SACRED SELENIUM
by DrBenGo Healthwarrior
iMedDo.club/news November, 2022
Greetings iMedDo newsletter subscribers and Happy Thanksgiving! This month I’m talking about the nutrient Selenium which is named after Selene the Moon Goddess. My interest in Selenium is primarily related to mercury detox as well as thyroid function, and in particular, I want to elucidate how Selenium supplementation is synergistic with iMedDo System in particular with nascent iodine: NeuIodine. In this episode I discuss the two thyroid selenoproteins, and discuss how thyroid physiology of glutathione peroxidase (GPO) elucidates why nascent iodine is better than iodide supplementation. Selenium is most known for its anti-oxidant properties, anti-cancer and anti-viral properties and being a critical trace nutrient for all life, but selenium has a darker side that it can kill you if get too much, but you can’t live without it! Just like the moon, beautiful but scary, there is no doubt that selenium is just as impressive, and just like the moon, the more you known about it, the more you become even more impressed as you find it hides a much deeper secret concerning alternative energy processing in the mitochondria. Selenium is a mandala mirror whose study reflects light into our own life’s energy and leads to deeper understanding of how iodine and oxygen and even silver are used in the body to protect life during metabolism and stress. An important finding of this work looking at thyroid physiology is that increased selenium is recommended if you are using iodide form of iodine to counteract oxidative stress (I recommend nascent iodine not iodide), and increased selenium is recommended to protect against mercury toxicity, so selenium nutrition is synergistic with iMedDo System which uses iodine and silver for mercury detox. Selenium and silver work together in the mitochondria where silver kills organisms using older energy pathways like cancer and bacteria, and selenium and iodine protects mitochondria in healthy cells.
SELENIUM THE BIG PICTURE
Once again I’ve written a rather dense article, and I don’t want you my dear readers to miss the big picture which is simply that I recommend that in addition to taking your iMedDo Detox System containing nascent iodine, colloidal silver and gold, that you also take a multivitamin and the one that I recommend is the one designed by DrCalinPop who is a silver & gold expert. In his multivitamin it does contain selenium in both organic and inorganic forms both of which are important to get. iMedDo System makes your other vitamins and nutrients work better, and for the first time I have confirmed that conversely if you take selenium it will make both NeuIodine and NeuSilver work even better as selenium is used in thyroid hormone signaling and in mitochondrial protection. But even if you are getting enough selenium it won’t work unless you take iodine, and in this article I will explain why taking iMedDo System with nascent iodine is better than Lugol’s or other iodine with iodide form which has to do with thyroid physiology related to selenium.
SILVER VS SELENIUM
In alchemy it is silver that is associated with the moon, so this new element selenium being named after the moon has a lot to live up if it is to rival silver for “moon healing” properties! Silver is anti-cancer and anti-viral and anti-inflammatory. Selenium is anti-cancer and anti-viral and an anti-oxidant. Silver has all kinds of additional healing properties like being anti-bacterial and anti-fungal, and doing some cool stuff with gold protecting DNA. Selenium also has all kinds of additional healing properties mostly related to oxygen and sulfur chemistry, protects proteins from oxidation, and seems to have some overlap with silver and gold for DNA protection possibly through copper and iron pathways. So yeah, selenium seems as magical and sacred to me as silver, but big difference whereas you can’t hurt yourself talking high does of silver (at least not with food grade nano-colloidal coated silver NeuSilver; you can hurt yourself, even kill yourself, if you were to take too high doses of selenium! So silver seems safer, but selenium is just exceedingly impressive in that it seems to have the scope of healing as large as silver but it its own complementary way. Also note that selenium is not even a metal, so comparing it to silver metal seems a bit unfair as selenium is more appropriately compared to sulfur. But since sulfur can bind to silver, selenium can also bind to silver, and so the interaction and synergy between selenium and silver pathways are not necessarily that surprising or unexpected. Since I have the best silver & gold detox system, am very excited to present my findings on how selenium is synergistic with silver and gold which is my ongoing research interest to elucidate.
