Vitamin C is also involved with iron absorption. Why is this significant? Because pathogens compete with vitamin C for iron resources, as it is essential in aerobic metabolism. If pathogens steal too much of your iron, they can starve you of energy by starving your cells of oxygen. They produce excessive amounts of free radicals and acidic by-products which can overwhelm the immune system if there is not enough antioxidant defence available.
Vitamin C can buffer the acids and counteract the free radicals which cause so much damage by clogging and choking the respiratory system.
This is also why you can get extremely tired and run down – and anaemic – with a depressed immune system under viral attack! Taking extra iron without enough vitamin C may feed the viral beasts, but not contribute to your immune system defence. Note that overload of iron can also be toxic. It’s the antioxidant support that helps the body to use iron to its best advantage.
Magnesium – the king of the minerals
Another extremely important antioxidant nutrient often overlooked is magnesium. Like vitamin C, our body can’t make it and we must get what we need from outside.
There are over 100 years of magnesium research showing magnesium powerfully supports the immune system. Remember when you took a swim in the ocean with a head-cold, that it cleared up quickly afterwards? That’s because sea salts dry up mucus and kill pathogenic bacteria. Ocean water also contains a significant amount of magnesium, the master mineral electrolyte, which strengthens our immune system’s lymphocytes and natural killer cells.
Magnesium is essential to make ATP (adenosine triphosphate) – our cellular energy currency. No detox nor cell building and repair can take place without energy and magnesium is at the centre of the energy production. A good metabolism is the key to resilience in health.
The haemoglobin of red blood cells requires magnesium to help it take up oxygen from lungs and deliver that oxygen to tissue cells in other parts of the body. Researchers believe this is because, as part of the ATP energy currency, magnesium is vital to membrane integrity of red blood cells. The heme protein (containing iron) in these cells needs to ‘attract’ oxygen molecules from lung sacs as blood passes by. The oxygen molecules need to pass through the red blood cell (RBC) membrane – to get ‘onboard’ the train so to speak.
Magnesium is in charge of these cell membrane gateways (protein channels), creating just the right charge for proteins to do their oxygen-transporting job. Proteins do their work via attraction or repulsion, which is dependent on electrical charge. As the RBCs pass via tissue cells that need oxygen, the charge (attraction) goes the other way and oxygen molecules pass from the blood to the tissue cells. That is, the oxygen molecules get off the train at the cellular stations. At these same stations, cell wastes such as C02, are also picked up to be returned to the lungs for exhalation.
All these processes require magnesium for correct electrical charge and switching ability. Magnesium-ATP forms our cellular battery pack system. Thus in magnesium deficiency, where less oxygen gets on board, the system becomes anaerobic and acidic, that is, oxidised and damaged by free radicals. A low magnesium status itself can cause inflammation and over-reaction of the immune system.
Supplementation with magnesium can reverse this oxidative and inflammatory effect.
Note the reference to increased hydration (diminished cell dehydration) when ample magnesium was present. This is because magnesium is water-attractive. And without enough water we dry up and die. Our whole electrical system relies on electrolytes and water for conductivity.