Context is so powerful. In this case the last 100 or so years. A lot has happened in the last century, obviously more than can fit into this book, but we will do our best to lay out some of the key points to help set the context of where we are now.

Before we dive in, let’s take a step back and look at the big picture. In general, for most of humanity in the modern world, life is good. The human race has advanced faster and further in the last century than in the hundreds of thousands of preceding years. Our advancement has led to longer life spans, energy abundance, and the ability to connect over the internet and instantly find knowledge at our fingertips. It is beyond the scope of this book, but it is worth noting how far we have come. If you want to learn more, there is a fascinating book called The Rational Optimist.

So with all these advancements, why is it that one in four adults suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder? More importantly, why are the leading causes of death cardiovascular diseases, cancers, digestive disease, and diabetes? These diseases were almost nonexistent at the turn of the early 1900s. Could there be something that has caused both the rise in these illnesses along with the increasing epidemic of obesity? Or is it just because we can diagnose diseases better than ever?

According to a Harvard article on U.S. Obesity trends, “in 1990 obese adults made up less than 15% of the population… Today, nationwide, roughly two out of three U.S. adults are overweight or obese (69 percent), and one out of three is obese (36 percent).” Even more alarming is that the children are getting more and more obese.

Often in history, decisions made with good intentions ended up causing as much or more harm than good. During the 20th century, there were substantial changes in agriculture, diet, and medicine. These changes were not all bad. They led to the end of many illnesses and the proliferation of food. They resulted in the savior of many lives and allowed our world to rebuild and grow after two world wars. Unfortunately, it also has led us to the current health and medical crisis.

Part of the problem is that many of these changes were based not on science but politics and big business. They were decided not by doctors and scientists but by politicians and lawyers. As a result, we have become a nation led to believe that a low-fat, high processed food diet is not only healthy but the path to wellness. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Another part of the problem is that the tools and systems, as well as ideologies we have adopted into the mainstream, fail to measure relevant data and, even worse it tries to fit the diagnoses into recommendations based on standards and ranges, which, while helpful in some limited situations, are based on faulty research biased towards pharmaceutical solutions and interventions. The result is that people are diagnosed with sicknesses and illnesses that are man-made and created solely for the purpose of prescribing pharmaceuticals rather than addressing the actual root cause or issue.

The root cause of most illnesses is a deficiency of nutrients or toxicity from modern chemicals. Western medicine addresses neither. Instead, it adds to both with drugs that, in many cases, deplete essential nutrients while delivering toxic chemicals such as fluoride and other petroleum-derived chemicals.

Adding to this, the majority of Americans already are deficient in multiple nutrients. And it is likely worse than the studies point out, as the studies reference RDAs (recommended daily allowances), which were established to determine how much we need to avoid an acute disease state. RDAs are for bare survival, and it doesn’t take into account biodiversity and bioavailability.

Also, there are nutrient inhibitors and antinutrients that affect bioavailability. As we mentioned above, in spinach and other vegetables, there are oxalates that inhibit the absorption of nutrients.

Add to this our modern epidemic of chronic stressors, including electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), and the lack of tools to compensate, and it only makes sense that we would suffer from more and more disease and sickness as our bodies become unable to cope.

EMFs

EMFs are a physical field produced by electrically charged objects. It might be easiest to think of them as a form of radiation. They are organized on a spectrum and classified according to their wavelength and frequency. EMFs are basically everywhere in nature. Light is an EMF. The problem isn’t the natural EMFs. It is the massive amount of man-made EMF bombardment we are now constantly subjected to. And as time progresses, our EMF exposure is only getting more and more prevalent and more powerful. It’s been theorized that we are exposed to levels 10 billion times higher than back in the 1960s. These EMF radiation levels will be thousands, if not millions, of times higher in just a few decades.