SELENIUM VS IODINE
Iodine is known to affect metabolism, like completely control metabolism, having a positive effect on mitochondria and energy production. Selenium is known to have a positive effect on mitochondria and energy production related somehow to accumulating in and protecting mitochondrial membrane. Selenium is used in proteins which keep hydrogen peroxide from causing oxidative damage to proteins and is used in the thyroid as an integral part of processing iodide form of iodine. Also selenium is also used in thyroid proteins to activate thyroid hormones directly interacting with iodine. Iodine is critical to the brain, and selenium also is critical for the brain via regulating anti-oxidant molecules that send signals to the brain, as well as by keeping the brain’s processing of oxygen from creating damage via oxidized proteins. So yeah, selenium is as magical and sacred to me as iodine nutrient and is definitely synergistic with iodine as selenium can directly interact with iodine in thyroid and we need to talk about that! Since I have the best iodine health supplement system, I’m extremely excited to present my finding regarding how selenium works synergistically with iMedDo:
IMPORTANT FINDINGS ABOUT SELENIUM & IODINE:
SELENIUM & IODIDE
The use of iodide instead of nascent iodine creates more hydrogen peroxide in thyroid and thus is more critical that you get selenium if you are using Lugol’s or other iodide containing iodine instead of nascent iodine like NeuIodine. NeuIodine does not contain any iodide, as energized fat soluble molecular iodine I2 is used instead which is in equilibrium with nascent iodine which requires less energy and creates less oxidative damage in the thyroid to use, and that is most likely the reason why people prefer nascent iodine to older forms of iodine like Lugol’s which contain iodide.
The enzyme in the thyroid that converts iodide to nascent iodine intermediate for organification into thyroid hormones is called thyroid peroxidase (TPO), and like the name sounds it creates peroxides (H202, hyrdogen peroxide) in the process. Selenium in the enzyme known as glutathione peroxidase (GPO) is able to get rid of the excess hydrogen peroxide by turning it into water before it can oxidize/damage surrounding proteins. The way selenium is used in GPO is very similar to how selenium is used in other seleno-proteins and revolved around sulphur chemistry where a protective molecule called glutathione with double bonded sulphur G-S-S-G (oxidized form) is converted to two molecules of reduced glutathione form GSH, GSH. Selenium proteins uses selenium instead of sulphur at an active site where selenium replaces sulphur in a cysteine amino acid using a selenocysteine instead.
I know what I described sounds pretty complicated and it is. The main thing I want you to kn here is that selenium is used for sulfur chemistry and the sulphur chemistry is used for anti-oxidant chemistry to protect the thyroid from oxidative damage from the processing of iodide. That’s why selenium is thought of as an anti-oxidant which is technically incorrect but correct enough since selenium itself is not anti-oxidant, but selenium in GPO protein in complex system with glutathione oxidation and reduction using sulphur chemistry is an antioxidant in the sense that it controls hydrogen peroxide before it can cause oxidative damage since hydrogen peroxide can break down to form oxygen free radicals. Clear as mud?
The body needs iodine and will get it any way it can. Iodide is the unenergized/reduced form of iodine which has to be oxidized, have an electron removed from it to form nascent iodine so that it can be used to make thyroid hormones.
It’s not easy to oxidize iodine, so to oxidize iodide it requires well oxygen! Oxygen and Iodine are all very electronegative, and something even more electronegative than iodine is needed, and things like that are generally highly toxic like fluorine or cyanide! Oxygen is more electronegative than iodine. Selenium is not, and electronegativity decreased going down chalcogens so even though oxygen is same family as sulfur and selenium they are very different, where oxygen is its own beast but sulfur and selenium are similar.
So when you give you body iodide or when your body doesn’t have a fresh source of nascent iodine and has to recycle under-energized iodine (iodide form), then it still has to work hard to oxidize the iodide first before it can use it.
This result in creation of hydrogen peroxide which can potentially cause oxidative damage to surrounding proteins, and that is why the body has a system of using selenoprotein (GPO) to handle the oxygen problem.
SELENIUM & NASCENT IODINE
Now that we known how selenium works in the first part of thyroid hormone production from iodide, it starts to become more clear why supplementing nascent iodine is better than supplementing iodide form of iodide.
The reason is because the thyroid can use nascent iodine to create organified iodine in the thyroid hormones bypassing the energy intensive and hydrogen peroxide generating step of having to convert iodide into nascent iodine first.
Also, by supplementing nascent iodine as energized molecular iodine (which is in equilibrium with nascent iodine) which is fat soluble, it bypasses other hard work the body has to do to process iodine into protective and anti-cancer iodo-lipids as the thyroid doesn’t have to work so hard to convert iodide water soluble form into a fat soluble form.
