The Cellular Foundation: Simple Micronutrient Support for Sustained Energy

Minerals are essential to nearly every process in the body, supporting energy production, cellular function, and overall resilience. Join Caroline Alan, Co-Founder of BEAM Minerals, as she explores the science behind plant-based minerals, why micronutrient status matters, and how targeted mineral support can help build a stronger foundation for long-term health.

• Presenter: Caroline Alan, Co-Founder, BEAM Minerals.
• Key Themes: Plant-based minerals, cellular health, energy production, micronutrient support, and whole-body wellness.

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The Cellular Foundation: Simple Micronutrient Support for Sustained Energy:

Transcript

Dr. Sandi: So, take it away, Caroline, if you have slides, if you want to share your screen. And I will go off camera.

Caroline: I just want to say how great it is to see you, though. Thank you so much for having me. So, I’m Caroline. I am the CEO of BEAM Minerals. I’m also a mineral expert, and I’m hoping to take you through really quickly here a conversation about minerals that I hope is going to shift your paradigm about how you think of them. So, let me jump in here.

So, first, we’re going to start with a context. So, we tended to think about our body more like a car with parts, pieces, tissues, that kind of thing. But instead, when we think about minerals, we have to go below that. Instead of thinking about all these systems and all these organs and tissues and fluids, we’re going to think about the body as a cellular ecosystem. It’s a completely different perspective.

So, the entire human body is made of single cells, and every single cell knows exactly what it’s supposed to do. And given what it needs, it fulfills its intended function. The adult body has between 37 trillion and 150 trillion cells, and it’s pretty amazing. It’s actually awe-inspiring to think that all those cells know what to do and fulfill their function.

Now, the thing about cells is they’re all powered by mitochondria. I’m sure all of you know about mitochondria, these energy-generating organelles that are inside your cells. But I’m going to give you a sense of scale around it because these mitochondria generate nearly all the energy in your body.

On the back of your hand, in a single skin cell, there may be 1 to 200 mitochondria. In your heart, in one single cell, there’s 5,000 to 8,000 mitochondria. And in one single brain synapse, you can have upwards of 2 million mitochondria. So, the amazing thing is that all these tiny energy units are being generated by these mitochondria, and those tiny energy units we call ATP power the entire body, and they power the body at a cellular level.

Now, the fact is that these mitochondria need fuel, and there are two components that are the fuel for these mitochondria. One is amino acids, many of which are already in the body, many of which you get from your food. But all of the minerals which are like the heavy fuel that your mitochondria burn to generate energy, all come from the outside. So, minerals support energy, they also support all the biosynthesis in your body. Every single biosynthesis process in your body requires at least one or more minerals as cofactors in the process. So, they are critical factors.

They also make up the body’s structure. So, this is really important to think about because, actually, if you look around you, if you’re in a room, all of the structure around you, it’s all minerals. In fact, minerals are the foundational substrate of the entire universe. If you took all of the water out of your body, you’ll actually be just a little pile of minerals, which is kind of an interesting thing to think about.

Now, so, with the proper fuel, meaning all the amino acids and minerals, your body generates about 1,200 watts of electricity every day. That’s enough to plug in your blender, your toaster. It’s a lot of energy. But without the proper fuel, your cells struggle to complete all their intended functions. So, most people are only actually bringing in enough fuel to generate maybe 800 watts of electricity or 600 watts of electricity. So, what happens is your cell…many of your cells are unable to complete their intended functions, and this creates a big problem.

Now, one of the misunderstood things about minerals is people tend to think maybe about the four or five electrolytes, they think about maybe chromium if they have blood sugar issues, maybe iodine related to thyroid production. There’s different things related to specific things. What they don’t recognize is that your body needs the full spectrum of minerals. It needs all of these minerals. And what’s most important is it needs those in balanced ratios. So, it’s not like a car where you can just go down and fill up the tank. You actually need to provide all the minerals to your body in natural ratios to keep your body in balance. This is how natural ecosystems work. Let’s go on.

