Why You're Probably Mineral Deficient If You Eat A "Healthy" Diet, How Coffee & Ketosis Affect Your Mineral Status, Is Himalayan Salt Toxic, The Best Bottled Waters & More: The Mineral Fix With James DiNicolantonio.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, if you're holding onto too much magnesium, you are highly likely deficient because the body is holding on to that dose. We never used to drink soft water. It's something that we just decided to do not from a health perspective because we didn't like the scaling on pipes that would happen in mineral water.

Where are you at with this increasing trend of liquid packets of minerals added to water or other beverages?

I think it's a great way to top off your mineral status, health performance.

Nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Well, unless you've been living under a rock, you probably know salt isn't bad for you. Or at least it's kind of been increasingly less vilified than perhaps, perhaps it was in the past. I've talked about on podcasts before how sometimes there's an issue with isolated high amounts of sodium chloride like you might find in processed and packaged foods or in table salt. But ultimately salt is not only not that bad for you, but it's something that I have used in copious amounts in terms of in mineral form and in good salts like Kona black salt and Celtic salt and Colima salt. Ever since I was raising Ironman Triathlon and I figured out that the pounding in my ears and difficulty I had getting to sleep at night after a day of training nearly vanished when I just like threw all the silly rules that I'd been indoctrinated with during my college nutrition studies out the window, embraced salt and just started like salting all my food and using minerals and just like working into my diet a lot more, banishing any potential thoughts of high blood pressure which did not manifest, but the improvements in sleep were profound. And now I'm like totally on the salt bandwing. I do like Quinton minerals and salt, everything. People have come over my house and they're just shocked at how much salt I put on foods. And I even get kind of like weird looks at restaurants when a chef or a server will bring out the food and I'll like salt it before I even taste it. So I, I'm definitely on the, on the salt bandwagon. I should probably invest in some kind of like a salt company. Anyways, though, my, my guest on today's podcast is actually pretty well known as the guy who wrote one of the game changing books that changed a lot of people's minds about salt. He wrote a book called the Salt Fix and I never interviewed him about that book. Although many others did. And I, I think the book is wonderful. I read it. He also wrote books like the Immunity, the, the book the Longevity Solution, and then a newer book that I just finished called the Mineral Fix. You might be seeing a theme here with the title of the books that this chap writes. But anyways, so I read the Mineral Fix and it was really, really good. Like, it got into a lot of stuff about minerals that I didn't know. And this is a guy I've cited before on podcasts and mentioned before on podcast, but I just really have never had him on the show. So it's high time that I did because he's, he's smart, neat, he puts out some amazing material. His name is James DiNicolantonio and James D. Nicolantonio is a doctor of pharmacy. He's a cardiovascular research scientist, very well known in the realm of health and nutrition. He serves as the associate editor of the British Medical Journal's Open Heart and is on the editorial advisory board of a bunch of different medical journals. He has co authored a lot of publications in medical literature and is just really a prolific author with a lot of really good books. If you haven't read the Salt Fix, you should. And a great follow up to that would be the Mineral Fix. And I wanted, I want to dig into some of the deep, dark rabbit holes behind the Mineral Fix today. I would highly recommend that you also read the book though. So I'll link to the book. I'll link to James websites and everything else that we discuss on today's show. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com mineralfix that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Mineralfix Hey James, I do a pretty good job pronouncing your name.

Man, you crushed it, Ben.

Yeah, yeah, I practiced all morning. Nickel, Antonio. D. Nickel, Antonio. I got it.

Practice makes perfect. You got it?

Yes. Fortunately, no one listening in needs to know how to spell that. You can just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.comMineralFix Are you like me? Do you, do you salt your food a lot or go through a lot of minerals?

Well, you'll find that basically when, when most people switch over from a processed food intake to whole foods, you need to kind of replace that salt. And so, you know, most people that are eating a real whole food diet, they're going to need to add back the salt for numerous benefits, including exercise performance, which is obvious, but also just simply improving insulin sensitivity, how they feel per day. And yeah, I actively Add real healthy salts to my food all the time.

Well, that actually begs the question, and this might be jumping a little bit ahead because I do want to get into these important minerals, but do people who eat healthy tend to have. Well, people who eat, I guess, would be perceived to be healthy. Maybe they're not on the mineral bandwagon. They're not using a lot of like trace liquid minerals or really good salts, or salting their food heavily or anything like that. Do they actually tend to have more mineral deficiencies than people who might be eating like a processed, packaged, standard American diet, or simply eating out of packages and in containers, which we all know have a lot of sodium in them? Do healthy people tend to be more deficient in minerals or do you know.

Well, healthy people will absolutely be more deficient in salt compared to people who are eating processed foods. And that's kind of the linchpin to a lot of people who start a keto diet or they're starting to consume whole foods and they don't even realize that. And after reading my book, they'll say, james, I started just eating like a normal amount of salt again and my afib went away. Or I no longer have ringing in my ears, or I feel so much better now and like, it was such a simple change, but it was literally affecting their lives and they had no idea that it was self deficiency.

Yeah, well, that's an important point that you make about ketosis. I think a lot of people probably already know that. Like one of the common recommendations if you lower carbohydrates is to actually increase minerals because the low energy and the lack of physical function, et cetera, that seems to be paired sometimes to a ketogenic diet isn't necessarily due to like hypoglycemia or glycogen depletion, but mineral depletion.

Right, exactly. So typically what happens is with when you drop your carbohydrate intake and you've been consuming chronically a moderate too high amount of carbs, what will happen is the body will obviously lower insulin levels, and insulin helps the kidneys retain salt, but also it'll start producing negatively charged ketone bodies. And the kidneys have to maintain electro neutrality. And so what ends up happening, at least for the first one or two weeks, is the kidneys use the positively charged sodium ion to eliminate the negatively charged ketone body. And then chronically, you have a reduction in your ability to absorb sodium because glucose helps with the absorption of sodium. So when you cut out the glucose.

It'S almost Like a double whammy.

You got it.

That's interesting. Okay, so the actual processing of ketones requires a greater amount of minerals. And then also the absence of glucose would also cause a depletion of minerals or a depletion of glycogen would come with a concomitant depletion of minerals.

