THE BASIC BUILDING BLOCKS
The Root of All Disease Chapter 2
MINERALS
There are a total of 90 minerals that are most recognized and can still be found in most newly erupted volcanic ash and remote mountainous areas of the earth. Of these, 64 are metallic solids, six are metalloids, four are non-metallic, five are liquid, and 11 are gaseous. These inorganic elements are listed as follows:
Metallic Solids (64) aluminum, arsenic, barium, beryllium, bismuth, boron, cadmium, calcium, cerium, chromium, cobalt, copper, dysprosium, erbium, europium, gadolinium, gold, hafnium, holmium, indium, iodine, iridium, iron, lanthanum, lead, lithium, lutetium, magnesium, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, neptunium, neodymium, nickel, niobium, osmium, palladium, platinum, plutonium, potassium, praseodymium, rhenium, rhodium, rubidium, ruthenium, samarium, scandium, silver, sodium, strontium, tantalum, technetium, terbium, thallium, thorium, tin, titanium, tungsten, uranium, vanadium, ytterbium, yttrium, zinc, and zirconium.
- Metalloid (6) silicon, germanium, antimony, selenium, tellurium, and polonium.
- Non-Metallic (4) boron, carbon, phosphorous, and sulfur.
- Liquid (5) cesium, francium, mercury, gallium, and bromine.
- Gaseous (11) hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, chlorine, helium, neon, argon, krypton, and radon.
All the minerals listed were available in our soil during prehistoric times. Unfortunately, as we are seeing, this is not the case today. This may be why nutritional experts who represent world governments point to only 12 or 13 minerals as necessary for average health and to another 8 or 10 minerals as providing some benefit. I have always wondered why they have never studied the probable necessity of the other 70 or more minerals on earth! If God put 90 or 100 minerals on earth and man is comprised of minerals, why are we only utilizing 15 or 20? Is it possible these other minerals were and continue to be overlooked because they just aren’t available in the surface soil where plants grow? In my opinion, this is a very interesting question and one that could be answered with a resounding “yes”!
Mistaken Notion
Most physicians and many persons live with the mistaken notion that the average recommended diet of 2,000 calories somehow magically supplies all the nutrients essential for a healthy life. If you believe that, you will die prematurely and never enjoy the good health God intended for you to enjoy. I hear all the experts basing good health on a 2,000-calorie-per-day diet. Several times, I have offered money to any physician or person who can supply a diet averaging 2,000 calories per day that also supplies all the RDI of essential nutrients. I was never challenged because it cannot be done!
When you think about it, minerals are bound to play an essential part in our lives. After all, rocks are the parent material for soil that is the primary source of nutrition for plants, animals, and, ultimately, humans. While deficiencies of a single mineral are common, what happens if we are marginally low in the number of minerals? We have less energy; we are run down; we have headaches; we feel bad because we have all sorts of ailments and appear haggard. These effects can be easily seen when studies are conducted on people who are pure vegetarians, those who consume a large amount of junk food in the absence of adequate mineral supplements, or those with poor diets without adequate mineral supplements.
Mineral absorption and age
Also, it is known that the absorption of many minerals declines with old age. Certain diseases exist because people have difficulty absorbing nutrients. As the body ages, the assimilation process slows down. Additionally, extreme exertion, stress, and exposure to environmental pollution raise our requirements for minerals, especially zinc, calcium, and iron. In my own research, I found and am amazed at the number of people who are unaware of the importance of minerals relative to good health. Most of them seem to have resigned to the fact that you’ve lived a full life if you die at the average age of 76 after suffering from several diseases for years before death. This type of thinking is pitiful! People need to change their thought patterns. They don’t have to die and 76 years of age just because their parents died at 76.
VERY FEW PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF MINERALS
From my experience with minerals and interviews during my trips to forty countries, I am convinced that a tiny percentage of the people in the world are aware of the essential part minerals play for ultimate health. It’s clearly evident that they are deficient in minerals because they are not consuming a full spectrum of mineral supplements on a daily basis. Numerous research teams have reported that this stems from the lack of minerals in our present-day foods.

