#676: Gout Explained: Uric Acid, Sugar, Red Meat and What Really Matters

Now, as far as silica goes, when it comes to human physiology, for a long time, it was basically dismissed as something inert.

Doesn't really matter.

It goes in, it goes out.

It doesn't change anything, but that's changed a ton over the last several decades.

And now we know that there are very specific tissues, including bone, teeth, connective tissue, and skin.

And I'm going to talk about arteries too, because that's a big deal that makes silica actually something that has a very functional role in all of those areas.

Now, you may have heard episode 633 with Jody from BioSil, and we talked about a very specific type of silica there.

I'm going to talk about silica in more general terms here.

And that's another show that if this show fascinates you, probably would be worth giving a listen to give you a little

bit more of the whole picture.

Now, I want to be careful when I talk about this because there are minerals that we don't want in our body.

But they're still minerals.

Aluminum is a perfect example.

And fluoride would be another example or bromide.

And they'll store in very specific tissues in the body.

The thyroid, for instance, is a great example when it comes to fluoride and bromine.

And then when it comes to the brain, aluminum, of course, is a major concern.

And we'll talk a little bit more about that later in the show as well.

So just because we find silica in concentrations in a bunch of these specific tissues doesn't necessarily mean that it's supposed to be there.

But when we look at the evidence, it's very, very clear that silica plays a very supportive role in proper maintenance of soft tissue.

And when you look at the fact that silica is used in just about every human cell, we start to recognize that it really is an element that we need to pay a lot of attention to.

Silica is called biologically an essential trace element.

There is no RDA on it, much like what I said for boron and so many other minerals that are in this series.

That doesn't mean that we don't need it.

It just means that the government, for whatever reason, has decided that there's not a deficiency disease that's a big enough deal that they should recommend it on a daily basis.