Health Ranger issues zeolite challenge: Drop your zeolites for 28 days and see if you feel BETTER

Friday, October 30, 2015
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Tags: zeolites, detoxification challenge, blood lead levels

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(NaturalNews) I want to thank all the readers who participated in the outpouring of support following my publishing of laboratory test results for zeolites.

As I wrote yesterday, off-the-shelf zeolites are composed of remarkably high concentrations of lead (10, 20, 40 or even 60 ppm) and strikingly higher concentrations of aluminum (24,000 to 30,000+ ppm in the samples we tested). It's important to note that the real numbers are actually far higher because nitric acid digestion does not completely dissolve zeolites, meaning these test result numbers were on the LOW side.

Many readers found it astounding that nobody ever told them about the lead and aluminum content of zeolites. Apparently, there's a near cult-like following behind zeolites, and many people have been persuaded to consume zeolites on a daily basis as if they were superfoods or nutritive supplements. The typical story behind zeolites is that they should be consumed as a "daily detox" to keep removing toxic elements from your body. Which toxic elements? Metals like lead and aluminum, ironically, the very same elements found in zeolites themselves.

Some people selling zeolites, meanwhile, have never leveled with their own customers about what zeolites are really made of. Natural News readers were shocked to learn that zeolites contain lead and aluminum in not just "trace" quantities, but strikingly high concentrations compared to nearly all other dietary supplements. (I personally can't recall any dietary supplement that even comes close to the lead concentration of zeolites.)

Granular zeolites are not easy to digest, but pulverized zeolite is another matter altogether...

Statement of FACT: When you swallow zeolites, you are swallowing lead and aluminum. As I've stated in previous articles, I don't believe this is a concern when zeolites are granular and largely intact for the simple reason that zeolites are similar to tiny rocks (grains of sand) in the sense that they are not digested in the human stomach. Large, granular zeolites pass right through your digestive tract, and you literally poop them out intact.

However, when zeolites are ground into a fine powder -- "micronized" -- manufacturers and retailers promise this allows them to be absorbed into the bloodstream. If these fine-ground zeolite materials are going into the blood, then they are almost certainly adding lead and aluminum to the blood, since those two elements are substantially present in zeolites.

Some of the marketing hype I've seen on zeolites claim that zeolites are removing toxic elements from the body because clinical trials have observed aluminum being eliminated via urine when people consume zeolites. This isn't proof that zeolites extract aluminum from the body's tissues; it's only the obvious demonstration that when you swallow a lot of aluminum, your body tries to get rid of it. No surprise there, I hope. If you drink mercury, you'll also find mercury in your poop. This does not mean that eating mercury "removes" mercury from your body.

People with symptoms told to take more zeolites

As I've been receiving feedback from more and more readers, I'm learning that many people started taking zeolites because they suspected their bodies had been contaminated by chemicals or heavy metals. They were told that zeolites would remove these substances from the body, and when these people experienced worsening symptoms over time (such as brain fog, dizziness, headaches, muscle fatigue, mood instability, etc.), they were often told to take more zeolites.

An obvious question emerges from all this: Could zeolites be causing some of these symptoms? If a person takes micronized zeolites each day for, let's say, 90 days in a row, how much of an additional burden of lead and aluminum are they placing on their bodies and brains? Could zeolites themselves be contributing to brain fog, dizziness, headaches and other symptoms for which people are being told to "take more zeolites"?

Is it also possible that zeolites might be useful on a temporary clinical basis but harmful if consumed day after day, year after year, in substantial quantities as if they were food? I don't yet know for certain if this is the case, but it's a reasonable theorem when considering the lead and aluminum composition of zeolites themselves (and the quantities some people consume on a daily basis).

The typical narrative on zeolites: They remove aluminum and lead!

The typical story on zeolites goes something like this, a passage from a 2012 article written on Natural News by Dr. David Jockers:

Zeolites are effective at adsorbing heavy metals such as mercury, lead, aluminum, cadmium, and arsenic. These toxins are quickly accumulating in our bodies in the 21st century due to our overuse of chemicals in our food, household products, personal hygiene products, water, and medical treatments. These heavy metals are highly toxic and create massive free radical stress in the brain, liver, kidneys, and gut.

Yet this article on Natural News utterly failed to state that zeolites contain substantial quantities of lead and aluminum, the very metals described as "toxins" in this article about zeolites! (This is not a criticism of Dr. Jockers, by the way. Neither he nor I were aware of the elemental composition of zeolites until recently. There are many articles about zeolites on Natural News which were written before this composition information became known. As of now, they are obsolete because they were written without the benefit of knowing zeolite composition.)

Are you seriously swallowing 270mg of lead every year and calling it a "detox?"

A popular zeolite product advises users to "Detoxify Daily" on its label. Each serving of this particular zeolite powder is 15 grams of zeolite material, according to its label. In a 30-day month, this would equal 450 grams of zeolite taken orally.