According to science, millions of years ago, the soil near the Earth’s surface was saturated with dozens of minerals. At least 84 minerals were available everywhere, and some areas of the planet did possess 100 minerals. Science has proven the plants of prehistoric times were rich in minerals because there was an abundant supply for them to feed upon from the soil.
Plant roots
When a plant grows, it draws the available minerals from the soil reached by its roots. If the soil contains only a few minerals, the plant will take up only a few. We now know the mineral content of plants has been severely altered throughout the last several million years and drastically altered in the previous several hundred years. When man began to till the soil, wind and rain erosion began to take its toll, along with continuous cropping that gradually caused the soils to possess fewer and fewer minerals.
Unfortunately, these millions of years of erosion and centuries of unwise farming practices have made good, mineral-rich soil a scarce commodity. As a result, soil tests worldwide have revealed that our soils severely lack minerals. This, in turn, produces mineral-deficient plants with significantly reduced nutritional value for us humans and the animals we eat.
NPK FERTILIZER
The chemical industry developed fertilizers in the early 1900s by making or mining concentrated forms of Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), and Potassium (K) (NPK) rather than using living compounds as they exist in nature. These living compounds include manure and humus, which is a natural food for a rich variegated blend of organisms living on and within the soil like beetles, worms, and other invertebrate creatures, along with fungi, molds, yeasts, algae, insects, and other tiny microbes. These organisms add to the Earth’s carbon pool which is very important for sustained soil health. Without an abundant supply of these compounds, which survive only with adequate minerals, our soils become barren and can barely sustain life.
The health and survival of all plants, domestic or wild, depends on the health of the soil and its ability to provide a constant supply of carbon and minerals. The nutritional value of a plant is relevant to the conditions in which it is grown. The temperature, amount of sunlight, the humidity of the atmosphere, water, oxygen supply in the soil, and other factors of the general environment all play a role in a plant’s maturity.

PLANT METABOLISM
In its metabolic processes, innumerable substances are formed, such as sugars, starch, cellulose, acids, lignin, tannins, amino acids, proteins, amides, etc. However, with few minerals in the soil from which the plant can draw, it doesn’t have a good chance of metabolizing these substances or being healthy even if all the other relevant conditions are perfect. If there is a lack of minerals in the soil, few of the necessary components of good soil exist, so plants become stunted, sick, and devoid of much of the food value they contained in prehistoric times. If we only go back 60 or 70 years, we find 30 percent more minerals in the soil than we find today. My grandfather raised large herds of cattle. They survived and were very healthy from eating the feed grown in those days. No supplements were required! Today’s cattle must be supplemented, or they will be malnourished, become stunted, sickly, lose their hair, and abort their calves, all because of a mineral deficiency in the soil.
NPK Fertilizer
When man began using artificial fertilizers containing ammonia, nitrogen, phosphate, and potash, it was learned that crop yields could be greatly increased. But what appeared to be a blessing has become a curse. According to the Complete Book of Minerals for Health by Rodale Press, manufactured inorganic fertilizers upset the delicate balance of minerals and organisms in humus-rich soil by killing off beneficial microorganisms and bacteria and lacking in the naturally occurring minerals, they are less available to plants. Inorganic, meaning “toxic, synthetic, dead and inert,” ammonium-based fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides kill the precious microorganisms essential to creating organic complexes in the soil. Organic means “carbon-based, containing life and living.”
Chemical fertilizers can also saturate plant roots with too much of one nutrient, making it difficult for plants or crops to pick up and absorb other minerals they need so badly. If minerals are not available to be pulled from the soil by plants, the nutritional value of our food is drastically diminished. This is why our present-day foods would hardly keep a rat healthy. Unfortunately, this is also the reason people all over the world become sicker each year.