Humans are electrochemical by nature, and mineral intake helps sustain the electrochemical system. A mineral deficiency can contribute to feelings of fatigue. Our bodies operate on electrochemical gradients, and taking a full range of appropriate minerals will help you maintain the proper electrochemical gradients.
Our cells operate most efficiently at a voltage range of around –30 to 70 mv, which is about an average pH of 7.35, which is why we need to be slightly alkaline for optimum health. Fatigue typically occurs when cell voltage drops below –20 mv and pH drops. Greater decreases may result in chronic illness. For instance, cancer cells have a voltage potential of around –40 mv or a pH of 6.3. High toxin loads, chronic sympathetic nervous system stress, infections, injuries, and a lack of electron-donors such as minerals all contribute to this condition.
Many strategies exist to support optimum cell voltage: sunlight exposure, grounding, heavily acidic foods, PEMF, or bathing in Epsom salts. These help to keep pH low and voltage potential high. But, let’s take a look at the last item in relation to mineral intake.
Why you may be deficient in key minerals
Living organisms do not produce minerals. We must obtain them through our diet, this is why they are called essential for bodily function. They are necessary for the proper functioning of organs and tissues, fluid balance, muscle contractions, making enzymes and hormones, and more. Mineral levels are low for a variety of reasons including:
Modern harvesting, shipping, processing, and storage techniques of food, which degrades their nutrient content. Most soils are depleted of nutrients, which decreases the beneficial vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants in conventionally-grown crops.
- Increased chronic stressors of modern life.
- Environmental pollution. Toxins, pollutants in the air, chemicals in cleaning products, pesticides in foods, and other toxins increase your body’s need for minerals, vitamins, and antioxidants.
- An increased need for the mineral, lack of the mineral in your diet, or difficulty absorbing the mineral from food.
- Exercise. It can increase your body’s need for nutrients.
Mineral deficiency symptoms
To understand why you may be deficient in key minerals, it helps to understand the most common minerals and what they do in your body.
If you have been experiencing insomnia, cramping, sore muscles, low metabolism, brain fog, or weight gain, you may have a mineral deficiency.
Minerals are divided into two groups: major minerals (macrominerals required in large amounts) and trace minerals (microminerals required only in minute quantities).
Major minerals include calcium, magnesium, chloride, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, and sulfur. Trace minerals include iron, manganese, copper, iodine, zinc, fluoride, chromium, molybdenum, and selenium.
Major minerals
Magnesium – Found in bones, magnesium is needed for making protein, muscle contraction, nerve transmission, and immune system health. You have about two ounces of magnesium in your body—mostly in muscle and bone tissue. Magnesium is responsible for over 700-800 important bodily functions and is essential for more than three hundred reactions, including nerve and cardiac function, muscle contraction and relaxation, protein formation, and the synthesis of ATP-based energy.
Symptoms for deficiency tend to relate to major basic body processes such as sleep, appetite, and muscular function. A magnesium deficiency can result in muscle cramping, excessive soreness, low muscular force production, disrupted recovery and sleep, immune system depression, and even potentially fatal heart arrhythmias during intense exercise.
Calcium – Important for healthy bones and teeth, calcium helps muscles relax and contract and is important in nerve functioning, blood clotting, blood pressure regulation, and immune system health. Because your body carefully regulates the amount of calcium in your blood, a deficiency produces few obvious symptoms in the short term. Lack of calcium over the long term can lead to decreased bone mineral density called osteopenia.
Symptoms of a severe deficiency include muscle cramping, fatigue, poor appetite, and irregular heart rhythms. Phosphorus – Important for healthy bones and teeth, phosphorus is found in every cell. It is part of the system that maintains acid-base balance. Calcium and phosphorus are closely related minerals that should be balanced. About 99 percent of calcium and 85 percent of phosphate occur in the skeleton as crystals of calcium phosphate.
