The Problem With Mineral Supplements, Why Minerals Don't Get Absorbed, Why You Probably Have A Mineral Deficiency & What To Do About It.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, College educated. I'm in a first world country. Like, how many other people have this problem? It's a grueling thing to do to your body and then to not. And it's fine as long as you know how to replenish. But short term, we have to be able to fix this on a cellular level for ourselves based on our individual energy requirements.

Why is it that we wouldn't just be able to consume the minerals set aside and just get what we need from n. Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral.

Living, biohacking, and much more.

My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Hey, what's up? Got a cool podcast for you today on all things minerals with my friend, Barton Scott. Not now. After we recorded this episode, I should tell you, he sent through a pretty cool review of my own hair mineral analysis that I did after we recorded this episode. Because I got so interested in it, I was like, what the hell? I want to do a hair mineral analysis. See what my values are like. So he was kind enough to go ahead and run a mineral analysis on me, and he went through the results of that in the audio that's appended at the end of this interview. Hair mineral and toxin analysis. It's fascinating. All right, folks, I hope you're ready to geek out on all things minerals. Not just minerals, but mineral particles and nano minerals and mineral absorption. And the guy I have on today to talk about minerals, I was actually with him a few months ago. We were at a conference. Where was that conference, Barton, that we were at?

We're out in California. Yeah, it was the Metabolic Health Summit.

That's right, the Metabolic Health Summit. Yeah. Which I guess was fitting for you because that summit tends to be very focused on 10 at least. I feel like it does. Keto, low carb. Low carb pizza, low carb Pop tarts, freaking erythritol and xylitol coming out people's wazoos on the elevator. And of course, a big part of keto and low carb is a lot of people say that, you know, mineral deficiencies are one of the reasons people kind of get that fluish type of feeling. And so. So you kind of fit in there. But when I had a chance to chat with you both there, and we've talked back and forth via email and at a few other conferences, too, I've been pretty impressed with your knowledge on minerals. I know your background is you're a chemical engineer and a nutritionist, but now you've kind of Started to get into this idea of mineral absorption, mineral bioavailability. And you gave me a few bottles of these things called nano minerals, you know, very, very small minerals. At least that's, that's my layman's definition of the word nano. But teeny tiny minerals and very, very well absorbed from what I understand. And I know you've also studied up quite a bit on testing for minerals and how you could know if, if you're actually at a mineral deficiency and even have gotten into some of the things regarding mineral ratios, you know, because you know anything from copper to zinc to magnesium and beyond, apparently the actual ratios of those are important as well. So I'm pretty stoked to talk to you and get into this stuff because I haven't really taken a deep, deep dive into minerals on the show before, unless you count the shows I've done on how to season your food with amazing salt. So anyways, the show notes for those of you listening in for everything that Barton and I talk about. Barton's last name is Scott, by the way. Barton Scott. His company's upgraded formulas. Everything we talk about you can find@BenGreenfieldFitness.com MineralsPodcast BenGreenfieldFitness.com mineralspodcast so Barton, welcome to the show, man.

Thank you, Ben. Yeah, it's a pleasure to be on. Yeah, I'm happy to share some of, some of this knowledge that I've found that I find to be so incredibly important for our health, our vitality, longevity, brain function, all of these things.

Cool. Well, I guess what I'm curious about is how you kind of went from chemical engineering to nutrition and then minerals. Like, what sparked your interest in all this?

Sure, certainly. I mean, it was two largely emotional factors. I had started wrestling as a young, young kid.

My father was a wrestling coach, among other things.

Just really depleted myself, you know, just. You can certainly relate with all the Ironmans and things you've done, but you know, just day in, day out, sweating way more than you're, you're putting in. I mean, I played football too. I played quarterback, played a couple different sports, but wrestling is just so grueling from a sweating and just.

Well, Ironman 2, I mean, I'm going to interrupt your, your intro early on, but I can tell you a couple things. For me, When I was racing Ironman A, we had the physiologist Alan Ltd. Who's, who's involved with a few different pretty good nutrition companies. And he came in and he would test my team. I raced for team Timex, and he did a sweat sodium analysis on all the athletes. And I lose, like, nearly twice the amount of sodium, at least. I don't know about the other minerals, because this test was only for sodium twice the amount of the average white male in terms of my sweat sodium loss, which was pretty interesting for me, because when I would race Ironman, I would lay in bed at night unable to fall asleep because I could hear my pulse pounding in my ears. And then when I finally got that test done, it was a little bit of a light bulb moment for me because I thought, okay, I'm just going to. I'm going to replenish like crazy. Because up until that point, I hadn't really familiarized myself with the whole myth behind, you know, salt really not being bad for you. And so I got my hands on some really good salt, turned into kind of a salt aficionado, and began to use probably upwards of 6, 7 grams of salt per day. And it took two days for that pulsing in the ears to go away and for me to actually be able to fall asleep at night without hearing my beat of my heart in my ears. So that, for me, was probably nine years ago. And ever since then, I've been pretty steeped in just salting heavily a lot of my food, or at least using that as an excuse to buy copious amounts of really good salt, like Florida cell and Aztec salt and Kona salt, black salt. And so I'm just pretty much addicted to salt now. But anyway, so same thing for me. I was in a sport that involved heavy sweating. And furthermore, not only did my sport involve heavy sweating, but it turns out I actually lose more sodium in my sweat than the average person does. So I've kind of been interested in this stuff for a while.

Absolutely. The thing we find, too, with taking in a lot of salt, and I was in the same place about 10 years or so ago, and this is part of the problem. It wasn't the whole problem when you start to really take in large amounts of salt. And I thought, you know, salt was bad then, too. That was part of it. And, you know, in addition to just years and years of extreme output, really, when you combine all those things, you get this nasty chemical equation in the body at a cellular level, and the cells just don't make as much energy. So you go, wait a minute. My memory isn't really working the way it used to. Like, things that really give you pause, you know.

Oh, when you say that, I'm fine with you geeking out a little bit. On that. What do you mean you're not able to make energy? Like, can you get into the science behind that?