Yeah, the reduction in your exogenous intake of glucose is going to reduce your absorption of dietary sodium because glucose helps with the absorption of sodium. So one sort of hack around that is glycine. Glycine can help to actually sort of pitch head for glucose and help with sodium absorption.

No kidding, huh?

Yeah.

You know, that's good to know. You know that you could just, you know, take bone broth or drink more bone broth or get more glycine into your diet to combat some of that mineral depletion. I've heard you talk about or read you discuss glycine before, not in that context, but in two other contexts. And correct me if I'm wrong here, that glycine may help to mitigate some of the damaging oxidative, oxidative effects of consuming a vegetable oil, like say canola oil, for example, if you hit the whole food salad bar, you could have a little bit of glycine to undo, you know, the potential damage for something like the, the canola oil in that. And then also that glycine may also lower the body's core temperature prior to sleep and assist with, with deep sleep levels because of that drop in core temperature. Is that, is that true on both those fronts?

That's, that's all true. So certain immune cells actually contain glycine receptors. They're called glycine gated chloride channels. And essentially that helps to reduce pro inflammatory cytokine release. And you know that central immune activation can damage things like the liver. If your Kupfer cells, which are immune cells that are housed in the liver, they'll actually secrete inflammation and lead to liver cirrhosis and inflammation. And if you. So it's essentially glycine is sort of keeping, you know, the pro inflammatory immune cell cytokine storm release at bay because of the glycine receptors that are on certain immune cells. And then for reducing core body temperature, you're 100% correct. 3 grams of glycine prior to bedtime or prior to exercise too, is going to help reduce core body temperature.

3 grams. What about for that, that mitigating the damage of vegetable oils? How many grams would that be? Approximately?

I think 5 grams would be a good, a good Shot to use. Because that is what's been clinically tested too, to help with inflammation in diabetics as well as glucose levels. Five grams, three times a day.

Interesting to have a cup of bone broth. Isn't that pushing like close to 10 grams of glycine?

It depends on what is actually used to making the bone broth. So if you're actually simply utilizing bones, if you do this at home, if you use, let's say like chicken bones, you'll throw it in the refrigerator, the broth, and you'll see that only maybe 10% is actually gelled at the top. So you actually don't form a ton of collagen or gelatin. But if using collagenous meats to make your quote unquote bone broth, right. Drumsticks, chicken necks, things that have a lot of collagenous tissue, you're going to see that 60, 70% of that liquid, once you put it in the refrigerator for eight hours is going to solidify and it has a tremendous amount of gelatin collagen in it. If you utilize collab meats. Yeah.

Awesome. Yeah, I like the jello y thick bone broth. Like I drink. Well, I'm not making it. I'll drink either the bell campo or the kettle and fire. And I like the kettle and fire for cooking, but it's a little bit more kind of thin liquidy. But then the bel campo, you dump that out of the, the, the package and it's literally just like dumping a clump of. Right. So that's the one that I'll sometimes use during the day. Another question, and then I do want to get back to the foundational principles of what minerals to be looking for Anyways, but another question, because we talked about people who are in ketosis and people are eating a healthy diet as potentially needing more minerals. But of course, another thing that a lot of so called healthy people do as well as unhealthy people, I suppose, is they drink a lot of coffee. And the word on the street is that coffee is one of those compounds that can pretty significantly reduce both potassium and sodium due to its diuretic effect. And I think most notably depletes magnesium, especially if you're overdoing it. And so because of that and also because it's kind of grown on me, I actually put like really good salt, like a good teaspoon or so of salt in my coffee when I drink it. Do you think that's a decent strategy?

Well, certainly from a replacing a loss of sodium and chloride that is a tremendous strategy. So essentially there's been numerous clinical studies that have tested coffee intake and caffeine intake in regards to excretion of sodium and chloride. And we used to think that coffee was just a diuretic and it just increased water loss. And the reason why it does that is because it's actually a natural. So it actually gets rid of sodium and chloride. And typically, if you consume four cups of coffee, you're going to lose around a half of a teaspoon of salt. Now, you know, I think coffee is the second most commonly consumed beverage in the world. And in America, it's probably getting even closer to number one compared to water.

So what's the first tea?

Well, water would be the first. And then coffee.

Oh, water is the first. Oh, you gotta count water. That's boring. Okay.

In the United States, I think coffee might even start surpassing water soon. We're all just kind of junkies here. But it sort of like echoes the fact that, you know, most of us are on a salt wasting diuretic, which is, which is coffee or some type of caffeinated beverage. And the chloride loss is actually about twice as much as the sodium loss, which is interesting. So you do get this dramatic loss of salt, sodium and chloride from consuming coffee. And with that, you also most likely get a loss in taurine, because taurine's reabsorption in the kidneys is directly dependent on sodium's reabsorption. So if you start spilling sodium and you're not reabsorbing it in the kidneys, you're going to likely spill taurine as well. So I typically try to supplement with taurine because I drink, you know, three cups of coffee per day.

Okay. So the people who made Red Bull were definitely onto something when they took all that caffeine and vitamin B12 and added a bunch of taurine to it.

Well, that's probably not where they're doing the salt, right?

Huh? Yeah. That's interesting. Did you see the hamburger study on coffee? This was, I think, several years ago. I think it was like back in the 80s where they actually gave people coffee with a hamburger. They called it a hamburger meal. I don't know why, but it was a hamburger. And they, they saw a significant decrease in iron absorption with the coffee. And I don't recall if they studied other minerals in that particular study, but. But iron's another one that, that coffee might have an effect on you.

Yeah. So coffee inhibits non heme iron. So. So meat has both heme and non heme iron. Whereas no plants are typically non heme iron. And part of the benefits of consuming coffee with meat is that it inhibits the oxidation products that form when you consume meat. Because meat, I mean, it's certainly very healthy, but the fact remains that you do have heme iron combining with acid and combining with some polyunsaturated fats, but also arachidonic acid. The iron is combined with cholesterol. All of that leads to oxidation products. Right. And especially in the, in the combination of the acid of your. Your stomach. So coffee comes in and it sort of inhibits a lot of those oxidation products and can actually reduce the amount of free iron ions in the body as well, which are extremely damaging. So I think, you know, that's kind of one of coffee's secret benefits is if, you know, you consume it with meat, it can help reduce a lot of those oxidation products that form.