SELENIUM AND THYROID HORMONE ACTIVATION
The thyroid converts iodine in water soluble form (iodide) into fat soluble iodine containing thyroglobulin molecules called thyroid hormones which are used to deliver energized organified iodine throughout the body via blood. Oxidized/Energized Iodine is like Dune spice of the body is all valuable for some unknown reason related to metabolism. My thinking is that like oxygen, iodine is critical to respiration as an ultimate electron acceptor. It seems to me the body must have evolved to use iodine because of its chemical similarity to oxygen also as some kind of alternative ultimate electron acceptor, and that might explain why oxidized iodine (iodine capable of accepting electrons) is so valuable, and why iodide the reduced form of iodine is not valuable until/unless the body recycles it back to oxidize form(s). Nacent iodine is more oxidized than iodide. Anyway, once either nascent iodine, or iodide converted to nascent iodine is incorporated into thyroid hormones (T4 &T3), there is one thyroid hormone (T3) which is more biologically active than the other.
Okay I know that was a lot but stay with me. Here is where selenium comes in again.
There is a SECOND selenium containing protein in the thyroid known as thyroid de-iodinase that removes iodine! Why they heck would we want to remove iodine, the thyroid is supposed to be making iodine in packaged form to ship out to the body!
It appears in the making of thyroid hormones cyclical proteins are used which put iodine all over a tyrosine amino acid in different positions, and the extra iodines have to be later removed to make most activate the thyroid hormone. The thyroid hormone made with three iodines on it (T3) is more biologically active than the one with four iodines on it (T4). So, the body needs a way to REMOVE one iodine and the way it does it is with a selenium protein called thyroxine de-iodinase (DI). DI is the most terrible abbreviation as it sounds like DIE which is a terrible name for what is going on here as it should be called LIVE instead! Because what is going on is that thyroid hormones are being activated, metabolism increases, life increases is the opposite of dying! It’s living! Yes it seems backwards because removing an iodine to activate rest of the tri-iodine containing thyroid hormone but that’s just the way it works. For more information about thyroid physiology with some additional complexity going on here than I’m telling you about check out this 2022 review paper: Physiology, Thyroid Hormone.
SUMMARY:
There are two selenium containing enzymes used in the thyroid in the processing of iodine:
- Glutathione Peroxidase (GPO)
- Thyroxine de-iodinase (DI), my abbreviation (LIVE)
The first (GPO) is used to process iodide form of iodine, and the second (DI/”LIVE”) is used to interact with organified iodine directly by removal ultimately turning T4 into more active T3 form.
Selenium is useful for both keeping hydrogen peroxide in check and is also useful in protein which directly interacts with iodine so selenium is pretty darn important!
I postulate that using nascent iodine instead of iodide helps people who are both iodine & selenium deficient because it doesn’t stress the GPO pathway like using iodide does. By not using iodide and getting iodine in nascent form instead you have less potential for oxidative damage in thyroid and if you are selenium deficient, the selenium available can be preferentially used for LIVE pathway instead of GPO pathway.
IODINE VS SELENIUM DEFICIENCY
Most people are not selenium deficient, but most people are iodine deficient. So my old approach was just to give people nascent iodine and not worry about selenium levels. My thinking is that even if you are low on selenium that by getting nascent iodine will take the stress off GPO pathway in thyroid so what selenium you have can go towards activating thyroid hormones LIVE pathway.
Looking at the science, it looks like you CAN GIVE IODINE without selenium no problem (what I do) but you SHOULD NOT give selenium without iodine UNLESS you are doing so under guidance. So either do iodine or do iodine + selenium but don’t do selenium without iodine unless you are doing so under guidance of a skilled healthcare practitioner who is monitoring your selenium levels to make sure not get too high.
SELENIUM IN NATUROPATHIC MEDICINE
I talked to Dr Amanda Prado ND and Dr Becky Cootes-Kimbley ND, skilled naturopathic doctors who already use iMedDo in their practice. I was impressed to learn that in naturopathic medicine they have a protocol for using selenium with vitamin C and E to pre-game iodine detox. This was a bit shocking to me at first because my position is to only use selenium if you are already using iodine so I wanted to investigate a bit further so I can comment on this as is no doubt a question that many naturopathic doctors have, and special thanks to Dr Becky for asking me to comment more on this.
The issue is that with older forms of iodine like Lugol’s it was well known that detox reactions could be a problem (headaches, nausea, acne etc), so the idea of doing something to pre-game the detox so there are less toxins to flush out and thus less detox reactions makes complete sense to me, and the fact that naturopaths developed a great protocol using selenium before using iodine is very interesting.
The difference now is that by using Nascent Iodine instead of Lugol’s and by using the nascent iodine in system with colloidal silver and gold that the detox reactions can be minimized already so there is less of a need for a pre-game detox.
