Almost everyone knows about vitamins and the importance of good vitamin balance for good health, but the role of minerals and why they are important is somewhat fuzzy to the average person. Here is a primer on minerals and their importance for good health, starting with the question: What is a mineral?

Your body cannot make minerals. Minerals must be consumed in foods, water, or supplements. The term for this is essential. Minerals are essential to your body.
Minerals help to keep your …

Vitamins and minerals do not in themselves provide energy, but macronutrients depend on them to regulate the release of energy from food.

* Vitamins are organic substances.
* They activate enzymes, which are proteins that act as catalysts to speed up biological reactions that take place in your body.
* Your body produces a certain amount of vitamins D and K, but all other vitamins come from your diet or supplementation.

Minerals are inorganic substances that originate from rocks and ores and enter the food chain through the soil.

* We get minerals either by eating plants grown on mineral-rich soil or by eating animals that have fed on these plants.
* Calcium, magnesium and phosphorus are the major constituents of bone.
* Sodium and potassium control your body’s water balance.
* Other minerals (chromium, iron, and magnesium) are needed for various chemical processes to take place in the body.
* Omega Fatty Acids
* Phytonutrients, also referred to as phytochemicals, are compounds that act as a natural defense system in plants, and that also have a beneficial effect on human health.

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Minerals and trace elements are an integral part of the chemical structure of almost all vitamins, enzymes, amino acids and a host of other substances that our body depends upon to be healthy and function properly. Did you know that plants absorb around 70 to 80 different minerals from the soil during the time they are growing? The majority of fertilizers used today by commercial growers contain only about five or six types of minerals. So where will the rest of the minerals come …