Please read the entire post, sorry it's so long, but necessary to give you a proper explanation.

The only form of minerals the body can actually access and utilize at the cellular lever are "amino acid chelates". The body chelates the minerals and bonds them to amino acids lying on the floor of the intestines during the digestive process. Minerals are the most difficult element of nutrition for the body to assimilate. Let me explain why: Minerals are metal. The body treats them as a foreign object until they are converted into an amino acid chelate which is a protein based organic element. Below is a detailed explanation of how the body processes minerals:

B-T-W, there is a big difference between absorbancy and bio-availability. I am not saying colloidial minerals or other inorganic forms are not absorbed, I am saying they are not bio-available.

During the digestive process the body will separate the elemental mineral from whatever its stabelizing component is. ie: calcium citrate, iron sulphate, etc. Once the mineral is isolated in the gut, the body breaks it down into a liquid ionic state where the molecular weight is now small enough to pass through the cell wall. If all conditions are perfect,( which they seldom are), ideally the mineral then travels to the intestine where it bonds with the amino acids lying on the floor of the intestine. Once the bond takes place with the amino acids, the resulting element is called a mineral amino acid chelate. Being a protein base, the minerals are now able to be taken in at the cellular level, literally smuggled in because they body takes the amino acids in very easily and readily and the minerals are bound to them with a small enought molecular weight that they pass through easily.

The problem with bio-availability is that in its liquid ionic state, before bonding to the amino acids, having been separated from its stabelizing component, the mineral is now unstable. It has to bond with something to get stable again. Unfortunately the mineral will bond with other things that may be in the gut such as fiber, phosphorus, herbs, medications, etc. If the mineral bonds to anything other than an amino acid, it will no longer be usable by the body. Those bonds are permanent and cannot be broken, so although they may be absorbed by the body, they will not be usable or accessable at the cellular level.

The body has two choices to deal with any element it cannot use. It can eliminate it through the waste in the urine and feces which is preferable, or if it cannot be passed through, it can take it into absorbancy sites which are the liver, kidneys, gallbladder, arteries, and even in the brain where it will be stored, but never accessible or usable. This can cause an unhealthy build up over time with repeated use of an inroganic mineral supplement. This is where artheroschloratic (sp?)plaque comes from, also gall stones and kidney stones, and autopsies have found high levels of inorganic minerals in the brains of Alzheimer's patients.

Colloidial minerals are simply suspended, not dissilved in liquid. The elemental mineral particles are still too large to be passed through the cell wall until the body chelates them.

The main problem with colloidial minerals is that they are not pure. In every case where I've contacted a manufacturer of colloidial minerals and asked for an exact breakdown of the mineral content, the list of minerals included contains toxic minerals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, arsnic, nickle, gold, silver, etc. as well as the esssential minerals. When I ask why, they tell me that they cannot be separated out, and not to worry about it because the level of toxic minerals is minimal. Toxic is toxic at any level, and I choose not to expose myself to any level if I can help it.

The positive results people report while using colloidial minerals can be construed as a false positive. The toxins prompt an immune response wich makes the body get a rush of the sense of well being because the immune system is kicked into high gear to deal with the toxins. It can be deceptive.

4 Today uses only true amino acid chelated minerals in our companies formulations. The raw material supplier is Albion Advanced Nutrition. they hold over 100 active patents on the process of chelating the minerals into organic protein based amino acid chelates that are in the exact form the body would convert them into if it had to. They are stable and they survive the digestion process in tact, so they are already immediately accessible to the cells and are taken in quickly and easily, making them 70-90% more bio-available than any other form of minerals used for human supplementation. Additional information can be found at www.albion-an.com under human nutrition.

Great info Jan, many thanks for the post - it clears up a lot of confusion. Georgia

Thanks for the great info!!