So the question is do naturopathic doctors using NeuIodine need to change or re-evaluate their selenium protocol when using iMedDo? I don’t think so, there is no problem using selenium or vitamin C or vitamin E before, during or after using NeuIodine.
I think naturopaths and other skilled medical professionals as well in other fields of alternative medicine will all notice that detox reactions are MUCH reduced when using iMedDo System so their older anti-detox anti-herx reaction protocols which are still great are less needed but by still doing them on top of using iMedDo will just be even better.
So I stand by my general position that you need to give iodine for detox not selenium but if you do give selenium you need to also give iodine, but I’ve updated my position to acknowledge that some fields of medicine (naturopaths) have protocols using selenium before iodine, but it’s okay (but only because is being done under skilled guidance).
And my position is that when you do iodine you need to do nascent iodine! (And whenever you do nascent iodine the best way to do that is in a system with silver and gold!).
It’s okay to get iodide but if you do your body has to work harder, and needs more selenium to do it!!!
So if you are supplementing iodide you need to also supplement selenium!
If you are supplementing nascent iodine it is less critical that you supplement selenium.
BUT YOU STILL NEED SELENIUM EITHER WAY
Because even if you don’t need it for GPO pathway in thyroid you still need it for LIVE pathway in thyroid!
DR BENGO’S OFFICIAL IMEDDO POSITION ON SELENIUM SUPPLEMENTATION
Yes, I support selenium supplementation as part of your regular diet and MULTIVITAMIN regime. I’ve always advocated that everyone doing iMedDo system should also be talking a multivitamin to go with it. Every multivitamin has some selenium in it. However, I’ve been frustrated for many years because I didn’t have a GREAT multivitamin to recommend to people when they ask but now I do, so I hope you listen to me and do it as upon researching selenium you will find that it is highly synergistic with iMedDo detox system. I endorse and recommend and am a distributor now for and offer as an elite multivitamin to iMedDo Distributors at 25% off, the Power Source One multivitamin designed by DrCalinPopMD the famous internal medicine doctor who also convinced me that nano-colloidal silver and gold are safe for the human body. Turns out he’s spend the last 10+ years designing a multivitamin which if you analyze what’s in it is like talking an advanced course on nutrition as you will find he’s got all the right vitamins in most bioavailable form, so let’s check out what he put in there for selenium:
Looking at the bottle it says the selenium in there is 50% L-seleno-methionine and 50% sodium selenate 250 mcg 455% in 8 pills. He chose to use both organic and inorganic forms of selenium which are both known to be effective and his dosing is actually quite sophisticated as though he is recommending almost 5x higher dose of selenium than the RDA (455%), it’s easy to customize the dosage, like 4 pills for half dose, 2 pills for quarter dose, 1 pill for 1/8 dose, so if very amenable for dose rationing and many people like to muscle test for the vitamin dose they need. People should try full 8 pills for first few days when using the power source one multivitamins just to get replete in all vitamins and minerals and then can customize dose depending on their diet and needs.
No, I do not support selenium supplementation over and beyond what you get in diet and multivitamin UNLESS you are doing so under guidance. The reason is that too high selenium (1200+ mcg) starts to become toxic. There is a gray area in the 300-600 mcg range where there seems to be a benefit to selenium supplementation, but you do not want to go there unless you are monitoring yourself closely or being monitored by a skilled healthcare professional. There are some groups of people who are at higher risk of selenium deficiency especially vegetarians or vegans since they don’t eat meat or fish so only source of selenium is plant based as many soils are selenium depleted. If you are vegan I recommend you talk to my vegan naturopathic doctor friend DrAmanda Prado ND who has experience using selenium. DrPrado recently informed me she is planning on writing a book course about her clinical experience using iMedDo system with NeuIodine nascent iodine, and has asked me to write a section to introduce her course which I’m planning to unveil for next episode so stay tuned.