Certainly. So you need magnesium to make ATP. You need a few other things as well, oxygen being one. But you know, when you start to. This is on both sides and this is why testing is so important. When you take in a lot of salt, you know, this is, this is if you're not doing the level of exertion we're talking about. If you're like sitting at a desk and just pounding salt. I mean, your body pretty much tells you when you've had too much salt. If you're eating a clean diet, I find. But that's, that's a different topic. Yeah. To make energy to, you know, our bodies are electrical forces and you just, you have to have electrolytes, as in electricity. You know, you really have to understand what your current levels are. You know, genetics are great, but that tells you the story of what should be. When we're looking at one of our hair analyses that are done the proper way. And it's really essential to understanding the overall picture of your health. I mean, you get thyroid ratios, we'll get into some of that later too. You get adrenal, you get metabolism. There's a lot of interesting stuff. There's. For me personally, the way, the reason I go all the way back to that is because what really started to answer your question was me beginning to lose my memory, my short term memory. And I was in my early 20s and my memory up until that point, like all through school had been just kind of really razor sharp. And I, I didn't take it for granted, but I was. Because it was very sharp. I really noticed the degradation of it and that soon thereafter, you know, I was born to older parents, much older parents, and I knew that probably losing one of them at some point would be a real thing that would, would happen sooner rather than later. But you know, I lost my mother and around that, you know, they say trauma is linked with losing memory too. You're also increasing your mineral. I mean, from a technical standpoint, you're certainly increasing whenever you're under stress and trauma. I know you've covered some of these things on the podcast before. It's super, super interesting. Your body's requirements go way, way up. So, you know, undoing some of those traumas you've talked about, plant medicines, things like that can really, you know, emdr, many different modalities can be helpful for reducing your just kind of what I call idling temperature or Burn rate. And that's super, super fascinating, right? Because if we can sit at our desk and not be redlining like I see so many people do when they just pound copious amounts of stimulants, you know, instead of maybe meditating or getting some great exercise or maybe sleep soft or, you know, they're hurting, they don't have the mineral ratios in the right levels, the right ratios and percentages. So all of this really feeds back into each other.

And I want to harp on what you just said about stress and specifically electrolyte needs, because if you look at cortisol, it interplays with aldosterone quite a bit. And aldosterone is a steroid hormone. It's secreted by your adrenal glands. It helps to regulate the balance of water and electrolytes in your body. And generally, if sodium intake drops too low, or you could even argue mineral intake overall, that stimulates a hormone system. It's your renin angiotensin aldosterone hormone system. And that maintains your osmotic balance and your adequate blood pressure. That's why, for example, when I was racing Ironman, I would lay awake and I could hear my blood pressure in my ears. And that's because when renin goes up and aldosterone goes up, that occurs in response to mineral insufficiencies. So you tend to get these really pronounced blood pressure dysregulation type of issues. And, you know, the, the interesting thing is that in many cases, that can be associated with, paradoxically an increase in blood pressure, meaning that decreased electrolyte and mineral intake can cause your blood pressure to go up due to those renin aldosterone mechanisms, not down, which is ridiculous. You know, there's a whole, there's a really great book about this, by the way. Dr. James Nicolantonio, or D. Nicolantonio is his name, he wrote a book called the Salt Fix. And I'll link to that in the shownotes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Michael Minerals podcast. But it's, it's super interesting the, the interplay between that renin aldosterone system and cortisol. And then of course, as you noted, you know, a big part of this, as James Tennant talks about, and, or Jerry Tennant is his name, he talks about this in his book the Body Electric. You know, this idea that our entire body really operates on these electrochemical gradients and sodium is the extracellular cation in that. I mean, you'll find it in blood, you'll find it in Lymph fluid and the maintenance of extracellular fluid volume is pretty much up to sodium. And I'm not necessarily arguing that you need copious amounts of isolated sodium from say, like table salt or sodium chloride, but a full spectrum of minerals is going to allow you to maintain those proper electrochemical gradients.

And.

And then it's also going to allow you to ensure that you're not getting that huge increase in renin and aldosterone that's going to cause the blood pressure dysregulation. So, I mean, those really, I think, are the two most important physiological mechanisms underlying a lot of this stuff.

I think those are great points. And you explain that really, really well. The one thing that we do want to be careful with, because it varies with activity, right, Is sodium and magnesium and how those play together as well as sodium and potassium. So as sodium goes up, our magnesium will tend to go down. It's part of that osmotic dance that you talked about. So that's, that's just something to be aware of for people out there. So it's like, well, if you're getting cramps, I mean, cramps can come in the form of low sodium, low potassium, low magnesium. To go back to where we were before the this. As this is happening, my memory is really slipping. I'm thinking I can be at peace with losing someone close to me. It's part of life, but it's still. It was from degenerative diseases. And now that's something that I'm very aware of, the signs and symptoms and what you can do to reverse many of these things. Because really all of it comes down to we're elemental. Let's figure out what elements are out of balance and let's fix it. So it, you know, longevity became a focus. So this. So I started to think about, well, what. What influences longevity, what influences memory? And you get really quickly to not. Not vitamins, but minerals. You know, it's kind of like saying fruits and vegetables, they are quite different. I know you've. You've said that before too. It's just. It's just a common vernacular, right? So we should separate those out because without minerals, vitamins are useless. You have to have them activated.

Now, when you say without minerals, vitamins are useless, are you meaning because multivitamin companies will chelate their vitamins to minerals to allow for adequate absorption, or are you referring to something else?

Just that you have the enzymatic sort of process that minerals activate? I mean, magnesium alone activates. We used to think it was around 300. Now it's somewhere around 800 different pathways in the body.

All right, got it, got it. So what you're referring to then would be a magnesium deficiency limiting the enzymatic activity that's necessary for proper absorption of vitamins and nutrients.

Right.

