Top Selenium Benefits You've Never Heard Before
Dr. Berg’s Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast
Dr. Eric Berg
4.7 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 18 October 2023
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today I want to cover some interesting points about selenium that you may have never heard before.
Selenium is a trace mineral, and it’s involved in thyroid function and helps detox mercury.
Selenium is also a powerful antioxidant. It’s important to support cardiovascular and brain health and may help prevent strokes and cancer.
Brazil nuts are loaded with selenium. One Brazil nut will give you the selenium you need for the day. Taking too much selenium could lead to selenium toxicity.
Selenium is in many other foods, too, so why are so many people deficient in selenium? It has to do with the fact that it’s in a form that plant roots have a difficult time extracting—they need help from microbes. However, there aren’t enough microbes or diversity of microbes in the soil.
A good solution is to start buying foods from farmers who care about their soil and grow things with microbial diversity. It’s also essential to consume fermented foods.
Another overlooked cause of selenium deficiency is a certain genetic mutation related to the proteins or enzymes with selenium. Taking statins may also lead to selenium deficiency.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Today I want to talk about some really interesting points about selenium that you've never heard before. |
| 0:06.0 | So when I talk about selenium, which is the trace mineral, Brazil nuts are really high in selenium. |
| 0:11.0 | They might know that it's involved in thyroid function. |
| 0:14.0 | It helps convert T4, the inactive version of the thyroid hormone, to the active form of the thyroid hormone, T3. |
| 0:22.7 | They may also know that it helps to detoxify mercury, and it can help fight and prevent cancer, especially the prostate |
| 0:29.4 | and the lung. Selidium is also really important in cardiovascular health and preventing |
| 0:35.2 | strokes and also in preventing dementia, simply because it |
| 0:38.9 | tends to fight free radicals and inflammation that can occur in the brain. And so it's really good |
| 0:45.6 | in the prevention of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other types of degeneration that occur in our |
| 0:50.6 | nervous system. And so here are some things that you probably don't know about selenium, |
| 0:55.9 | the real reason why it's high in Brazil nuts. Now the Brazil nuts come from the Brazilian tree, |
| 1:01.1 | which is in South America. And what's unique about the soil that this tree has grown on is that |
| 1:07.7 | it's nearly absent of sulfur. |
| 1:14.2 | And the chemistry of sulfur is very similar to selenium. |
| 1:20.5 | And this means that selenium can bind with certain amino acids, |
| 1:25.2 | just like sulfur can, and be a functional substitute for sulfur. |
| 1:27.2 | And so when you just consume one Brazil nut, |
| 1:28.0 | you're getting like, I think, 96 micrograms of selenium, which is more than enough. You don't need a lot of selenium. |
| 1:33.7 | You just need tiny amounts because there are also, on the flip side, is some problems with |
| 1:38.2 | taking too much selenium and becoming selenium toxic. And from that, you can get hair loss, |
| 1:43.8 | neuropathies, tremors, |
| 1:46.2 | other neurological problems, issues with the heart. There's a lot of issues that you can get if |
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