BORON: UNKNOWN TRACE ELEMENT FOR TESTOSTERONE AND ESTROGEN PRODUCTION, BONE, AND JOINT HEALTH

Boron is a trace element that is necessary for good health. Recent research has shown that it has an entire host of previously unknown health benefits. Let’s take a deep dive into boron this week and learn all about it!

What the hell is boron? You might innocently ask. Let’s find out. Many of my middle aged and elderly readers will remember Death Valley Days TV show sponsored by 20 Mule Team Borax.

Borax that you find in 20 Mule Team Borax is a chemical mixture of sodium, boron, and water. The active ingredient is overwhelmingly boron, with 99.5 % being pure borax. The largest deposit of borax in the United States is in Death Valley, and it was here in the 1800’s that they began mining it and using large mule teams with attached water wagons to carry it out of the desert to the nearest rail line. Hence 20 Mule Team Borax.

BORON, BORAX, AND BORIC ACID

Boron is not found in nature in its pure elemental form. It always combines with other chemicals, most frequently sodium. When it does so it forms the chemical sodium borate or what is commonly known as borax.

Just for the sake of complicating things even further, there is boric acid which is made from acidification of borax and thus has an acidic pH of 5, where borax has an alkaline pH of about 9.

Kinky Fact/Nerd Food: Skip this if you don’t care about boric acid use as an insecticide and fertilizer.

Insecticide:
Boric acid is lethal to many insects; usually by eating it. There are some reports that crawling over boric acid (and borax) can also damage their exoskeleton and kill them. For this reason, boric acid is included in many insecticide preparations.

If you decide to use boric acid as an insecticide you must dilute it to between a one and a five percent solution. Any stronger and the taste will be too bitter, and the insects will not ingest it.

Fertilizer
Fertilizers contain varying levels of nutrients, depending on plants’ needs. Some primary nutrients, such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, are needed in larger amounts, while others such as boron are called micronutrients because they are needed in trace amounts.

Some plants, such as the cole crops that include broccoli and cauliflower (Brassica spp.), need boron in slightly higher amounts than other plants. Boron deficiency symptoms may appear as hollow broccoli stems or brown cauliflower heads. If a soil test shows a boron deficiency, you can use 20 Mule Team Borax to correct the problem.

Following soil-test recommendations, broadcast 1.5 to 3 pounds of 20 Mule Team Borax per acre when you apply fertilizer. For smaller gardens, sprinkle 1 tablespoon of 20 Mule Team Borax for every 100 linear feet.

You can make a foliar fertilizer by mixing 0.2 to 0.3 pound of Solubor, which is manufactured by 20 Mule Team Borax, in 30 gallons of water and applying it per acre. Adjust the amounts for your size garden.

However, once again I digress. Let’s get back to using Boron and its derivatives for your health.

As with every mineral and trace element today, they are severely depleted in our soil due to industrial/chemical farming where the only minerals replaced in the fertilizers they use are nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. All the others including boron are never replaced.

Plants cannot make them out of thin air, so consequently the quantity found in our food goes down every year. Nevertheless, some foods still are higher in boron than others such as:

• Prune juice: One cup contains about 1.43 mg of boron.

• Avocados: Half a cup of raw, cubed avocado has around 1.07 mg of boron.

• Raisins: A handful (1.5 ounces) provides approximately 0.95 mg of boron.

• Peaches: One medium peach contains about 0.80 mg of boron.

• Grape juice: One cup of 100% grape juice has around 0.76 mg of boron.

• Apples: A medium apple contains about 0.66 mg of boron.

• Pears: one medium size pear has about 0.5 mg of boron.

  

Here are some of the benefits of taking boron:

• Speeding up wound healing

• Improving gum and teeth health

• Preventing vitamin D deficiency

• Strong anti-inflammatory, helps arthritis and joint pain

• Balancing hormones

• Metabolizing key vitamins and minerals

• Having a key role in bone health by building bone mass helping osteopenia and osteoporosis patients

• Affecting estrogen and testosterone levels

• Improves wound healing

• Aids the body’s use of estrogen, testosterone, vitamin D, and magnesium, markedly increasing testosterone levels and vitamin D levels by about twenty percent.

