What Are Trace Minerals?

Trace minerals are important components of every animal’s diet. From humans to whales to bluebirds to koi, we all need the essential nutrients trace minerals provide to sustain our basic metabolic functions.

And when we don’t get enough of these minerals in our diets, things can start to go wrong. Take anemia, for example. That’s a condition that affects 3 million people in the US every year. When you’re anemic, your red blood cells fail to transport enough oxygen to your organ tissues and other cells. This makes you feel exhausted all the time, makes your skin lose its color, and can cause your heart to beat faster while you constantly feel short of breath.

The cause of anemia? Not getting enough iron. That same metal ancient people made swords and shields with 3,000 years ago needs to be in your body — but only in the faintest amounts. Too much is toxic, and too little is unhealthy.

For most of human existence, our diets maintained that balance for us. Today, however, Mother Nature needs a little help in getting us the trace minerals we need.

The fix is a pretty easy one, fortunately. And we’ll get to that. But first, it’s important to understand what trace minerals are and what they do for your overall health. That knowledge is key in sustaining a lifetime of healthy nutrition.

So, here is everything you need to know about trace minerals.

What are trace minerals?

A mineral is any inorganic, naturally occurring substance. They include some of the usual suspects from high school chemistry labs: iodine, magnesium, zinc. These substances are naturally found in the earth and are so familiar that we still use the names the ancient Greeks and Romans gave them.

There are nearly 20 minerals our bodies need to ingest daily in varying quantities, and we need them in their ionic forms. Ionic minerals either have one electron too many or too few at the atomic level, which creates an instability. That’s a good thing: That instability allows those atoms to bond easily with water so our tissues can absorb them.

Some minerals are necessary in relatively large amounts for our bodies to function properly. These include calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, sodium, chloride, potassium and sulfur. Those are sometimes referred to as “macrominerals”.

But several other minerals are only necessary in trace amounts, measured in parts per million in our diets. We need less than 100 milligrams of each per day.

Why are trace minerals important to our diets?

Dissolved, ionized minerals facilitate many of the processes in our bodies.

Some trace minerals, such as manganese and zinc, catalyze biochemical reactions (breaking down sugars and converting them into energy, for example). Other trace minerals are helpful in maintaining electrical balances, transmitting nerve impulses and even stimulating muscle contractions.

The essential trace minerals

Scientists agree that there are at least nine essential trace minerals and many scientists add a tenth mineral to that list. For the sake of being comprehensive, let’s explore all 10 minerals, what functions they perform and how much of each we need to consume daily:

• Chromium
  • Enhances insulin action and helps break down carbohydrates
  • 0.035 mg per day for men and 0.025 mg for women
• Cobalt
  • Part of the B12 vitamin, it enhances nervous system function and helps make red blood cells
  • 0.005 to 0.008 mg per day
• Copper
  • Aids in iron absorption and is found in several important enzymes
  • 0.9 mg per day
• Fluoride
  • Helps remineralize the surface of our teeth and strengthen enamel
  • 3.8 mg per day for men and 3.1 mg for women
• Iodide
  • Facilitates the synthesis of the thyroid hormone and controls cellular metabolic rates
  • 0.15 mg per day
• Iron
  • Helps in oxygen transport and cellular respiration
  • 8 mg per day for men and 18 mg for women
• Manganese
  • Is found in several important enzymes
  • 2.3 mg per day for men and 1.8 mg for women
• Molybdenum
  • Is found in an important enzyme that helps create uric acid and move iron from the liver
  • 0.045 mg per day
• Selenium
  • Cofactor in an enzyme that facilitates antioxidant reactions
  • 0.055 mg per day
• Zinc
  • Cofactor in dozens of enzymes that do everything from helping wounds heal to breaking down alcohol to supporting the immune system
  • 11 mg per day for men and 8 mg for women

Emphasis on “trace” when measuring intake

Note that recommended daily intakes are ballpark figures — they only give you an idea of how little of each mineral is necessary. Even for zinc and iron, measured in mg per day, that’s still just a fraction of a teaspoon.

