By Penelope A. Domogo, MD
Unlike vitamins, minerals are familiar to many people since time immemorial. All those who passed high school would remember the periodic table of elements in chemistry. Especially if you had to take summer classes for a failing grade, you would perhaps remember that Ca is calcium, Mg is magnesium, Fe is iron, Au is gold, K is Potassium. I wonder why they had to make it difficult, eh? The makers of this table could just have taken the first 2-3 letters of the mineral for its symbol. These elements are minerals. Of course, Pharaoh knew the value of gold. The King of Spain knew of the vast mineral wealth of the Orient thus the voyages of Vasco da Gama, Columbus, Magellan. (Well, historians say these were also searches for spices.) Except for gold, the other elements mentioned are needed by our bodies, meaning they are stored in our bodies. Buti na lang because then if we needed gold inside our bodies, you could imagine graveyards turning into gold mines.
Just like vitamins, these minerals are needed by our bodies in miniscule amounts but these invisible amounts are enough to spark the plug that turns on our various organ systems. Again, like vitamins, they work together, not individually. You cannot just say you drink milk for calcium because calcium needs phosphorus and other elements to function. As we mentioned in a previous column on vitamins, the mineral iron needs vitamin C to be absorbed by our intestines. So again, you will note that it was only recently, with the boom of industries, that minerals are being sold as individual elements – calcium tablets, iron tablets, zinc powder, etc. The invisible treasures in nature have been synthesized in the laboratory and packaged into colorful items, usually sugar-coated so that even children would love to take them in. But is that the way it should be?
How does nature provide the minerals to us humans? Like vitamins, nature provides us minerals as green camote leaves, orange camote, yellow squash, blue (or black?) alumani, etc. Each having its particular taste and in combination with a lot of other minerals and vitamins and other elements of nature that up to now the laboratory has not identified. Not only are there unidentified flying objects. There are also a lot of unidentified elements of nature even in such a common plant as sayote. This is because our gadgets are not sophisticated enough to unravel nature’s complexity.
God did not provide us minerals in mega doses, with the exception of gold nuggets, I guess. He really loves us – just tiny amounts will do so we don’t have to eat a sack of saluyot to get enough calcium. So do we need to drink milk or yoghurt to have enough calcium? Or do we need to drink calcium tablets or iron tablets? Remember that excess calcium will have an opposite effect. It will drain calcium from your body.
Where does the cow with its big bones get calcium? Except for the milk from Mama Cow during its babyhood, the cow just eats grass and a teeny weeny salt (I learned they are also given sugar to make its meat fatty thus more tasty). So would somebody debate that the source of calcium for the cow is grass? How about the kuhol and ket-an? Where do they get their calcium shells? Do we feed them milk in the payeo? Wow, that would be costly! Obviously, God provides calcium and other minerals like iodine, copper, iron in the soil which the plants absorb and process to absorbable forms which we humans and animals then eat. Isn’t that wonderful?
If then, we eat a variety of these plants as provided in nature, in season, then we will have enough calcium, iron, etc. for our health and development. We will not only get minerals. We will also get enough vitamins, enzymes, antioxidants, fiber, etc. It is not only 3 in 1, it is infinity in 1 leaf or 1 root or 1 fruit. Then logically, we need to take care of our soil so that it will be rich and pure, not polluting it with batteries, burnt plastic and other hazardous elements which the plants may also absorb. We don’t need mercury or cadmium in our bodies. Although they are useful in batteries, they are harmful to us. **
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“But the Lord’s will stands fast for ever, and the designs of his heart from age to age.” Psalm 33:11