Hmm. It's pretty rare that I have a hamburger and crab, a cup of coffee, but I suppose you could do the whole, you know, scrambled eggs, bacon, cup of coffee for breakfast and.

Got it.

Limit some of the issues with heme iron there. I that a lot of men, especially these days, do need to be aware of the issues with hemochromatosis and iron oxidation. And you know, that that's perhaps a bright side of coffee in terms of it being able to help out with that. Although we should note that it's the caffeine. And correct me if I'm wrong, James, caffeine in the coffee that is responsible for preventing the absorption of minerals at the gut lining. And so decaf could be an acceptable swap if you didn't want to lose as much of the mineral absorption. But then for the iron, from what I understand, that's more blocked by some of the antioxidants in the coff. Whether you drink caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee, you would still get that iron blocking effect.

That's a fair statement. Yeah.

Okay, let's step back now that we all know how to eat our vegetable oil and drink our coffee and go into a state of ketosis with zero issues whatsoever. So long as we just use minerals. We'll get into minerals later and which ones you like, but let's step back a second because, you know, people hear minerals and I think they probably think magnesium maybe, they think sodium, maybe potassium, possibly calcium. But you in the book, which is super thick, by the way, dude, this is like a multi hundred page. Was it like 700 pages long? I think it's.

Yeah, yeah, it's it's somewhere around there, if you count the 5,000 or so references. Yeah.

No, you can't count those. Sorry. All right, well, either way, it's a big book, but the. The minerals go way beyond just some of those that I just listed. And you list them all in the book, there's like, 17 different essential minerals, and you break them down into macro mineral minerals and trace minerals and possibly essential trace minerals. What does it mean exactly when you say there's 17 essential minerals? That a mineral is essential. What makes a mineral essential?

Essentially, if you don't consume it in the diet, you will eventually die from that deficiency. In other words, it's required for life to exist. And part of the reason why is because this is really interesting. If you look at how life was thought to be formed, it's essentially certain amino acids like lysine, coming from comets and being formed from comet impacts on the Earth, and then the minerals that actually catalyzed those amino acids to form life, essentially. So you needed those minerals at the beginning, and that's. For life to form on Earth, minerals had to have existed, and so that's why they are essential, even for humans today.

Hmm. Okay. Got it. So it's your bot. Your body cannot make its own minerals like it could. It could leach them from bones, for example, to allow you to keep up. If you were, say, I don't know, like, eating a highly acidic diet or excessively exercising and sweating. Without mineral replacement, your body can take its stores and replenish from the stores, but it's never going to combine two compounds to make something like, I don't know, cobalt or fluoride or manganese or any of these other minerals in your body.

Exactly right. And. And as an essential mineral, essentially what they do is. Well, most people just think they're just cofactors for enzymes. And in fact, they do a lot more than that. They're literally your first line of defense against oxidative stress. They were the first antioxidants in life. So blue green algae, how they combated oxidative stress from actually producing oxygen. And they actually, you know, blue green algae about 3 billion years ago are the reason why we're here today because of basically their production of oxygen, but that formed reactive oxygen species, and they had to protect themselves against that. And essentially the iodine and selenium did that for them back 3 billion years ago. So they form our actual own antioxidant enzymes in the body. So things like superoxide dismutase, which is in the blood, in the cytosol and in the mitochondria need certain minerals to actually function. So we typically think of vitamins as antioxidants, but really the first line defense against oxidative stress is the mineral enzymes.

Hmm. Now does that mean or is that linked to this idea? Like I mentioned when I was racing Iron man, for example, and I started to do more mineral replenishment, that I slept better, I recovered faster, I didn't get as much pounding in my ears, probably because it regulated my blood pressure a little bit. But you'll hear often the recommendation in people who are exercising a whole lot like that or in people who are adrenally stressed. Right. Or under a lot of stress, they say that you might be exhausting your minerals or that the adrenals as a storehouse of minerals, may be getting exhausted. And therefore, if you're concerned about adrenal fatigue or about exercise recovery, particularly due to stress stress, that you should engage in a little bit better mineral repletion. Is that related to this idea that as you've just noted, that like life is dependent upon minerals to combat oxidative stress?

Absolutely. That is certainly one part of it. The other factor, as you're mentioning stress is cortisol pushes minerals out of the cell in order to be utilized for that stressful situation, to ramp up whatever enzymes and functions it needs to combat the stress. So magnesium is a really good example. And once it's pushed out of the cell, you typically then after you've utilized it, it can be lost in the urine. So people who are stressed are typically more magnesium deficient because of that push out of the cell and then loss in the urine.

Is it true that the adrenal glands are actually a so called storehouse of minerals?

I wouldn't say necessarily. It's a storehouse of minerals. And I get this question all the time. Is there such thing as adrenal fatigue in a human? I would say yes, there is. And there are certain cortisol tests to kind of see if your adren, quote, unquote fatigued. And you experimentally can do this by putting animals on a low salt diet and force them to essentially produce 10 times as much aldosterone. And their adrenal glands will hypertrophy and essentially after that they'll end up burning out. And so it's pretty. I would assume that this could happen in humans as well, because the same hormonal changes occur in humans as animals where you get that tenfold increase in aldosterone in the kidney are just because they're constantly Producing extra hormones and mineral corticoids that they will hypertrophy. And that's typically. That's the first step before a organ burns out. Just like the pancreas, there's this over massive production of the hormone. Take insulin, for example. In the pancreas, it secretes a lot of insulin hypertrophies and then burns out. Same thing would happen in the adrenal glands. If you're not getting enough salt, for example, and you're pushing out too much aldosterone.

Strong. Okay, all right, got it. Got that makes sense. Okay, so arguably, not only people who drink more coffee, but who are, for example, limiting carbohydrates, but also people who exercise a lot or under a lot of stress should also be concerned about not just topping off their, say, salt levels, but. But getting a full spectrum of these essential minerals.

Right. This is where it really gets down to the nitty gritty, too. But salt is actually a controller, a master controller of all of our other minerals, almost every single.

Now, when you. When you say. When you say salt, James, are you referring to table salt? Are you defining salt the way that it might be defined in chemistry class? Or when you say salt, what exactly are you referring to?