If this zeolite is, let's say, 25,000+ ppm aluminum, then it contains at least 25 milligrams of aluminum per gram. Multiply that by 450 grams consumed in a month, and you get 11,250 milligrams of aluminum a month, or 135 grams of aluminum a year that you would otherwise not be consuming.

Similarly, for a zeolite product that's, say, 50 ppm lead, you would be getting 50 micrograms of lead per gram. If you consume 450 grams in a month, you're swallowing 22,500 micrograms of lead, or 22.5mg of lead in a month.

Do this for a full year, and you've swallowed 270mg of lead in a calendar year.

To me, this seems like an extraordinary high level of lead intake for a product that claims to "detoxify" your body. I don't know anybody interested in natural health who, when presented with these facts, would think it's a wise idea to consume 270mg of lead every year as a dietary supplement, regardless of its form or absorption or detox claims.

Consider this: If zeolites are supposed to be removing X milligrams of lead from your body every year, but zeolites themselves add 270mg of lead to your body, then doesn't that mean in order to be effective, zeolites would have to excrete X + 270mg of lead from your body every year? Think about it... if your goal is to eliminate lead, why would you eat more lead? If your goal is to eliminate aluminum, why would you eat more aluminum?

Another question: Of this 270mg of additional lead you're swallowing each year, how much of this lead is excreted vs. deposited in the body somewhere? According to the CDC:

Absorbed lead that is not excreted is exchanged primarily among three compartments

- Blood

- Mineralizing tissues (bones and teeth), which typically contain the vast majority of the lead body burden

- Soft tissue (liver, kidneys, lungs, brain, spleen, muscles, and heart)

Take the zeolite challenge: Drop zeolites for 28 days and see if you feel better

In the interests of public health, I'm encouraging Natural News to drop zeolites for 28 days and see how you feel.

Why 28 days? According to the CDC, the half-life of lead in human blood is 28 - 36 days. This means whatever excess lead is circulating in a person's blood will be reduced by roughly half in about a month.

In two months, lead concentrations will drop to one-fourth, and in three months down to one-eighth.

If you've been swallowing 270mg of lead every year (and 11g of aluminum every month) in the form of zeolites, a 28-day holiday away from those dietary sources might make a noticeable difference in your personal experience.

Zeolite sellers want you to keep consuming zeolite daily so that you keep buying it monthly

Some zeolite manufacturers and sellers, of course, will scream blood murder at this idea, because it means you won't be purchasing their products for a month or so. Their profits depend on you consuming it daily and purchasing new bottles on a regular basis.

Those profits are very high, too. Raw zeolite material can be purchased in bulk for about $8 - $10 per kg. But once placed in a bottle and aggressively marketed, it can be sold for as much as $100 per kg, representing a markup of well over 1000%.

I find it astounding that in an industry where everyone know they should be eating FOOD, so many people are eating clinoptilolite (zeolite) which is mined out of the ground. It is, in essence, made of "special geological minerals" which have a unique crystalline structure that happens to be very good at trapping certain chemicals or radioactive elements such as ammonia or cesium-137.

There's no question that zeolites have clinical application for blocking radioactive elements. They're also used in horse stalls to absorb ammonia from horse urine (you can purchase zeolite material in granular form for about $25 for a 50-lb. bag at your local feed store). I use huge scoops of zeolite material to neutralize the odor from chicken poop in my chicken coops, and it works! But should you be eating zeolites daily?

I very much doubt it. If you want to detox daily, drink some clean water every day and work up a sweat. Your body is naturally detoxifying itself every day, and by consuming real foods, clean water and plant-based superfoods, you can likely achieve all the detoxification you'd ever need. If that's not enough, go on a raw juice feast or a water fast.

In my opinion -- and yes, I am very much entitled to an informed opinion on this matter -- zeolites are wildly overhyped, marketed with deceptive information and might even be contributing to the very same metals burden they claim to reduce. If so, it could be the perfect detox scam: Here, take this product that contains lead and aluminum in order to eliminate the toxic lead and aluminum in your body. Keep taking it and you'll keep eliminating, but you'll never quite fully eliminate everything because you keep swallowing more of those metals each day. That's why you need to keep buying it and keep detoxifying, etc. To me, it all sounds like detoxification circular reasoning.

P.S. For the record, I have no financial stake in this report. We don't sell zeolites, and I will NEVER sell zeolites as a daily dietary substance. The closest I come to that idea is a product I patented (pending) called Cesium Eliminator which is for emergency use only, to be used in a nuclear fallout scenario when you can't find clean water or food sources. Nobody even buys that product because we aren't in a nuclear war. Should a nuclear event break out, my plan is to donate tens of thousands of bottles of Cesium Eliminator to emergency responders who can help distribute it to fallout victims trying to survive in radiation zones. Zeolites are very, very good at capturing cesium-137. Every prepper would do well to stockpile some zeolite material for that purpose, in my view. In the Texas floods earlier this year, by the way, we distributed $100,000 worth of emergency superfoods to displaced flood victims. See our donation photos here. (Special thanks to Living Fuel for that $88,000 donation.) All of our emergency responder donation efforts are verifiable with food banks and emergency recovery groups.