SELENIUM & MERCURY DETOX
I wrote about mercury detox month before last from amalgams, primarily talking about using silver and iodine to detox mercury but I did briefly mention selenium in the appendix, but now that we are talking about selenium in more detail, I need to expand on the topic. It turns out that mercury in the form in fish when present without selenium is even more toxic than mercury in amalgam fillings because it is in a methyl-mercury form which requires additional steps to detox. For more information on how methyl mercury form is eliminated see featured science article in mercury detox newsletter. I knew that silver and zinc helped with mercury, but what I didn’t fully realize until this article is that selenium is also important for mercury detox especially from mercury from fish sources. In fact it seems that the fish high in mercury are also generally high even higher in selenium and how selenium protects the fish from all that mercury is generally not considered as we are more focused on avoiding mercury than we are for getting selenium. But turns out selenium is critical for suppressing mercury as selenium is used in selenoproteins that like GPO that can suppress oxidative effect of mercury and in a different seleno-enyzme family called thioredoxin proteins that can repair oxidation of sulfides. I found a really well written article on the topic called Selenium and Mercury Fishing for Answers from which I want to share a quote from becaue it is so good:
“Less than 30 years ago, scientists discovered the 21st amino acid selenocysteine. This amino acid is unique from the other 20 amino acids in that it contains selenium and it is required as the active component of selenoproteins. Scientists now know that selenium is essential for the normal function of 20-30 very important enzymes involved in numerous biological functions. The process of selenocysteine incorporation into proteins requires a complex system which is also regulated by selenoproteins. Remarkably, selenocysteine is the only amino acid that must be degraded and reformed during each cycle of selenoprotein synthesis. Selenide is released from selenocysteine when it is degraded, making it vulnerable to binding to heavy metals such as mercury because of its high binding affinity for these elements. Once bound to mercury, selenium is no longer available for selenoprotein synthesis. Therefore, if selenium is not replenished, selenoprotein synthesis cannot be maintained, and their related functions will be compromised.”
Thinking about how selenium cycle interacts with other cycles like circadian rhythm cycle is very interesting but beyond the scope of this episode will save it for later. How mercury blocks selenium via selenide Se2- ion clicks with what I know about sulfur chemistry [compare to Sulfide S2- anion] and puts me very close to understanding something that I’ve been meditating on for many years which is why isn’t silver toxic, you would think it would be since it binds to sulfur and selenium like heavy metals mercury but mercury is toxic and silver is not, and selenium appears to be the key.
SELENIUM SECRETS POINT ME TO THE MITOCHONDRIA
Studying selenium in detail for this episode has been very exciting because it has forced me to review and meditate on some rather complicated biochemistry topics such as oxidative stress, cellular respiration, thyroid physiology and more to try to get a clear picture on selenium to present to you, and that clear picture points to the mitochondria which is the source of all human energy. What it really comes down to is that the secrets of how selenium, iodine, oxygen work, and even the secret of how silver works comes down to figuring out how energy is processed in the mitochondria. The mitochondrial membrane is an advanced biochemistry topic and I don’t expect you to understand it since I’m trained in advanced biochemistry, and I don’t fully understand it but I want to make a few comments of what do know. The way energy works in the body is that it converts from electrical from negative electrons to electrical from positively charged protons. So there there is a shift when thinking about energy from chemistry as pushing electrons around to biochemistry which is more about pushing hydrogen H+ around. One ancient way that H+ energy is stored and pushed around is in NADH molecules which are able to donate one H+. Looking at the diagram below you can see that NADH (H+ energy) from the citric acid cycle is used to created a proton gradient of H+ with more H+ in the outer compartment of the mitochondria which is then used to flow back in down its diffusion gradient and then is stored in a different type of energy in ATP as phosphate bond energy. Looking at the mitochondrial electron transport chain simplified as below (it’s really complicated!) what is clear to me is that the mitochondria is being used to AMPLIFY ENERGY. One H+ as energy (in NADH having been created by the citric acid cycle) is turned in 2-3 protons (H+) of energy and oxygen is required for this amplification. There is a lot that can go wrong here because if something like a heavy metal disrupts the membrane then electrons on their way towards oxygen acceptor can get loose (leaky electrons) and damage the membrane which normally results in cell death (apoptosis) but sometimes results in cancer if the cell adapts to being able to make energy without oxygen using a less efficient pathway. One theory is that cancer cells just use NADH (H+ energy) without amplifying it, or that they use an older anaerobic bacterial pathway (mitochondria evolved from enclosed bacteria). Both selenium and iodine and oxygen and silver kill cancer [also gold kills cancer but wasn’t clear to me how gold and selenium interact so not talking about in this episode], and the reason seems to be that selenium and iodine protect the mitochondrial membrane of normal cells but help hasten the destruction of cancer cells possibly by choking them of oxygen so they cannot amplify energy and have to initiate cell death (apoptosis). Iodine can selectively help noncancer cells and kill cancer cells. Oxygen status is an important signal since normal mitochondria with nondamaged membranes can utilize oxygen whereas as damaged mitochondria cannot or do so less efficiently and with more oxidative damage to their membranes. Selenium is used in de-iodinase proteins that activate thyroid hormones which send the signal for more energy resulting in increased mitrochondrial energy amplification and oxygen use. Cells that can’t keep up either have to die or become cancer cells, and in the presence of mitochondrial membrane protecting selenium they are more likely to keep up. I think I read papers indicating it was inorganic selenium doing this which different from later use of selenium with iodine. Somewhere in the mitochondria iodine is being used for an alternative energy pathway pathway possibly as an alternative energy pathway which is used for signaling as to which cells are cancerous and which are not since only the non-cancerous cells can utilize oxygen, in same way only non-cancerous cells can utilize iodine when oxygen is missing.
