I'm on David Wolfe's mailing list and I got this link about calcification:
[longevitynowprogram2.com]
He says that we should be building our bones out of silica, so when people ask you where you get your calcium send them this link. (excerpt from the PDF trascript)


"It appears to me that we actually build our bones out of silica, magnesium, and phosphorus. So people say, “well what do you mean? Our bones are made out of calcium. It has to come from somewhere!”

The answer is, that’s right. Calcium in its final form is not digestible. It’s not useable. But magnesium and silica, and actually to some degree, potassium, can be transmutated or atomically changed into calcium. That has been known forever. All herbal systems going into the past have always known that because they have recommended Horsetail, which is an herb for bone density and it works. It’s all silica! There is no calcium in it at all."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/02/2010 11:08AM by tropical.

Im not fond of horsetail, it contains nicotine which constricts the blood vessels.

Better sources of silica are food grade diatomaceous earth, nettle leaf and seaweeds.

Silica is the number 1 nutrient for bone building. Which is when when we age stomach acid levels lower which in turn you begin to have problems absorbing silica, which is thought to be why osteoporsis occurs.

Agree with powerlifer

Tobacco contains 2-3% nicotine which is a thousand times more than horsetail has at 0.00004% so yes it has MINUTE amounts of nicotine, but avoiding it because of it's nicotine content would be like avoiding almonds because of their cyanide content. But I'm sure some people would have problems with horsetail since there is always someone who can't take every herb so thanks for mentioning it.

[www.herbs2000.com]
"Horsetail also contains minute traces of nicotine at 0.00004 percent of total volume."

MORE FROM THE INTERVIEW DESCRIBING HOW THE CALCIUM IN WELL WATER HARDENS OUR TISSUES

LG: When we talk about calcification in general, can we describe calcification as a buildup of sedimentary materials in the body that are obstructing the normal physiological processes that contribute to health?

DW: That’s correct. It’s the formation of hard materials, mostly calcium phosphate, but not only that, which can and does build up in our tissues.
Take a condition like atherosclerosis or when we have a condition like a cataract; it’s like the similarity between cancer and kidney stones. There is something similar going on there, and that is they all involve calcification. It’s the excess formation of calcium residue in our body.

LG: So when we are younger David, our body is very nimble. It’s very flexible. It’s very supple. The tissue is very juicy and soft, and then as we get older, this calcification begins to buildup. It builds up in our tissues. It starts to form inside our arteries and our arterial walls causing vascular disease.

Let’s talk about over time. From the time we are young and as we get older, what are the different ways that we are introduced to this calcium? And, how does it over time buildup in our bodies?

DW: That’s a great question. It’s mostly environmental. We are exposed to these minerals, and let’s just call them “bad calcium” because that’s a really good way to understand them. It’s real simple, just “bad calcium.” It’s like having a hard calcium pill stuck in your joints.

We’re introduced to a lot of these contaminants, bad calcium, by water. And in fact, well water is notoriously contaminated with high calcium levels: high levels of hard water.City water is the same.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/02/2010 08:12PM by tropical.

My understanding of it is this:

Calcium is on every list of "essential nutrients" that I've ever seen. An "essential nutrient" is a nutrient that your body has to have and either doesn't make any without a dietary source, or doesn't make enough, without a dietary source.

Calcium is involved in the formation of bones, but also in many other functions as well. Bones are the storage place for calcium, and calcium moves in and out of the bones as it's needed by the rest of the body. When the blood doesn't have enough calcium to serve the functions of the body, calcium will move out of the bones and into the blood. That's one reason why too little calcium in the diet - from a healthy source of course - can be one factor resulting in osteoporosis.

Sufficient calcium ions are essential for proper functioning of the human blood-clotting mechanism and for nerve and muscle activity - especially the chemical inducement of muscle relaxation after contraction.

Again, just my understanding of it: too much calcium from the wrong sources - like dairy products, contaminated drinking water, and maybe some supplements - can cause calcification.

That's exactly what I thought too, suncloud, until yesterday. (Now it seems to me to be like "eating meat to get protein"

To clarify, they are saying that our bones are made out of silica, magnesium, and phosphorus which become calcium through transmutation and that silica is a better source of calcium than eating calcium.

This Google book (there are a lot of books which mention this by the way, not just this one) seems to explain it well and even mentions the healing of teeth (top of the next page):
[books.google.com]

I've also seen it mentioned that silica can detox aluminum for Alzheimer's patients.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2010 06:53AM by tropical.

