744: Discover Plant-Based Minerals With Caroline Alan

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Discover Plant Based Minerals With Caroline Alan
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744: Discover Plant-Based Minerals With Caroline Alan
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Today’s episode is short and sweet. I’m talking with Caroline Alan of Beam Minerals at the Dragonfly conference and wanted to share our conversation with you. Like many of us, Caroline had a variety of health conditions, including gut inflammation, digestive issues, recurring sinus infections, adrenal, and thyroid problems. She was frustrated by the lack of solutions offered by health practitioners and decided to try something else.

Caroline discovered plant-based minerals and hasn’t looked back since. As she explains, they give our bodies the natural balance of minerals they need to function optimally. When our minerals are balanced, our cells function optimally, and our body can resolve ongoing health issues.

We talk about the difference between electrolytes and plant-based minerals and why Caroline recommends eating salt, not drinking it. She also touches on some of the amazing results they’ve seen with muscle cramps, athletic performance, and even brain fog.

Episode Highlights With Caroline

  • What are plant-based minerals and how are they different
  • Humic and fulvic and what these are
  • Our body is designed to heal and achieve optimal health
  • Why it’s impossible to receive all minerals in food alone
  • All cellular systems use humic and fulvic
  • Difference between salt-based electrolytes and plant-based minerals
  • How athletes should replenish their electrolytes
  • Berkley study on minerals with brain fog

Resources We Mention

More From Wellness Mama

Read Transcript

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

Katie: Well, I guess that’s a great starting point. You could just explain the plant-based minerals and what makes them different because I would guess for some people that’s a new term or they don’t understand the differentiation.

Caroline: Yeah. In fact, some people it’s like plant-based minerals. Like, you know, we all grew up with animal vegetable mineral.

Katie: Right. In separate categories. Yeah.

Caroline: So what could plant-based minerals be? So where they come from, imagine an entire rainforest that decomposed over millennia into this mineral-rich substance. It’s called humate. It’s like literally the energy of an entire rainforest in the substance. And out of that we take these molecules called humic and fulvic. The beautiful thing about them is they provide all the minerals that the body needs, formulated in the ratios by nature, in the ratios that your body utilizes minerals. But they also provide the delivery system of the minerals into the cells. And that’s what’s so cool.

So they’re a completely, they literally take mineral supplementation and turn it on its head. Rather than thinking that we know what our body needs, and somebody said we need 320 milligrams of magnesium or whatever and trying to hack our bodies, instead we’re going to infuse all of the minerals in these natural ratios and allow its infinite wisdom to have what it needs, when it needs it, where it needs it, how it needs it.

Katie: Yeah, I say so often, like, our body is designed to heal and to exist in a state of optimal health. And if it’s not, those symptoms are amazing because they’re telling us something. And it’s what is it our body need that we’re not getting or have too much of that we need to just be aware of.

And it seems like in the past 700 podcasts, minerals become such a recurring theme. And they’re so vital. And we’ve all heard, you know, it’s hard to get them or some would say impossible now through food alone. Even if you ate all day long, it would be hard to get enough from food. And so I love when there’s a solution, like you said, that works synergistically with what we know that the body is designed to heal. It’s not overriding that. It’s not doing it for the body. It’s giving the body what it needs.

Caroline: Right. And the thing about the plant-based minerals is it’s actually ancient, ancient, ancient wisdom. Because, and I’m talking about well before humans ever existed, because it’s actually what the body is evolved to utilize. Like all cellular systems on Earth. What do they use for mineral replenishment in their, into their cells? Humic and fulvic. All the plants outside, all the trees, a huge redwood tree, the mycelium that are in the soil. What are they delivering to the roots? Humic and fulvic. That’s just so fascinating.

Katie: Yeah, it’s fascinating.

Caroline: So we were talking about the athletes and what’s the difference between taking salt-based electrolytes, what we call our macrominerals, and taking something like a plant-based mineral. And I’m kind of on a mission with athletes, in particular, because so many athletes come to me with terrible cramping, hydration issues, a feeling that they’re always depleted. And I say, okay, do you take electrolytes? They say, oh yeah, I chug those all the time. I’m like, okay, I want you to stop. Because what’s happening is, our bodies, if you think about it, we drink fresh water. If you drink salt water, what happens, it actually makes you feel funky in the stomach. If you drink a glass of salt water, it’ll make your stomach feel bad. And if you use salt-based electrolytes on a regular basis, it actually irritates the lining of the bladder and kidney. And then what happens? You start urinating more.

So now you’re irrigating rather than hydrating. Water needs to get into your cells to be actually hydrating your muscles and your tissues, you see? So instead of, you know, like the runoff in a, you know, when they’re irrigating a field, you want it to actually get into your body. So you want to hydrate.