SELENIUM FEATURED SCIENCE ARTICLES
The most interesting thing learned about selenium if I had to pick just one thing is that when eukaryotic cells split from prokaryotic cells to have mitochondria that they also started using iodine around that time. I got this key piece of information from must read article: Selenium, the element of the moon, in life on earth. It’s an excellent review article on selenium which has some great tables comparing selenoproteins in bacteria versus selenoproteins in mammalian cells. Yes, bacteria also used selenium, but a key change from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells is that now the selenium is involved with iodine as bacteria do not have the de-iodinase DI/LIVE selenoproteins, but we as mammals do.
Knowing that selenium chemistry is older than iodine chemistry is useful when thinking about thyroid function and how iodine and selenium work on the mitochondria.
Iodine is known to increase metabolism which increases need for oxygen, i.e. has a positive effect on mitochondria.
Selenium is also known to have a protective and increase effect on mitochondria.
DrSircus has an impressive article about iodine, metabolism and oxygen that I found very useful when writing this article trying to figure how to explain to myself that iodine is an alternative energy pathway in the mitochondria. Also note DrSircus appears to me to be a selenium expert, and I noted that he has a book on selenium, and I recommend checking him out for my advanced readers.
SILVER AND SELENIUM
Silver you would think would be toxic to mitochondria because they are basically evolved from bacteria and silver kills bacteria BUT silver toxicity to mitochondria is negated by selenium! But neither iodine nor selenium negate silver toxicity to cancerous mitochondria. Silver is 400x more toxic to cancer cells than normal cells [personal communication from DrCalin Pop regarding a suppressed paper about silver and cancer].
DrPop the designer of the selenium containing Power Source One multi-vitamin really knows his stuff regarding both silver and selenium, and when I asked him about selenium he sent me excepts from a book he is in the process of writing on the topic which is all about selenium anti-cancer uses, but I decided not to include any of the information as he has not published it yet (and may never publish it as is on a suppressed topic). But the take home message was clear. Selenium kills cancer. Silver kills cancer. My research on selenium for this article indicates to me that the overlapping reason has to do with mitochondrial physiology, a topic beyond the scope of this article that I hope to revisit in future newsletters.
SELENIUM MANDALA
Turns out selenium really is like the moon in that it is a mandala and like a silly scientist I almost drove myself crazy trying to understand everything about it but the more I learned the more I recognized that there is to learn as it is infinite in scope. Fortunately, I have a lot of experience with mandala’s and the correct thing to do is to stop and admire it for its beauty and the recognize that the beauty you are looking at is a reflection of yourself. The way to use a mandala is as a spirit mirror to send love to yourself.
When you look at life as a biochemist you start to love not just humans but all life as we are all more similar than different all using DNA from human to insect we are more similar than different. And that’s not a pleasant feeling at first to recognize that in the eyes of God you are not that different from an insect lol, until you realize the eyes are your own eyes as you are the one with consciousness who is doing the looking and you are wise enough to discern that you are different and wise enough to see that you are the same.