So, the factor that really compounds mineral deficiency…or excuse me. There are several factors that compound mineral deficiency. And ultimately, mineral deficiency leads to chronic symptoms. So, if you think about your patients who are coming to you not with one or two symptoms nowadays, but they come with five or six. And what I say is that is because mineral deficiency is truly the health issue of our age. Why is that?

The first problem, which I’m sure you’re well aware of, is the fact that our food supply is actually substantially mineral-deficient, and that’s simply because when you grow food in the same soil for hundreds of years, the plants take the minerals from the soil, and it goes into the plants. If you never put that plant material or those minerals back into the soil, the soil becomes depleted. And now, the foods that we’re eating today are extremely different in nutrient density than the foods that our grandfather ate. Some people say, eating one apple that your grandfather ate, you’d have to eat six or seven today to get the same amount of nutrients.

The second problem is water. We have a water problem, and it’s mainly because lots of people are drinking bottled, either distilled or filtered, reverse osmosis filtered water. The problem is that empty water… Actually, I call it empty water, so water without minerals. Water is a carrier molecule. It’s meant to have minerals in it. Everywhere in nature, it has minerals in it. And those minerals are what help your body absorb and utilize that water. When you put distilled water or reverse osmosis water into your body, it actually ends up depleting your body of minerals, and carrying those out. It goes straight through your system.

So, there’s actually a term for mineral deficiency, and it’s a term that was coined by the World Health Organization, and it’s called the hidden hunger. I think it’s the health issue of our age, and it is the root cause of many, many chronic symptoms that people are experiencing.

The way I like to think about it is that…you know how you feel like you’re doing all the right things, you’re eating really well, you’re exercising, you’re taking all your supplements, but there’s just that one thing that it feels like if you could just find that one thing. And that is your body continually signaling you at a very low nervous system level that your cells do not have what they need.

What I want to talk to you today about is how to effectively replenish minerals in your body and restore cellular health. So, at a very, very foundational level, what we want to do is…all the chronic symptoms are like boats sitting on the sand down at the beach. And when the water comes in, when the tide comes in, all the boats rise off the sand at the same time. And that’s what happens when we have mineral replenishment, effective mineral replenishment.

So, I want to talk to you a little bit about how minerals get into the body because you really need to understand this when you’re thinking about putting pills and supplements in you, are they actually making their way to where they need to get to for them to actually make a difference in your system?

So, for minerals to be utilized, they must first be brought in from the outside of the body. They have to be broken down all the way, meaning digested and broken down in your gut all the way to their ionic molecular components. It’s very, very small, before they can be absorbed through the lining of your gut. And because I don’t have a huge amount of time today, I want to make sure that I’m not… I’m not going to be able to go very deep. We’re going to give you some more locations where you can find more information at the end.

Finally, once those elements have been digested and broken down to their molecular ionic components, now, they can be absorbed through the lining of your gut into your bloodstream, which of course relies on you having a healthy gut lining. So, for people who struggle with SIBO or IBS or other…or Crohn’s, all sorts of issues with their gut lining, this can be quite a problem.

But now that you’ve got…let’s say you’ve broken down a certain amount of minerals, you’ve actually absorbed them through the lining of your gut, and now, they’re in your bloodstream. Well, that’s very well and good, but it’s not where minerals need to get to. Most minerals make their difference inside the cells. So, the final stage is they have to get into the cells, where they can be utilized by the mitochondria for energy generation for all sorts of other biosynthesis processes. This is very, very important to remember. So, it’s three stages: digestion, absorption, and assimilation.

So, first thing you have to ask with a mineral supplement is how well does it actually break down in your gut? If you’re using mineral supplements that are made from rocks, shells, and bones, guess what. The human digestive tract doesn’t break those down very well. So, you’re going to have very, very low absorption or actually even digestion, let alone absorption.

So, the next question is how well does the material absorb through the gut lining? The interesting thing about the gut lining is…so, the lining of your small intestine is lined with the villi. They’re kind of finger-like structures. And those villi are lined with epithelial cells, and those epithelial cells are lined with receptor sites.