So, don’t take more than you need. “The body only needs minerals in trace amounts,” healthcare researchers at Columbia University say. “Excessive dosages of minerals can actually be toxic. Therefore, before you experiment with any vitamin or mineral supplements, you may want to speak with your healthcare provider.

“A provider can help you sort out fact from fiction, so you can make an informed decision and avoid products that may be harmful or simply ineffective. In certain cases, you may be better off wearing these minerals than ingesting them.”

Where do we find these minerals?

Each of these trace minerals naturally occurs and can be found in the earth … or, at least they used to be found in the earth. Unfortunately, centuries and millennia of farming and erosion have depleted much of the world’s soil of its naturally occurring minerality.

Unlike water or nitrogen, for example, there is no natural process for replenishing elements like zinc. So, once it is tilled or washed out of the ground somewhere, it’s gone.

As a result, those minerals don’t make it into the food chain. They aren’t absorbed into the crops grown in that soil, and thus don’t pass into the animals that eat those crops. Therefore, anything we eat from the land — whether soybeans or chicken — will simply have fewer trace minerals than it would have had in millennia past.

Fortunately, there are ways to restore our mineral balance.

Why do we need to supplement our diets with trace minerals?

Because our diets are not as rich in minerals as they would have been 10,000 years ago — back before agriculture, when people lived as hunter-gatherers — we need to find new sources of trace minerals.

Sure, you will find naturally occurring traces of iron in spinach or zinc in sirloin steak, but it’s likely not enough to meet your needed daily requirement. Over time, that trace mineral debt builds up:

• Hypothyroidism from a lack of iodine can stunt growth.
• Cavities can form in the mouths of people who don’t get enough fluoride.
• Dull muscle pains can set in for people who don’t get enough selenium.

That’s precisely why we need to supplement our diets — and we’ve been doing so for decades now. That’s why table salt is iodized and we add vitamin A or D to our milk.

But that’s not always enough for some people. How do you introduce cobalt or manganese into a deficient diet, as well? You supplement the diet.

And, fortunately, nature has sustained one very important source of mineral nutrients for millions of years.

The importance of oceans

An essential property of matter is that it’s finite and doesn’t disappear. So, there are still roughly the same number of zinc or iodine atoms on the surface of the earth as there were 5,000 or 50,000 years ago. They’ve just moved.

Now, when irrigation or flooding or landslides displace parts of the ground, the minerals in the soil get washed into bodies of water, whether it’s the underground water table, a nearby lake or out into the ocean.

As such, oceans are rich in nutrients and trace minerals — they always have been. This is something we wrote about in the summer of 2016: “The ocean is teeming with minerals and trace elements that are vital to human health and well-being. If you can’t get the minerals you need from foods grown in the earth, it makes sense to source them from the ocean.”

How can we get more of the trace minerals we need?

There are two options:

1. Eat more foods from the ocean.
2. Take supplements that contain all of the essential trace minerals.

If you’re looking for one place to get all of the trace minerals vital to overall health, look no further than Trace: An Ocean Mineral Solution.

Trace contains 70+ major and trace minerals, including:

• Magnesium
• Phosphorous
• Potassium
• Manganese
• Chromium
• Copper
• Cobalt
• Selenium
• Iron
• Boron
• Zinc
• Iodide
• And many more minerals!

Trace is made from pure ocean water from the southern coast of Australia. The ocean water is then collected into small ponds where the actual water content naturally evaporates under the hot sun, leaving nothing but highly concentrated, pure, ionic, ocean mineral solution.

The minerals that are extracted from it are reduced to their pure pristine, elemental states. Any remaining toxins are completely removed. The remaining raw sea mineral solution is tested to ensure total purity before being bottled.

All you have to do to reap the benefits of this remarkable product is put a few drops into your water. But if you want to explore all the ways to use it, check out our blog post on the five best ways to take Trace.

Discover the benefits of ocean minerals today! 

Images by:
©karandaev/123RF Stock Photo, ©genlady/123RF Stock Photo, ©vicushka/123RF Stock Photo

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