The Specific Uses of Minerals or Elements in the Body-Sodium -Chlorine

August 2007: Volume 2 Number 8

Sodium [Na] – Chlorine [Cl] – Sodium and Chloride minerals usually work together in the body. Sodium Chloride, common table salt, is used to make our food taste better. The chloride is a constituent of gastric juice that helps us digest our food. Sodium Chloride flows in our blood and it is essential for many life processes of the human body. Sodium is transported into the blood stream from the intestines by an active transport system. The water and chloride ion follows the sodium ion to equalize the electrical gradient left by the absence of sodium ions. Other ions are absorbed through the mucosa of the intestine and are controlled by mechanisms and needs of the body. Calcium is absorbed in relation to the parathyroid hormone secreted by parathyroid glands and vitamin D. Iron is actively absorbed in proportion to the body’s needs for iron. Potassium, magnesium, phosphate, and other minerals can be actively absorbed into the blood stream by various control systems.

Sodium usually works with potassium to cause action potentials in the nervous system. Action potentials are what makes muscles move, endocrine glands produce hormones, eyes communicate with the brain to show you pictures, helps to digest your food, helps you hear, and all the other marvelous things that your body can do. The active transport system for sodium and potassium is found in almost all cells and uses the direct energy of ATP to move these minerals in the body. ATPase is the transporter protein enzyme that assists in these actions.

Nerve and muscle cells respond to electro-chemical stimulus that changes the resting membrane potential. Changes in the membrane potential send electrical messages from cell to cell. This communicating system is marvelous, because it take place so fast between stimuli and the action site. It is amazing that a few minerals make this system work.

Chloride, a major anion outside the cell, generally follows a concentration change in proportion to the changes of sodium and inversely with the changes in bicarbonate concentration. The chloride mineral fine tunes or buffers the changes in sodium to potassium concentration ratios. The sodium-chloride-water balance is also maintained by hormone and enzyme regulation. The regulation of this balance is done by urinary concentration mediated by anti-diuretic hormone and the glomerular filtration rate. Important minerals required by the heart are sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium and magnesium.

We will discuss Magnesium (Mg) mineral in our next lecture as a continuation of the specific uses of minerals or element in our bodies.

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