The other thing to think about when it comes to absorption is that a lot of people don't realize you think about hydrochloric acid, people are familiar with that as being vital to the digestion of food, particularly protein. Well, hydrochloric acid, the chloric in that the chloride ions are providing by salt. Right. And so if you don't have adequate minerals, you're not actually producing enough hcl. Therefore you're not going to be able to do things like digest protein and assimilate amino acids. So I mean, I would argue it's not just the magnesium, it can even be the sodium chloride that you'd find in salt.

It's 100% true. You know, people talk about when we look at their levels, we'll say, well, I'm low in phosphorus. And you know what's high in phosphorus? It's like, well, mini grass fed meat eating, no sale, that's high in phosphorus. But will you absorb it if you have low stomach acid? No. I mean, you'll struggle for sure. So chloride is essential as well. So where we go from there is I developed this lens, it's been about 20 years now for me using supplements for performance. I'm thinking. So at that point I'm like, all right, I already know the right brands. I do a hair analysis, then do a couple different labs, do, gosh, about 10 grand in testing in a year. And then, which seemed like a lot for me at the time on yourself.

You were doing all these tests when you're having all these issues.

Yeah, and then I just couldn't figure out what was causing the problem. I wasn't, you know, I was like fit. I was, you know, pretty, you know, pretty ripped really. And I had no real energy mentally. And I was just like, this is, this is not a way to live. And I'm sitting at that place going like at that point of, you know, finished. I'm college educated, I'm in a first world country, like how many other people have this problem? And maybe I just got here sooner because I pushed just like you have and all these, so many races. It's just, it's a grueling thing to do to your body and then to not. And it's fine as long as you know how to replenish but not replenishing. I mean, it's just a ventral recipe that's just dead set for disaster. So, you know, I finally do a hair analysis and I look at, at this point, I already know great brands. I'm taking great brands and taking the, you know, copious amounts, if not at least the, the rda. And I'm sitting there, I'm looking at results. And granted, people should always look at that results when, with someone that's trained in reviewing them. But I'm looking at it and going, how is it possible that I'm chronically deficient in magnesium and I'm taking 600 milligrams of magnesium like six days a week. How is this possible? And I have for a year and a half at this point. So I start to get pretty angry at this and I, Yeah, it's not like I have a solution right away or anything, but, you know, it just begins this research cycle. And then I start to think at some point several Years later, like 3am in the morning, I go, oh, I got it. Absorption, which is really the main thing we're trained in, in chemical engineering, basically get your minors in chemistry and math and a lot of physics. And then you do this focus, which is a lot of thermodynamics and a lot of absorption, because that's what you're going to do if you stay in that field. So I started to think about it from this lens of absorption that I have, having already understood that I'm not absorbing and I'm taking the right brand.

Meaning all this magnesium, you're taking your hypothesis then was I'm taking it, but it's not being absorbed.

Exactly. And there were several others, but that was the main one. That from what I could tell from research, if I fixed that sort of lead domino, a lot of things would improve and get better. So yeah, I start to think, I'm like, oh, well, this is a process problem. Like we need to improve the absorption from a process standpoint, which is something we go to school for.

Yeah. And by the way, I want to interrupt you real quick. Were you concerned about the form of the minerals that you were taking or. Because I think a lot of people don't think about this. First of all, minerals that you get from animal products are more readily absorbed than minerals you get from plants. And that's because compounds found in plant foods interfere with mineral absorption. Like phytates that you find in whole grains and a lot of plant foods. Those can bind to calcium and iron and zinc and interfere with Absorption oxalates, you know, that you'll find in spinach and almonds and beets and things like that, those can also bind to and inhibit mineral absorption and then so can tannins, you know, such as in teas and coffees. So how come you, you didn't think, okay, well, you know, may I drink too much coffee or, you know, I should eat fewer plants? Like, or did that come across your radar as well?

Yeah, you know, I wasn't nearly as knowledgeable then as I am now on all of these different subjects, certainly. But I did know that the viability from plants was lower. I probably also had low stomach acid too, like hypochlorohydria. So many people have some level of this, you know, so even if I would have been, and this, and we're talking 10 years ago, so even if I then immediately started to do this, the problem is my deficiencies were so, and this is the case for a lot of people, my deficiencies were so severe that diet alone, it would have never truly reversed the deficiency. And I know that's a big statement, but when you think about it, I mean, your body can only assimilate. Yeah. There's just so many factors that go into it and I just know it to be true. People eating what I consider to be an ideal diet for them, they've done so much experimentation and they still have energy problems. And it just mainly comes down to thyroid adrenal. You know, These glands produce 98% of the energy in the body. Do they have what they need to produce what you need? It's not that simple, but that's a big part of it. And if we ignore it, like it kind of doesn't matter if you're taking, you know, I love Ayurveda and I know I'll go really deep into that world at some point. I've gone fairly deep into it. But you know, taking Ashwagandha is great, but these things move the needle like 10%. If you have severe deficiencies, good luck. And I've been there. Like I. It's not to say don't do those, it's say layer on those things.

Yeah, yeah. And then the other question I have for you is, you know, in addition to, of course, consideration the bioavailability of the minerals that you were consuming, which, which I know you're going to get into. You know, I had mentioned that, you know, certain high intake of plants with phytates and oxalates as well as a high intake of tannin rich foods like coffees and teas may impair absorption of some minerals. But did you also consider, because the small intestine, you know, the, the duodenum, the jejunum, the ileum, that's pretty much where most mineral absorption occurs. You know, like iron, calcium, magnesium, zinc. All those are absorbed almost immediately after they have left your stomach. You know, in about the first eight feet of the small intestine. Did you consider at all, you know, do I have some type of intestinal inflammation, some type of, you know, bacterial overgrowth or something that is affecting my gut health to the extent to where I might not be absorbing minerals properly? Because I think that intestinal inflammation or small intestine bacterial overgrowth or some issues like that can also be a major player in low mineral availability.

