How Your Body Gets Out Of Whack

Carve this in stone: Your body will balance itself no matter what you think, do or say.

This is one of the many things they don’t teach us in school.

And I’ve never seen a headline about it on a magazine cover, either.

It seems to be somebody’s secret, but we need to let that cat out of the bag right now. This is important stuff.

For instance, your body insists the calcium in your body be balanced with the magnesium in your body. Well, everybody’s heard about taking calcium to protect your bones, so we piously chug down calcium and wish our bones well.

Not so fast, Chester.

Most of us have a magnesium deficiency. Pity that, because magnesium’s involved in all sorts of activity that keeps our bodies going.

But in terms of balancing, here’s the kicker: As long as your magnesium level is low, your body will keep dumping calcium until they balance. You’ll be in the ditch when they do, but your body will be taking bows about a job well done.

And all the calcium you’re taking? In one end and out the other in not much more than a trice.

Standard medical information, if we hear it at all, tells us to take half as much magnesium as calcium. Well, maybe not. More informed opinion now argues whether to take the same amount of calcium and magnesium or to take half as much calcium as magnesium.

As is typical in our contentious times, each side ridicules the others for their position. I’m siding with the same amount of both. Magnesium takes part in more than 300 enzyme actions in our bodies every day. With all that heavy lifting going on, I don’t want get stingy.

A test would be nice–if you can convince your doctor to order one.

Then there’s the deal where the body wants to balance sodium and potassium. When you swear off salt, your body dumps potassium, which raises your blood pressure. So the doctor says to really, really cut out salt, which ends up lowering your potassium even more. And so on.

It’s kind of like a death spiral. Well, actually, it is a death spiral. Staying alive requires sodium, which requires potassium, which requires sodium, which requires . . . You get the idea.

Ditch table salt, though. They process the life out of it, then bleach it, then add bad stuff to it. Use sea salt. Celtic is a good brand.

And how about copper and zinc? They also have a ratio to maintain. But birth control pills raise women’s copper levels big time, and things get out of whack. Men lose a carload of zinc during sex, proving the out-of-whackedness can go both ways.

And in case you’ve wondered why I talk a lot about general health when I say I’m all over endocrine problems, now you know. It’s because the body balances everything. We can’t have a healthy endocrine system in an unhealthy body. Everything gets balanced out–and we don’t want it to end up with us wondering if a truck hit us.

Here’s the deal: Half the population has thyroid problems, but most don’t know it. The percentage of us with diabetes is skyrocketing. Auto-immune diseases are going through the roof. And obesity? Yikes! People, we have to get a handle on our out-of-balance mess.

So my goal is a healthy endocrine system in a healthy body–everything balanced and happy. WooHoo!