You may experience a number of bone-related symptoms (bone pain, fragile bones, stiff joints) if you have a phosphorus deficiency. Other symptoms include anxiety, fatigue, irregular breathing, irritability, numbness, weakness, weight change, and loss of appetite.
Potassium – A mineral that functions as an electrolyte, potassium is needed for proper fluid balance, the transmission of nerve signals, and muscle contraction. The most common cause of potassium deficiency is excessive fluid loss. Examples can include extended vomiting, kidney disease, or the use of certain medications such as diuretics.
Symptoms of potassium deficiency include muscle cramping and weakness. Other symptoms show up as constipation, bloating, or abdominal pain caused by paralysis of the intestines. Severe potassium deficiency can cause paralysis of the muscles or irregular heart rhythms that may lead to death.
Chloride – An extremely important electrolyte, chloride helps keep the amount of fluid inside and outside your cells in balance. It also helps maintain blood pressure and volume and balances the pH of your body fluids.
Low chloride doesn’t typically result in noticeable symptoms. Some symptoms can include dehydration, diarrhea, or vomiting.
Sodium – This mineral is needed for proper fluid balance, nerve transmission, and muscle contraction. Unintended consequences of a drastic reduction in sodium intake include insulin resistance (diabetes), metabolic syndrome, increased cardiovascular mortality and readmissions, cognition loss in neonates and older adults, unsteadiness, falls, fractures, and cravings for salty foods.
Symptoms of hyponatremia (low level of sodium in the blood) may include nausea, fatigue, headache or confusion, muscle cramps, restlessness, and weakness.
Sulfur – Found in protein molecules, sulfur is important for detoxification, gut-lining integrity, lowering your risk of cancer, and oxidation-reduction.
Signs of sulfur sensitivity include deleterious reactions to garlic, eggs, wine, and dried fruits that have sulfites added to them, along with joint pain, inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis), irritable bowel syndrome, and neurotransmitter imbalances.
Trace minerals
Copper – Part of many enzymes and needed for iron metabolism, copper has profound relationships with a lot of different minerals including zinc, chromium, manganese, sulfur. Given these interrelationships, working to deal with copper dysregulation can be complicated.
Symptoms for deficiency tend to relate to immune system irregularity and low energy levels.
Iodine – Found in thyroid hormone, iodine helps regulate growth, development, and metabolism. All the cells in your body contain and use iodine, and it is concentrated in the glandular systems of your body.
Symptoms of potential iodine deficiency include neck (thyroid region) swelling, unexpected weight gain, fatigue and weakness, hair loss, dry skin, changes in heart rate, trouble learning and remembering, and potential problems during pregnancy.
Zinc – Part of many enzymes, zinc is needed for making protein and genetic material, and has a function in taste perception, wound healing, normal fetal development, production of sperm, normal growth and sexual maturation, immune system health.
There are many crucial symptoms for deficiency including diarrhea, reduced appetite, reduced testosterone, skin issues, smell and taste irregularities, stunted growth, and thinning hair.
Fluoride – Found in your bones and teeth, fluoride is mainly used to improve dental health.
Fluoride deficiencies can present as badly formed or weak teeth, an increase in cavities, brittle bones, or fractured hips in the elderly. but overexposure to fluoride is perhaps more concerning. This can result in Fluorosis, a condition that causes yellow/dark brown tooth stains, surface irregularities, and pits in the teeth—making it important to never swallow fluoridated water, toothpaste, or mouthwash.
Chromium – Chromium assists with glucose metabolism, which is how you use carbohydrates as a fuel. It may also help to improve your insulin sensitivity. Basically, chromium is needed to properly convert the food you eat into energy.
Symptoms for deficiency in chromium tend to mimic those of diabetes, such as weight loss, impaired glucose tolerance, neuropathy, anxiety, fatigue, and muscle weakness.
Iron – Used by your body to make hemoglobin, which carries oxygen from your lungs to the rest of your body, iron is needed for energy metabolism. Iron is also necessary for the production of myoglobin, a protein that provides oxygen to your muscles.