What I would say for anyone to zoom out of just me, I would say for anyone listening, most Americans do not have a functional digestive tract. I'm sorry, I'm sure that's pretty commonly known. I'm sure a lot of people listen to the show have certainly above average, but God, I mean, having loose junctions in the digestive tract in general is just terrible. Whether or not you're eating gluten and you've cut out a lot of toxic triggers. I mean, stress in general will also cause these loose junctions to happen. So I realized that we really have to engineer the product through a process standpoint such that the minerals are able to be digested without the help of the digestive tract. Like, that would be a bonus. But that was, that was what needed to happen. And I realized, like, okay, well, that's a size. That's going to be a size problem because we have normal, like colloid, colloidal minerals that are about five times of a normal cell. So that's. That math is never going to work. The only way that does work is, you know, you go through, as you just described, the digestive practice or digestive process. So this is, this is where I start to think, well, all right, so size matters. Something called electron driving force really matters. And between these two things, we start to think, well, okay, now it's just a matter of figuring out how to do it.

You need to unpack those. So what do you mean size matters? And what do you mean electron driving force matters? What, what exactly is it about minerals that either of those are an issue when it comes to mineral absorption?

With electron driving force, you want the body to be able to absorb, say, magnesium, two plus charge into the mitochondria. Mitochondria is about 500 nanometers on the smaller side, that's what you're shooting for. To get it in the cell, you have to have a driving force for all things to happen, Right? And I know you know this for anyone listening, that's thinking, well, what do you mean? It's like. Well, a door doesn't close on its own. You have to exert energy. So how could you get mineral particles into a cell? Well, you have to have them in an active form. So, for example, calcium carbonate, right? You have one calcium atom, three carbon atoms. They're bound really tightly together, and because of this tight bond, they're practically useless to the body. Molecular bonds, the body recognizes, it can break those apart. When we eat plants, and we do get those minerals from them, although they have all the different interference mechanisms that cause plants to not get eaten when they're in the forest, we do absorb the aspects of them that we absorb. We absorb. Well, it's just about getting past those gates, so to speak. So that. And then size, right? So if you were to just drop a normal colloidal mineral like calcium carbonate into your bloodstream, into, like, injected into your veins, not much is going to happen. Not anything good. At least that size. You know, the red blood cells are a certain size. I mean, it's much, much smaller than these mineral particles.

Okay, now I want to interrupt you real quick, because if I'm eating a plant or I'm, you know, consuming maybe some meat that has minerals in it, are you saying that the size of the minerals we'd naturally find in nature are not being absorbed? And if that is the case, wouldn't that suggest nature is broken? I mean, it seems to me like there might be a little bit of a disconnect here. If there are minerals in nature, shouldn't we be able to absorb them?

Exactly, yeah. So we do. We do. Absolutely. Nature already does this process naturally. You're 100% right. That's a great list litmus test for it. Plants have the strength and ability to ionize minerals themselves. Now, just regular ionic minerals are not. That's a good starting place. It's not, I would say, good enough. But, you know, they, they do that through a process of photosynthesis. Now, I mean, plants can crush through and crack concrete, you know, as they're germinating, Right? So this is, you know, they're strong. And how they get strong, well, they, they use the electrons that come from. From minerals. So. But they're able to do that internally. Like, we're. We're not really able to do that.

So that's not even what I'm saying. What I'm saying is can't we just eat plants and get the minerals from those plants? I mean, for thousands of years, obviously humans have probably not been able to somehow make minerals smaller. But, but why is it that we wouldn't just be able to consume the minerals that we would find in nature, in animal or plant food? You know, the, the, you know, mineral inhibition mechanisms of some plants set aside and just get what we need from nature.

Yeah. So this comes down to World Health organization in the 90s said soil was something like 80% depleted in most places in the world. But just in general, you can forget that stat and just know that, you know, a stake today has about half the iron that it used to, because the topsoil is something like 3 inches when it used to be 18 inches on average. Again, just rough numbers. So the soil, just like a mother, can't give to her child iodine she doesn't have, which greatly impairs the child's iq. The soil can't give to the plant and the plants can't give to the animals what they don't have. This is the essential. Do we have to fix that long term? And is that something I'm really thinking about? Absolutely. But short term, like over the next 20 years, we have to be able to fix this on a cellular level for ourselves based on our individual energy requirements.

Okay, so, so what you're, what you're saying is that there are minerals of the proper size for absorption in soil and in plants and I would assume then in animals, but because of poor soil regenerative practices in many locations in the world, the, it's, it's not the size of the mineral, it's the volume of the properly sized minerals that we're now no longer being able to take in.

Yeah, that's a, it's a huge part of it. My, what I've realized is that we, we really need to optimize the size of the particles too because, you know, the, the plants can ionize it and themselves and can make it usable and small, but you know, they also kind of stabilize it. Interestingly, it's a both thing. It's a. Yeah, so what do you.

Mean it's a both thing? It's not enough minerals. But then what's the other thing?

It's not enough and it's, it's not sized correctly.

And that's what I'm taking issue with you on. When you say it's not sized correctly, you're Somehow implying that the planet that we live on is not producing minerals that we can actually absorb.

We can through our digestive system. Absolutely.

Okay.

Yes, absolutely.

So that, that seems to then be in stark contrast. You saying it's not sized properly.

You know, it's just inefficient.

Okay.

It needs to be more efficient because so many of us don't have that. I'm sure you have an ideal digestive system. Most people don't.

So what you're saying is, what you would like to propose is that the minerals, although they're not in as high quantity in many plants and animals as we would like them to be, based on poor farming practices, they could or should be. Let's just use the word biohacked to allow us to. Because we're living in a post industrial era where we've got broken guts, we've got poor mineral absorption, we have high amounts of stress, many of us are sweating excessively, etc. What you're saying is that your argument is why not figure out a way to make minerals better absorbed.

Yes.

Okay, all right, so that makes sense.

Absolutely. Because, you know, it goes back to that example of me and so many other people. I mean, so many hair analysis over the past couple of years. It's really evident that a lot of people, they're, they're low in a particular mineral and they go, but wait a minute, I'm taking zinc or I'm taking chromium, or I'm taking potassium, or this is part of it. Part of it may be exertion, part of it is severe deficiencies, part of it is absorption. So how do we stack the cards in our favor such, you know, such that we can produce all the energy our thyroid and our adrenals need to produce.