The evidence for the transmutation seems to be Dr. Krevran's experiments with chickens in the '50s. Is there anything for humans?

The book said that transmutation is a process which can only be carried out in living things and which can't be duplicated in the lab.

But I looked hard to find a source that did not mention animal testing, I passed up a lot of great sites that do mention it, I guess I must have missed that reference, so I'm not interested in looking up experiments.

I know that in the case of supplements or even foods, the human body absorbs only around 75% of calcium, so getting its constituent minerals is necessary. Those of us that eat a varied mostly plant based diet do well with this automatically; it's SADers that struggle. There's no silicon[silica precursor] in a Big Mac.

i think its really important to remember that exercising is really important in building/maintaining bone mass as well

you can take all the supplemental nutrition in the world but if yer butts on the couch 24/7 you will probably still suffer from bone mass loss

just thought id toss that in there

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

Ok, I don't think anyone has listened to the interview
[longevitynowprogram2.com]
or read the transcript (the first part is the interesting part at the end they go off on other tangents).
[longevitynowprogram2.com]

Or they would be talking about avoiding calcium, they say that calcium basically turns you into a coral reef and on page 3-4 he goes on about little nanobacterias which use the calcium in your body to build coral reefs everywhere inside you (and other animals) basically turning you into stone.

What's your opinion?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2010 03:53PM by tropical.

Well, I had read most of the transcript, but was stuck on not being able to find much basis for Wolfe's idea that we don't need calcium because we can perform biological alchemy. Then I didn't see where he was getting his ideas about nanonbacteria forming mollusk like shells in our bodies and so on...

Tropical, I looked at the transcript, and I couldn't see where David Wolfe suggests we should avoid calcium in food - especially raw vegan food. I think he more like suggests we should avoid "bad calcium" from calcium supplements and city water.

He says this: "Calcium is a relaxing mineral. It’s an alkaline mineral. It’s a detoxification mineral. It relaxes our muscles. It alkalizes us. It detoxifies us. It can be very good as long as it is coming from a natural source that is digestible, for example, broccoli or any green leafy vegetable like kale. In that form it is wonderful! It can be digested with no problem."

Good thing! I'd hate to stop eating oranges, a good source of good calcium!

With a little attention, it's fairly simple to get enough good calcium from raw vegan foods. There shouldn't be much need for any kind of supplement - calcium, silica, or otherwise.

As for the role of calcium/silica in the formation of bones, I'd feel more comfortable with David's assertions if he'd provided some kind of validated reference.

Tropical, did you notice, at the end of the article where David Wolfe talks about experimenting with eating deer antlers as a "natural" hormone replacement therapy? How did you feel about that? It really turned me off. Completely. He might be a good guy, who means well and is trying to do the right thing. But this really shocked me.

Right, I meant avoiding the bad calcium: calcium supplements, calcium fortified foods, hard water, mineral water ect there are 15 kinds of calcium listed in Wiki:
[en.wikipedia.org]
A lot of mineral water and calcium supplements are made of Calcium carbonate (CaCO3) while our bones seem to be made of:

Hydroxylapatite (Ca5(PO4)3(OH), but is usually written Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2) makes up seventy percent of bone. Also carbonated-calcium deficient hydroxylapatite is the main mineral of which dental enamel and dentin are comprised.

I don't know how I feel about eating deer antlers, but at least it might fall into the catagory of not harming the animal.

As far as references, the Mayo Clinic seems to be studying calcification now and Dr. Edith Carlisle did the research on silica back in the 70's.

[nanotechwire.com]
Dr. Maniscalco, co-chair of Nanobac, stated: "We believed that CNPs play a major role in pathologic calcification and a multitude of associated disease states such as calcification of arteries and organs. This study, conducted by one of the lead medical and research facilities in the United States, lends credence to our beliefs."

[www.evolutionhealth.com]
""Calcium in its powdered form is not strong at all and cannot be utilized by the body to make strong bones in the absence of silica. These two elements work together, inextricably, to create both strong and flexible bone material.
Dr. Edith Carlisle, a research scientist at the UCLA School of Public Health, studied silica extensively in the 1970’s. She demonstrated beyond any doubt that silica played an essential role in bone formation and health. She demonstrated that regardless of the amount of calcium in the diet, without silica, the achievement and maintenance of healthy bone and other connective tissue was impossible. She hypothesized that silica created the collagen matrix with which calcium and other minerals could attach"

Why would eating deer antlers fall into the category of not harming the animal?

