The Beginning of the Sulfur Story

Posted by Mark Sircus - Director on 28 June 2011

The American Food and Drug Administration, asleep at the switch as usual, has not 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.

Dr. Gabriela Segura posted an important page on the Internet that introduces something I overlooked in my first report on how to protect oneself from radiation as well as how to treat radiation sickness. We need extra sulfur in our systems to help protect and treat radiation contamination. Segura published that, “Sulfur has a long history of use as an antidote for acute exposure to radioactive material.”

I could probably write a book on sulfur like I did on magnesium, iodine and sodium bicarbonate. Sulfur takes us, like these other basic minerals, down to the very basic structure of life. When we use these common substances as medicines we are treating and addressing the foundations of healthy cell physiology.

In my book New Paradigms in Diabetes I carefully address the issue of disulfide bonds because mercury and other heavy metals like uranium and lead attack these sensitive sulfur bonds. Disulfides dissolved in water are very sensitive to radiation damage. Mercury, in its various forms, all of which have been studied in universities around the world, has shown a great affinity for certain minerals, as well as protein and non-protein molecules in the body.

The science of mercury toxicity shows us that mercurials have a great attraction to the sulfhydryls or thiols. The mercury atom or molecule will tend to bind with any molecule present that has sulfur or a sulfur-hydrogen combination in its structure. A thiol is any organic compound containing a univalent radical called a sulfhydryl and identified by the symbol -SH (sulfur-hydrogen). A thiol can attract one atom of mercury in the ionized form and have it combine with itself. Because it is a radical, it can enter into or leave this combination without any change. Mercury and lead both have a great affinity for sulfur and sulfhydryls and are capable of affecting the transsulfuration pathways in the body. Uranium would be included here because it has the same chemical properties of lead.

The most common mode of breakdown is the sulfur-sulfur bonds. Organic sulfur is an acid-forming mineral that is part of the chemical structure of the amino acids methionine, cysteine, taurine, and glutathione. Sulfur disinfects the blood, helps the body to resist bacteria, and protects the protoplasm of cells. It aids in necessary oxidation reactions in the body, stimulates bile secretion, and protects against the harmful effects of radiation and pollution. It is found in hemoglobin and in all body tissues, and is needed for the synthesis of collagen, a principal protein that gives the skin its structural integrity.

I wrote all about this in New Paradigms in Diabetes because insulin has three sulfur-containing cross-linkages and the insulin receptor has a tyrosine-kinase-containing sulfur bond, which are the preferred targets for binding by mercury, lead and uranium. Should any of these heavy metals attach to one of these three sulfur bonds it will interfere with the normal biological function of the insulin molecule.

The average adult inhales thousands of trillions of mercury atoms a day from a mouth full of amalgam, fish provide trillions more, the air more, and in children, vaccines provide one-day surges of trillions of mercury molecules in the form of ethyl-mercury, which is vastly more toxic than metallic mercury. Insulin molecules are directly assaulted as are insulin receptor sites.

If we do not get the correct amount of organic sulfur, or it’s weakened through bonding, it cannot do these four crucial things: (1) facilitate the detoxification of heavy metals, (2) effectively enable the transport of oxygen across the cell membrane, (3) foster healthy cell regeneration, or (4) act as the key agent in the effective utilization of amino acids. Four of the more crucial amino acids, methionine, cystine, cysteine, and taurine, cannot effectively function without organic sulfur.