Anti-Aging Secret: Minerals Without Fail : This article is about the importance of Minerals when trying to follow an anti-aging diet.

Minerals rank with protein as the most neglected, haphazardly obtained nutrients in our American diet. And more especially in the diets of persons past forty. One of the ‘three starvations of later years,’ spoken of frequently in nutritional reports, is mineral starvation.

(The other two ‘’starvations’ in older bodies are protein and vitamin B-complex.)Protein and minerals are so closely linked that to advise you to eat plenty of protein, without stressing the need for equal care in obtaining a full quota of minerals, would be to tell only half the
Eat-and-Grow-Younger story. A report made this year to the National Academy of Sciences by a research team headed by Dr. Cannon emphasizes that the minerals potassium, phosphorus and magnesium are essential in the diet for proper use of all body-building protein foods. This research team discovered that omitting potassium from the diet could lead to eventual congestive heart failure. Dead tissue developed within the heart muscles six days after potassium was taken out of the diet. But when potassium was restored to the diet, the body muscles began to rebuild, and the dead tissues in the heart healed. In other words, with potassium again present, protein could resume its appointed task of repairing and replacing body cells. Protein and minerals are the chief actors in the nutritional drama, while vitamins play a secondary, although essential, role (vitamins, the front-page news of the past decade, are now recognized as being solely activators, that is, substances needed to set other substances into action). To neglect any of these three food elements is to wreck the nutritional drama. Yet to star vitamins over protein and minerals is an equally unsound practice. You can’t repair your body cells with vitamins alone, nor can you expect vitamins to do the nutritional work of minerals.

Each of the three food elements-protein, minerals, vitamins has its own specific task in preparing your body for a long, youthful life. If I seem to emphasize protein and minerals more than I do vitamins, it’s only because I feel certain the vitamin story is well enough known not to need detailed repetition in this book. On the other hand, I’m afraid the
mineral story has been too often pushed into the background by ’sensational’ vitamin news. Yet today, more than ever before, nutrition experts are turning to mineral therapy. The final report of the New York State Joint Legislative Committee on Nutrition for 1947 contains an article by Dr. C. Ward Crampton, noted authority on diseases of older
persons, in which he .states: ‘The foremost nutritional defects in the mature and aging are calcium, iron and protein. Seventy-five per cent of the men of sixty suffer a lack of one or more. On the other hand, many suffer dietary excesses, notably carbohydrates and possibly cholesterol.’

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!