So when I say salt, I'm actually referring to both sodium and chloride. So sodium and chloride, both of those two essential minerals that make up salt, actually control the movement of a lot of molecules in the body. So almost every single neurotransmitter in the brain, in order for it to move in and out of a cell, requires sodium or chloride to move glutathione in and out of a cell typically requires sodium or chloride to absorb vitamin C or drive vitamin C into any tissue requires sodium. So two molecules of sodium to drive one ascorbic acid molecule into the tissues, so it's a master controller, both sodium and chloride for almost every molecule in the body, including glucose, to move glucose in and out of the cell, and numerous amino acids. And so when you're deficient in sodium or chloride, now, you can't move things in and out of the cell. And so because it's so vital, the body will pull sodium from the bone if it doesn't have enough to maintain a normal sodium level. Unfortunately, the osteoclasts that will break down the bone, they're not specific. They're not smart enough just to grab sodium from the bone. They'll actually strip calcium and magnesium at the same time and induce magnesium defic deficiency. So there's been numerous balance studies to show this, that if you're not getting enough salt. It actually induces magnesium and calcium deficiency.

Okay, got it. Yeah, that makes sense. What's the best way to test? Because you'll a lot of times find on some of the fancier blood panels that it will give you, like RBC, magnesium, you see chloride and CO2 on there. Sometimes you'll see a few other minerals, but those are, those are all typically blood based measurements of a handful of minerals. Typically you don't see all 17 on there. You know, the 17 essential minerals that you list in the book. Is there a test out there that just tests, you know, in a really good gold standard way for, for all 17 essential minerals? So you can just see I'm low in this, high in that. And by the way, I should say, as I asked you this question last year, I interviewed Barton Scott from the company, I think his company is called Upgraded Formulas. And he's big on, on hair testing for minerals. And so that's another kind of flavor of mineral testing I've come across and discussed on the show. But I'm curious, in writing this book or in your own research, what you've found to be the best way to test for minerals.

Well, hair mineral analysis is interesting because it's a three month reflection of blood. So it's sort of like a longer snapshot of what's been going on in your blood for three months. So in that aspect, it actually is technically better than blood. Now, part of the problem with blood and hair mineral analysis is that you have to take into account that certain minerals are called acute phase reactants, meaning some will drop due to inflammation even if you're not deficient, and some will actually increase due to inflammation to combat it. Even if you're deficient, you could have high levels of copper, for example. So if you take into account the. There's about four or five minerals that are acute phase reactants. If you know which ones go up with inflammation, which ones go down, and you can adjust for that, then, yeah, hair mineral analysis can be fairly effective. If we're talking about a gold standard, it's different for every mineral. So the gold standard for magnesium is actually called IV magnesium low test. Essentially, they give you 400 milligrams of magnesium IV over four hours, and then over 16 to 24 hours, they see how much comes out in the urine. And if you're holding on to too much magnesium, essentially if you're holding on to 20% of that dose that was given or more, you are highly likely deficient because the body is holding onto that dose. But most people aren't going to get an IV magnesium low.

I was going to say most people aren't going to get that. What's the second best?

So the second best would be a mononuclear blood cell magnesium test, essentially immune cell tests to show how much magnesium are in the immune cells. That's the only blood test that has ever been validated against an IV magnesium load test. And there are just numerous studies showing that mononuclear blood cell magnesium correlates very well with total magnes. But the simplest way is to look at a blood test and then never go below the mid range of a blood test for minerals, because.

And the blood test would be like an RBC magnesium test.

That's typically what you're seeing, a red blood cell test. So. So red blood cells are carriers for magnesium. So they can be high because you're actually deficient because it's transporting a ton of magnesium around the body.

Yeah, yeah, good point.

So I'm referring to like serum or plasma blood tests. And so if you think about it, a normal range is based on normal quote, unquote, people, which 50% of us are sick anyway. And then there's two standard deviations apart from that. So being in the normal range is kind of meaningless. What ends up happening though is if you are deficient, even though the mineral status typically won't drop below the quote, unquote normal range, it will go subpar and below the mid range of normal. So you want to try to always be at least midway of normal or higher. So you try, you want to be in that sort of middle, top range of normal when it comes to minerals. That's the easiest way to sort of look at a blood test and say, am I actually magnesium, like sufficient or not? Because typically in order to be deficient, you have to be less than 1.7 milligrams per deciliter for magnesium. But you're probably deficient if you're less than 2 milligrams per deciliter.

Okay, got it. So coming back full circle, you could get a decent idea of overall mineral status of a lot of these essential minerals with just something as simple as a hair analysis. And then there are a few important ones, probably. Will magnesium be at the top of the list that you may want to get a blood test for?

I would think for almost all the minerals if you're on a blood test, if you're looking at being higher or at the mid range of normal, that's probably suggestive that you're okay if you're below the mid range of normal. Even if you're normal, then you need to start adding tests to really figure out are you truly sufficient or not.

You get into like, you know, the nitty gritty tests in the book, like if you really want to find out for whatever, magnesium, copper, etc. Et cetera. If you're super concerned about one right then here, here's some better tests to do. But overall, if you're getting a blood panel, if it's showing minerals, if you're within the reference range and above the midpoint, you're probably good. If not, you should do some more digging.

Exactly. Yep.

Okay. Got it. All right, so I'm gonna throw a little, little curveball at you, but I know my audience is super into water and so I know this is going to come up. I mean, we've talked about things like how really good water filtration systems, like say, you know, reverse osmosis or even a multi carbon block filtration system is probably going to remove an appreciable amount of from the water, dictating that. You may want to add some minerals back in or at least be more cognizant of your mineral intake if you are, as you should be doing, doing a good job filtering your water. But we haven't talked much about soft versus hard water and you aren't a fan of soft water even though, like, most people in a westernized, you know, context are drinking soft water. Like we, we soften our water and you think that might not be a good idea or at least might be contributing to mineral deficiencies. And I would love for you to share that with some. The audience.

Sure. So when you think about it, we never used to drink soft water. It's something that we just decided to do not from a health perspective because we didn't like the scaling on pipes that would happen because of the calcium carbonate in mineral water. And so essentially.

Okay, let me ask the dumb question. What's soft water?