While we don’t yet fully understand all the damage the EMFs do to the body, we know that our body runs on energy. Chemistry is just energy bonds between molecules. EMF, as a form of energy, impacts our bodies. One known effect is on our VGCCs or voltage-gated calcium channels. These let calcium in and out of our cells. EMFs cause these VGCCs to stay open and flood our cells with excessive calcium. Excessive calcium in cells is destructive, carcinogenic, and can lead to many diseases. One of the biggest concerns is the disruption of the blood-brain barrier. In other words, EMFs can cause our bodies to be exposed to additional infections, toxins, and endocrine disruptors. While we may not understand all the impact these higher and higher levels of EMFs have on the body, without something to compensate for the damage, it is only going to get worse for everyone in the modern world.

Examples of products that create a lot of EMFs around us today:
Computers, tablets, phones, Bluetooth devices, routers, cell phone towers, electrical grids, and cables without sufficient insulation. Suppose you want a scary but close-to-home example. Look at your iPhone or cellphone manual and its warning. It is recommended that you do not hold the device closer than a few centimeters from your head. There are damn good and scary reasons why holding your phone too close to your head can basically fry your brain. Think I am joking? There are a lot of great resources on this, and we will be adding more information and resources to the mineralsrevolution.com website. But for now, let’s move on.

EDCs

The endocrine system is a complex network of glands and organs that uses hormones to control and coordinate the body’s metabolism, energy level, reproduction, growth and development, and response to injury, stress, and mood.

EDCs are exogenous chemicals or a mixture of chemicals that can interfere with any aspect of hormone action. The effects of EDCs, like those of hormones, can occur at very low levels. However, decades of research have revealed that the disruption of hormones can have detrimental effects on various diseases. Several recent “state of science” reviews of the EDC literature, as well as large reviews of hundreds or thousands of EDC studies, draw strong conclusions about the association between EDC exposures and diseases.

In other words, there is substantial evidence that EDCs are having a major impact on a large percentage of the population and are a major factor in causing diseases.

There are at least 1000 known chemicals that have been identified as EDCs. The CDC has documented widespread exposure to a number of EDCs in the general population. Even still, there are numerous chemicals that have yet to be identified and studied as EDCs. Yet these studies have shown the presence of EDCs in the placenta, amniotic fluid, and umbilical cord blood, documenting exposure throughout the most critical stages of development as well as across the lifespan.

Substantial credible data support the claim that many chronic diseases, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome, are linked to epigenetic changes in cells and tissues during development, which manifest in altered tissue development as a result of early environmental factors (stress, drugs, nutrition, environmental chemicals, or EDCs).

What this means is that not only do we have to deal with diet, lifestyle, and EMFs, but also exposure we and even our parents had to EDCs and the damage they did to our systems as a result of even minuscule exposure. You can dive more into it here.

“Metabolism Disrupting Chemicals and Metabolic Disorders”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5365353/

With all that in mind, let us dive back into our history to better understand how the changes in agriculture, diet & food, and medicine have led to the current crisis and mineral deficiency.

Agriculture:

Until the beginning of the 20th century, farmland was rich with minerals and free of toxic man-made chemicals. The farmland was also owned and managed primarily by local farmers. However, it was at this time that large companies acquired and took over the majority of these farms. They implemented new technologies that focused on optimizing the number of crops that could be yielded and other modalities that quickly depleted and damaged the soils.

One such example is that growing & harvesting methods changed. Instead of using proper crop rotation and ancient fertilizers, which vitalized and maintained the soils’ mineral-rich content, modern farming relies on artificial chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and other unnatural agents to boost crop yield. Sadly, these negatively impacted the soil, resulting in impaired nutrient uptake in the plants, notably with copper and magnesium.

Now there was an upside, as it allowed us to begin to beat the starvation and malnutrition the country faced. Two wars and government loans led to these methods becoming pervasive.

Besides a massive increase in crop production, the ability to grow crops on land that had been unfarmable resulted in an interesting side effect: it dramatically decreased the available grazing land for cattle, which resulted in cattle moving from free-range to being raised in pens. This was the origin of today’s industrial meat production.

Another invention was the nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium (NPK) fertilizer, which became and is still widely used. Unfortunately, NPK blocks the uptake of copper by plants.

