Micah Stanley
Selenium activates the body’s own detoxification enzymes and is directly involved in the detoxification of heavy metals. Selenium yeast refers to a mixture of organic selenium compounds that are particularly good at detoxifying.
Detox with selenium
Selenium is an essential trace element. So we have to get enough of it in our food. In the USA, for example, the soils are relatively rich in selenium. The population is correspondingly well supplied with selenium. In Europe, on the other hand, the soil and consequently also the food is rather low in selenium.
Therefore, while people in the USA can have blood values of 100 to 180 µg selenium per liter of blood, the values in Germany are usually only 60 to 80 µg/l. A selenium deficiency is therefore much more likely in our region.
However, selenium has such important tasks in the body that a selenium deficiency can be accompanied by far-reaching symptoms. Even at values below 50 µg/l, the activity of the glutathione peroxidases is restricted. These are endogenous enzymes that are responsible for detoxifying the body and reducing oxidative stress in the organism.
The better the selenium supply, the better the body is protected from toxic substances, and the better it can detoxify itself – a connection that has been known for a long time.
Selenium and vitamin E reduce the toxicity of heavy metals
As early as 1992, the effects of selenium and vitamin E on heavy metal poisoning were investigated. It was already known back then that selenium can counteract the toxicity of heavy metals. Whether cadmium, inorganic mercury, methylmercury, thallium, or, in some cases, silver – they can all become less dangerous with the help of selenium.
Vitamin E was also known at the time to be able to reduce the toxicity of methylmercury, although not quite as well as selenium, instead vitamin E proved to be more effective against the toxicity of silver. Vitamin E also has a good effect on lead, while selenium is less helpful here.
However, it should be a natural source of vitamin E. Because synthetic vitamin E – if taken regularly and in high doses – can increase the risk of cancer.
Natural sources of vitamin E are e.g. B. wheat germ oil or moringa. Wheat germ oil provides about 18 mg of vitamin E per 10 grams. Moringa provides 4 – 8 mg per 10 grams. An adult needs 12 – 14 mg of vitamin E.
Nuts, almonds, and oilseeds also provide a lot of vitamin E. For example, 30 grams of hazelnuts provide 7.5 mg of vitamin E. Almonds and sunflower seeds have similarly high values, while other nuts and seeds contain significantly less vitamin E.
Selenium detoxifies cancer-causing chemicals
In addition to heavy metals, there are of course many other toxins that burden people on a daily basis, such as B. carcinogenic chemicals from exhaust gases, tobacco smoke (passive smoking), food (pesticide residues), mold (aflatoxins), packaging and plastics, etc.
Selenium also has a detoxifying effect on many of these toxins and therefore protects the body from the sometimes serious illnesses resulting from chronic toxin exposure.
No wonder selenium is also considered a potent agent for effective cancer protection. Because it is true: the better you are supplied with selenium, the better you are protected against cancer. Selenium deficiency, on the other hand, is associated with an increased risk of cancer.
The risk of bladder cancer, lung cancer, stomach cancer, esophagus cancer, and liver cancer is said to increase by a factor of two to three in selenium deficiency. When it comes to thyroid cancer, a selenium deficiency is said to increase the risk of developing the disease almost eightfold.
The higher the selenium level, the less dangerous mercury is
Current findings confirm the detoxifying effect of selenium. For example, in 2010, Ralston et al. from the University of North Dakota in the journal Toxicology: The higher the selenium level, the less dangerous it is when poisons such as e.g. B. consume methylmercury.
This fact is also known from livestock farming (since the 1960s): If animal feed contains little selenium, then mercury exposure leads to serious damage to health. On the other hand, if the animals are well supplied with selenium, the heavy metal does not have nearly as bad an effect.
Not only can a selenium-rich diet prevent toxins from methylmercury—a particularly toxic organic form of mercury—it can even correct some of the most serious symptoms that can occur as a result of mercury exposure.
Why is mercury so harmful? The researchers from North Dakota also explain this in their article:
Mercury renders detoxification enzymes ineffective
Methylmercury irreversibly inhibits selenium-dependent enzymes, the selenoenzymes. These enzymes include the glutathione peroxidase mentioned above.
Selenoenzymes prevent oxidative attacks throughout the body, and they can also repair oxidative damage to a certain extent. They are particularly active in the brain and in neuroendocrine tissue.
The latter is a type of hormone-producing nerve tissue. It is found primarily in the gastrointestinal tract, but also in the lungs, kidneys, ovaries, and skin.
If the selenoenzymes in these sensitive tissues and organs are impeded or even inactivated, this naturally leads to all kinds of health problems.
