Which Minerals are the Essentials Minerals?
 

In chemistry, a mineral is simply an inorganic element found in nature. In nutrition, however, the term mineral is used to classify those dietary elements essential to life processes. Minerals are natural elements that are not of animal or vegetable origin.

They are essential for the proper function of many body processes including: muscle contraction, oxygen transport, nerve impulse conduction, acid-base balance of the blood, maintenance of body water supplies, blood clotting, proper immune function, and normal heart rhythm.

Many minerals are used as the building blocks for body tissues such as bones, teeth, and muscles, and some minerals are important components or activators of several enzymes and hormones. Minerals do not provide a source of caloric energy, but are essential for the proper functioning of metabolic enzymes, which in turn provide energy.

In fact, enzymes cannot function unless minerals are present. In other words, other than the use of minerals as electrolytes and structure, metabolism is the main purpose of minerals in nutrition.

Minerals are found in the soil and are eventually incorporated in growing plants. Animals get their mineral nutrition from the plants they eat, whereas humans obtain their supply from both plant and animal food.

Because minerals are excreted daily from the body in sweat, urine, or feces, they must be replaced. Inadequate mineral nutrition has been associated with a variety of human diseases, including anemia, high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, tooth decay, and osteoporosis.

Thus proper dietary intake of essential minerals is necessary for optimal health, energy, vitality, and physical performance. Unfortunately, most people do not obtain enough nutrient minerals to sustain optimum health.

The lifestyles and nutritional habits of individuals living in developed countries do not allow for optimum nutrition. Cooking and processing our foods robs the food of its essential nutrients. In addition, our soils are becoming more depleted, and our foods contain lower amounts of essential minerals than they used to.

 It is becoming more and more difficult to eat a healthy, balanced diet that will provide adequate amounts of nutrient minerals for health. As a result, more people are turning to supplementation to ensure that they are getting enough minerals for optimal health.

Unfortunately, considerable confusion seems to exist in the dietary supplement industry on the subject of mineral nutrition. In some cases, it is assumed that all minerals have nutritional value.

But not all minerals found in nature are necessary for nutritional health. In fact, the minerals that are considered to be nutrients are strictly defined by six criteria:
 

1. Presence in healthy tissue of all living things.
 

2. Fairly constant concentration from one animal species to the next.
 

3. Withdrawal from the body induces the same abnormalities, regardless of species studied.
 

4. Re-introduction reduces or prevents these abnormalities.
 

5. The abnormalities are always accompanied by specific biochemical changes, such as reduction in activity of a specific enzyme.
 

6. The biochemical changes can be prevented or cured when the deficiency is prevented or cured.

There are twenty-one minerals that meet these criteria. They are calcium, phosphorous, magnesium, sodium, potassium, chloride, iron, zinc, copper, selenium, chromium, iodine, manganese, molybdenum, fluoride, nickel, silicon, vanadium, arsenic, boron, and cobalt.

Of these, there are not known to be deficiencies in humans of phosphorous, sodium, chloride, nickel, silicon or arsenic; instead, many people consume too much of these nutrients.

Potassium, while sometimes deficient in certain diseases, is not one of the minerals that are depleted from commercially grown foods (because it is added to commercial fertilizers). Iodine is commonly added to foods, and its deficiency has become rare.

 Cobalt is only an essential nutrient in humans as vitamin B-12. Supplementation with fluoride is not considered prudent because its level of requirement is too close to the level at which toxicity occurs.

This leaves calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, copper, selenium, chromium, manganese, molybdenum, vanadium and boron as the appropriate ingredients of a complete mineral supplement.