Soft water is water that, where the calcium and magnesium has essentially been removed from the water, whereas typically there would. The water would contain some of that. But then that causes scaling on pots and pans when you cook. Or it can scale the piping in your house so they soften the water and remove the minerals so it doesn't cause those issues. So think about it like running like, you know, hard mineral water through like a coffee machine. It can kind of mess up, you know, the machine itself.

Yeah, right. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, because my dad was a coffee and espresso machine repair man. He was like all over making sure the water was not too hard. But it goes beyond pipes, right? I mean, didn't they in medicine endorse water softening because of the association with lower rate of cardiovascular disease when people were drinking softer water?

No. So actually what ended up happening is the reverse. So they started softening. They started softening the water because of basically cosmetic value. Right. Not to mess up the pipes, not to mess up cookware when you're cooking, scaling the pots and pans. And then in the 80s, Massaroni and colleagues started publishing all this data that people who live in hard water areas, things that have particular, particularly if the hard water was higher in magnesium, had a much lower rate of cardiovascular disease and death. And the WHO started publishing these studies as well. So it's. The hard water hypothesis has been shown globally really that anyone who lives in a hard water area is at a much lower risk of numerous diseases because they're gaining more minerals through their drinking water.

Okay, all right, gotcha. So then, but what do you do about the problem with the corrosion of the pipes or some of the aesthetic issues? Issues like is there a way to have our cake and eat it too in terms of softening the water but not getting, for example, the decreased cardiovascular health from drinking soft water versus hard water?

Right. And so. Well, here's the thing too, is that soft water is more acidic. And so, you know, it can potentially even leach out more heavy metals like cadmium. So that's even potentially one problem with soft water is potentially more cadmium. But the way to do it is to right, have more, less like copper piping and metal piping and use more plastic piping or other versions, non metal versions piping would be one way to prevent scaling. But the other way to do it is, okay, have your soft water for when you need to just run water for a shower and then you just buy actual hard water. So you buy mineral waters for ingestion. And that's sort of what I do. I typically consume things, Gerald Steiner water. And then I'm getting my calcium, my magnesium and my bicarbonate to offset the acid load of my animal based diet.

I want to ask you about that water momentarily, but before I do, what about do they make like a water softener that would just be like a shower head filter that could soften the water? So you're drinking water's hard, but then, for example, what you're showering in is soft.

Oh, that's a good question. I don't know. I know they make a lot of filters to get out the fluoride, to get out chlorine, things like that. I don't know if they actually have filter.

I'll find out. My dad would know. Hey, dad, if you're listening in, leave us all a comment. Dad about that because my dad probably knows. He, he look, he looks in the water filters all the time. So he'll fill us in, I'm sure. Go to the comment section, pops. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Mineral Fix. Let us know how we can soften our water and still drink hard water. But now if we switch to plastic piping, is there a concern about like, you know, microplastics and things like that that we might be consuming? You know, it's kind of like a bounce.

There is. And that's sort of why I typically try to drink my mineral waters from glass. Almost all the mineral waters that I consume are from glass. So typically, most of your microplastic ingestion is due to water or beer that people consume that they're getting through the plastics, whether it's the cans or whether it's the bottles that they're consuming. That's where most microplastics actually come from.

Okay, got it. Now you mentioned Gerald Steiner and you actually had a fantastic anecdote in the book. I've always been a fan of carbonated water and popping a piece of gum just because I, you know, I don't like to eat a lot. I go a long time between meals and I can just, I can jam all day on carbonated water or sometimes zevia and gum. And you talk about, in the book about how carbonated water can lower hunger. And it's not just like a thing that is caused by, you know, say like the expansion of bubbles in your stomach or something like that or some type of placebo effect. You actually talk about how defects are mediated by enhanced postprandial gastric and cardiac activity and that, that it literally does actually lower appetite when you drink carbonated water, which I thought was fantastic because a lot of carbonated waters, from the evidence that I've seen and the graphs that I've seen, like the Pellegrino or the Gerold Steiner that you talk about is actually pretty mineral rich. But in terms of your own water intake, it sounds like if you're drinking Gerolsteiner, you are drinking carbonated water. If people are going to go out and drink some of this glass bottled water, as you've recommended, what would you Say are some things to look for or some of your top brands that you really like for water.

So if you're someone who consumes an animal based diet and you're consuming a high acid liquid load, then the two things you really want to look for is you want to look at the bicarbonate and the sulfate. So bicarbonate, it provides alkali to the body and sulfate provides acid. So there's a lot of good mineral waters that are high in bicarbonate, but then they're also really high in sulfate. Now it's not necessarily bad for you, but you're just going to need to find a different source to actually bring alkalinity then to the diet. So that's something I typically look for for is I want to make sure it has a high bicarbonate to sulfate ratio if I'm using it to offset the acid load of my animal based diet.

Okay, all right, got it. So the, the, the deal with the carbonated water, in terms of the actual graphs and, and mineral content, I guess what I want to get at is if people just want like the best of the best for mineral water and wanted to get something they could find at, you know, Whole Foods or Amazon or at the grocery store pretty readily. Do you think that Gerald Steiner is at the top of the list or are there others that you like?

It's definitely at the top. And one of the reasons is because it has 100 milligrams of magnesium per liter and about 340 milligrams of calcium per liter. The reason why you want to try to consume minerals through a liquid form is A, it's caloric free, B, the bioavailability is much higher than certainly plant foods because it's already ionic, it's already dissolved and it's readily absorbable. So you're getting this calorically free, highly bioavailable form of calcium and magnesium and you're slowly consuming it throughout the day, giving its bioavailability even more. And so they've done studies looking at this where if you consume 7 ounces of mineral water seven times a day versus 24 ounces, let's say two times a day, the bioavailability and retention of magnesium is 40% higher. By consuming it slowly throughout the day, we would have during evolutionary times. So there's just like triple advantage of getting minerals in a lower dose slow throughout the day. It dissolved in an ionic form.

