February 5, 2008

Excerpt from Bragg’s Healthy Heart Book — Chap­ter 11
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The body is con­stantly break­ing down old bone and tis­sue cells and replac­ing them with new ones. As the body casts off old min­er­als and broken-down cells, it must obtain fresh food sup­plies of essen­tial ele­ments for new cells. Sci­en­tists are only now begin­ning to under­stand that var­i­ous kinds of den­tal prob­lems, dif­fer­ent types of arthri­tis and even some forms of artery hard­en­ing are due to body imbal­ances of cal­cium, phos­pho­rus and mag­ne­sium. Many dis­or­ders can be caused by imbal­ances in the ratios of min­er­als to each other.

Each individual’s healthy body requires a proper bal­ance within itself of all the nutri­tive ele­ments. It is just as bad for any indi­vid­ual to have too much of one item as it is to have too lit­tle of another one. For instance, it takes appro­pri­ate lev­els of phos­pho­rus and mag­ne­sium to keep cal­cium in solu­tion so it can be formed into new cells of bone and teeth. Yet there must not be too much mag­ne­sium nor too lit­tle cal­cium in the diet or old bone will be taken away and new bone will not be formed. We know that diets that are unbal­anced can deplete the body of essen­tial min­er­als and elements.

Diets high in meats, fish, eggs, grains and nuts or their prod­ucts may pro­vide unbal­anced excesses of phos­pho­rus which will leech cal­cium and mag­ne­sium from the bones, caus­ing them to be lost in the urine. A diet high in fats will tend to increase the intake of phos­pho­rus from the intestines rel­a­tive to cal­cium and other basic min­er­als. Such diets can also pro­duce a loss of the body’s basic min­er­als in the same way a high phos­pho­rus diet does. Diets exces­sively high in fruits or their juices may pro­vide unbal­anced excesses of fruit sug­ars and of potas­sium in the body, which also can leech cal­cium and mag­ne­sium from the body.