Could Sulfur Deficiency be a Contributing Factor in
Obesity,
Heart Disease, Alzheimer's
and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?
1. Introduction
Obesity is quickly becoming the number one health issue confronting
America today, and has also risen to epidemic proportions
worldwide. Its spread has been associated with the adoption of a
Western-style diet. However, I believe that the widespread consumption of food
imports produced by U.S. companies plays a crucial role in the rise in
obesity worldwide. Specifically, these "fast foods" typically include
heavily processed derivatives of corn, soybeans, and grains, grown on
highly efficient mega-farms. Furthermore, I will argue
in this essay that one of the core underlying causes of obesity may
be sulfur deficiency.
Sulfur is the eighth most common element by mass in the
> human body,
behind oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, and
potassium. The two sulfur-containing amino
acids,
methionine and cysteine, play essential physiological roles
throughout the body. However, sulfur has been consistently overlooked
in addressing the issues of nutritional deficiencies. In
fact, the American Food and Drug Administration has not even assigned
a minimum daily requirement (MDR) for sulfur. One consequence of
sulfur's limbo nutritional status is that it is omitted from the long list of
supplements that are commonly artificially added to popular foods like
cereal.
Sulfur is found in a large number of foods, and, as a consequence, it
is assumed that almost any diet would meet the minimum daily
requirements. Excellent sources are eggs, onions, garlic, and leafy
dark green vegetables like kale and broccoli. Meats, nuts, and
seafood also contain sulfur. Methionine, an essential amino acid,
in that we are unable to synthesize it ourselves, is found mainly
in egg whites and fish. A diet high in grains like bread and cereal
is likely to be deficient in sulfur. Increasingly, whole foods such
as corn and soybeans are disassembled into component parts with chemical
names, and then reassembled into heavily processed foods. Sulfur is
lost along the way, and there is a lack of awareness that this matters.
Experts have recently become aware that sulfur depletion in the soil
creates a serious deficiency for plants [Jez2008], brought about in
part by improved efficiency in farming and in part, ironically, by
successful attempts to clean up air pollution. Over the last two
decades, the U.S. farming industry has steadily consolidated into highly
technologized mega farms. The high yield per acre associated with
these farms results in greater depletion of sulfur each year by the
tall, densely planted crops. Plants require sulfur in the form of the
sulfate radical (SO
4-2). Bacteria in well aerated soil, similar to
nitrogen fixing bacteria, can convert elemental sulfur into sulfate
through an oxidation process. Coal contains a significant amount of
sulfur, and factories that burn coal for energy release sulfur dioxide
into the air. Over time, sun exposure converts the sulfur dioxide to
sulfate, a significant contributor to acid rain. Acid rain is a
serious pollutant, in that hydrogen sulfate, a potent acid,
penetrates lakes, making them too acidic for lifeforms to thrive.
The Clean Air Act, enacted by congress in 1980, has led to substantial
decreases in the amount of acid rain released into the
atmosphere. Factories have introduced highly effective
scrubbing technologies to comply with the law, and, as a consequence,
less sulfate makes its way back into the soil.
Modern farmers apply highly concentrated fertilizer to their soil, but
this fertilizer is typically enriched in phosphates and often contains
no sulfur. Excess phosphates interfere with sulfur absorption.
In the past, organic matter and plant residues remained after the
fruit and grain were harvested. Such accumulating organic matter
used to be a major source of recyclable sulfur. However, many modern
machinery-based methods remove a great deal more of the organic matter
in addition to the edible portions of the plant. So the sulfur in the
decaying organic matter is also lost.
It is estimated that humans obtain about 10% of their sulfur supply
from drinking water. Remarkably, people who drink soft water have an
increased risk to heart disease compared to people who drink hard
water [Crawford1967]. Many possible reasons have been suggested for
why this might be true (
Proposed theories for soft water/hard water
differences in heart disease),
and just about every trace metal has been considered as a possibility
[Biorck1965]. However, I believe that the real reason may simply be that hard
water is more likely to contain sulfur. The sulfate ion is the most
useful form of sulfur for humans to ingest. Water softeners provide a
convenient environment for sulfur-reducing bacteria, which convert
sulfate (SO
4-2) into sulfide (S
-2),
emitting hydrogen sulfide gas. Hydrogen sulfide gas is a poison that
has been known to cause nausea, illness and, in extreme cases,
death. When the bacteria are thriving, the gas will diffuse into the
air and give off a foul odor. Obviously, it is rare that the
concentration is sufficiently high to cause severe problems. But the
sulfate ion is lost through the process. Water that is naturally soft,
such as water collected from rain run-off, also contains little or no
sulfur, because it has gone through an evaporation-condensation cycle,
which leaves behind all the heavier molecules, including sulfur....
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