Okay, that's interesting. I did not know that because of the ionic form that something like a mineral rich carbonated water is actually going to allow for better mineral absorption than you would get from even like a mineral rich produce. So that's actually, that's really good to know. Now in terms of the water itself, there's also a very common practice now of folks, including myself, adding trace liquid minerals like pinches of a good salt to their water. But liquid minerals like Rob Wolf, I think launched a company called Element, I believe is the name of his company where he's doing like, I think it's a liquid or powder. And then my friend Nick Norris, who's a former Navy SEAL who lives down in San Diego, he's got a new one called Protect. And then probably at the top of the totem pole and the one I've talked about the most is, is Quinton Q U I N T O N championed by, you know, folks like Chris Shade at Quicksilver Scientific or Robert Slovak at Water and Wellness. And you know, they say Quinton comes from these, you know, phytoplankton blooms and pristine water and is higher in minerals than any other source on the face of the planet, et cetera. Where are you at with this seemingly increasing trend of like liquid packets of minerals that could be added to water or other beverages?

I think it's a great way to top off your mineral status, particularly if you're using it as a lower dose and slowly consuming it throughout the day day, you're going to get more bang for your buck. I mean it's still going to work if you use higher doses and shorter frequencies. And I think because our food is now more nutrient depleted across the board, both plants and animal foods are particularly depleted in magnesium, calcium, copper and iron compared to 60 to 80 years ago. Because we now grow food for yield. And the phosphorus fertilizers and the MPK fertilizer have reduced the mineral content of our foods. Adding and using these type of trace minerals as a liquid form to get and increase your mineral status I think makes a ton of sense.

Okay, do you use any of those?

I don't because I use Gerald Steiner water. And then I use my diet to sort of fill in the gaps using things like organ meats. Right. You know, pastured liver. And I try to eat more ancestral meats like bison, elk, venison in which are much higher in minerals compared to grass fed cattle.

Yeah, Particularly copper. And those organisms are fantastic for copper. And you actually describe the big issue with copper deficiency in the book. You even say that iron deficiency. When a lot of people think they're iron deficient, they Might actually be copper deficient. What do you mean by that?

Yeah, so in order to transform iron to the form that can bind to transferrin so it can move around in the body, it requires the enzyme dependent on copper ceruloplasmin in order to do that. So you can't export iron out of the liver, you can't move iron around without copper. And even digging deeper into the rabbit hole without vitamin A found in animal foods, you really can't really move and utilize copper well. So you can be iron deficient from actually vitamin A deficiency, drug driving copper deficiency, driving iron deficiency. So the rabbit hole can get really deep on all of these things, which typically people tend to hyper focus on one nutrient like iron for iron deficiency. And it's really. You gotta look at broad picture that these things can be affected by many other deficiencies.

Okay, got it. Now the, the other thing that I wanted to ask you was just a guy who's written the Salt Fix and the Mineral Fix books, you know, and this is coming from me and I'm a. You know, I was recently at some parties down in LA or some dinner gatherings in la and everybody went, wanted to sit by me. Not because I'm a great conversationalist or because I had much to contribute. But I do always have a bag of really good salt with me and I'll take it out and just like, you know, upgrade the taste of any meal. In this case, I had like a blend of black Kona salt with some Kalima salt, which is like a Mexican salt, and a little bit of Himalayan salt, which of course the total salt orthoresics out there will tell us not to use because of the little bits of iron and metals in there. But it's not staple. The Himalayan salt isn't. I just like, you know, I was just, you know, mixing and matching and playing a little bit of salt. Put all this in a bag. It tasted pretty good. So that's why I traveled with. So I'm always trying out all these different kinds of salt. Man, I love salt and the flavor of salt. But I'm curious for you if you have any. Go to salt brands or even just like guilty pleasures if you're gonna spend a few extra bucks on a really good salt.

Yeah, if you're, if you're looking for magnesium, there's a, there's a salt called. I think it's called norder salt. So. And salt ver. There's these sort of like Norwegian salts that are really. That can be up to 180 milligrams of magnesium per 10 grams of salt.

Wow.

And certain. Actually, certain Australian flat salts can have a lot of magnesium as well.

So could you just like, search for. For Norwegian salt on Amazon and find that type of thing?

Yeah, they're the two. The two brands.

Salt Ver.

Salt Ver. And I think norder. I can't remember.

Yeah.

Which one was higher? And magnesium, I think I want to say it was.

Oh, my gosh.

Saltburk was higher.

Okay, everybody knows what to get me for Christmas now. Salt. I'll check it out. It just sounds good. It sounds like the Swedish chef from. From the Muppets. Chocolate moussey. All right, well, the. The thing is, when you're using a salt like salt verk, are you pretty much every meal, aside from your Gerald Steiner, every bottle of water, or are you still kind of picky with what you'll actually salt?

Usually I. I use Redmond. I like the taste of it. It's more sweet, more mild. Sulfur is like. Is a flake salt, so it's really very high potency. But a lot of chefs will use it as a specialty salt. Like, they'll garnish it with the flakes.

So. Okay.

My typical go to is. Is like a Himalayan or Redmond real salt just because it flavors better.

Have you heard that before about Himalayan, how it might be higher in. In metals or in iron or anything like that?

Yeah, well, yeah, it's definitely higher in iron. That's where some of the reddish tones come from. Pinkish tones from the ferrous oxide. And then you do need to be careful with microplastics. So typically a lot of the salts from Hawaii are very low in microplastics because it's such a pristine ocean in Hawaii. Whereas, you know, if your things like maybe like Celtic salts or other salts have been tested, they have more higher amounts of microplastics. And underground salts typically have low, lower. But most Himalayan salts use explosives. So you need to source a Himalayan salt that is either hand harvested or doesn't use explosives. So Redmond does not use explosives. The original Himalayan salt company is a hand harvested Himalayan salt. So there are ways to kind of circumvent the explosive material that could be in some of the pink Himalayans.

And when you say explosives, do you literally mean they're using, like, dynamite to extract the salt?

Yes, literally dynamite to blow up the salt.

Is that why there's concerns about, like, mercury and arsenic and lead and some of these pink Himalayan salts also?

No, I think those. So like rubidium and Uranium, some of those are naturally occurring in very, very low amounts. And what was this was interesting too. I think it was Paul Saladino who did a like a review of Gerald Snyder. I think it was on uranium that it contained it and was sort of kind of like telling people that maybe you shouldn't drink it. But the, the actual amount of uranium I believe it was uranium was well below the actual like WHO guidelines for upper. So so even so we got to take in the context to even if these things, these salts contain things like plutonium and uranium, they're usually extremely in parts per billion.

