Fw: Selenium (necessary) vs Selenomethionine (toxic)

[Guest guest]

This is from another list I follow. Selenium is very important for immunity but

the source matters.

BTW, Brazil nuts are the highest source of Se.

....

----- Original Message -----

Selenomethionine is a wrong term, you might also call it fraud. What one

does is make a slurry of a selenium salt and the amino acid methionine.

This slurry is then spray-dried and pressed into tablet form and sold

under the name of " selenomethionine " , but it is just the same selenium

salt as before, either sodium selenite or sodium selenate, to which some

methionine has been added (which is a cheap filler and has no effect in

the slurry). It is as if you added sodium chloride to your veal and

would call this vealo-sodio-chloridio. Your family would call this veal

to which table salt has been added.

The inorganic salts of selenium are OK as fertilizers and are used as

such in China and Finland, but they are unfit for human consumption

since you will get a fever if you take 1,000 micrograms of Se in that

form, whereas if you eat bread made from high selenium wheat as occurs

in S. Dakota, you may eat 1,000 mcg of Se in bread form with great

success. (Some wheat from S. Dakota will contain about 5,000 micrograms

per pound and is a perfect source of Se since this is organic Se.)

Compare this to Finnish winter wheat which contains about 25 micrograms

per pound. Yes: Twenty-five versus five thousand.

I mentioned before how wheat from S. Dakota put an end to an epidemic of

Keshan disease in Bavaria, and I think the US wheat had a great deal to

do with the enormous economic upswing of Bavaria after WWII since Se

increases cognitive performance. The same is true for China these days

since the Chinese very actively add selenium to their soils now.

Today, Norway is the only European country left that buys wheat from the

US, and they have the highest serum selenium levels at 119 ng/ml. For

comparison: Austria, on European wheat, has average levels of 67 ng/ml.

Of course, you get much higher values in Se territory such as 257 in

Rapid City, S.D. That is why they have the low incidence of autism.

The elementary rule is that Se first has to go through a plant, and not

through a spray drier.

Happy New Year, and I hope for some success in 2005. This cannot go on

forever.

Hans [Raible]

>I've been reading the posts on selenium. In the forward from

>Eurolyme, this caught my eye:

>

> " The most important mineral is selenium and plant-based selenium at

>that (do not use a man-made chelated selenium called L seleno-

>methionine as it is defective and toxic to the body).

>

>I've never heard that selenomethionine is toxic. I'm very curious as

>I suspect this is the form most parents are using as a supplement. I

>went to the website and couldn't find any reference to back this up.

>Do you know anything about this?

>