Iron deficiency causes anemia (low hemoglobin and reduced numbers of red blood cells), which results in tiredness and shortness of breath because of poor oxygen delivery.
Manganese – Part of many enzymes, manganese helps with protein and amino acid digestion and utilization, as well as the metabolism of cholesterol and carbohydrates.
Overall, manganese deficiency is not common, and there is more concern for toxicity related to manganese overexposure.
Molybdenum – Used to process proteins and genetic material such as DNA, molybdenum assists in detoxification by preventing toxins from building up in your body. It also activates certain enzymes that help break down harmful sulfites.
Because humans only need very small amounts (45 mcg), molybdenum deficiencies are extremely rare with only one documented case that occurred in a patient receiving IV nutrition.
Selenium – Selenium is an important antioxidant that works with vitamin E to protect the immune system, heart, and liver, and may help prevent tumor formation. Selenium deficiency can cause an intolerance to high iodine.
The most common symptoms for deficiency are infertility in men and women, muscle weakness, fatigue, mental fog, hair loss, a weakened immune system, and cardiomyopathy.
Testing for mineral deficiency
Everyone experiences these familiar symptoms: brain fog, fatigue, headaches, cramps. The only way to know for certain if these are caused by a mineral deficiency is to test for them.
The two most common ways to test for mineral deficiencies are blood testing and hair mineral analysis. While blood tests show the recent and current body status, hair represents a longer time frame; and since the elements are present in the hair at higher levels, it is possible to obtain more comprehensive results. Hair testing is accurate and shows your day-to-day health whereas a blood test gives a snapshot of one day.
Equipment for hair mineral analysis is precise Inn the lab, the hair is burnt in a mass spectrometer, which gives it a precision that is not currently available with blood testing. While more research needs to be conducted, evaluations of commercial labs performing mineral hair analysis show that it produces results.
One thing to keep in mind is that a high level of something in your hair may not mean you have high levels in your body. Your cells might be releasing and you still have a deficiency. High levels in hair of calcium, magnesium, sodium, or potassium (indicators of how much stress you’re putting your body under), may show as large deposits in the hair.
Solutions for mineral deficiencies
If you have determined that you are deficient in one or more minerals, then you can be proactive. Adding foods that are rich in minerals is the first line of defense. Other solutions include supplements and transdermal solutions.
Knowing you’re deficient in one or more minerals is an important first step in optimizing your health, but where do you go from there?
Which foods should you add? Here is a handy list depending on the mineral:
- Magnesium: raw cacao nibs/beans/powder, whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds, greens, fruit
- Sulfur: cruciferous vegetables (kale, cabbage, etc.), cranberries, horseradish, asparagus, carob powder, garlic, onions
- Phosphorus: whole grains, pinto beans, pumpkin seeds, Brazil nuts, lentils
- Sodium: Colima Sea salt
- Potassium: citrus fruits, bitter green leafy vegetables, bananas, tomatoes, pineapple, black olives, seaweed
- Calcium: sesame seeds/tahini, broccoli, kale, legumes, mustard, turnip greens
- Chromium: onions, romaine, tomato, cinnamon, grapes, apples, sweet potatoes
- Iron: beans, legumes, prunes, figs, seaweed, spinach, cherries
- Chloride: celery, olives, tomato, kelp, Colima Sea salt
- Manganese: walnuts, almonds, pecans, whole grains, green leafy vegetables, pineapple, blueberries
Final thoughts
If you are experiencing insomnia, anemic workouts, cravings, sore joints, cramping, brain fog, or other issues, a mineral deficiency may be the issue. A hair mineral analysis test is a good option to elucidate deficiencies that you can then work to address through diet, supplementation, or transdermal application.
In the meantime, add mineral-rich foods to your diet. That is the first way to address a mineral deficiency. If you have done so, and if you have determined a mineral deficiency through testing, a supplement or transdermal may be your next option.