• Improves cognitive performance (helps you think clearer)

• Improves short term memory (unfortunately, no evidence of it helping long term memory)

• Decreases the side effects of chemotherapy

• Prevents certain cancers

• Helps regulate blood sugar (glucose) levels

• Essential for reproduction and the development of the fetus

• Prevents blood clots

HOW THE MEDICAL UNDERGROUND USES BORON

OSTEOPENIA, OSTEOPOROSIS, AND OSTEOARTHRITIS
In my practice I have been using boron for decades primarily for patients that have osteopenia (the stage before osteoporosis) and osteoporosis as well as osteoarthritis.

It has proven to be very effective at building bone. In fact, orthopedic surgeons for decades have noted that in areas with high boron in the soil it is difficult to saw through patients’ bones!

All supplemental forms of boron come chelated, meaning they are bound to amino acids to make them more stable and more importantly better absorbed. The most common types of chelated boron are: boron citrate, boron aspartate, and boron glycinate.

Some supplemental manufacturers have combined all three forms for maximal absorption. Remember what I always say, it is not important how much of a substance you ingest, what is important is how much you absorb! ABSORPTION IS KING.

Swanson makes a supplement that combines all three forms of boron for maximal absorption, but other companies do so as well.

When treating patients with osteopenia or osteoporosis, it is important to add other minerals, vitamins, and trace elements that help form healthy bone matrix. One of my favorites is a little-known vitamin K2. This is not to be confused with vitamin K. This is different. I wish they would give it another name… LOL.

For decades doctors were treating middle aged women with thinning bones with high doses of calcium. Ironically, the calcium was being deposited in their arteries where we don’t want it (since it causes atherosclerosis or hardening of the arteries), and not going to their bones.

The missing link was vitamin K2, since it takes calcium deposits from arteries and moves it to where we want it in bones.

So, for my patients with bone loss of any type, I have them take a variety of nutraceuticals such as magnesium in the form of MagTab SR (once again highly absorbed), vitamins D3 and K2, C, calcium, and Boron.

Phosphorus is another critical element needed to produce strong bones. The good news is that phosphorus is found in many foods and usually does not need supplementation. Other elements that are important for bone health are exercise, plenty of sunshine, and fresh air.

My protocol for osteopenia and osteoporosis has proven to be very effective at building new strong bones, and as always, the supplements the Medical Underground utilizes have nothing but beneficial side effects! Not like pharmaceuticals, which often are foreign chemicals that the body doesn’t recognize, and the result is numerous harmful side effects.

Remember: Whenever you take any mineral, vitamin, or trace element they are all better absorbed when taken with food.

Since boron also has strong anti-inflammatory effects, I have noted that patients on it for several months have seen marked improvement in their joint pain from their osteoarthritis.

One way to avoid taking supplements but still getting your proper intake of boron is to supplement it in your garden, adding it to the soil around your fruit trees, berry bushes, fruits, and vegetables. This way the plant uptakes it and incorporates it into the plant tissues where it is in a highly organic bioavailable form that is recognized by your body and hence readily absorbed!

When boron is added to the soil, it vastly improves plant health, and also increases the plants uptake of other minerals and trace elements making them bioavailable to you as well! One of those rare win-win scenarios in life!

One of the most inexpensive ways of getting boron into your garden soil as by making a dilute solution of 20 Mule Team Borax, of between a one and five percent solution. There are also many other commercial boron products available for gardeners. However, these are much more expensive.