Now, here’s the thing that blew my mind is these receptor sites are designed in specific ratios. So, you have a huge number of magnesium receptors because your body utilizes a lot of magnesium, but you have many smaller in terms of ratios of all the other minerals. And these receptor sites, I like to think of them like catcher’s mitts. So, they’re sitting waiting to catch a mineral, but they’re specific. So, it’s not like any catcher’s mitt can catch any mineral. No, there’s a magnesium one, and there’s a chromium, and a selenium, and molybdenum, and vanadium, and copper, and boron, and all of the minerals. So, this is one of the reasons why it doesn’t actually help to put a huge concentration of magnesium in your gut. So, you only have so many receptors available. So, most of it ends up in the toilet.

Finally, once you get those minerals absorbed, you have to deal with getting those minerals into the cell. Now, there are different ways, we call it diffusion, which is the process for getting things across the cell membrane into your cell. Now, if you just eat…you know, let’s say you have some magnesium or you have some potassium or you have calcium or chromium, and some of it gets broken down, some of it gets absorbed into your bloodstream. Now, it has to get into your cell. And there’s something called passive diffusion, which is a single magnesium molecule hits up against your cell wall. Your cell goes, oh, that’s magnesium. It opens a gate. The magnesium, the single magnesium molecule goes in there. Based on this thing called a concentration gradient, there’s less magnesium in your cell, then the magnesium will go in. It works, but it’s a very inefficient system.

Now, when you consider the fact that all life on Earth is made of cellular ecosystems and all cells on Earth require a full spectrum of minerals to operate, you bet that nature would have provided a much more effective and efficient system than one molecule hitting up against the cell wall and getting into the cell. And that’s what we’re going to introduce you to today.

So, I want to give you a quick overview on the difference between supplementation versus what I call replenishment. And it’s a critical difference. So, supplementation is a mechanical model. It’s based on recommended daily allowances. You see it on the back of nutritional facts panels. So, this has certain percentage of an RDA of vitamin A or vitamin C, or maybe folate or there’s a whole list here, magnesium, etc.

The problem is that these recommended daily allowances have no relevance for anyone, really. They were designed actually to know what the human body needed at the very lowest level so it wouldn’t starve. They’re not about optimal health. They’re not measuring… And they also have no relevance for one person with a specific genetics, epigenetics, lifestyle, eating style, health history, etc. So, those really have no relevance to you.

So, when somebody tells you, oh, you should be taking a thousand milligrams of magnesium a day, I really go, I don’t know. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. It depends on so many different factors. And not only that, how much magnesium you need is an extremely dynamic thing that changes in your body moment to moment.

So, supplementation isn’t focused on bioavailability. It’s based on concentrations. So, put a lot in there and hope that your body can utilize it. The problem is that concentrations, first of all, they’re not sustainable for your clients. I mean, who wants to take so many pills every day? They end up in the supplement graveyard. Right? That cupboard filled with all the pills and bottles of things that you took for a while, but you didn’t notice the difference. How many patients or clients have you worked with? You gave them a big long list of protocols. And they did them for a while, and then they’re like, well, I stopped taking that. I couldn’t really do it. You know?

So, supplementation also requires the body to eliminate all that excess. So, you’re putting these large concentrations of different minerals, different…all sorts of different substances into your gut. And what do we know about the gut? The gut actually thrives in balance. It’s a beautiful microbiome that works more like a forest than a mechanical car with tanks.

So, the best replenishment, it utilizes the body’s natural replenishment systems rather than thinking about the body like a car, I’m going to put 1,000 milligrams of this in, 500 of this, 250 of this. I’m going to take the pills every day. Instead, it looks at the body as a natural ecosystem. If you think about a forest, if you took a wheelbarrow of magnesium and threw it on the floor of a forest, would the plants in that area, the cellular life thrive? No, it would not thrive because that’s a concentration. And ecosystems like small, incremental changes consistently over time. And that’s how they thrive.

So, effective replenishment complements the system complexity, and supports its innate intelligence. So, rather than trying to circumvent the innate intelligence of your body by throwing in a ton of all these different minerals in large concentrations, maybe you should think about using nature’s solution for replenishment.

So, this is the cool thing is that nature actually solved the problem of getting minerals into cells. It created it over millennia, and it’s an amazing solution that utilizes natural source material created in nature.

