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Why is it so important to balance ions throughout the body?
One reason is that all of the surfaces inside the body, the mucosal surfaces, and the skin, are protected by anti-microbial peptides. These peptides normally keep all of the trillions of bacteria, fungi and viruses under control provided that the balance of ions is normal. When the balance of ions is changed, a very common occurence, the protection against these microbes is lost. Loss of protection is involved in many chronic conditions including eczema, psoriasis, rosacea, cellulite, hay fever, irritable bowel syndrome, high blood pressure, dry eye, glaucoma, poor sweating, and migraine.
Another reason it is so important to balance ions throughout the body?
The second reason is that when the body is under stress, physical or mental, cells in the body protect their own survival by conserving ions. Only by providing a surplus of ions can the ion channels be opened. If there is no surplus of ions then this affects major body muscles. The nervous system needs ions millions of times every second, so if there is no surplus available, the body metabolism may be functioning below optimum, leading to stiffness, and fatigue. This is well known to top athletes who try to create a surplus of ions by drinking electrolytes, but this gives far too high a dose of ions which are rapidly removed to the bladder. What is needed are electrolytes in ionic form providing a continuous 24 hour presence of surplus ions. If balanced ions are so important why hasn’t this been discovered before?The main facts have been known for many years, but researchers have been misled by assuming that rats, mice, monkeys and other laboratory animals have the same physiology as humans. They don’t. Humans are almost unique in using copious sweat for cooling, thus needing to have an ion conservation system to prevent catastrophic loss of electrolytes. The only other mammal to have this conservation system is the horse. By the way, only humans and horses suffer chronic essential hypertension, the common reason for high blood pressure.What exactly is meant by balanced ions? How is the balancing done?
Body intracellular (in the cells) fluids are rich in potassium ions, whereas the interstitial (within the tissues) fluids and the blood plasma are rich in sodium and chloride ions. Despite the differences in composition between the intracellular fluids on the one hand, and the interstitial and plasma fluids on the other, each of these “compartments” are regulated to have approximately the same osmolality. Osmolality is the total concentration of all the particles that are free in the fluids. Also each fluid must have the same number of charged positive and negative particles to respect the principle of bulk electroneutrality.The balancing of osmolality and electrical charges occurs millions of times per second throughout the body. If the necessary ions for balancing are not readily available, protective action is immediately taken to conserve or hold onto ions. This conservation is inappropriate, because well fed humans are not deficient in ions, but the ions may not be immediately available. Inappropriate conservation may be responsible for the many chronic conditions suffered by people in advanced countries like the UK. It is preferable that there is always a 24 hour presence of ions in the body to prevent inappropriate conservation.
What examples are there of the body system being put off balance? In advanced societies like the UK, many people have a little excess glucose in blood plasma - usually resulting from too little regular physical exercise. Glucose adds free particles to plasma and so increases osmolality. Since osmolality is strictly controlled, other ions, particularly sodium, are automatically moved out of plasma. The body system senses this as a deficiency of sodium ions in the plasma compartment, and goes into an inappropriate protective mode, conserving ions. Having a presence of sodium and other ions in balance, always available 24 hours, prevents this inappropriate conservation of ions, maintaining good health.
Where We Are and Where We Need to Go Next
A Global Assessment of Current Efforts to Control High Blood Pressure and an Analysis
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