To add boron to garden soil, you can follow these methods:

1. Use borax as a granular fertilizer or boronic acid as a foliar spray (foliar spray means spraying it on the plants’ leaves)

2. Add elemental boron directly to the soil.

3. Test your soil with a boron kit to determine if you need more boron.

4. Mix boron with water to create a liquid fertilizer and spray it on your plants.

5. Blend boron with dry granular fertilizers or mix it with liquid fertilizers for even distribution in the soil.

Note: You should exercise caution not to apply too much boron to the soil since this will have a paradoxical effect of stunting plant growth and flowering. The best time to apply boron is right before growth spurts such as in the spring.

BORON TO IMPROVE TESTOSTERONE AND ESTROGEN LEVELS IN BOTH MEN AND WOMEN

There is a very curious phenomenon going on world-wide, testosterone levels in males are plummeting, as are sperm counts. I have been pondering the cause of it, and the Medical Underground thinks it is a multifactorial problem, from microplastics and forever chemicals, to estrogen disrupters in plastics, to soy baby formula to radiation exposure from 5 G and all the other radiation producing devices, coupled with a diet of highly processed foods, all of which contribute to the current testosterone collapse.

The use of boron in patients with low testosterone is very effective and inexpensive and without any significant side effects. If you have low sex hormone levels, especially testosterone then one of the first things you should consider trying is supplementing with boron and zinc.

Once again, note that there are an entire host of benefits from supplementing either of these minerals, that go way beyond sex hormone production. Zinc alone is essential for over two hundred different enzymes to function properly.

Studies have shown that using 6 mg to 10 mg of boron for one week began to increase levels of both total testosterone and free testosterone. You should note that free testosterone is unbound to other proteins and circulates in the blood and is very active or what is known as bioavailable.

98 percent of your testosterone is bound to two proteins known as, albumin and sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG). SHBG binds testosterone and makes it available to the testes that need testosterone, the other two percent is what the entire body must use.

Boron essentially changes this and lowers the levels of sex hormone binding globulin, and therefore increases levels of free testosterone for your muscles and the rest of your body.

You definitely want your free testosterone to be high. In men it also lowered their estradiol (a form of estrogen) levels and in women did the opposite, it lowered testosterone and raised estrogen, also what women would want. Unless of course you want a woman with a moustache who is always hogging the television remote!

The absolute best way to supplement boron is with all three forms in a boron complex such as I showed earlier from Swanson. I am not plugging Swanson, any company that makes a mix of all three borons, glycinate, aspartate, and citrate.

Once again, a further benefit of supplementing with boron beyond its positive effect on sex hormones in both men and women is its strong anti-inflammatory effect. Boron reduces indicators of inflammation, such as interleukin and C-reactive proteins, by more than half. Reducing inflammation is always a good thing.

The ideal dose that the Medical Underground recommends for both men and women is between 6 and 10 mg daily, along with a zinc/ copper complex.

The Medical Underground always uses a combination of zinc and copper when supplementing zinc for a long time since it will deplete copper levels. Usually, it is a 25 to one ratio or thereabouts, nothing is written in stone. This product, for example, has 50 mg of zinc and 2 mg of copper.

Note: There seems to be a “sweet spot” of boron supplementation that is between 6 and maximum 15 mg daily. I would not go higher than that and personally think 10 mg of the triple boron mix is a great dose.

If all you can find it in is a 6 mg dose, then alternate taking one six mg tablet one day and two on alternate days. Studies have shown that lower doses do not work at all, so use six mg as a minimum dose and 15 as the maximum.

BONUS: I have been using zinc lozenges for almost forty years on my patients with aphthous oral ulcers. It has amazingly worked 100 percent of the time! Get OTC zinc lozenges and keep sucking on one, keeping it over the ulcer until healed. It typically will take one week or so. By then, if you take vitamin C 1,000 mg twice a day, this will help heal the aphthous ulcers rapidly.

Well, that concludes another exciting episode of the Medical Underground. As always, I hope you found it both entertaining and educational and hopefully you can apply your newfound knowledge to your daily life.

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Until we meet again, May God Bless You and Your Family and The United States of America. For those of you aware enough to be believers in Jesus Christ, always remember: Miracle Shall Follow Miracle and Wonders Shall Never Cease.

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