I want to introduce you to plant-based mineral complexes. I’m going to check the time because I want to make sure that I’m not going over. I’m really trying to whiz through this so you guys get as much information as possible.

So, what we want to do is use nature’s solution. What are plant-based minerals? This is a forest floor decomposing. It takes a very, very long time. It uses all sorts of bugs and microbes and bacteria and all sorts of things to break down this plant material all the way back into its natural mineral material that it came from.

Now, if you think about something like BEAM Minerals, which is my company, the material that we use comes from ancient rainforests. In fact, 65 million years ago, a meteor hit the Yucatan. The Earth was covered with rainforests. And all of those rainforests died and decomposed, and became some incredible materials.

It was a material called humate. It’s a line of incredibly mineral-rich material about 10 to 12 feet below the surface of the Earth. And in that material, there are two amazing molecules. They’re called humic and fulvic. And the cool thing is they represent the ideal replenishment for minerals as well as providing detoxification support for cellular systems.

I want to talk about fulvic first. It’s an amazing molecule. If you hold your hand in a fist and you think of a head of a pin, the head of the pin is the size of a fulvic molecule. It’s incredibly small. And it provides all the minerals your body needs in the natural ratios that your body needs them. Imagine a pre-formulated molecule with all the minerals your body needs that also delivers the minerals directly into your cell.

So, when the fulvic molecule that carries this full spectrum of minerals hits up against your cell wall, your cells recognize fulvic and go, oh, this is cool. Let’s bring this fulvic molecule in. The fulvic molecule goes into your cell. It changes its polarity, and it drops all of its mineral content into the cell, available for the mitochondria in the proper ratio. So, you’re creating balance throughout the entire ecosystem of your body. This is absolutely a phenomenal thing. It also provides detoxification. So, once it’s dropped its bolus of minerals, it travels around in the cell, picking up biowaste toxins, heavy metals, nanoplastics, glyphosate, and carries those out of the cell.

And then it drops them in the bloodstream where its partner, the next molecule that I call…that is called humic. And you can see that this is a much larger molecule. It’s a complex also of a huge number of minerals. Its main capacity is not only that it provides…it has all the same minerals in the proper ratios, but it also is an incredibly powerful antioxidant and an intelligent binder. So, this is an incredible thing. So, if you put binders into your body and they will just bind to any metal, now, you might be depleting certain metals that you need.

The interesting thing about the humic molecule that they’re studying around the world for this reason is it has a capacity. It binds minerals all the way up to the point where…let’s say you’ve taken a big pill of magnesium. It will bind the magnesium all the way up until there’s homeostasis or balance reached. Then it will stop binding. But it also binds with heavy metals, toxins, viral detritus, senescent or zombie cells, glyphosate, nanoplastics, graphene oxide, all sorts of different toxins in the body. And it ultimately carries them out of the body completely.

So, these two tools, humic and fulvic, are incredible tools to have in your body at all times. I like to call humic Mother Nature’s janitor.

We have two products at BEAM Minerals that are really effective. One is called Electrolyze. It’s the purely fulvic product. And the nice thing about that is you can enhance energy generation with your clients using Electrolyze within a very, very short period of time. So, they start feeling better very quickly. And they come back to you and they’re like, wow, I feel better. You’re really good at what you do.

After you use the fulvic for 10 days or so, you start with the humic. Now, this product does have some humic and fulvic in it. We don’t recommend using it alone. We always say you should use them together because it’s kind of this one-two punch for nutrient uptake and detoxification.

So, I’m going to also just show this next slide so you guys have it. If you’re interested in learning more, if you scan this QR, if I can get this off of here…and I’m sure they’ll provide this link for you. If you’re interested in learning about being a practitioner who uses BEAM Minerals with their clients, you could scan this code, and we’ll send you…as part of that process, we’ll send you a sample of the products and also a free copy of my book, “The Mineral Reset,” which has a lot of information for you and your clients about everything I’ve been talking about today.

We have a couple of minutes for questions. I’m not sure if we have enough time. I tried to rush through.

