If you want to know if your thyroid gland is working properly, all you need to do is look at your fingernails.

Vital for your beauty
The thyroid gland is responsible for controlling the metabolism inside all cells that enables them to carry out their vital functions. When we are talking hair and nails, your outer beauty depends on good functioning at a cellular level. However, other cells such as muscle cells, brain cells, immune cells, and even sperm cells also depend on being able to generate energy at a proper rate.

Why you need selenium
Did you know that selenium is one of the most important micronutrients in terms of normal thyroid function? You need an adequate amount of selenium to make sure that your thyroid gland can keep the right metabolic rate, which is the speed at which your cells convert food (fat, protein, and carbohydrate) into energy.

Helps you maintain your weight
Yes, you have already guessed it. Your metabolic rate is also important for your ability to maintain normal body weight. If your body cannot metabolize the calories you eat fast enough, your weight may increase.

A supplement may be useful
Unfortunately, it is challenging to get enough selenium from the diet in our part of the world. The agricultural soil in large parts of Europe contains very little selenium, but there are ways of getting around that problem. An increasing number of people opt for selenium supplements, which is a convenient way of boosting your intake of the nutrient. This is especially important for those who do not eat enough fish, whole-grain or nuts, and also for those people who have gluten intolerance.

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A Swiss team of scientists warn that changes in the climate and soil may lead to a decrease in the soil content of selenium, a micronutrient that is essential to human health. This is bound to affect Europe in particular, they say. Read about the report here and find out how organic selenium yeast can help you stay healthy…..

An estimated one billion humans worldwide get too little selenium, a micronutrient that is essential to human health. Things may get worse, Swiss scientists warn, basing their assumption on climate-change models that reveal how shifts in climate and soil could reduce selenium levels in crops in the future.

Analyzed soil samples
The team of scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology conducted a thorough analysis of soil samples taken from 1994 to 2016, looking at how the selenium content in the top soil changed over time. By holding selenium levels in soil up against 26 environmental variables, the scientists were able to see how the selenium content would change until the end of the century.

Europe most affected
They assessed that selenium deficiency could be on the increase as climate changes lowered the selenium content in soil. About 66% of croplands would lose selenium, they report, guessing that agricultural areas of Europe and parts of the United States would be affected the most. This would add to the current situation where one in seven humans worldwide does not get enough of this vital nutrient.

Adding selenium to fertilizers
The big question is how we ensure that people around the world get enough selenium to maintain proper health. In Finland, the government introduced mandatory selenium-enrichment of fertilizers in the mid-80s as a way of increasing the selenium content in crops. That strategy actually improved the Finnish population’s selenium status. There are disadvantages of this method, however. Not all of the selenium that is added to the fertilizers gets absorbed by the plants, and since selenium is scarce – science believes the global selenium reserves will be exhausted in less than 40 years from now – we may be better off with a strategy that makes better use of this limited resource.

Supplements may be better
A better approach could be to ingest tablets with organic selenium yeast, which is the selenium source that the body absorbs and utilizes the best. Pharma Nord’s organic selenium yeast (SelenoPrecise) can document that 88.7% of its selenium content gets absorbed, and 74% is retained in the body, which shows that it has good bioavailability.

Helped elderly stay healthy
A few years ago, Swedish scientists came out with a study showing that elderly people who took SelenoPrecise daily together with a supplement called Bio-Quinone Q10 were able to maintain their health more easily than those who were given a matching placebo. The study (KiSel-10) got

published in the International Journal of Cardiology in 2013.

The selenium-dependent enzymes
Humans have 25-30 different selenium-dependent enzymes called selenoproteins, which cannot function properly without selenium. These selenoproteins are responsible for body functions such as:

• Immune defense
• Thyroid function (metabolism)
• Protection of cells
• Reproduction (fertility)

We need a certain amount of selenium every day to saturate these selenoproteins and keep them in normal working order. There is an ongoing discussion about the exact amount needed to stay healthy, but most experts agree that it is somewhere around 70-100 micrograms per day, possibly slightly more.

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Fish it good for you. It contains vitamin D, iodine, and lots of other nutrients that are required for maintaining good health. Unfortunately, fish is also contaminated with heavy metals such as mercury, a potentially harmful neurotoxin that can cause damage to the brain. Luckily, one of the healthy nutrients in fish is a trace element called selenium, which has a feature that comes in very handy.

Handcuffing mercury
According to Dr. Nicholas Ralston, PhD, a biochemist and biologist working at the University of North Dakota, USA, selenium has a special binding affinity with mercury, which enables it to attach to mercury in a one-to-one ratio, so that the mercury molecules that would otherwise cause harm are virtually “hand-cuffed” and unable to react with the human organism.

Lecturing at a large, international selenium conference in Stockholm last month, Dr. Ralston said: “Mercury targets selenium and destroys important selenoproteins. It is therefore important to have adequate amounts of selenium in the body.”

Outweighs the harm
“In fact,” he specified, “the selenium content in our diet is eight times more important than the amount of mercury,” so getting enough selenium has high priority.
He also pointed out that the natural selenium content in many fish, including most types of tuna, is adequately high to outweigh the potential threat from the mercury content and claimed that there is generally no need to worry about consuming fish because of their mercury load. Still, one needs to realize that the selenium, which the binding process sequesters, is no longer available for useful purposes such as supporting the selenium-dependent selenoproteins in the body.

How much do we need?
Scientists generally agree that an adult human needs around 100-125 micrograms of selenium daily in order to saturate the many selenoproteins that need this nutrient to function properly. Selenoproteins are what ensure normal functioning of the immune system, thyroid gland, reproductive system, and protect cells against oxidative stress.

Eating a balanced diet with good selenium sources like fish, nuts, whole-grain, and meat is advisable. One may include a supplement like SelenoPrecise, which is an organic selenium yeast that can document that 88.7% of its selenium content gets absorbed by the body.

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