Another deadly invention, glyphosate (commonly known as Roundup), is a chemical chelator that binds and removes minerals such as calcium, magnesium, manganese, copper, and zinc. According to Stephanie Seneff, PhD, one of the world’s foremost experts on the dangers to human health caused by glyphosate, the capacity to chelate at low pH means that nothing can stop glyphosate’s chelating action in the soil, plants, animals, and humans. Glyphosate also inhibits the production of ceruloplasmin, a key copper protein in our body. The result? There has been an 80% loss of copper in crop soil over the last century. And it is only getting worse.

In addition to farming, the modalities and flexibility of transporting goods drastically changed. Refrigeration became mainstream, as well as canning, painting, and coating vegetables and fruits. These technologies allowed for year-round availability and global shipping, but they also contributed to the depletion of minerals. Plants pull nutrients in up until they are ripe.

Are you starting to see this issue in front of us? Now let us look at what happened to our diet & food.

Diet & (the Emergence of Processed) Foods:

In the 20th century, the way we looked at food forever changed. Due to a series of events that started in the 1920s, the way we measured, discussed, and researched food/nutrition became focused solely on the nutrients contained in foods (or to be precise, the recognized nutrients we look for in foods.)

Michael Pollan popularized the idea of nutritionism in his book, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s.

“Nutritionism is a paradigm that assumes that it is the scientifically identified nutrients in foods that determine the value of individual foodstuffs in the diet. In other words, it is the idea that the nutritional value of a food is the sum of all its individual nutrients, vitamins, and other components.”
Not the whole foods themselves.

The issue is that it becomes easy to blur and obfuscate the differences between whole and processed foods. As you can imagine, the food industry played a significant role, pushing scientists and researchers to villainize nutrients rather than types of or specific foods.

Like agriculture, modern food processing methods became commonplace. These technologies include pasteurizing, supplementing, and replacing ingredients with refined sugars and hydrogenated oils. Unfortunately, one result of these changes was the loss of critical nutrients (retinol, magnesium, and copper).

Additionally, vitamins and other supplements were added to foods. In subsequent articles, we will address the dangers and issues that arise from these artificial substances. The vitamins and supplements were predominately manufactured from chemicals and are often different from what the vitamins are supposed to be in nature. And they often do more harm than good. For a history of vitamins, you can read more here. https://supplementfactoryuk.com/blog/2018/05/the-history-of-vitamins/

Again, this was not all bad. The innovations cured or remediated many illnesses, diseases, and famines. But like many things, good intentions can still lead to severe consequences.

In the 1940s, inorganic iron fillings were added to our food system via enriched flour and grain-based products. There were a lot of beliefs and confusion around the why and how much. In fact, in 1969, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) increased the recommended amount of iron by 50% in many foods. They wanted to increase it more, but dozens of scientists testified against this. Nonetheless, to this day, excessive iron is still found in most processed foods with grains. It is scary, but iron and folate are often found in these foods in twice the listed amount. Add that to the fact that people tend to eat double the recommended serving size of cereal, and you can imagine how excessive amounts of iron and folate are being consumed just through cereal.

We will dive deep into the importance and issues with iron throughout the blogs especially our blog on Iron 101. But for now, it’s worth noting that iron is the 4th most common element on this planet. Iron is highly oxidizing (i.e., it causes our body to rust); it is the metal that ages us when left unchecked. Our body has a very sophisticated system for recycling, storing, and maintaining iron in balance with little need for additional iron. Thus, contrary to the FDA, we do not want or need excessive iron.

In the 1950s, the two most dangerous idealisms were born on top of nutritionism. In 1955 President Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower had a heart attack. His cardiologist, the famed Dr. Paul Dudley White, villainized the president’s high-fat/high-cholesterol diet and put him on a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet instead. (The fact that Eisenhower had smoked four packs of cigarettes a day up until 1949 didn’t seem to cross anyone’s mind as being a likely cause.) When Ike ran again for president in 1956, the low-fat diet was credited for his recovery and ability to return to work. What never got publicized is that Ike hated his low-fat diet. He felt hungry all the time even as he gained weight and his cholesterol continued to rise. He also continued to have heart attacks—six more after leaving office. The final and fatal attack occurred in 1969. The supposed link between saturated fats and heart disease was a marketing windfall for the food industry. Suddenly they had a demand for a product that had been pretty unpopular up until then: margarine.