So that'll make Homer Simpson happy. Yeah, I think it was an Australian research study. I believe it was pretty recent. I want to say it was like last year where, where they looked at him Himalayan salt and found a significant amount of. I believe in that study it was lead. I don't know if that was one brand of salt, but I mean this was pretty recent that I saw this scare about kind of like rethinking like pink Himalayan salt. Are you familiar with that one?

Yeah, I am familiar with that one. And it reviewed different salts and different Himalayans had way like tenfold differences in lead. So you know what would be good is to get a certificate of, of analysis or a mineral analysis from the actual producer of the salt. And typically lead will be listed and I'm pretty sure rotten was fairly low in lead.

Okay, all right, got it. So. So it's going to depend on the salt brand. Just like, I mean that's the same thing with bottled water. You know, like Topo Chico went through that thing where, where you know, some of their brands or some, some of their products last year were found to have a higher amount of microplastics in them. And apparently they went back and kind of fixed some of their filtration mechanisms and it's a non issue now. But you know, I think a lot of people don't realize if you reach out to some of these companies they can provide with lab certificate of analysis. Sometimes they even publish this information on their website. So you just have to be a savvy consumer and dig in. Like it's possible to find, find those kind of details. And if you don't know, you know, just, just be careful since your body is not only a giant excretion tube, but also a pretty good storage mechanism as well. Now another thing that I wanted to ask you about was a part of the book that I really enjoyed. Enjoyed. And that's where you get into the. The practical nitty gritties I mean, somebody could read the book and come out with like a master's degree in minerals. But then at the same time, you know, sometimes I like to focus on just some of the practical aspects and, and you know, you talk about fixing mineral deficiencies and some of the things that you would do if you just want to prevent your body from becoming deficient of essential minerals by either A protecting against their excretion or B, improving their absorption. You know, we talked about coffee a little bit and we talked about some of the bottled water brands that, that you get. But then you, you talk about, about things like fixing insulin resistance, which some people might not think about when it comes to maintaining mineral status, and a few other kind of smart tips. So I would love to hear you kind of lay out in practical terms if people really do want to maintain good mineral status. What would be the biggies based on what you learned right in this book?

Well, you brought up the first biggest one, and that is insulin resistance, which affects about 75% of U.S. adults. And, and the fact is that many minerals are actually insulin sensitive in order to get into the cell. In other words, insulin helps magnesium drive magnesium and potassium into the cell. So if you are insulin resistant, you're not going to utilize and drive and be able to drive your minerals into the cell as well. And so the first thing the three out of four adults in the United States need to do is sort of cut back on the things that induce insulin resistance, particularly omega 6C seed oils, refined sugars, refined carbohydrates. So they can even utilize the nutrients that they're eating or the nutrients that are already inside their body in order to do the functions that they have to do. So that, that would be, number one. Number two would be to reduce the inflammation as well, which is essentially eliminating the same things I just mentioned, because inflammation will basically shuttle minerals to antioxidant enzymes versus other functions like producing ATP, for example. And so the higher inflammation that you have, the more your minerals are going to be shifted over to non, let's say essential functions because it's trying to combat more inflammation in the body. So if you can sort of become healthier simply from just removing the toxic stuff that you're eating, that's going to improve your mineral status even if you don't eat any more minerals in the diet, simply improving your own inflammation and insulin resistance.

Yeah, and that also makes sense that it would shuttle minerals towards higher antioxidants activity. Make sense that that would also dictate that people who exercise More or maybe are exposed to even other forms of inflammation. Like not only the vegetable oils which are contribute to the insulin resistance that you talked about, but maybe even things like, you know, EMF relationship stress, like some of the, some of the things that we don't think about when it comes to inflammation, those may also create a need for higher mineral intake.

Yeah, and stress too, right? Like stress absolutely does increase the loss of magnesium through cortisol and through noradrenaline, which pushes magnesium out of the cell. So literally just trying to figure out ways to combat stress is going to help. And then, you know, really what it comes down to is people need to start including more animal foods in their diet. More pastured animal foods, more organ meats, particularly liver and heart. Liver for folate, vitamin A and copper, and heart for CoQ10. You know, at a minimum, people should be consuming 20, 20% of their calories from animal foods because you're just going to be deficient if you don't do that otherwise. And trying to source from better than organic foods, pastured foods from regenerative farms are going to be much higher in minerals and even try going the step further that you and I had slightly discussed consuming things like bison, elk, venison, which across the board have about 50% more minerals concentration than cattle, even grass fed cattle. So you know, I know that's like, you know, top tier for a lot of people, but you know, it is what it is. So. So if you're a type A personality like me, I'm going to do everything I can to try to boost my mineral status through going up the chain like that. Yeah. The other thing is the acid load. People really don't believe in this because you can't really. It's hard to affect the PH of the blood with a high animal based diet. But just like magnesium for example, you can be deficient even with a normal level of ph. And the ph does actually slowly go down when you consume a high acid load. It just takes a while. And our enzymes are literally dependent on ph. So phospho fructokinase for example is like very dependent. If the ph goes a little too low, it slows down, which is the rate limiting enzyme for glycolysis to produce ATP. So your enzyme functions and your ability to produce ATP goes down when you are more acidic and you don't, you can't really tell by the PH of the blood, but you can look at the serum bicarbonate. So I've talked to a lot of high tier carnivores and they have bicarbonate levels of 60 year olds, even if they're like 30 years old and they're eating a carnivore diet. And it's because they've depleted their bicarbonate stores. So that's how you can tell if you're in what's called low grade metabolic acidosis. You don't look at the blood ph, you look at the bicarbonate level, the fasting serum bicarb. And you can look at urinary citrate too, which will tell you if it's low. You have metabolic acidosis and things like that. And that can deplete minerals too. So it's good to consume animal foods, but then you have to offset the acid load somehow. So that would either be bicarbonate mineral waters or that would be consuming things like sodium citrate or potassium citrate or magnesium citrate or eating some plant foods.