FINAL THOUGHTS
To understand selenium you must realize that it’s a chalcogen like oxygen and sulphur. As such it can accept electrons and serves as a counterpart to energy production which produces protons. Iodine is known to react similarly as oxygen though it is not a chalcogen because it like oxygen is electronegative and can accept electrons. It seems to me that iodine evolved alongside selenium as sort of alternative energy pathway to oxygen, which is different somehow from either normal oxygen respiration and different from anaerobic respiration. Figuring out how this works at the mitochondria is the key to understanding why both iodine and selenium kill cancer. It’s also the key to understanding why silver kills cancer. Oxygen is known to kill cancer, presumably in my old way of thinking because cancer become anaerobic escaping normal oxygen respiration. But new studies postulate that cancer makes use of a different energy pathway using protons (NADPH) as energy. From my perspective this is just using an older energy pathway going back to bacteria, and that is why silver kills cancer as it disrupts the cancer oxygen metabolism. Iodine is known to selectively help non-cancer derived cells while killing cancer cells. Iodine seems to me to be a fancy alternative to oxygen in an energy pathway and selenium seems to me to be a fancy alternative to sulfur also in an energy pathway. Whereas sulfur and selenium energy pathways have been around since the dawn of life, it appears that usage of selenium to process iodine in a new energy pathway has only been around since eukaryotic life split from prokaryotic life and is somehow necessary to regulate mitochondria and mitochondrial metabolism. Selenium is synergistic with silver and iodine in detoxing mercury. Many cancers are from mercury toxicity and this could explain in part why selenium is anti-cancer. The brain sends signal for more energy to thyroid which sends signal via iodine containing thyroid hormones to make more mitochondria. Selenium also is used to activate thyroid hormones amplifying the signal and selenium on its on also protects and amplifies mitochondria. Selenium in selenoproteins to protect to protect from oxidative damage from the increased oxygen metabolism, and selenium in selenoproteins is used to protect from oxidative damage from iodide usage.
APPENDIX: NIH FACT SHEET
For some additional basic mainstream information about selenium can look at the NIH fact sheet. Its got the basic selenium dietary recommendations, and has some good basic info about selenium which is very useful if you can read in between the lines. NIH mentions selenium usage for cancer, thyroid disease, cardiovascular disease and cognitive decline. As you can tell from it selenium is a broad topic, I only talked some about thyroid and cancer in this article and didn’t even scratch the surface on the cardio and brain topics. Since I’m a neuroscientist I will at least comment:
APPENDIX: SELENIUM NEUROSCIENCE
The brain uses a lot of oxygen metabolism and definitely relies on selenoproteins (brain glutathione peroxidase GPO) for anti-oxidant protection. I saw a paper that hydrogen peroxide itself is a signaling molecule which adds extra level of complexity of what selenoprotein GPO is actually doing when it is converting hydrogen peroxide to water its also involved in a signaling pathway. We already know the brain communicates with the body for more energy ultimately asking for increased mitochondrial function via way of what is known as the hypothalamus, pituitary, thyroid axis where brain communicates with TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) to tell the thyroid to create more T4 iodine storage molecule which is predominantly activated into T3 by thyroxine de-iodinase (DI/LiVE) selenoproteins where the brain is using iodine to convey energy and also to control metabolism and be responsive to stress. So endocrinology overlaps with neuroscience when it comes to looking at selenium but they all miss the picture if they don’t study biochemistry of the mitochondria which is where my studies as a neuroscient who is an iodine scientist who is a biochemist and biophysicist has finally led me to for this article. Looking at selenium and how it works with GPO with glutathione I did make an interesting discovery: that glutathione is not just a molecule about molecular stress, it’s actually also a neurotransmitter.
APPENDIX: GLUTATHIONE NEUROTRANSMITTER
There are signaling molecules everywhere, and I noticed that the glutamate on glutathione which is one of the co-substrates along with hydrogen peroxide of the GPO selenoprotein is itself a neurotransmitter and can bind to the NMDA receptor. Glutamate is a tri-peptide with a backwards glutamate and a cysteine and a glycine. I noticed last month when writing about lead detox and presenting my theory on how lead ions can interfere with NMDA receptor that the NMDA receptor whose agonist is glutamate also has a glycine modulating domain. Glutathione, with a backwards glutamate on one side and a glycine on the other side looked to me like a neurotransmitter. Sure enough I found a paper confirming that glutathione is an agonist of the NMDA receptor. So now we can see how glutathione depending on differences in its middle amino acid be it as reduced glutathione or oxidized glutathione or selenoglutathione or methlselenoglutathione etc can communicate with brain to prevent or cause neural death. Glutathione is known to have a protective effect on NMDA receptor. I saw an article by DrSircus that selenoglutathione is a potent anti-cancer molecule. Also, I known that glutathione coated silver and gold nanoparticles are potent anti-cancer molecules. Glutathione as a signal of oxidative stress is a way that anti-cancer signals can be communicated to the brain be they using selenium, or silver or gold. This is definitely a topic that deserves its own newsletter in the future.
APPENDIX: SELENIUM AND GOLD
I think gold is protecting +2 charged pathways of calcium, magnesium and zing +2 ions a hypothesis I discussed in detail in last month’s episode on lead detox.
Sulphur and Selenium reduced down to S2- and Se2- and could be the corresponding anion protectors of the +2 pathway.
So my first pass guess is that selenium is used instead of or in addition to sulphur as the protecting anion 2- for the important +2 pathways of Calcium, Zinc and Magnesium ions.