The problem was that Dr. White based his advice on a faulty and manipulated study called the Seven Countries Study by Ancel Keys. Keys set out to prove a hypothesis that a fat-rich diet was responsible for heart disease and overall poor health.

The study was so named because it involved studying the diets of populations in Finland, Greece, Japan, Italy, Netherlands, Yugoslavia, and the U.S. From this study, Keys claimed proof that cholesterol levels were strongly related to heart disease mortality. Unfortunately, Keys’ study was highly flawed because, among other things, he buried the findings of 15 other countries that contradicted his desired outcome. Sadly, and to many people’s detriment, Keys remained adamant that dietary saturated fats caused elevated cholesterol levels, which in turn caused heart disease.

The logic went like this: Saturated fats such as those found in butter, meat, cheese, and eggs raised serum cholesterol in laboratory animals and humans. Because cholesterol is a major component of atherosclerotic plaques, and early studies had linked high serum cholesterol levels to heart disease, then saturated fat must cause heart disease.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Recent evidence and studies have questioned the risks of fats. A paper published in the January 29, 2015, edition of the BMJ’s Open Heart examined the data on fat and cardiovascular disease available to U.S. and U.K. regulatory committees at the time the 1980 and 1984 guidelines were issued.

“The analysis revealed that the six randomized controlled trials available back then did not provide sufficient evidence that cutting total fat or saturated fat intake reduces deaths from heart disease. The authors conclude that the ‘dietary advice not merely needs review; it should not have been introduced.’”

In 1957, the American Heart Association (AHA) joined forces with Keys. Soon, AHA spokespersons took to television to warn the American public about the dangers of butter, eggs, bacon, and other saturated fat food sources in relation to heart disease. The government quickly followed suit, issuing federal guidelines recommending that a low-fat diet be followed in order to prevent heart disease.

Every five years since the late 1970s, the USDA has issued a set of dietary guidelines for Americans. And every five years, predictably, the food industry rises up to make sure that eating less of anything isn’t in those guidelines. Politics and lobbying shape these dietary recommendations far more than actual science. This led to the eventual creation of the food pyramid. So how has this misinformation affected us?

As a result “From 1909–1999, consumption of soybean oil in the United States increased by more than 1,000-fold per person and margarine consumption increased 12-fold, whereas consumption of butter and lard decreased by about four-fold each.” Rather than protect people, it has led to the creation of a nation of overweight, sick, and obese citizens.

“[If] foods are understood only in terms of the various quantities of nutrients they contain,” Gyorgy Scrinis wrote, then “even processed foods may be considered to be ‘healthier’ for you than whole foods if they contain the appropriate quantities of some nutrients.”

No idea could be more sympathetic to manufacturers of processed foods, which surely explains why they have been influential and supportive, if not completely behind the nutritionism bandwagon.

Before we wind up this section, let’s lightly touch on cholesterol and retinol.

Without diving in too deep, here are a few key points on cholesterol. Every day, our liver produces around 1000mg of cholesterol. It is the most important component and structural unit of cell membranes. It is a vital piece for a normal functioning nervous system. And it is the building block for our body to manufacture numerous hormones. It also serves as an effective and powerful anti-inflammatory agent. You can read more about cholesterol here. 

Lastly, but definitely not least, retinol, the bioavailable form of Vitamin A, is a fat-soluble vitamin that is only found in animal-sourced foods, such as liver, oily fish, cheese, butter, heavy cream, and egg yolks. As you can imagine, retinol has largely disappeared from our lives because of the modern low-fat diet.

Retinol plays an essential role in body growth, energy production, immune function, vision, and reproductive health. And retinol is a key player in our protocol for most people. You can read about Retinol in a later chapter.

Now let’s look at the third cause of our mineral depletion and imbalance in modern medicine.

