SOIL AND HUMAN HEALTH

The environment in which a man and animals live, greatly affects their health. A range of serious diseases of unclear etiology are obliged to the soil composition on which the food eaten by animals and humans is grown. It was determined by the works of A.P. Vinogradov and V.V. Kowalski. Excess or lack of chemical elements, and even more a violation of their ratio, become the causes of thyroid diseases, the enamel tooth damage, the bone system diseases, etc. Such diseases of A.P. Vinogradov called endemic, and the territories with an anomalous content of chemical elements - biogeochemical or endemic provinces. 
It is conditioned by the fact that many microelements participate in vitally important processes, occurring in the organism – hematosis, digestion, in the work of nervous and hormone systems. Microelements play the role of biological catalysts, being a part of enzymes, hormones and some vitamins, thereby influencing the growth, development, reproductive function. Not only by failures in the supply of microelements to the organism play the important role in the development of some or other diseases, but also by a violation of the balance between individual chemical elements, including macroelements. Thus, scientists associate an increased risk of stomach cancer with insufficient magnesium in food and water (but the primary reason is in soils), as well as with the violation of the ratio distortion in soil solution between the ions Ca, Mg and Mn. Magnesium promotes the correct absorption and use of calcium, as well as other important nutrients. If a lot of calcium comes with food, without enough magnesium, excessive calcium can practically become toxical, inducing diseased states in the organism. Even earlier, Rostov scientists V.V. Akimtsev, Z.M. Mitlin, I.I. Smolyaninov, who wrote the book “Soils and human health” in 1966, came to the conclusion about the extreme importance of the chemical elements correlation in soils, the effect of soil composition on the quality of products obtained on them, and the connection with the spread of cancer diseases. They were among the first in the scientific world to see and convincingly showed the relationship between the chemical composition of soils and the cancer spread.  In particular, they found that the frequency of the gastric cancer occurrence dramatically increases in those areas of the Rostov region, Krasnodar Territory, North Ossetia, Dagestan, where the content of water-soluble magnesium in soils falls below the threshold - 0.002%.

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