of any vitamin and mineral deficiency
are fatigue and depression, the number one presenting
problem in every doctor’s office. The problem
is that the public hears about one mineral - one ‘magic
pill’ - and think that’s all they need. Too much calcium
is certainly not what we need.
Calcium Overload Linked to Depression
Judith was known for her sunny disposition. She
had been the victim of a violent crime. She was a battered
wife. She had been so financially destitute
she qualified for food stamps and welfare. She had
beaten cervical cancer. Despite everything she went
through, she still maintained a positive outlook.
This is why I was surprised when I saw Judith
cry - a lot. Before she never complained. Now she
was crying all the time. We were attending a power
lunch at our church. The luncheon always starts with
a song. It was a beautiful duet. Judith started crying.
She wasn’t moved by the message. She cried at the theater,
she cried at parties. She wasn’t Judith anymore. I
sent her to my doctor, who ordered a Tissue Mineral
Analysis report. This is a test which charts your biochemistry
and then tells you what to eat and what
supplements to take to get back into biochemical balance.
The answer was right there in the report: Judith
had a high level of calcium in her body. Calcium toxicity
is one of the primary biochemical causes of depression.
Dr. Richard Malter, a clinical psychologist in
Schaumburg, Illinois, has studied the relationship between
calcium toxicity and depression. One of his patients,
who had just turned 40, read in her local newspaper
about the dangers of osteoporosis at her age. She
began to take calcium supplements to protect her
bones.
Months later, according to Dr. Malter, she was engulfed
in a deep depression, coupled with fits of anger
and crying spells for no apparent reason. Dr. Malter
discovered her symptoms started after she began ingesting
her calcium pills every morning. He told her
to stop taking the supplements.
Within two weeks the depression started lifting.
Within 90 days she returned to her normal, uplifting
mental state. She also had a Tissue Mineral test that
quantified her calcium toxicity.
Milk and cookies have been a popular bed-time
snack for centuries. That’s because calcium is a natural
sedative. It slows you down physically and mentally.
Like iron in bread yesterday, today calcium is in
orange juice, antacids, and other processed foods. It is
today’s magic pill solution to arthritis and osteoporosis.
Calcium is a valuable, essential mineral - but dangerous
when taken alone, not accompanied by other
essential minerals, such as potassium, magnesium, and
boron.
When we are born, our cells are 95 percent magnesium
and five percent calcium. When we die, our
cells are 95 percent calcium and five percent magnesium.
Calcium will make you age faster, settling at the
surface of the skin, wrinkling it, stiffening joints, and
making arteries hard.
Too much calcium - called calcinosis - causes cross
linkages in the skin, characterized by dryness, wrinkles,
and stiffness. Without enough magnesium - the traffic
cop of calcium - calcium is pulled from the bones and
deposited into soft tissue, settling in arteries, joints and
skin, causing arthritis and the pale, hard, wrinkled look
of aging. Calcium deposits can cause blockages that
incur strokes, heart attacks, and circulation problems.
Veterinarian and medical doctor Dr. H. Korpela,
at the Department of Human Health, University of
Kuopio, Finland examined 18 pigs who died of sudden
heart failure and found low concentrations of magnesium
and high levels of calcium in their heart muscles
and livers, as compared to healthy pigs and those who
died of other diseases.
Researchers followed over 10,000 men and women
for an average of 3.5 years and found a strong correlation
between the amount of coronary calcium in the
arteries and risk of future heart attack. In other words,
the more calcium, without the other minerals, the
greater the risk of a heart attack.
The effect of high amounts of calcium on the heart
is exemplified by kidney dialysis patients. Your kidneys
clear waste products from your body. But when
the kidneys do not work properly, a buildup of waste
can occur and hemodialysis may be needed to filter
the blood.
A sad irony is that the top killer of people on dialysis
is not their kidneys — it’s heart disease. Kidney
patients are up to 30 times more likely than the general
population to die from heart disease, and doctors didn’t
understand why.
Here’s a hint: one of the complications of chronic
kidney disease is that the bones lose calcium and phosphorus.
