Re: Ocean Pollutants / Germ Theory

[Guest guest]

Suze,

> that assumes that the body *arbitrarily* picks minerals from the supply

> it's

> provided. therefore it doesn't seem analogous to plants (in the brix

> thread), which seem to *selectively* choose what they need. if living

> organisms *arbitrarily* selected nutrients from the given supply, i can't

> imagine how any of us would be alive today. my understanding is that plants

> and animals *selectively* absorb what they require to function properly, not

> *arbitrarily* absorb whatever happens to be in the brew they consume.

I think Mike was right on, but I'll put it in my words--

That's true, but you can't assume perfect selectivity. Moreover, there are

many facets to absorption and utilization, and you only need one of them to

have partial or no selectivity to introduce the probability phenomenon. For

example, most selective ion channels are *mostly* selective. The potassium

channel will ordinarily not allow sodium through, because the negative pore

helix

loops aren't close together enough to make it energetically favorable for sodium

to shed it's sphere of hydration and attach instead to the loops and thus

pass through the pore. But what's energetically favorable depends on a lot,

including the kinetic energy of any given ion and molecule, which is a spectrum,

not a constant. For example, water at room temperature produces water vapor,

even though it isn't boiling, but it's such a small fraction of the molecules

that you don't see it. So, just to make up random numbers, say the ion channel

blocks 99.999% of the sodium and allows through 0.001% of the sodium. If

you keep the sodium constant but double the amount of potassium, you are going

to cut the entry rate of sodium by a third, because of two laws: those of

probability, and, as Mike pointed out, the law that two things cannot occupy the

same space at the same time.

According to Mercola, if one is zinc deficient, one will use heavy metals

available in the body in place of zinc to make zinc-dependent enzymes, which is

probably true, and is a similar phenomenon, just like the plant/brix issue.

> i don't recall the specifics of your idea that i was responding to, but i

> thought it was that high mercury in seafood *in and of itself* is not the

> determining factor in how much one absorbs, but rather the person's nutrient

> status at the time they consume it. similar to the " terrain vs. germ "

> theory, basically - if i've got what i need, i'm not going to absorb toxins,

> if i've got what i need i'm not going to get sick) unless viruses come in

> for toxic waste clean up, of course ;-)

That's true, and that was my point. However, on the virus/bacteria issue,

the extreme view that bacteria can ONLY make you sick if you're " terrain " is bad

is simply not true. Bacteria need to get a foothold, is all, and your

ability to fight them off not only depends on your " terrain, " but also the

concentration of bacteria and the magnitude of toxicity. Just like an army or a

football team. Sure, if you have good defense relative to the other team/army

they

aren't going to score, or win a battle, but obviously whether your defense is

" good " or not, relative to the other team/army, is a function not only of your

own defense but of the other team/army's offense.

For example, tooth decay is generally caused by bad nutrition, cracks, etc,

that give bacteria a foothold. Then they might dig so deep into the tooth they

mutate in a different environment, and then cause massive harm in your body,

even though the condition of your blood and other organs may not have been

such that they would have gotten attacked otherwise. But to prove this, you can

inject the toxins or the bacteria from the tooth into animals, like Price did

with hundreds upon hundreds of animals, and reproduce the disease that clearly

wasn't affecting the animal before the injection, even though that animal

didn't have any difference in exposure than did the human (bacteria came from

the

air or whatever).

So that foothold might not be your own tissue. In the case of one of Price's

rabbits, it was another organisms tissue-- a human. Or, for humans, it could

be another human. You might have great defenses fighting off normal

low-level exposure to airborne diseases, but those same defenses might not be so

great

when they encounter an immensely more concentrated source of the same

organisms through direct contact with another human host.

Chris