Okay, got it. Now you brought up hair analysis quite a bit. Is there validity to hair analysis for testing for minerals? And if so, how does it work? Like, how do you take a clump of hair? Because I've actually had this done. You know, I've gone into my, my hair salon, I've gotten a haircut, I've brought in a white envelope with me and told them, hey, could you save a little bit of this? I'm gonna get a hair mineral analysis, I send it off and I get everything from, you know, zinc, copper, magnesium, different ratios, et cetera. But how does that work for people who need to wrap their head or their, their hair, in this case, around how you can actually learn mineral levels from a clump of hair that indicates what's going on in the rest of your body. How does that actually even work?

That's a great, great question. First, if you let me out, I'll tell you that we know that the hair analysis is accurate, because I can tell by looking at your analysis, if I had it in front of me and we had never met and I knew nothing about your lifestyle, that you would have certain disorders, like, let's say, a sleep disorder, for example. The EPA also uses it. I really focus on it mainly for a mineral standpoint, not as much the heavy metal side. That's a whole nother topic that we can definitely get into, if you like. But the EPA will use it to determine heavy metal levels for people that have been in, quote, unquote, exposed areas for toxicity. Does it show if it's recent? Certainly, yeah. Again, this is. This is why I use them for minerals, much more so than heavy metals. If you have heavy metal exposure, there are certain minerals that can, you know, you can pinpoint and load up on that will help you start to remove these heavy metals from your body. And also a body that has very few mineral deficiencies collects much less heavy metals. It's almost like the movie 300 where they go, shields up. It causes that electric, that electrostatic force across the cell membrane, and it's just less permeable. So cadmium comes by and just doesn't stick. Mercury comes by and just doesn't stick as well.

Okay, so. So they've. They've actually looked into, like, reliability and validity of laboratory data for hair mineral analysis and found that it agrees with what you would find in, for example, the blood.

Yes, blood is a snapshot, and you do a lot of blood work. And I'm a fan of blood work, too, because frankly, we haven't developed the testing yet to test for every single biomarker as we can. And it's great in many, many cases for a lot of different reasons. No denying that at all. Is it a snapshot? Is it influenced on what you ate Yesterday or within 72 hours? Absolutely. Like your testosterone. For anyone listening, you know, if you're. If you go out drinking, have a heavy night of drinking on Friday, you go in Monday and get a blood test, your testosterone will be pretty affected by that. And that was. That was several days before, you know, so what I want when I'm making a decision on anything really, is as much as much of a trend as possible instead of data points. So, again, you know, I'm a fan of it. But, you know, many blood tests, like thyroid, you know, they're based on a sick population. And there's a really, really wide range. Now, once you get into diagnosing things like thyroid, really, really well, you know, you sort of tighten that range and, you know, people more in the know tighten the range more and more. But it's based on sick population. To begin with. These numbers were based on 200, 200,000 hair analyses. And then of. And they started with a group of healthy athletes in their prime, and then they just recalibrate and recalibrate. And that, that's been, you know, proved improved. Improved for a long, long time.

Okay, so does it matter at all, like the rate at which your, your hair grows? Does it matter how recently you've cut it? Does it matter if there's things like shampoos or conditioners in there? I mean, are there other considerations when you're using a hair mineral analysis to look for, for what's going on as far as ratios of things like, you know, zinc or magnesium or copper? And then secondarily, what minerals can you actually see in the hair? The big picture here is I'm trying to help people understand how a hair mineral analysis actually works. If you can just dig into the science of that.

Yeah, certainly. Yeah. We, we test for 15 different minerals. We test for eight different heavy metals. We look at some additional elements, the significant ratios. So things like calcium to phosphorus. These on their own are more important than individual levels as far as things that interfere with testing dyes do. And what do you get there? Well, sometimes you could really, you just get false positives for things like tin. So if someone is dyeing their hair blonde, then they're going to get a tin level that is much higher than what is in their actual tissues. And hair is living tissue, just like the tissue in your arm. So it's a closer approximation than what we see typically in blood. Blood is what's circulating through. So if you do a test from that and you pull heavy metals or you pull minerals, you get what's circulating, but not necessarily what's there. And one of the things I say there is when you have, for example, your blood ph, when it's greatly out of whack, you pull out from bone marrow, calcium, magnesium, etc. To titrate the blood. Because if your blood ph changes, I mean, just a little bit, you're dead. So is the blood the best place to check for certain things, minerals? No, I don't believe that to be the case. Just everything I've seen seems to back that up. Is it maybe better than testing nothing Yeah, I think so. You can do, for example, a magnesium RBC test. That's just going to test one mineral and not 15. I mean, in total, there's about 60 different markers we look at in a hair analysis. And it's really, I mean, frankly, it's just really cost effective, too. Hair holds up too, you know, when you're shipping it. Just a lot better than blood, too. I mean, you see blood on the sidewalk and you see hair on the sidewalk. You know, fast forward a month, the hair will still be there.

Yeah.

As far as growth rates, if I could touch on that, that is something to think of, the range is between six and eight weeks. Six and eight weeks. Every six and eight weeks, someone could do a hair analysis if they chose to. I do them every two to three months is where I typically fall in. Just because, well, I forgot and got busy with other things, but at least quarterly.

Hmm. Okay. I'm somewhat skeptical still on hair mineral analysis. I mean, when I talked to Dr. Andrew Weil, his concern was normal ranges of minerals and hair had not yet been defined. And there was a good correlation between levels in the hair and indicators of nutritional status. And then, you know, I know that the. The Journal of the American Medical association seemed to, you know, and this was, this was a. It occurred a little while ago, but they, they found a lot of variability between laboratories in terms of the results. So. So it really depended, it seemed, on the laboratory that was actually doing the hair mineral analysis. So I go back and forth between, you know, how much, I guess, how much faith I would put in that versus like a really good, you know, like some kind of a spectracel or, you know, a minerals analysis via the blood that was a little bit more thorough. I realize hair is far more convenient and less invasive, but. But, you know, I'm still skeptical on the hair piece, but, you know, I get some of the arguments that you're making. I just, I have yet to be convinced that it is the bee's knees when it comes to. To testing. But, you know, regardless, you know, if you are looking at a hair mineral analysis, let's make the assumption that it's accurate and that the values tend to agree from lab to labor. When you're holding a hair mineral analysis report in your hands, what exactly are you looking for? Are you looking at ratios? Are you looking at deficiencies? I mean, how are you actually interpreting something like this?

