March 10, 2023

Over the past few years, some persons have been saying silicon is a nutrient for humans. Now silicon is in most vitamin and mineral pills. There isn't a biological function for silicon in the large-animal world. Silicates normally attach to cations and metals hardening rocks due to covalent bonds.

So it's not a good thing for humans to ingest silicon. Most of it would not be soluble; and no one knows how much enters the circulatory system. One of the rationalizations for putting silicon in pills is probably to slow absorption creating an element of "time-release." But that type of time-release would also be fallacy, because highly delayed absorption would tend to result in non-absorption, while a lot of persons complain of vitamin and mineral pills not being absorbed well. Removing the silicon would improve that problem.

Even though silicon is largely not soluble in vitamin and mineral pills, a small amount would be, just as rocks weather on the hills. Acids would solubilize a small amount. And that is entirely why there should not be silicon ingested by humans. The solubilized silicon could form covalent bonds with cations and metals.

No one is saying there is silicon in gall stones, kidney stones, calcium deposits or hardening of arteries. But if some silicon were found there, it wouldn't be mentioned, because positivism is the prevailing rule in tailoring information for the public, while negativism is assumed to be the ruination of man. In fact, no looking for silicon would occur for that reason. No need to find out what the negative elements of modern existence consist of.

Medical scientists got urea wrong in assuming urea is a method of getting rid of excess nitrogen. Its actual function is to kill bacteria in the urinary tract.

Urea is a combination of carbon dioxide and ammonia. When bacteria absorb urea, it splits apart into carbon dioxide and ammonia. The resulting carbon dioxide is emitted through cell walls, as usual, leaving ammonia in the cells as alkali. Cells cannot adjust pH to reduce alkali, so the accumulation kills the cells.

Cells normally adjust pH when overly acidic by pumping hydrogen ions out of the cell. Almost all cell membranes in biology have hydrogen ion pumps for removing excess hydrogen ions from cells. An ATP is needed for each hydrogen ion.

But there is no way to correct for alkalinity, because hydrogen ions cannot be pumped into cells. That's because the outside of cells does not have excess hydrogen ions to pump into cells. So alkalinity cannot be corrected. But alkalinity is extremely unusual, because breakdown of carbohydrates produces excess acidity, not alkalinity.

Creating urea to kill bacteria is an involved and energy intensive process. So why not simply exhale the ammonia instead of converting it into urea? Medical scientists see ammonia being produced in converting one amino acid into another and assume the result is accidental production of ammonia. Not so. The whole process has the function of producing ammonia, so it can be used to kill bacteria.

Very little ammonia is accidentally produce in metabolism; so it is easily exhaled without an elaborate process. That's because ammonia is high in energy; and energy is not wasted in metabolism. In fact, ammonia is the gold of the soil, because it is easily metabolized being high in energy. But only a small amount of ammonia exists in the soil; and it is rapidly absorbed as a valuable nutrient.

The claim is that sugar creates a problem in fat production. If so, the amount is the problem and some sugar might not be a problem depending upon how energy is metabolized.

But another problem is that sugars damage cells. That problem is not noticeable with youngsters, since they seem quite resilient to nutritional problems. But nutritional problems become more noticeable for the elderly, as their metabolism slows down and gets stressed; and a problem with sugars damaging cells becomes noticeable. Physiology explains why.

Glucose enters cells uninhibitedly, while insulin keeps the right amount in the bloodstream. The manner in which glucose enters cells is different than the manner in which other substances enter cells. Usually, proteins identify which substance should enter cells and assists the transfer. But sugars are not identified. Instead an opening is created which selects only on the basis of size.

The problem is that most sugars are approximately the same diameter and will go through the opening into cells which is designed for glucose. But only glucose is readily metabolized as sugar. That means the other sugars get in the way of cell metabolism.

The inside of cells is like tens of thousands of assembly lines packed together. Enzymes must be attached to membranes to keep reactants moving directly from one to another without diffusing around and disrupting other processes. Sugars diffuse around and disrupt various processes. If it's glucose, it gets metabolized rapidly, but not other sugars.

So the elderly notice aches and pains from eating sugars. Eliminating all sugars improves those problems. That means cells are being damaged from the sugars.

For youngsters, eating some sugar might be a lesser of evils in alignment of choices; but for the elderly, avoiding refined sugar would be worthwhile.