So the first thing I tell them is stop taking those salt-based electrolytes completely, and just use plant-based fulvic and humic. You’re going to use the fulvic for your main electrolyte replenishment, and you’re going to use the humic for all the micronutrients that you’re depleting regularly in your workouts. And the humic is also going to improve hydration because it increases cell wall permeability. So it supports the getting the water into your cells. So these two together, I mean, literally they come back to me and they’re like, you saved my freaking life. My experience is so different. For the first time they feel hydrated, they feel replenished, and they’re not having any cramping or fasciculation or anything like that.

Katie: I bet that is noticeable more quickly with athletes too, because I read the stat once that athletes or people who live in very hot climates will, through sweat, lose more minerals in five years than the average person in a lifetime if they’re sedentary. So I bet they see an effect really, really rapidly.

Caroline: Really, really rapidly. In fact, so we have an example is a cyclist that I work with over in Grand Junction area. He’s a mountain biking, you know, he’s an age, he’s older, but he’s high-performance guy. So he came to us, he had really bad cramping. I said, stop the electrolytes, forget that, just use these. He did that, all his cramping went away.

But then he went through the winter, spring came, he started doing some intense training runs because he’s going to do a race. And he’s like, well, I’m going to need some extra magnesium. So he took magnesium citrate, came home, cramps immediately that night. He’s like, huh, wow, that was a really hard run. Maybe I need to take more magnesium. Cramps even worse and fasciculation, they call it the creepy crawlies. So I, and he called me up, he’s like, what’s happening? And I said, well, what are you doing? And he said, well, I took some magnesium. I’m like, why? Why? He’s like, well, I thought I needed some more. And I said, no, that just threw your body out of, into imbalance. So people think cramping is low magnesium, but it can also be due to phosphorus. It can also be due to the ratio of magnesium to potassium or calcium. So minerals work in balanced pairs or triumvirates. So you’re always trying to create balance.

Katie: Yeah. That makes sense. Would your recommendation then be like salt food to taste to people like the taste of salt or…?

Caroline: Just use salt, exactly. You get plenty of sodium from the foods you eat. Yeah, use your pink Himalayan salt when you’re cooking and on your food. But you do not need to drink salt-based electrolytes every day, and in fact, they are exacerbating your hydration issues.

Katie: That makes sense. And I think the other advantage that I’ve noticed, I just started testing with your minerals, but they are relatively tasteless and easy to integrate into your lifestyle. So for a mom, that’s helpful because, you know, often many of the health recommendations are things that are a higher barrier to entry or kids will simply not do. And I’m a big fan of respecting my kids’ autonomy, so I’m not going to force those things.

Caroline: I’m so, I’m with you.

Katie: But this can be easily added to anything that’s liquid, and they don’t seem to mind it.

Caroline: I always, you know, I always say if your kids take something that you ask, that you’re suggesting to them, then it’s a true example. And both my sons, they religiously take the minerals. They’re 24 and 26. And they have really, really helped. My younger son, he wasn’t taking them, but he watched his older son start to get really beefy at the gym. And he’s like, what are you doing? He’s like, well, I don’t know, I’m taking mom’s minerals. So he started, and now he’s like really starting to fill out.

Katie: That’s awesome. When it’s their choice, then it sticks.

Caroline: Yes, when it’s their choice. Exactly. For kids who are in such developmental stages and so many young people are dealing with brain fog. We did actually a great little kind of study with a group of kids at Berkeley, and they did a health class, and we asked them for two months to not take any other salt-based electrolytes and just use our minerals. And we got so many, many, there were 50 kids. We had so many reports of them coming back and going, I can’t believe it. Like I can study again. Like I’m in class and I can pay attention, even if it’s a morning class, like the brain fog starts to clear. So cool.

Katie: Which makes sense. It goes back to that, giving the body what it needs and letting it do what it innately knows how to do.

Caroline: Exactly. So thanks so much for just being interested in minerals and for the work that you do in bringing the message of minerals to so many people. It’s like a foundational thing. I really believe like if we can get more Mother Earth in us, we can change the world.

Katie: I fully agree. And I think I’m so grateful every day I get to speak with moms because I think moms are a force of nature and that when we help moms, we change society.

Caroline: Thank you.

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.

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Katie Wells Avatar

About Katie Wells

Katie Wells, CTNC, MCHC, Founder of Wellness Mama and Co-founder of Wellnesse, has a background in research, journalism, and nutrition. As a mom of six, she turned to research and took health into her own hands to find answers to her health problems. WellnessMama.com is the culmination of her thousands of hours of research and all posts are medically reviewed and verified by the Wellness Mama research team. Katie is also the author of the bestselling books The Wellness Mama Cookbook and The Wellness Mama 5-Step Lifestyle Detox.

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