Okay, yeah, that's something a lot of people don't realize. Like bicarbonate is pretty commonly seen on like a comprehensive metabolic panel or a basic metabolic panel, which a lot of people's physicians will run. Or you know, it's a pretty simple panel to get, but you know, when, when you look at it can give you a lot of clues when it comes to electrolyte balance. You know, and like you mentioned, you know, a low bicarbonate might indicate, you know, an excessively acidic state or, or I guess low bicarbonate would be more of a mineral depleted state. Right. Whereas high bicarbonate would be more of like, like a too alkalytic of a state. Correct.

So, yeah, so, so what happens here is first of all, a low bicarb is typically 23 considered low, which you really want to be about 28. So you might have a bicarb, you might have a bicarb of 24. That's very indicative of metabolic acidosis and also likely calcium and magnesium deficient. Because in metabolic acidosis, especially if it's due to an animal based diet, what ends up happening is the sulfate that is produced from the sulfuric acid that is formed from consuming the cysteine containing amino acids. Animal protein. Right, Cysteine, taurine. What's the other one I'm forgetting? I'm drawing a blank here. But anyway, the negatively charged sulfate has to be excreted by a positively charged mineral. So if you're consuming a high animal based diet, the body will use magnesium and calcium to pull the sulfate that is forming. And so typically, if you have a low bicarb which is indicating metabolic acidosis. Then you're also likely low in calcium and magnesium because you're also stripping the bone to get rid of the sulfate, if that makes sense, the negatively charged sulfate.

Okay, okay, got it. But that's something pretty similar or pretty simple for people to look for on their blood panel. Is that bicarbonate test?

Yes.

So the idea of adding minerals to your diet, along with mineral waters to your diet, eating a lot of those mineral dense foods that you talked about, like especially shellfish and organ meats, or even like organ meat capsules, which I really love, is kind of like a quick source for doing that type of thing, you know, kind of microdosing with organ meats throughout the week and then, you know, being careful with, with coffee and being aware if you're limiting carbs excessively. Improving your gut health is one that you talk about. Improving your liver and your kidney health, avoiding heavy metal exposure and then the insulin and the blood glucose. Like, like if you're kind of doing some of those things, you're, you're probably doing a good job in terms of, of your over overall mineral balance. Those are some of the main things that I wanted to cover with you, James. But is there anything else that you think you would say is super important or a glaring issue when it comes to minerals and folks that you didn't get a chance to talk about today?

One really interesting thing is that if you don't move a lot, like if you're not exercising and you overdose with minerals, you'll spike the blood because the muscle isn't absorbing the minerals. And that'll trick your body into thinking you're overloading and let's say magnesium. So if you're someone who doesn't really exercise, doesn't have a lot of muscle and starts taking like loads and loads of magnesium, you're going to spike the blood magnesium and trick the body into that your magnesium overloaded and then you'll start kicking magnesium out in the urine and reducing your dietary absorption. So I think movement is actually really important in building muscle. So you have a base to draw minerals to and that, so you don't overly spike the blood with minerals.

Okay, got it. That's good to know. And you know, the, the main thing here, the big takeaway for me really is that if people really want to defy the status quo when it comes to what we've been led to believe about salt, about minerals, your book Salt Fix is really good. This book's, this book Mineral Fix kind of takes that to the next level in terms of getting into a lot of these other light trace liquid minerals and, and essential minerals and you know, a lot of the smaller things that people might not think about when it comes to minerals. So it's worth a read. I know it's a big book, but as you noted, James, like, you know, third of it is references which you don't have to read. So it's not as long to read as you might think. But it's an excellent book. I enjoyed a lot and I really enjoy a lot of the, a lot of the research that you, that you put out and a lot of your writing. Is there any type of new book that you're working on now that I could get excited about or share with the audience? Or are you just kind of done writing it after putting out this 700 plus page beast?

Yeah, I think I'm taking like a sabbatical from writing books. But I mean, I'm currently doing a little research on medicinal mushrooms like Reishi and stuff like that. I mean the data is really, really intriguing on these medicinal mushrooms which are actually approved in Japan and China as adjunct treatments for cancer therapy. They've been actually approved for like over 30 years. And I was really excited about them because two years ago, like I just developed massively terrible allergies and throat mucus and it just, just like it's just was terrible and it's sometimes really difficult for me to even speak. And then I found just medicinal mushrooms like Rishi, lion's mane. The other one I use is turkey tail and I'm like 80 to 90% better. And you know, for people who are struggling with just any type of like allergies or immune system, like dysfunction, I think it's worth a shot. I mean, I can't give recommendations, but it's just like it's. I always thought was like this hokey pokey Chinese. Like you know, no real evidence to it, but like there's like some really good clinicals on these mushrooms, like clearing HPV and improving cancer outcomes. Even a Cochrane meta analysis.

Yeah.

So I don't know, just something that I'm digging more into.

Yeah, you appreciate the choir, man. I consume mushrooms like almost every day. You know, I talked about how I put salt in my coffee, but a lot of times I'll drop some chaga.

Yeah.

Or a lion's mane or cordyceps. Are all three in there. Typically I'll use the forcing sigmatic stuff and then I always do a little bit of Rishi in the afternoon and right now, over the next month, that's actually one of our projects here on our land is we're bringing in some logs and gonna start some medicinal mushroom grows right here on the property. And we also might even start doing a little bit of, like, the neuroplastic type of mushrooms, like. Like doing a little bit of psilocybin or cubensis along with some of the medicinal mushrooms. And so it's certainly something I've explored and. And will be exploring more and possibly even donning my farmer's hat and doing a little bit of growing of in the future. So your next book will have to be like a cookbook that basically is comprised of mushrooms and good salts. I think you'd crush it with that. So maybe that's the next one for you.

The mushroom fix, right?

That's right, the mushroom fix. Of course you'd call it that. All right, man. Well, first of all, thanks for coming on the show. And second, for those of you listening in, you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com mineral fix for all the show notes. I'll link to all James books and anything else that we discuss on the show today. I'm gonna have to go get me some of that Nordic salt, because that sounds amazing and add that to my pantry of salts. And James, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Thanks for having me, Ben. It was fun.

All right, cool, folks, I'm Ben Greenfield, and just because I got to say it one more time with Dr. James D. Nicolantonio there, I did it again. Signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com Mineral Fix. Have an amazing week. 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, 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.