Mineral Compounds and Supplement Forms
These are not elements. They are the salts, preparations and supplement forms that minerals actually arrive in — and the form very often decides whether the mineral is absorbed, tolerated, or useful at all.
Magnesium is the clearest case: the same element as oxide, glycinate or sulfate behaves like three different products. A page here covers the preparation; the element it carries has its own page under macrominerals or trace minerals.
Table of Contents
Mineral Compounds and Supplement Forms on This Site
- Magnesium Glycinate — Magnesium chelated to glycine — the form usually chosen for daily repletion because it is well absorbed and least laxative.
- Magnesium Sulfate — Epsom salt: the laxative and the bath, and the intravenous drug used in eclampsia.
- Calcium Chloride — A soluble calcium salt used industrially and clinically; not the form used for dietary supplementation.
- Lugols Iodine — Iodine and potassium iodide in solution, the traditional strong iodine preparation.
- Lithium Carbonate — The pharmaceutical lithium salt, distinct from the trace amounts discussed as a nutrient.
- Borax — Sodium tetraborate — a boron compound with a long domestic history and a genuinely contested safety literature.
- Glaubers Salt — Sodium sulfate decahydrate, historically a purgative.
- Silica — Silicon dioxide: the form silicon is usually encountered and supplemented in.
- Shilajit — A Himalayan resinous exudate sold as a mineral supplement — a mixture rather than a defined compound, which is the main thing to know about it.
- Silver Nanoparticles — Colloidal and nanoparticulate silver. Silver has no nutritional role; this page covers the research literature and the risks.