Well, real quick, too. On normal levels, they have been able to establish normal levels with those. That's something I really respect, Dr. Weil. But that's something that, you know, no one can have an area of expertise in every area. That's not possible. So it's probably just something he's not aware of. They have been able to do that. And what you want to look at is really your significant ratios first and then individual levels. And then if you have heavy metals, you can look at your toxic ratios and see, oh, do I need to take some more? Do I need to take more? Selenium, is my iron low? Zinc is that low? That part is pretty straightforward. The. What's called additional ratios. I'm sorry, significant ratios is really, really the key part that you want to focus in on because you're looking at everything from parathyroid to thyroid to estrogen, anti aging, thyroid dysfunction, adrenal expression, is it reduced hormone balance between things like progesterone, estrogen, testosterone, NA to K is a stress ratio. It's also considered sort of an adrenal ratio. So there's a lot of those things. And if you read just a chart without someone that is really well trained in this, they. I mean, it's not, it's not going to say any of those things on it. It's just that we know that all of those significant ratios represent those things.

So when we're getting back to minerals, because what I really want to do, I mean, I don't necessarily want to turn this into a giant podcast on hair mineral analysis as much as teach people what ratios tend to be an issue and then what you've specifically learned as a chemical engineer and nutritionist about how to replenish those. And some of the common issues, especially in the supplement industry with the way that mineral replenishment is approached, because that's what made me want to get you on the podcast in the first place, was more of the actual, you know, how do we replace these things using an effective size and how is that delivered? So I'd love to get into what exactly it is that people tend to be most deficient in, why that's an issue and then how you actually replenish these things.

Magnesium is number one, typically in terms of, you know, deficiencies that really move the needle and they're corrected. So, yeah, like upgraded magnesium, for example, was. Was the first product that I produced that. I mean, it's a noticeable feeling for a lot of people, like they sleep their very first night. Potassium is really, it's a close second. I would say the results of being actually minerally deficient in magnesium versus potassium, not that you can only choose one and Only fix one by any means, but it's just. It has such a biological impact through so many different enzymatic functions that magnesium is certainly the leader there in terms of if you fix it, do you feel differently? To really answer your question there and then, I would say third, a much less known one that we see people are almost never high in is manganese. So I think the RDA is just frankly way too low in manganese. We also just don't really get it very easily. I mean, you can find it in things like almonds, but for the reasons you mentioned earlier, almonds can kind of interfere with your absorption just themselves.

Let's take magnesium, for example. Give me some details. What form of magnesium would you use? How do you actually get it to be a small size? Because you're saying that the size is usually not small enough to be absorb, from what I understand, across the cell membrane. So get into that. I mean, how do you actually approach this problem from an engineering standpoint, what.

We found is we really. So we use magnesium chloride. I know a lot of people really like other forms, but they like those forms really because they've been told those forms absorb well. Those forms absorb about 20 to 25% or less. Magnesium oxide is around 5%. And for that reason, because it doesn't absorb, it's great for clearing the bowels. Right. Don't get ready for a race and take a bunch of magnesium oxide, thinking it's going to prevent cramps. I'm sure a lot of people already know that. So we use magnesium chloride. So what we do is we start with. I'll just talk about what we can talk about. But we want to get these minerals in their most elemental state, which is atoms. That's the only state that can carry the electrical charge, whether it's negative, positive, etc. And the body really takes up these elements if they do carry electrical charge that's, you know, active and available. So I mean, really it's. It's a process standpoint and I think people really notice the difference when they. When they try ours. There's a lot of great companies out there that do an amazing job with quality, but quality and sourcing standards, I think it's just kind of a base bar at this point.

What are you guys doing to make it so small?

We start with. It's a great question. We start with, for example, in the case of magnesium, we start with pure magnesium. And the goal is to get it into a plasma sort of state so it's electrified underwater. And yeah, I Mean, from that we're able to precipitate out electrons, essentially. For magnesium, we add in chloride because as you mentioned, chloride is just essential for health, really.

Okay, so. And then you've got what you would call, I think you refer to it on your website or on these bottles. They give to me a nanomagnesium.

Right, okay. Nano is a unit of measure. So that's the reason why we use that tint of the mind strain.

Gotcha. Now, I noticed on your website you have magnesium, potassium, zinc and iodine. So are those the four that you think are the most important?

Yeah, we have a number. Those are four that I see so many people needing. We also. Those are. It's a great place to start for most people. Again, test, don't guess. And you'll see. I mean, do your own research. You can think of it as investing some money as an experiment to see what you need from a hair analysis and see how that's correlated with what the symptoms you should be experiencing. So if our nutritionist can tell you that you have these eight symptoms and you have all eight, I would say it's pretty. And it's a phone consultation you've never met. I would say it's pretty accurate. And therefore it's a good starting place to begin to make these changes. But we do have some other products right now. We have one that I'm really, really happy with called Peak Thyroid. That's really, really interesting because it's a balance of zinc and copper and many people have an imbalance of zinc and copper.

I've heard that a lot. Can you explain why that is and why that would be an issue?

