In the journey of discovery of how nutrients, in various forms, affect our bodies, I have been really amazed at the importance of sulfur for our health.  I guess this should not have surprised me as you think about many of the health remedies that have a sulfur connection.  All mud baths and mineral waters have sulfur, usually as sulfate, in their make-up.  Garlic has always been associated with its many curative properties.  Garlic, even in low sulfur soils, will find a way to reach high sulfur content.  There are over thirty sulfur compounds to be found in garlic.  When soaking in Epsom salts baths, it has typically been thought that the magnesium was the curative ingredient in the magnesium sulfate.

As I discovered that vitamin D3 controls the transporters for sulfate in various organs, I now wonder if this is not part of the curative effect of vitamin D3.  Vitamin D3 improves the ability of our bodies in how we handle sulfur.  As you already know from my earlier post, sulfur is extremely important in many biological functions.

I have some issue with high blood pressure, but not high enough to where I needed a med.  Although at times, my blood pressure has been much higher than it should have been.  It was not unusual to see numbers of 130/90.  This is caller pre-hypertension.  As I begin to supplement with vitamin D3 and then magnesium, my blood pressure became normal reading typically around 125/80.  As I added sulfate to my diet through additional cruciferous vegetables and alliums and mineral water, my blood pressure has dropped again.  It now typically runs at 115/70.  This is a significant indicator of improving health.

It seems that our medical professional in the US have not considered sulfate when trying to reduce high blood pressure.  It seems that they have always thought it was the magnesium in magnesium sulfate that was effective.  Consider this article from Livestrong.  The article starts by quoting a physician saying that magnesium sulfate is the only treatment for high blood pressure and then proceeds to discuss magnesium.  The assumption has always been that we have an excess of sulfate available to us.

Intravenous magnesium sulfate has always been the choice in reducing high blood pressure issues like pre-eclampsia and pulmonary hypertension.  Why have we not considered that it was the sulfate as the primary actor and not the magnesium?  The Chinese seem to be ahead of us in their approach to discovering methods to combat hypertension with sulfate.  Consider these two journal papers:  Effects of sulfur dioxide on hypoxic pulmonary vascular structure remodeling, Sun, et.al. and Endogenously generated sulfur dioxide and its vasorelaxant effect in rats, Shu-xu Du, et. Al.

Sulfur dioxide, a toxic gas usually associated with acid rain, is the effective form of sulfur for hypertension.  Sulfur dioxide is not to be confused with hydrogen sulfide, the toxic gas found in sewers.  It seems that sulfur dioxide works in synergy with nitric oxide in this relaxation effect in our blood vessels.  It is interesting to understand this because one of the catalysts for the production of acid rain from sulfur dioxide is also nitric oxide.  How odd.  Certainly the body cannot generate the sulfur dioxide as needed if we do not have enough sulfur in our bodies.

The intake of sulfur compounds most be made on a daily basis.  As we have discussed before, sulfate in the body acts as our waste removal system.  This constantly depletes the sulfur stores in our bodies.  Nature has made sulfur as sulfate readily available to us through high mineral content water.  However, we have consistently removed the minerals from our water because of issues like hardness and plugging water piping.

Eat your vegetables, drink your mineral water, and soak in an Epsom salts bath while being replete in vitamin D.  Imagine yourself soaking in a mineral spring in the summer sun – ah, the curative effect.  – Pandemic Survivor