We talk endlessly about protein, about vitamins, about the latest superfood. Minerals rarely get the same airtime — and yet they are the literal scaffolding of the body, the electrical charge behind every heartbeat, and the raw material your bones are built from. This piece is an invitation to look closer at something we absorb from the earth and carry inside us for a lifetime.
What Are Minerals, Exactly?
A mineral, in the nutritional sense, is an inorganic element — meaning it doesn’t contain carbon — that the body requires to function but cannot manufacture on its own. Unlike vitamins, which are organic compounds the body can sometimes synthesise or store in complex forms, minerals arrive in their raw elemental state. Calcium is calcium. Iron is iron. There’s no shortcut, no internal factory. Every atom of mineral in your body was mined from soil, drawn up by a plant root, eaten by an animal or a human, and passed along the chain.
Minerals connect your body directly to the mineral composition of the earth beneath your feet — to rock, to soil health, to the water table. When soil is depleted, the food grown in it carries less. Mineralisation isn’t just a biological process; it’s geological.
Inside the body, minerals perform work far beyond “building strong bones.” They regulate the electrical signalling that fires your heartbeat and every neural impulse. They activate enzymes — the catalysts behind nearly every chemical reaction your body runs, from digestion to detoxification to hormone production. They hold water in balance across your cells. Without adequate mineral supply, none of these systems run cleanly.
How Many Minerals Exist?
Geologically, there are thousands — somewhere in the range of 3,800 to 5,000 known minerals occur naturally on Earth, most of them irrelevant to human physiology (quartz and feldspar won’t help your thyroid).
Of that vast catalogue, only 21 elements are currently classified as essential to human health. "Essential" here means that the body cannot produce them internally, and without them, dysfunction or disease follows. These 21 fall into two broad camps:
Macrominerals — needed in larger quantities (generally more than 5 grams stored in the body): calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, sodium, chloride, and magnesium.
Trace minerals — needed in smaller amounts but no less critical: iron, zinc, copper, iodine, selenium, manganese, chromium, molybdenum, fluoride, and several others.
Zoom out further and an interesting fact emerges: roughly 96% of your total body mass is made up of just four elements — oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, mostly bound up in water, protein, and fat. The remaining 4% of your body weight is minerals. That sliver is doing an outsized amount of work.
The Percentages: What’s Actually In You
Based on data from the International Commission on Radiological Protection, here’s roughly how the major minerals break down as a percentage of total body weight in an average adult:
Calcium — ~1.5%
Phosphorus — ~1.0%
Potassium — ~0.4%
Sulfur — ~0.3%
Sodium — ~0.2%
Chlorine — ~0.2%
Magnesium — ~0.1%
Iron, iodine, and other trace elements — <0.1% eachSmall numbers, enormous consequences. Calcium alone — at just 1.5% of your body weight — is responsible for bone density, muscle contraction (including your heartbeat), blood clotting, and nerve transmission. A percentage point can carry the weight of an entire physiological system.
The Most Important Minerals — and What They Actually Do
Calcium — Structural integrity of bone and teeth, muscle contraction, nerve signalling, blood clotting.
Phosphorus — Partners with calcium in bone formation; central to how cells generate and store energy (it’s a core component of ATP).
Potassium — Governs fluid balance and the electrical charge that allows your heart and nervous system to fire correctly.
Magnesium — Involved in over 300 enzymatic reactions; supports muscle relaxation, nervous system regulation, and energy production. Chronically under-consumed in modern diets.
Sodium and Chloride — Fluid balance, nerve transmission, blood pressure regulation. Rarely deficient, often excessive.
Iron — Carries oxygen through the blood via haemoglobin. Deficiency is the most common nutritional deficiency worldwide, particularly among menstruating women.
Zinc — Immune function, wound healing, and a cofactor in hundreds of enzymatic processes.
Iodine — Essential for thyroid hormone production, which governs metabolism, temperature regulation, and — critically — foetal brain development during pregnancy.
Selenium — A powerful antioxidant cofactor, also central to thyroid hormone conversion.
Where to Source Them
The best mineral sources are, unsurprisingly, close to the earth — foods that haven’t travelled far from soil, root, or sea. So local, from your farmers markets, and where possible biodynamic / organic.
Calcium: dairy, sardines and tinned fish with bones, leafy greens (kale, bok choy), sesame seeds and tahini.
Magnesium: pumpkin seeds, leafy greens, legumes, dark chocolate, whole grains.
Potassium: bananas, potatoes (with skin), avocados, leafy greens, coconut water.
Iron: red meat, liver, lentils, spinach — paired with vitamin C to improve absorption.
Zinc: oysters, red meat, pumpkin seeds, chickpeas.
Iodine: seaweed, iodised salt, dairy, seafood.
Selenium: Brazil nuts (one or two a day covers your requirement), fish, eggs.
Sulfur: eggs, garlic, onions, cruciferous vegetables.
A note worth including for readers: soil quality matters. Decades of industrial farming have measurably depleted mineral content in commercial produce compared to fifty years ago. This is part of why sourcing from mineral-rich, well-managed soil — or supplementing thoughtfully where diet alone can’t keep pace — has become a live conversation in nutrition science, not just a wellness trend.
We also suggest having a basic daily fulvic mineral, that contains a lot of these minerals. Our recommendations are Black Stuff or Manna Vitality
I use either of these daily along with the ZenCleanse products — Ambrosia is my current daily go-to as I have been experiencing insomnia as of lately, but Chi is also an incredible daily supplement to keep the body mineralised, counteract deficiencies and keep all of the body systems vital and well.
Why This Matters Beyond Nutrition
Mineralisation is, in a real sense, the story of how the inorganic becomes alive. Rock becomes soil, soil becomes plant, plant becomes flesh, flesh becomes thought and heartbeat and movement. When we talk about “grounding” or “being embodied,” there’s a literal substrate underneath the metaphor — actual atoms of calcium and magnesium and iron, mined from the earth, holding your structure together and firing your nervous system in real time.
Minerals rarely announce themselves the way a vitamin deficiency might. Their absence shows up slowly — in fatigue, in muscle cramps, in a nervous system that never quite settles, in bones that thin without warning. Paying attention to mineralisation is a quiet, foundational form of care.
Not only that, but as a company that teaches Somatics, we feel a sense of duty of care to also speak about mineralisation. Because a body that is not electric, alive, which literally comes from being mineralised — is a body that cannot be revived through somatic therapies alone. We need the ground work. And that work happens through mineralisation.
Our Somatic Therapy programs are truly Wholistic in this sense — we are always looking at the whole human picture.
We have two upcoming trainings.
Spinal Attunement Byron Bay with Sigourney Belle - find out more / apply
and Sigourney’s one year Medical Mediumship Training — Early bird ends September 1st 2026 — find out more / apply
Sources: International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) body composition data; standard nutritional science references on essential mineral classification and dietary sources.