Yeah, certainly, certainly. So this is actually a key thing right now to understand with a viral outbreak that we're having, zinc and copper is a reflective virus and bacterial predisposition. So if you have low zinc, you have a predisposition for. And some people know this, you know, I have a predisposition for a viral attack. Right. But here's the thing. When people take too much zinc and they over absorb zinc, they push out copper. When they push out copper, they set themselves up for a bacterial infection, which of course. What does that do? Well, that lowers their immune system and then it makes them more susceptible to also getting a virus or, you know, certainly just not a place you want to be. So what can you do there? Well, you can, you can test your levels and see where you are. You can also take copper as well as zinc. I recommend testing and not just kind of guessing which one you should take. I don't think that's a great approach. The other things we see are people taking large amounts of vitamin C, which, I mean, I myself even did that like seven years ago. There's a lot of great research to show amazing effects from this, and I'm really, really highly aware of it. What I will say though is this is absolutely not an opinion. This is just physics and chemistry, is that whenever you take a large amount of any one mineral or vitamin, you start to have this domino effect. It's like playing a. I always say it's like playing a multidimensional piano. You play one key. They're all connected. If they're all able to make sound, they would all make sound in the body. They do. So if you take a lot of vitamin C, you actually increase your iron absorption. So when you increase your iron absorption, your copper lowers and then you get set up for again a bacterial infection, which if you're trying to prevent against a virus like we are right now with COVID then lowering your copper level really, really low through megadosing vitamin C is possible. Certainly that's just how the chem. Just how the mineral balance works.

Okay, gotcha. And you find that typically the issue is too much copper and not enough zinc. So a low zinc to copper ratio.

You know, it's interesting, I think more women tend to have an elevated copper level, more men tend to have an elevated zinc level. If there's any sort of broad correlation I can draw. The other thing that I can say about this ratio that's really, really interesting is that copper is related to creativity and zinc is related to philosophy. So if you find yourself stuck in.

Is that like an Ayurveda thing or has that been studied?

This is. Yeah, it's been studied through. Probably through Ayurveda as well, I imagine, but certainly through hair mineral analysis.

What do you mean? How do they do that? You take like a mood state score or something like that along with your hair mineral analysis or. I don't understand that.

Yeah. So children just having different mental disorders. I forget what they. Exactly what they were, but they would notice. Oh, okay. They have this mental disorder and they have this zinc to copper ratio. They have this copper level individually and they have this zinc level individually. And then they would improve based on reducing copper intake or reducing zinc intake and in some cases also at the same time supplementing. And what I find, in many cases, if people aren't really absorbing most of the minerals they're taking or they're just trying, they're Just doing kind of a scatter shot approach that a lot of times it's the reduction of the, say, calcium that makes them feel a lot less fatigued, a lot more energized, because then the magnesium, potassium and sodium all balance each other.

Yeah. And everything I've seen, everyone I've talked to thus far seem to indicate that the most common imbalance would be elevated copper and depressed zinc. So too much copper, not enough zinc. And that does have some association. I've seen some studies with hyperactivity and add, even depression, some behavioral disorders just because of the relationship between that and neurotransmitters. So I would say if anything, the thing you're gonna see most common would be a need to decrease some of your exposure to copper and then increase foods that would contain zinc. Now, for you guys with the type of minerals that you sell on your website, this upgraded, what's it called, upgraded formulas, do you guys sell copper or do you primarily just do zinc? Because that that deficiency is so common to have not enough zinc and too much copper.

That's a great question. We probably, by the time this airs, our copper product is finally ready. I wanted to take some time and really get it done well. And we do have copper and zinc together in peak thyroid, which is, which is great. Copper can be a very foul tasting product. So I would say take it with food. If you're taking peak thyroid, take it with food just because it can be difficult in general, taste wise. But usually when you find something to be really. For example, if you take magnesium and you take some of our magnesium in liquid form, we have a capsule stew. If you take liquid, you notice a severe taste issue. You have a deficiency.

Yeah. Zinc's really important for fertility and testosterone too. I actually recently did a blood test, and even though my testosterone was in the 900s, my zinc was actually surprisingly low, which concerned me. I should actually have you send me up some zinc so I can check out your product. I just started putting this black ant extract into my smoothies in the morning. I put a big tablespoon of that stuff just because it's incredibly high in zinc. But I'd be interested to try some of these nano minerals that have zinc in them. And I know we're starting to get a little short on time, but as far as the way that people would use the type of minerals that you make, these nano minerals, how do you even use them? Are they liquids, are they capsules? Do you sprinkle them on food or how exactly does it work?

It's A great question. Our iodine, for example, we have a dropper and it's best to put that directly in the mouth without water because a lot of water has chlorine and it'll bind with it. Iodine's a protective mineral.

Well, if your water, if your water's filtered, you're probably okay though.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're fine. And I mean, mine is, yours is, a lot of people's isn't. But normally across the board, just take it as you would any other supplement. Again, not medical advice. Let's talk on a one to one basis with a nutritionist or nutritionally informed doctor. But I know you do a disclaimer, but just in general, I would say that's important. Our most common product right now, we've gone ahead and dehydrated that and put it in capsule form. It's upgraded magnesium, but the rest are.

All liquid and all of them are this tiny, tiny nano formula which basically the entire proposal here and the idea behind your company is that the nanominerals are bioavailable and absorbed to a much, much greater extent than the normal type of mineral that you'd find in supplements.

Yes, exactly.

Gotcha. Are there other companies doing this? Like, have you guys patented this process? Is this like a trade secret or, you know, why aren't more people doing this?

You know, it kind of blows my mind. I'm not sure really. Yeah, with us it's, you know, on our way to being patented right now. It's just a signed contract with a manufacturer that we've been able to work with and develop a really, really unique sort of contract and had a lot of requirements and changes and it took years to even find someone that we could work with. But I would say for anyone that's listening, just give some of these a shot and see it for yourself. It's great to understand things analytically, but it's just not going to help after a certain point. I think you've done a great job with a bunch of awesome questions that most people would have before starting a regimen, as they should. Results really speak for themselves. We get results for people.

Well, I'm going to link to your stuff in the show notes in case people want to try out. I suppose a pre and post hair mineral analysis would be one thing. Thing. And do you guys do the hair mineral analysis too? Is that something you offer?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes, yes. And consultation too. I feel like that's, that's a really important piece because, you know, for the reasons we just talked about, there's, there's a lot of amazing data in a hair analysis that will be missed if it's, if it's done by someone that yeah, isn't really well trained.

