What are minerals? Minerals are nothing more than elements -- identical to those found in the periodic table of chromium, magnesium, iron, zinc and other high school chemistry textbooks. They are the elements that make up the whole universe, this earth and everything on it, including you.

Your body is truly a masterpiece of these same elements. Therefore, it is important to constantly replenish the body with the elements it consumes every day.

Chemical and electrical processes take place in your body all the time. These processes work only if you continue to supply your system with the right balance of minerals. Provides iron for your blood, sulfur for your muscles, calcium for your bones, and a balanced microaggregation of many other elements that help ensure your body functions properly.

What is an ion?

An ion is a mineral or element that has a positive or negative charge. At the molecular level, this means the element has too many or too few electrons. This unstable ionic state allows the element to easily combine with water, allowing the body to absorb it. In this state, an element has specific positive or negative characteristics, resulting in dynamic equilibrium. The body can then facilitate changes by transferring nutrients to areas where they are needed.

What are trace minerals?

You can collect silver coins, wear a platinum ring or fill gold. You've probably drunk tea out of a copper kettle, eaten cookies out of a fancy tin container, or flown in a titanium airplane. But did you know that these elements and many others (in very small, balanced trace amounts) are critical to your health? While trace minerals are no longer as abundant in the food you eat, they are abundant in just the right proportions in the mineral-rich waters of the earth's oceans.

The stripping of Mother Earth

Traditionally, eating fresh grains, fruits and vegetables grown in nutrient-rich soil has been a major source of supply for a wide range of ionic minerals.

Unfortunately, naturally occurring, nutrient-rich soils are becoming scarcer and scarcer in today's world. Billions of years of vegetation growth and aggressive modern agricultural techniques have brought many of the earth's minerals to the surface and washed them away.

Synthetic fertilizers are commonly used on farms and fields where the minerals have run out. But artificial fertilizers only provide enough minerals to sustain basic plant life. Many trace minerals vital to human life are not being replenished.

Where did all the minerals go?

Many trace elements that were once abundant in the soil have been washed into the ocean. In the ocean, they are found in proper proportions -- the same basic proportions found in healthy humans.

In the few surviving inland seas, such as the Great Salt Lake in western North America, these basic elements are present in highly concentrated, beneficial proportions. This healthy, intricate balance of minerals and trace elements in seawater is good for you.

Today, these life-sustaining waters contain all the minerals and elements needed to support human life. Most importantly, these minerals and elements are ionic and in perfect balance -- easily absorbed by human cells.

The importance of ionic minerals

Your body relies on ionic minerals and trace minerals to conduct and produce billions of tiny electrical impulses every second of every day. Without these impulses, no muscle, including your heart, can function. Your brain won't be able to function properly, and cells won't be able to use osmosis to balance your water pressure and absorb nutrients. To ensure that you are getting the ionic minerals and electrolytes your body needs, select only ionic mineral supplements or supplements containing ionic minerals.

"Experts estimate that 90 percent of Americans suffer from mineral imbalances and deficiencies."

Disturbing trend: Mineral imbalances

Because your body needs nearly two-thirds of the elements currently known to humanity to maintain health, maintaining a balance of these minerals is a complex but very important task. The events of daily life require constant intake of minerals.

There are 92 known elements, 22 hypothesized others, and hundreds of isotopic variations. No wonder scientists are only now beginning to discover the effects and interrelationships of minerals in our systems, such as how they help maintain a healthy balance and what adverse effects mineral imbalances can have. Experts estimate that 90 percent of Americans suffer from mineral imbalances and deficiencies.

If you're one of them -- whether because of frequent exercise, stress, or an overly refined, nutrient-poor diet -- your body will try to correct the situation, but in vain, often leading to food cravings, muscle cramps, and overall fatigue.

Absorption plays a key role

Mineral absorption occurs mainly in the small intestine. As food passes through the intestine, minerals are transferred into the blood through the villi and through the intestinal wall (see figure 3). This can only happen if the mineral is in ionic form. Although stomach acid helps to ionize minerals in food, mineral supplements should contain minerals that have been naturally ionized so that they can be fully absorbed.

"Trace minerals are not isolated, they are correlated. Too much of one trace element causes other trace elements to be out of balance... Most trace elements need to be in ionic form to be well absorbed in the gut." -- Alexander G. Schauss, Ph.D

Secrets of life in the Dead Sea

The Great Salt Lake in western North America is the oldest inland sea in the world. A relic of the last Great Ice Age, Utah's Great Salt Lake has been collecting and concentrating minerals and trace elements from the surrounding Rocky Mountains for tens of thousands of years. The result is nutrient-rich water with more than 72 ionic minerals and trace elements at concentrations eight to 10 times higher than normal seawater -- exactly the same ratio as healthy body fluids. It is from this source that Trace Minerals Research harvests the elements and Trace Minerals that go into each product.

What can you do?

You can start by making sure you get enough minerals in your diet. The correct? Eat organically grown fruits and vegetables, whole grain breads and fortified grains. In addition, take a multivitamin or mineral supplement. It's a good start, but even these measures may leave your body in need of all the right proportions of easily available ionic minerals and trace minerals.

This is where we can help

For more than 35 years, trace mineral research has been addressing the growing problem of mineral deficiencies and imbalances in modern society. By harvesting health-promoting ionic minerals found in the Great Salt Lake and making them available to the public, we aim to be a constant source of minerals essential for maintaining proper health.

Today, Trace Minerals Research offers more than 100 different health promotion products, including ConcenTrace®, a major ionic mineral mixture produced from the waters of the Great Salt Lake. Over the years, thousands of people lacking essential micronutrients in their diets have felt the difference in their health and well-being when they take supplements of these important nutrients. Maybe it's time you did the same.

ConcenTrace® is included in each trace mineral research product

We ensure that the following elements are included in each Trace Minerals Research product (in roughly descending order) :

Magnesium, chloride, potassium, sodium sulfate, and boron, bromide, calcium carbonate, silicon, nitrogen, selenium, phosphorus, chromium, iron, iodine, manganese, titanium, rubidium, cobalt, copper, antimony, strontium, zinc, nickel, tungsten, molybdenum, scandium, tin, lanthanum and yttrium, silver, gallium, zirconium, vanadium, beryllium, tellurium, bismuth, hafnium, terbium, europium, gadolinium, samarium, dysprosium, holmium, cerium, cesium, gold, lutetium, erbium, ytterbium, neodymium, praseodymium, niobium, tantalum, thorium, Thallium, rhenium, and other minerals found in seawater.

ConcenTrace® Trace mineral drops

This naturally occurring liquid trace element and food supplement contains the full spectrum of trace and ultrafine elements in ionic form. These minerals are derived from weathering and erosion of large amounts of soil and rock found in Utah's Great Salt Lake basin.