Sea minerals for health?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My wife has bought a bottle of sea minerals with stinging nettle from the farm where we buy honey and bee pollen. The place is a holistic haven, giving bee sting therapy among many other things. The minerals come with a copy of an article called “Health From the Ocean Deep” by Gerry Amena. In the article he is interviewed about the benefits.

The minerals are concentrated sea water with most of the salt removed. Among the many claims he makes is regrowth of cartilage in the spine. Hmm, maybe it will work for my knee. Another of his preparations called Supa Boost can cure hepatitis C and gangrene and takes only 6 hours to cure bird flu.

Any thought about sea minerals?

2

I’ve got this bridge in Brooklyn I’m looking to sell…

3

Enjoy the honey, leave the other stuff alone.

4

Bee sting therapy? :flushed:

5

Try to get a version with the sodium chloride left in. At least then it can cure beef.

6

I am hearing a siren (“woo-woo-woo-wooo”).

7

Bee stings are used to help joint pain among other things. There is a cage in the middle of the room with a bunch of bees and long tweezers to apply them to the afflicted area.

8

Well … as long as she’s happy, the positive mental affects might in and of themselves be worth the money.

9

This has been proven to work for some people with autoimmune disorders, but it has to be done under medical supervision.

As for the OP, the minerals might be useful as expensive table salt, and if they aren’t food-grade, they would make a nice spa-type bath, I guess.

10

I was gifted a spa day by an ex lo! these many decades [ouch!] ago, and one of the things was a body wrap in dead sea mineral mud, smelled like mud, but left my skin feeling lovely. Not sure I would go for random mineral/herb combinations internally however. Maybe turn it into a body scrub? Use it as a poultice on the afflicted joint?

11

The Gerry Amena mentioned in the OP sells a product called Supa Yew ($50 for an eight ounce bottle) which sounds like really righteous stuff. It has “minerals which contain all the nutrients of this earth” (oh really?).

“People have used if for migraines, cancer, low immune systems, magnesium and better absorption of nutrients.”

That may or may not be an effective dodge to prevent interference by the FDA. After all, he’s not saying that Supa Yew is good for any of those things, just that people have used it for those purposes.

Selling supplements purported to be extra full of wonderfulness because they’re supposedly derived from the sea is not a new grift. Here’s another example.

12

The Gerry Amena you are talking about died in 2010 and cannot currently be selling anything. I suggest that people are talking about a mineral rich liquid that it a byproduct of the salt industry. It does in fact have high levels of magnesium and other macro and micro minerals as any test will find. If you look past the claims and look at what the product actually is, I think you will find that as a supplement it is a good source of minerals. For full disclosure I currently own the business that passed to me directly from Gerry Amena himself, in Australia. The article cited about re-growth of cartiledge was published in 2006 in Acres USA. In my opinion, this is what Gerry himself believed, maybe it did, maybe it didn’t, we will never know. All I do know is that there is currently no medical proof that this was the case. I am answering this because I don’t want a good source of dietary minerals touted and discussed as if it was snake oil.

13

It’s difficult to “look past the claims” when dubious ones are still being made for sea mineral products said to be developed by Amena.

The quote about purported use for migraines, cancer, “low immune systems” etc. is from the website of a company in Columbus, Ohio selling Supa Yew. There’s a firm in Australia (yours?) marketing similar-sounding stuff using language like this:

“Are you feeling tired, lethargic, irritable, have other symptoms of mineral deficiency such as constipation, bloating, brain fog, loss of appetite, cramps, your immune system taking a battering lately?”

“Congratulations! You have come to the right place! Our Ionic Sea Mineral products might just be the thing for you”

From a promo for the company’s “Ultra Boost Sea Minerals”:

“These herbs have either all or some anti viral, anti bacterial, and antibiotic value. The common Nasturtium , (tropaeolum ) a member of the mustard family have been used for the liver and for conditions such as urinary tract infections and has antibiotic properties. Sheep Sorrel (rumex acetosella ) is traditionally used by Indigenous Canadians to battle cancer*. In the early 20th Century a nurse Renee Caisse developed Essaic Tea which included Sheep Sorrel (Essiac is Caisse backwards), She believed that her mixture would help battle some cancers.”

Caisse started promoting essiac tea in the 1920s, claiming at times that it was an indigenous people’s remedy, though there’s considerable doubt that’s the case. In any event, essiac tea has long been known to be useless as a cancer remedy and even potentially carcinogenic.
Anyone who’s concerned about being associated with snake oil should 1) avoid mentioning essiac tea in a favorable light, and 2) ensure that any health-related claims for particular products are backed by quality research, preferably studies that examined those products.

*the asterisk on the company website leads to a disclaimer whose U.S. counterpart is commonly known as the Quack Miranda warning. It includes the statement “These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.” So what good are they?

14

I was in our local Tractor Supply Co the other day and spotted the most gorgeous rock selling for $12.99 for a 12 pound rock. It was many shades of red, orange and white. It’s salt! Mined in the USA and just as good looking as Himalayan Pink salt which they also sell by the chunk. Fascinating to hold it, it’s dense and quite attractive. I think I’ll pick one up. I can always lick it. It claims over 65 minerals but only lists 4 of them What could they be?

15

OK, I did a search for minerals in sea water and it seems the official list has 47 of them. So do we now have another unfounded claim or do they have an expanded list with the rest of the 65+ minerals?