Yeah, I'm personally generally pretty careful with getting my, my test analysis done by the same company that's selling me the supplements because I always have that fox guarding the hen house type of nervousness, or at least I'll sometimes get a comparison test just to make sure. I know there are plenty of places like direct labs that one could get a hair mineral analysis as well. But I know you guys offer those and then you've got all these different formulas. You got your magnesium, your zinc, your copper, you have a thyroid formula. So, you know what I may have to do is do some testing and I know you're gonna send me up some stuff to try and I might do a little pre post testing to myself. And if anyone else does or if anyone has questions or comments or feedback for Barton about this stuff, what I'm gonna do is I'll link to his website. He gave us a 15% discount code too. It's Ben 15 if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com upgraded formulas. But I'll also link that in the podcast. You can go ask your questions and kind of pipe in with some your own questions for barton@bengreenfieldfitness.com mineralspodcast because I did find it very interesting, this concept of hacking minerals, so to speak, to get them very, very small for maximum absorption. Because whether it is a blood test or a hair test, I do tend to see especially these zinc copper ratios. And a lot of people I've seen tests from as well as magnesium and potassium is another to be big issues. And again, the light bulb moment for me was just when I started to sleep better and had better blood press in response to my own kind of full spectrum mineral supplementation, particularly with really good salts and now with a variety of minerals. So it's very interesting. And again, the URL for the shownotes is BenGreenfieldFitness.com MineralsPodcast Barton, I want to thank you for coming on the show today and sharing this stuff with us.

Oh, thank you, Ben. I mean, it's been a pleasure. And I just feel like in the last 10 years this is really the most important discoveries that I've been able to make. So I just want to share that with people.

Cool, man, cool. All right, well folks, thanks for listening in again. Go to BenGreenFeldFitness.com MineralsPodcast for the shownotes and to go check out Barton's website upgraded formulas and until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Barton Scott signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week.

Hey, Ben, this is Barton. I'm looking over your results right now and what I'm seeing is your first thing I'd like to start with is your calcium to phosphorus ratio. So it's good, it can be improved. You have some excess calcium in your body. A lot of people do. And what that I'm wondering if you're suffering from a stiff stiffness.

Any.

Probably not super noticeable at this level. But you know, if, if you are feeling stiff or you're taking longer to limber up, so to speak, before your workout, this is something that, this is the reason really all else being in track. So that's something to consider. Your next ratio looks pretty darn good. That's sodium to potassium. That's, that's an overall just indicator of energy in the body. Looking good there. And that's a adrenal function indicator as well. Your calcium to potassium is your thyroid ratio. That looks really well, really good as well. Zinc to copper.

This is.

I'm glad we did this analysis because right now, based on your levels, your zinc levels are elevated. Actually, this is why we prefer blood, sorry, why we prefer hair instead of blood is because with blood, you're getting that snapshot. And so for that day or two or three, you may have been low in zinc, but currently just looking at a trend over, you know, four to six weeks, which is what your hair would show is, you know, this level is certainly elevated and your copper is just about ideal independently. But the ratio being more important means that you, you would want to lower your zinc consumption currently. And this is super important. I wanted to get to it on the podcast.

Actually.

Your zinc to copper levels are really indicative of. Let's try that one more time more. They're really indicative of your viral and bacterial openness. So what I'm saying there is when your copper levels are incredibly low, you're open for a bacterial infection and case in point, and then with zinc, you're. When those levels are really low, you're open to a viral infection, which is something you obviously want to protect against, as does everyone right now. So, and I'm not sure why virtually no one seems to know this, but it's super essential. It's very indicative. Case in point, a friend of mine here, you know, very knowledgeable guy going through a huge program with just one of the top anti aging doctors in the world right now, he actually started supplementing a huge amount of zinc, like 50 milligrams a day. Granted, you know, he's not, he's going.

To absorb about 20% of that because.

They'Re just normal minerals and. And yet the problem was he developed a bacterial infection in his mouth because he lowered his rate of copper. And we were talking about this, he had just gotten his results. I could probably get permission to share them, but he had just gotten his results. And we're sitting down to dinner, had a couple friends over and as we're talking about dinner, we're talking about this. And I said, you want to be careful with that zinc intake because you'll set yourself up for a bacterial infection. And he said, oh well that's really interesting because I have a bacterial infection and just developed a week ago. I had to go to the dentist. And I said, well be careful with that because as obviously, I think this part is obvious. When you lower your overall immunity by developing a bacterial infection, what are you more likely and more susceptible to to, to then get, well, a viral infection, right. So I said, well, you know, be careful, you know, definitely supplement some copper in there as well. So you started taking peak thyroid. That has a balanced level of zinc and copper. That's one of our products that I'm really, really proud of. And it just, you know, ideally people would be testing and seeing what their levels are. I think in the meantime you can.

You can certainly supplement that which will.

Over time bring your levels into balance. So those are some thoughts. Your arsenic level was elevated as well. This is, I'm guessing, you know, being living where you live, you probably intake quite a bit of shellfish. There are a number of different, you know, foods and opportunities to, to absorb high levels of arsenic. Water is one. I'm not sure if you're on well water where you are, that's another consideration. You know, there's a number of different foods you can, you can look into that. Got a little bit of mercury, a little bit of cadmium, a little bit of aluminum. You know what's interesting is that, you know, take lead for example. Lead is, you'll see it in the blood.

If you have a lead exposure for.

About 34 days is what they found. After that point, it's not available in the blood, but you can find it via hair.

So some of just thought I would.

Throw that in there. It's interesting to be mindful of. I mean, granted the primary use I, that I explore this with is for mineral status. There's always going to be some variance between blood and hair when it comes to heavy metals, and since the window is so much wider, you're getting a trend instead of a snapshot. It's also going to be different between blood and hair, but these are a couple just highlights from the levels. One thing that's really awesome is your calcium to magnesium. That is your blood sugar ratio and that is ideal. So is your iron to copper. That's kind of an anti aging free radical production type thing to have an eye on.

That is ideal as well.

So magnesium looks really good. So you know, unsurprisingly, overall your levels are really good.

Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes. Use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.