In the pursuit of better health you will run into many unusual products. Sometimes it’s hard to determine what is helpful, harmful, or simply a waste of time and money. Several years ago many people around the country, received or purchased an audio tape called ?Dead Doctors Don’t Lie? which talked about the superior benefits of liquid colloidal minerals and why people need them. This was great marketing and brought this product to the attention of many consumers. Now, just because the marketing was good doesn’t mean that the message was good, bad, true or untrue. It just means good marketing. Some of the claims presented on the tape and still in circulation by colloidal mineral manufacturers include: Increased mineral uptake by the body, and increased effectiveness or utilization once in the body. Lets look more deeply at what colloidal minerals are, some of the claims of colloidal mineral manufacturers, and safety issues concerning these liquid colloidal mineral supplements.
Composition/Effectiveness
Colloidal minerals, not to be confused with liquid vitamins and minerals, are different from capsules or tablets because they are finely divided negatively charged particles suspended in a liquid medium. The idea is that since the supplement is already broken down absorption will be more complete and since the active ingredients are supposedly negatively charged, it will also be better absorbed. Is it true, does research support these ideas? The human digestive system is very efficient at breaking down and absorbing many different kinds of compounds. There are of course limits, not everything can be digested and/or absorbed. Research regarding colloidal mineral absorption is scarce. Absorption of any nutrient by the body is regulated by a host of different mechanism, and very dependent on an individual’s physiology. If the body needs a nutrient , it increases it’s ability to absorb that nutrient, provided that the individual is in relatively healthy condition. So unless a pathology exists, it won’t make a lot of difference which form the mineral is in, within certain physiological limits. There are some tightly compressed tablets that may not get digested very well, but this is usually the lower quality brands. This problem can easily be solved by using higher quality supplements or ingesting the capsule form. Negatively charged particles would be less likely to be absorbed by the small intestine because of the nature of cell walls. A charged particle is going to have a tougher time entering a cell than an uncharged particle, due the the cell’s membrane. A charged particle must enter a cell through channels or pumps, this requires energy or an ionic potential built from several ions on both sides of the cell membrane. Either way, this aspect would be highly regulated by the cell and subject to body needs, not superior design of the nutrient. To clarify, while a substance, once in the digestive tract, is in the body, it is not yet part of the body until it is absorbed in the small intestine.
Dangers
There are some proposed dangers with taking colloidal minerals. One of the concerns is that the colloids may contain toxic levels of certain liquid colloidal trace minerals like aluminum, lead, cadmium, mercury, boron, and silver. Or that over time you could ingest toxic levels of these trace minerals. It is also difficult difficult to control the dosage of colloidal minerals since these minerals float around in a liquid medium.
Cost comparison
Colloidal minerals cost about the same when compared to most dry tablets and capsules. A 32 oz bottle of these liquid minerals (Dr. Wallach’s Majestic Earth Minerals) from Dr. Joel Wallach’s company called Youngevity (one of the leading brands and the same doctor who wrote and orated ?Dead Doctors Don’t Lie?) costs $19. That’s about 59 cents/oz. The bottle recommends 1 oz per day, so a bottle would last you a little over 1 month. So when compared to a one of the leading brands of multimineral supplements (Douglas Laboratories, Basic Minerals, 180 capsules), a 1 month supply will cost you $15 to $28, or about the same amount or money per 1 month supply.
Conclusion
Colloidal mineral supplements have been touted as being superior to regular capsules or tablets, but this does not seem to be the case. Plus, as discussed earlier there are dangers associated with colloidal minerals. Liquid nutrients are also more delicate and have a shorter shelf life than dry nutrients. It seems their benefits, have been a little blown out of proportion, while the dangers of liquid colloidal minerals have often been proposed as benefits. Be cautious about taking these supplements.
Some informational links:
- A good page about the dangers of colloidal minerlas. I have not read through the site, but I liked this page: http://www.healingnaturallybybee.com/articles/mn7.php
- Another page talking about the dangers and history of colloidal minerals as a supplemental product: http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/DSH/colloidalminerals.html
- Dr. Wallach’s product page. I’m not promoting the site, just linking to the information where I got my figures from: http://www.youngevity.net/product/13203.html
- Douglas Laboratories mineral product. Again, not promoting anyone, just showing where I got my figures from: http://www.shopwiki.com/Basic-Minerals-180-Capsules-by-Douglas-Laboratories