Wouldn't people kill the deer to sell/eat their antlers? It happens all the time to other animals - including endangered species - whenever money can be made from selling their parts: rhino horns, elephant tusks, shark fins, etc.

Even if the animal wasn't killed, and it's antlers were somehow harvested(?), how could that happen without harming the animal? Sounds gruesome and extremely cruel to me.

After reading about Mr. Wolfe's intentions, I wouldn't buy a grape from him. The money might go toward his antler "research".

suncloud,
Presumably these are the shedded antlers of pre-adolescent/adolescent deer, before the mature ones grow in. Not a viable industry, harvesting these, I daresay, so abuses of harvesting would probably result eventually. As they always do[sigh]

For those concerned about calcium, take a look that what increases calcium excretion. From aboutcalcium.net:
---------------------------------

Calcium excretion refers to the amount of calcium eliminated from the body in urine, feces and sweat. Calcium excretion can be affected by many factors including dietary sodium, protein, caffeine and potassium.


Sodium and protein:
Typically, dietary sodium and protein increase calcium excretion as the amount of their intake is increased. However, if a high protein, high sodium food also contains calcium, this may help counteract the loss of calcium.

Potassium:
Increasing dietary potassium intake (such as from 7-8 servings of fruits and vegetables per day) in the presence of a high sodium diet (>5100 mg/day, which is more than twice the Tolerable Upper Intake Level of 2300 mg for sodium per day) may help decrease calcium excretion particularly in postmenopausal women.

Caffeine:
Caffeine has a small effect on calcium absorption. It can temporarily increase calcium excretion and may modestly decrease calcium absorption, an effect easily offset by increasing calcium consumption in the diet. One cup of regular brewed coffee causes a loss of only 2-3 mg of calcium easily offset by adding a tablespoon of milk. Moderate caffeine consumption, (1 cup of coffee or 2 cups of tea per day), in young women who have adequate calcium intakes has little to no negative effects on their bones.

Useful, Prana, thanks!

Yes, thanks Prana! Good information about the sodium, protein, and caffeine!

And thanks also Tamukha. What you say about the antlers makes perfect sense. I hadn't thought about the adolescent antlers. Still though, like you said, it seems the end result would be the same - people killing deer to take their antlers.

Unfortunately, it appears that deer antlers are already a big, big business, not just as a "longevity" product, but as an aphrodisiac (sexual stimulant) as well. The Asian market for antlers is ancient and huge, and there are presently numerous farms in Russia and New Zealand.

Apparently, deer naturally shed their antlers every year. But deer farmers don't usually wait for the deer to shed their antlers. The farmers "harvest" the antlers, when the antlers are half grown. A Russian site claims that sawing off the antlers only feels like a "deep scratch" to the deer (some pictures of the process are in a link below. It's a bloody mess). A New Zealand site says the animals are sedated first, and a veterinarian is present, so it's OK.

Many of the websites that market deer antlers also market a full range of "superfoods". Some of the websites display a lovely "natural" front. I hope people will contact these companies and tell them that customers will not buy their products until they stop selling deer antlers!

Deer antlers are not vegan! And they are not cruelty-free!

[englishrussia.com]

[www.google.com]

That englishrussia.com website shows bloody images of deer being dismembered of their antlers at the growth stage when the tissue is still growing with nerves and skin, but most marketable and not vegan.

As far as calcification goes I like the way David Wolfe talks about the "internal ocean". I think he still sees a connection of life with the sea and says lots of interesting things about minerals and calcification, a subject that has about a thousand referrences on PubMed. Here's one on calcification and getting enough sleep, (which Wolfe is known for getting little of) --

[www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

Thanks for the link

Those marketeers say that deer antler is harvested with non harm too deer, I belived it too, what a load of crap.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/28/2010 11:10AM by Ariel55.

David Wolfe used to talk about biological transumutations which was a book by french scientis Professor Louis Kervan in the 70s which showed many elements can transmute as needed ie magnesium can change into calcium.

Here is the book. I've been wanting to get a copy so may get this

[www.amazon.com]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/28/2010 11:20AM by Ariel55.

Deer (and elk) shed their antlers naturally every year, there are areas in the forests out here that are so littered with antler you think they are fallen branches at first... I didnt realize there was such a market for them, If I had known, id be gathering this stuff up and selling it!!!lol

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