Why our mineral levels are SO important to our overall health

For me, what you learn about your body and health from doing a hair mineral test is so fundamental, when working to achieve optimum wellbeing. People spend a lot of time focusing on their macronutrients: their Proteins; Carbohydrates and Fats, and not enough on their micronutrients: Magnesium; Sodium; Potassium and more! The truth is; micronutrients are what the body use to perform nearly ALL of its tasks, and optimising them can increase our healthy lifespan and avoid chronic disease. 

The sad truth is that, with time, we have become exceptionally mineral depleted and the cause of this is multifactorial. One is that the actual food we are consuming contains fewer micronutrients. For example, mineral levels in wheat have starkly dropped between 1840 and the year 2000. 

This is partly due to the use of fertilizers; pesticides; insecticides and the effects of soil erosion. 

Another is our overconsumption of refined foods, foods that have been ‘treated’ or ‘handled’ by the human hand and thus stripped of nutritional goodness. 

Why do we need adequate Minerals?

Quite simply, we need minerals to avoid disease and to create hormone balance.

Minerals are the foundations to your body. They are the electrical current fuelling your light and if they are low, or out of balance, your light will not shine as bright. 

21st century habits also impact our minerals. For example, the Copper IUD and contraceptive pill raise our copper levels, which increases our estrogen levels, decreases our progesterone levels, disrupts our thyroid function and can cause infertility. 

Take Magnesium for example: 52.2 – 68.0% of the US population are deficient. Magnesium deficiency can lead to high blood pressure, high blood lipid levels, coronary heart disease, heart failure, kidney stones and more. Low Magnesium has a clear correlation to increased depression and there is a clear link between low magnesium and migraines, with supplementation decreasing the frequency of such headaches.

Thyroid medication is one of the most prescribed medications in western medicine. Thyroid hormones regulate energy balance in your body – you cannot live without them. For your Thyroid to function optimally, it needs Magnesium, Zinc, Selenium, Manganese, Iron, Copper and Iodine. So, to heal your Thyroid, to come off Thyroid medication, you need to take in adequate levels of these essential minerals that it requires to function. Assessing your mineral levels, then addressing low mineral levels, is addressing the root cause of an underactive Thyroid, taking Thyroid replacement medication, is not. 

The impact of minerals on our sleep

Sleep is fundamental for our happiness and health. We need sleep to allow our bodies to restore and heal. However, more than ever, people are struggling to get good, restorative sleep. Melatonin is our sleep hormone. We want plenty of it. However, to make Melatonin, we need Magnesium, Iron, Copper, Cobalt and Zinc! As you can see, adequate mineral levels lie behind each of our body’s functions. Testing our levels allows us to see where we are deficient before working to restore. 

Liver detoxification pathways play a key role in hormone balance. We need these pathways to be functioning well to excrete hormones that we no longer need, to stop them circulating in our body. When we are suffering with imbalances in our Estrogen and Progesterone, for example, we look to support the Liver and its detox mechanisms to help balance the hormones. To optimise these detox pathways, however, we need to ensure we are not deficient in Zinc, Selenium, Magnesium and Molybednum, as these minerals are the fuel to these detoxification pathways.

For your body to feel safe, it has to create and have access to enough energy. If you are not producing enough energy in your body, it will cut down on some of its functions to focus the energy that it does have on what it considers essential to life. The body’s energy source is called ATP. The body takes the food that we eat and uses it to make ATP. BUT, to do this, it needs over 22 minerals and vitamins! If we are deficient in a mineral, we produce less ATP, which then influences hormones, sleep, mood, metabolism and your immune system. Supporting the production of ATP by ensuring the body has access minerals will support healthy aging, reproduction, longevity and much more. 

This is just a small insight into how important your mineral levels are when supporting the roots of your health. Testing your hair is a cheap and effective way to get excellent insight into the last 2-3 month history of your internal mineral levels to see where there are imbalances and deficiencies. This allows for an individually targeted approach to restoration and easy follow-up on progress by re-testing. I will dive deep into the effects the build up of toxic elements in our body has on health next and how the hair mineral test will also show us these levels, so we can work to reduce them. 

Want to know more? Get in touch via my bloss profile to order your mineral test kit.