Modern Pharmaceutically Driven Medicine:

At the dawn of the 20th century, doctors trained and practiced medicine in diverse areas. It was estimated that at least 25% of them practiced holistic health care that emphasized the importance of diet and nutrition as primary preventative and therapeutic treatments.

At this time, a movement was funded by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, two of the wealthiest men in the world, to improve and revise the world of medical education. The result was the closure of many medical schools and a refocus of the existing ones on the ideology of narrow symptom-centered, drug-based treatment regimens. Lost among the reorganization and the revamping were whole-patient care and other treatment options, like diet and nutrition. The problem partially stems from this reinvention of the medical system.

It is important to note that Abraham Flexner, an experimental educator at the time with zero medical experience, implemented the change, resulting in a system that created too many “neutered technicians” who saw “patients in the service of science rather than science in the service of patients.”

Now at the time, the change made sense as it did increase the quality of training to a degree. At the time of the change acute, infectious diseases were the leading causes of death.

Treatment in these cases was relatively simple: the patient developed pneumonia, went to see the doctor, received an antibiotic (once they were invented), and either got well or died. One problem, one doctor, one treatment.

However, as lifespans extended by decades and our food, diet, and agriculture changed, new diseases arose along with multiple complications. The one-for-one solution was unable to keep up.

Modern Western or orthodox medicine focuses on acute treatment of the patient’s symptoms with the use of prescription medications, surgical operations, various forms of therapy, and radiation. The advantages and progress of this modern system make it ideal for urgent situations that require serious or immediate care. Additionally, modern pharmaceuticals can quickly alleviate many negative symptoms, allowing people to resume their daily lives with minimal interruption or discomfort.

However, modern Western medicine often only treats the symptoms without addressing the root cause of the issue. Additionally, the long-term effects of many medications can have huge impacts on the body over time. Since pharmaceuticals don’t fix the underlying issues in far too many situations, they are prescribed to be taken for the rest of a patient’s life. Sadly, as a result, prescription drugs have become the third or, at best, the fourth leading cause of death.

It is not just the prescription drug and symptom focus, but the conventional medical system now makes it next to impossible for a primary care provider (PCP) to offer much more than a one-off solution. The average patient visit with a PCP lasts about ten to twelve minutes, and the average PCP has about 2,500 patients on his roster. If a patient has multiple chronic conditions, takes several medications, and presents with new symptoms, it is nearly impossible to provide quality care during that ten-minute visit.

Things are only getting worse. Chronic disease is shortening our lifespan, destroying our quality of life, bankrupting governments, and threatening the health of future generations. And unfortunately, conventional medicine continues to fail to address this crisis adequately. Six in ten Americans now suffer from chronic disease, and four in ten have multiple chronic conditions. Chronic disease is responsible for seven of ten deaths each year. The rate of chronic disease in kids more than doubled between 1994 and 2006. Ninety percent of the $3.5 trillion we spend on healthcare in the United States each year treats chronic disease and mental health conditions.

Many pharmaceuticals are made using petrochemicals. Many contain some form of fluoride, and many contain iron oxides. These pharmaceuticals either directly or indirectly deplete magnesium and copper or contribute to the iron load in the body.

Thus, while the intent behind modern pharmaceuticals and the medical system may have been spot on at the turn of the 20th century, it no longer serves nor protects us. It has even been put forth that the modern Western medical system is to blame for our current healthcare crisis.

So what can we do?

Recent statistics suggest that more than 85 percent of chronic diseases is caused by environmental factors like diet, behavior, environmental toxins, and lifestyle. Our belief and intent that through education, diet, and lifestyle changes focused on ancestral concepts will cure your mineral imbalance and remove the other bad stuff from your body. You can take control of your life and make all the difference for yourself.

We believe that it’s now impossible to get enough nutrients vitamins from diet alone. We live in different world now and we have no choice but to adapt.  While we also advocate a focus on nutrient dense foods, in addition we need to compensate for these new factors with daily supplementation in order to fill the gap, and optimize our health.  We will dive more into this through the rest of the book.