Silicon is the second-most-common p...

Silicon is the second-most-common proper state on earth, led only through oxygen, and is the second-most abundant ingredient in the Earth's crust, where it is chiefly fix in the form of silica or silicon dioxide (also called flint).

In confines of inorganic sources, it take places mainly as oxide silica in sand and quartz and as silicates in so minerals as granite. Organic sources include the herb, horsetail, and certain regimens (discussed below). For convenience sake, we can just deliver over to the dietary forms as "silica."

A trace component part silica is critical for healthy: bone; cartilage; organ and connective tissues (aorta, trachea, artery walls, ligaments and tendons); and for beautiful: hair, skin, and nails. Thanks to research through E.M. Carlisle, K. Schwarz, DB Milne, A. Charnot, RH Monceaux, J geometer E.J. Rus, L.C. Kevran, A. Weiss, A.T. Diplock, and others, we now realize that this constituent exerts a giant influence in succession our health and life.

Edith M Carlisle, PhD discovered that calcium and vitamin D alone are not sufficient for bone development density, strength, and flexibility. Other minerals, including traces of silica, are urgencyed to strengthen bones and increase production of collagen, the tough, flexible connective tissue that binds everything together.

In fact, she noted in various studies that, with advancing age, silica disappears from the aorta, the heart's tonic blood vessel; consequently, connective tissue in it deteriorates.

Silica is what grasps us up (and together)

Her studies onward chicks in the 1970s and 1980 brought silica from its once-perceived unimportant status to essential. Studying the expansion and metabolism of bones with and without silica in the diet of chicks, she made sum of two units discoveries: First, chicks on silica-supplemented diets showed a 100-percent increase in bone collagen from one side of to the other those not receiving dietary silica. Further, their bone revealed a inert yet impressive, rise in calcium ease not shown in chicks receiving no dietary silica. Carlisle also erect that tiny amounts of silica helped create faster and greater bone growth

Carlisle established that a deficiency in dietary silica is an important -- still little considered -- risk factor for osteoporosis and osteopenia.

Early research, in 1952 by the agency of A. Charnot determined that decalcification (the leeching away of calcium) is always preced from the complete loss of detectable tissue silica. In 1972 Carlisle expanded in succession this, finding that silica influences the calcification proces and the rate at which calcium is deposited in bone She reported that animals kept onward high-silica diets attained maximal bone mineralization plenteous quicker than did those forward low-silica diets.

Carlisle (in 1970) and K Schwarz and DB Milne (in 1972) showed that rats and chicks f silicon-deficient diets weren't able to achieve optimal shooting and, actually developed deformed bone and skulls

More not long ago (1986), Carlisle verified silica's part in connective tissue formation, noting that silica is a structural component part of glycosaminoglycans (hyaluronic acids, chondroitin sulfates, and keratin sulfate) and their protein complexes

While it is known that in the greatest degree body nutrients and glandular secretions diminish with age, the reduction of silicon is especially marked.

Silicon satisfy of animal skin tissue and the thymus (the immune system's major gland) decreased with age with equal reason rapidly that the thymus gland of aged animals contained and nothing else two parts per million of silica, as contrasted with 56 parts by million for young animals: 1/28th as much!

Helping to thwart Alzheimer's disease

In their 1997 work Prescription for Nutritional Healing, James F Balch, MD and Phyllis A. Balch, CNC point without another benefit of silica to our health as we age. "Silicon counteracts the events of aluminum on the carcass and is important in the prevention of Alzheimer's disease and osteoporosis. Silicon flats decrease with aging, and, therefore, are be in want ofed in larger amounts by the elderly" say the Balches.

Silica may operate at a more basic flat than that, in fact possibly hampering the bioavailability of aluminum, a metal that has been linked to dementia.

Silica and the heart

Carlisle also originate that, with the departure of silica from the interior (intima) of artery walls, and with the weakening of its connective tissue, approachs a greater risk of developing occlusive heart disease.

The water connection? In the past generation, many studies have place that deaths from heart disease are far fewer in areas where drinking water is considered "hard." (Water is "hard" when it is "characterized by dint of the presence of salts, as of calcium or magnesium,n according to Webster's Dictionary.) This was reported as early as the 1960 from Henry Schroeder, then professor of clinical physiology at Dartmouth University Medical School

Later, a research by Earl Dawson, Ph.D., director of nutrition research at the University of Texas at Galveston, revealed that the death rate from heart attacks and misfortunes is 25 percent lower in cities where persons drink hard water. This was noted in a freshs story, "Hard Water Promotes Heart Health," issued by way of the University of Texas at Galveston, August 15 1981