Mercury inactivates the enzymes by binding to the selenium. The second favorite binding partner of mercury is sulfur. But mercury binds to selenium a million times better than to sulfur.
In this way, the selenoenzymes are severely damaged, their regeneration is prevented and the body’s own detoxification is blocked.
This explains why in populations where a lot of mercury-contaminated fish is eaten but the diet is generally low in selenium, it can be observed again and again that this has a negative effect on the children’s IQ.
If, on the other hand, the diet is rich in selenium, frequent consumption of fish contaminated with mercury does not seem to do any harm. The selenium can even improve the children’s IQ here.
Selenium ensures the elimination of mercury
In 2012, selenium’s detoxifying effects were tested in Wanshan, China, a region where people suffered from elevated mercury levels. 103 volunteers signed up for the study. 53 of them received selenium yeast (100 µg) daily for three months, and the remaining 50 received a placebo preparation (yeast without selenium).
One could now observe that the excretion of mercury via the urine in the selenium group increased, while the malondialdehyde values in the urine decreased. Malondialdehyde is an important marker for oxidative stress. And since mercury exposure is always associated with severe oxidative stress, falling malondialdehyde levels indicate falling mercury exposure.
All of these facts suggest that you urgently need to optimize your own selenium supply in order to be much better protected against possible environmental toxins and heavy metal pollution in the future.
But no sooner have you decided to take selenium or to eat selenium-rich foods than you often come across information that says selenium is carcinogenic and increases the risk of diabetes.
Selenium and the risk of cancer
Why is it that selenium is associated with an increased risk of cancer, especially since there are numerous studies that have found the opposite?
Very simple: It depends on how high your own selenium level is, and it depends on whether you take selenium alone or possibly together with inferior (synthetic) and other food supplements that are dosed far too high – as the following clinical study shows 2013 shows:
In 35,000 male participants over the age of 55, it was shown that those men who already had an excessive selenium status (measured in the toenails) and also took selenium (200 µg per day) had a 62 percent increased risk of developing prostate cancer. If they also took vitamin E (400 IU, which is more than 30 times the requirement), the risk of prostate cancer increased by as much as 224 percent.
However, men who had normal or low selenium status and were supplemented with selenium did not have an increased risk of cancer.
So selenium is only harmful if it is taken in when the selenium levels are already far too high. The situation is similar to other minerals. With iron, for example, you should never have an above-average supply, as this not only damages the cardiovascular system but is also considered an enormous cancer risk.
Selenium and the risk of diabetes
Some studies in recent years have also found a connection between selenium levels and an increased risk of diabetes. The more selenium a person takes in per day, the higher their risk of diabetes – so it says there.
In 2010, Stranges et al. found that out of 7,180 study participants, 250 developed diabetes after 16 years. Those who developed diabetes would have consumed 60.9 µg of selenium per day with their diet over the years, the others “only” 56.8 µg.
Five years later, in a study by Wei et al. similar. The participants who developed diabetes (525 out of 5,400 people) had consumed an average of 46.7 µg of selenium per day, the others 43.1 µg.
The difference is minimal and, in our opinion, not crucial for the development of diabetes, especially when considering the participants’ other risk factors.
For example, those women who got diabetes were older, heavier, and less educated. The latter often indicates an unhealthier lifestyle – and it should be well known that overweight people and older people are more prone to diabetes than slim and younger people.
In 2007, Stranges et al. on 1,202 participants how long-term (practiced for almost 8 years) dietary supplementation with 200 µg selenium affects the risk of diabetes. Half of the subjects received selenium, and the other half a placebo.
It turned out that selenium could not prevent diabetes. There were even more diabetics in the selenium group than in the placebo group.
The subjects were 63 years old at the start of the study. In this age group, it is “normal” for 9-10 percent of the population to develop diabetes. In the present study, 97 out of 1,202 fell ill.
If selenium would increase the risk of diabetes, many more people in the selenium group should have developed diabetes. But the number of sick people was within a normal range.
In addition, the study was carried out in the USA, where people are known to have a very good supply of selenium. At the start of the study, all participants therefore also had values of around 120 µg/l. So these were people who would never have needed selenium supplementation.
In the course of the study, however, the values in the selenium group rose to 180 to 200 µg/l, values that almost indicate an overdose, values at which the study participants – in our opinion – should not have been left for years.
So when is a dietary supplement with selenium useful? Or is it enough to eat selenium-rich foods? How much selenium do you need daily? What is the difference between organic and inorganic selenium compounds? And how do you measure the selenium level?
