It is difficult to overstate the importance of minerals as they apply to human biology. Every job our body does from fending off infection, to keeping a regular heartbeat, to growing hair is performed by a series of biochemical events and every such event requires the presence of one, two, three, four, sometimes a dozen different minerals. Try making, for example, elastin (fibrous tissue in skin, muscle and blood vessels) without the presence of trace amounts of the mineral, copper. It is simply physically impossible. Various metalloenzymes are involved, Vitamin C must be available, as well as certain proteins and the mineral copper.
If a person's stores of copper are low, if he isn't taking in bioavailable copper on a regular basis either from the food he eats or from supplements he is using, if this has been the case for years and years, then, predictably, his skin will begin to sag and wrinkle. Elastin, after all, provides the tensile strength for skin tissue. His blood vessels, too, will weaken, increasing the likelihood of aneurysm or stroke. A weave of fibrous strands of elastin to keep blood vessels strong just like the nylon weave in the walls of a garden hose or bicycle tire keep those "vessels" strong, protecting against a blow out.
Copper is just one essential mineral out of sixty, in yet besides serving in this one small role of making elastin, it is required for physiological functions as diverse as RNA, DNA, lysiloxidase and melatonin production (hair and skin pigment), electron transfer for subcellular respiration, etc. The list goes on and on. To describe every biochemical event in the body requiring one or more of the essential minerals would require an entire library shelf. .
Does this mean that supplementing with colloidal copper, specifically with the colloidal copper contained in Dr. Wallach's Plant Derived Minerals, will rid you of gray hair or make your wrinkles go away or render you bullet proof against stroke or aneurysm? No. Certainly we get reports of all of the above, restoration of natural hair color, for example, after around the seventh or eighth month of consistent supplementation. But in no way is such a change guaranteed. Why not? Because, besides the presence of trace amounts of copper, there are other factors, some of which we can control and some of which we cannot, that play into the equation of melatonin production and impact the chemical processes responsible for delivering pigment to the hair follicle.
For example, diet, food allergies, vascular health, environmental stressors, age, genetics, hormone levels, exposure to radiation, personal hygiene, etc. By supplementing, one takes a giant step forward in terms of making conditions ripe for such a "result," to occur but, again, nutrients are not drugs. They don't force a specific, direct reaction. Instead they serve in the wider context of a complete and complex and interdependent and interconnected biological system. As long as we are good stewards of that system, of our own body, as long as we "do the basics" of supplying our body with clean air and water and plenty of rest and moderate exercise AND the 90 nutrients essential to human health, we can reasonably expect optimal function.
Again, it goes back to the plant analogy. Provide that little seedling with sunshine, fertile soil, adequate water, space and the right temperature and good things will happen. .
Majestic Earth Minerals as a Source for the Major Minerals
Dr. Wallach's Majestic Earth Minerals are not a particularly rich source of the major minerals like calcium, magnesium and zinc. If you look at the laboratory assay, you will see that the major minerals appear in the same very minute quantities as do the other, more scarce and rarified minerals (like ytterbium). This is because Majestic Earth Minerals come directly from plants and plants only need so much of each mineral for their own, internal purposes.
Lucky for us, we, too, need only "trace" amounts of most of the sixty essential minerals. In fact, too much of some of the trace minerals, like arsenic or mercury, for example, can harm us. They can't harm us in a liquid, organic, colloidal form since, in that form the body can easily excrete them if they are unneeded, but they can harm us in a metallic or salt form.
We do need a higher daily intake of the major minerals. Since there is a greater stock of major minerals in our soils, for example the calcium we all know about contained in limestone particles, it is not all that difficult to get the major minerals we need from our diet. Bananas have a lot of potassium. Almonds contain high quantities of magnesium. There is calcium in milk and yogurt and broccoli and cottage cheese.
Of course, many of us, stuck inside the typical, Western diet, may miss out on even the major minerals or have them crowded out of our system by processed, nutrient- empty foods. So, Dr. Wallach includes extra quantities of these major minerals in the form of mineral chelates in his other core supplement products. But the Majestic Earth Minerals are important and make it to the list of "core supplements" because there is no better or more complete or higher quality source of all the minor minerals, trace minerals and rare earth minerals so vital to optimal function.
