Minerals Nutrition
As inorganic elements that come from water and soil, minerals are needed by your body in small quantities to function and sustain life.
They help to build body tissues, to regulate metabolic activities or tokeep your body’s cellular processes running efficiently. They are also essential in the contraction of muscles, clotting of blood and nerve reactions.
Although minerals are needed in only small quantities in the diet, some minerals accumulate to a significant degree: There is around 1 kg of calcium in your body.
Your body needs a wide range of minerals in the right amounts and relations to each other. A variation of even 1% in established limits may have consequences.
When the intake of minerals in our system becomes unbalanced or depleted, it draws from stores laid down in the muscles, the liver and even the bones.
Minerals must be supplied in your diet because your body is not able to make its own and can maintain the mineral balance for only a short period of time. Common causes of deficiencies are increased demand, inadequate intake, impaired absorption or increased urinary losses.
Minerals consist of two classes: Major elements and minor- trace elements. Examples of major elements are:
• Calcium: Bones and teeth formation and blood clotting.
• Magnesium: Functioning of muscle and nerve tissues, healthy bones.
• Iron: Transfer of oxygen between tissues.
• Potassium: Functioning of muscle and nerve tissues.
• Iodine: Essential for the body’s hormones.
• Sodium: Regulating your blood pressure and volume. Without sodium, you wouldn’t have any blood pressure at all.
And the trace elements are:
• Copper: Works together with iron to make red blood cells, involved in maintenance of immunity and fertility.
• Cobalt: Works with Vitamin B12 for the functioning of enzymes and production of red blood cells.
• Manganese: Antioxidant, free-radical fighting properties, important for proper food digestion and for normal bone structure.
• Zinc: Cell division, growth, and repair. It helps with wound healing and maintaining a normal sense of taste and smell.
• Fluorine: Essential hardening component of bones and beneficial in preventing dental complications such as cavities.
• Selenium: Antioxidants properties, contributes to efficiency of the immune system- wide variety of protective functions within the body.
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Minerals Nutrition- References:
The Chemistry of Food–Major Minerals in Nutrition, Linda Mamassian, http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/ chemistry/73568/2.
http://science.jrank.org/pages/4803/ Nutrition.html.
http://library.thinkquest.org/18755/nutrition/minerals.shtml.
Introduction to minerals and why we need them, http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/ resource/view.php?id=192834&direct=1.