If this is true then the gold and selenium are similar in that they are both protectants against toxic ions from mucking up the +2 charged dependent signaling pathways.
If this hypothesis is true it could explain why too much selenium is toxic. Unlike neutrally charged gold that protects the pathway in my lead detox hypothesis by bumping out topic +2 lead ions by size not charge without interfering with the +2 ions, selenium would/could bind to a toxic +2 charged ion like lead as Se2- which is great for detox but also too much selenium 2- would interfere with Ca2+, Zn2+, Mg2+ ions and toxicity would result from interfering with the signaling by forming CaSe, ZnSe, MgSe salts.
I have to do more research to determine how gold interacts with selenium but it seems most plausible with my current knowledge that interaction occurs at least in metallothionein proteins.
APPENDIX: WHY IS SELENIUM NAMED AFTER THE MOON?
Blame the Swedish “father of chemistry” Baron Physician Chemist Jons Jacob Berzelius who like to name the elements he discovered after Gods and Goddesses. He also named the element Thorium after the Norse Thunder God Thor which is pretty cool. Naming elements after gods is not a new trend as Mercury the heavy metal is named after the Roman messenger god for example. The official story of how Selenium element got its name is that since Tellurium another chalcogen element which was recently discovered was named after the earth (Latin: Tellus earth), that Baron Berzelius decided to name his newly discovered element which had similar properties to it after the Moon. Why he picked Greek goddess Selene for Selenium instead of Roman Luna or Swedish Mane is clear to me as a chemist as Selenium sounds a lot better than either Lunium or Manium and is nice Selenium starts with an S since it has similar properties to Sulfur another S word. Because the element selenium was discovered in red form but also can be in black or gray forms kinda like the moon can be a blood moon or an eclipsed moon or a silver moon, a fickle changing compound, it makes sense to name it after the moon. After having meditated on selenium now myself, he was spot on naming it after the moon as the moon is a mandala, and selenium is also a mandala as it reflects on the origin of life itself by reflection on energy pathways of oxygen and iodine as I explained in episode.
APPENDIX: SELENE GREEK MOON GODDESS
Selenium is named after Selene the moon in female goddess personification. Selene as a female/goddess (God Isis) personification of the moon (Roman Luna) was depicted in Greco-Roman with crescent horns, flowing billowing robes and carrying a torch. Also she was frequently depicted on a chariot being drawn by horses as was the custom for both sun and moon. All of her symbols are very obvious to me, the crescent horns are because the moon on partial full moon can look like a crescent. The billowing robes are actually not the moon itself but rather are a Milky Way reference (MW ref), and the torch makes complete sense because the moon is like a torch in the sky which lights up the night . The moon hides the milky way just as the splendor of the moon hides the splendor of the torch of the milky way except on new (crescent) moon when you can see the billowing robes of the milky way in as a Goddess (MW ref). The female goddess MW ref was the predominant MW ref of the Phonecians/Punic/Carthagenians that the Romans split from. As such Juno was given a more sinister light from which her torches lighting up crossroads for Hecate lead to myths of the Devil hanging out at crossroads in Christian mythology. The moon is a crossroads which can either reflect you back down to earth or which can take you on the golden road (MW ref) straight up to heaven or down to hell depending on your astrotheology. The moon, like the milky way, is a mandala mirror used for seeing your own reflection in the heavens, but whether you see something you like or a monster (Moon Star) can change in a most fickle nature like the moon changes shapes. Fun fact, did you know that in early Manichean Christianity, it was the moon that was Jesus not the sun, then later in Romanized Christianity Jesus became a solar god. But the lunar aspects of Jesus are still very obvious phonetically if you note that Ja = Moon and Je-Sus and Ja-Zeus or Ja-ISIS as supreme male or female gods in greco-roman religion. So the attributes of the Lunar Savior and the Lunar Goddess are one and the same to me, so whether you find Silver or Selenium Sacred, or both as I do you won’t regret meditating on both. Selenium the element much like the moon can change from being a poison into being most healthful nutrient but requires the snake of wisdom to discern the difference. In Norse mythology the Eye of Odin (Compare to word “Iodine”) a pineal reference and an iodine reference via third eye astrotheology reference is the missing key. The psyche i.e. the psychic key is iodine with whose detox poisons like selenium turn into vital nutrients, and poisons like mercury and lead lose their ability to hurt you. May the blessing of the moon and the secret milky way light it hides and the reflected light of the sun be upon you! Namaste, DrBenGo Healthwarrior