Dr. Sandi: Well, you did an excellent job. That was very comprehensive. This was a short course in minerals. And you brought up such a good point regarding the distilled and reverse osmosis water, because I always have to think about that. I have reverse osmosis, and I always have to go and add something to it.

Caroline: It’s super important. Super important.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah. So, if anyone has a question, the Q&A is bottom if you’d like to submit a question for Caroline. And I want to just mention that the delivery system… This is something that is so easy to use. So, the advantages and… We do have a question. Can these products be added directly to reverse osmosis water? From Julie.

Caroline: Yes. And so, the Electrolyze, the fulvic product is really ideal for re-mineralizing your water for two reasons. One, everyone can take Electrolyze. The fulvic product never creates any kind of detox symptoms or anything. So, anyone can take it. And it tastes like water, literally will not flavor your water. So, that’s really great, especially if you’re using it with kids who are sensitive to taste and all of that kind of thing. So, it’s the perfect thing for re-mineralizing your filtered water.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah. If you have clients who are saying that they can’t take swallowing pills and this is just an easy way to get it in. And what about…do you need to add any extra magnesium? Is this sufficient for magnesium needs? And of course, there’s no one size fits all.

Caroline: Yeah. So, this is a big question. So, people always ask how much magnesium is in the product. So many people have been learning about how important magnesium is in the body. So, the kind of context that I’m bringing to the whole conversation about minerals is you can put a lot of magnesium in your body. It doesn’t mean your body is absorbing or assimilating that. So, we do this. We use a scan. It’s a test called a OligoScan. And it does an intercellular scan of how many minerals are in your body. And the problem is lots of people take lots of magnesium, but then they find out they’re deficient. So, why is that?

So, the beautiful thing about our products, it doesn’t have a huge amount. I mean, magnesium is very high in general in the whole range of minerals that it has. But it’s nearly 100% bioavailable. So, when you drink it, all of that magnesium is immediately available as opposed to most of it just going and ending up in the toilet. Sorry. I know that you’re running out of time.

Dr. Sandi: These are great questions. They start with the green bottle and after 10 to 15 days, start the blue bottle.

Caroline: Yeah. There’s a QR code on the back of the bottle. You can scan that, and there’s all the usage information right there available to you. You can just get the set, and then you can just scan the QR code and get the info.

Dr. Sandi: Okay. And do you ship outside of the U.S.? We do. We have a…in Europe, in the UK, and in the EU, we have a distributor. It’s called Longevity Essentials. Other than that, we ship from the U.S. So, it’s very expensive. But, yes, we do ship many, many places around the world.

Dr. Sandi: Okay. Is it possible to overconsume minerals with these products? Let’s say, we’re drinking a lot of reverse osmosis water.

Caroline: I’d say, almost impossible.

Dr. Sandi: Okay.

Caroline: I’m going to say, almost impossible.

Dr. Sandi: Okay. And, yes, Carolyn says, how can I get more information and the book?

Caroline: Yeah. So, how can we get that information to them? Can we get that to them afterwards? Is there a way that we can get that?

Dr. Sandi: I would say you have the QR code, and that would be different. So, if you..

Caroline: If you do the replay, QR.

Dr. Sandi: Absolutely.

Caroline: That’s it. That’s the way.

Dr. Sandi: Yes. Yes. Okay. And final question. Your magnesium, would it be a certain form?

Caroline: Very good question. So, people ask me what kind of magnesium because you’re used to going to the store and buying magnesium citrate or gluconate or whatever it is. Think of the periodic table. This is magnesium, Mg, that’s it. It is the base foundation, which means it’s ready to be any other kind of ionic mixture that your body needs. Now, your body’s innate wisdom goes, oh, I need magnesium citrate here. I need magnesium gluconate over here. And it can create whatever it needs.

Dr. Sandi: Awesome. Caroline, it’s always a delight. Thank you so much. We are choosing presenters today who have products manufactured with integrity, mission-driven. And that certainly it’s you and all the wonderful work you have done with BEAM Minerals. So, thank you. Thank you so much.

Caroline: Thanks so much for having me. It was an absolute joy to be here, Sandra.

Dr. Sandi: And I know there’s a lot of interest in this product. Well, thank you.