Current treatment involves using large doses
of vitamin D and calcium to keep blood levels normal.
It’s these dosages of over 1,000 milligrams that
seem to be the key. What awakened doctors to this
connection was a study conducted by Dr. William
Goodman of the University of California, Los Angeles.
Goodman and fellow UCLA anthropologist Dr.
Isidro Salusky used powerful new imaging technology to
scan the arteries of 39 young dialysis patients. Nearly
90 percent of those in their 20s had serious coronary
artery calcification. Calcium deposits had crystallized
in their arteries, a form of cardiovascular disease
expected in 60- or 70-year olds, although virtually
unheard of in young people.
But the study, published in the New England
Journal of Medicine, triggered controversy for another
reason: patients with the stiffest arteries ingested
6,000 milligrams of calcium a day, twice as much as
kidney patients whose arteries weren’t calcified.
Another factor in this issue may be the kind of
vitamin D given to kidney dialysis patients. The
public never has had the correct information about
vitamin D, which must be absorbed with calcium.
Instead of advocating natural sunshine, food processors
fortify dairy products with a vitamin D substitute
- a synthetic hormone that keeps the body
from absorbing magnesium from food.
Foods containing high amounts of vitamin D
are cod liver oil, salmon, sardines, herring, egg yolk,
organ meats, and bone meal. Too much sun is not
recommended but 10-15 minutes a day will provide
most individuals with the right amount of immuneboosting
vitamin D.
Magnesium is the Missing Link
As I’ve mentioned, it’s not calcium, per se, that
causes problems, it’s the lack of the other minerals,
most especially magnesium.
During my television show, Making Healthy
Choices, Michael Schachter, M.D., stated that many
cases of sudden heart attacks during stressful exercise
can be directly attributed to a magnesium deficiency.
Researchers have found that a decreased concentration
of magnesium is found in the heart and
blood of human heart attack victims.
Magnesium deficiency is more common than
you might expect. A large study by the U.S. Department
of Agriculture found that only 25 percent of
37,785 individuals had magnesium intakes at or
greater than the recommended daily allowance,
which is notoriously low. A review of 15 studies
found that a typical diet contains only a fraction of
the RDA.
When food is processed, 75 percent of the magnesium
in food is lost, suggesting that the American
diet provides only 40 percent of the recommended
daily allowance for the mineral.
The average mixed American diet supplies
about 120 mg of magnesium per 1,000 calories. Green
leafy vegetables are particularly good sources of the
mineral, as are dry beans and peas, soybeans, nuts
and whole grains. High losses of magnesium occur
in the refinement of foods, and some losses result
when cooking water is discarded.
Calcium must be balanced with magnesium and
potassium for the proper regulation of heart muscle
contraction. Calcium channel blockers are pharmaceuticals
designed to prevent this damaging effect of
calcium on the heart. But what they don’t want you
to know is that magnesium works just as well - without
the high cost and trips to the doctor.
Magnesium deficiency is associated with multiple
cardiovascular problems. Magnesium has antiarrhythmic
(keeps heart rhythms regular),
antivasospastic (blood vessels aren’t affected by pulling
or stretching) and other beneficial cardiovascular
effects. Several trials evaluating the efficacy of
early magnesium therapy and decreasing mortality
from myocardial infarction (heart attack) also showed
improved survival. Complications from magnesium
therapy are low; but, still, don’t go out and get just
calcium and magnesium. You must take all the minerals
together for optimum health.
The research continues. Swedish researchers
found that patients taking magnesium showed an astounding
48-percent reduction in mortality risk compared
to placebo treated patients.
Remember, you’re not what you put into your
mouth, you’re what you absorb and digest and deliver
to cells. A tablet is only one to five percent absorbable.
Since the process of digestion is a process
of liquefaction, your body has to take a rock-hard
tablet and turn it into solution. This may be compromised
due to a number of factors, such as inadequate
stomach acid, stress, food allergies, and intestinal
problems. Studies show minerals dissolved
in water before ingestion are considerably more
bioavailable to the body than those even present in
food. Look for a good, easily absorbable, derived from-
nature mineral blend in solution.
