Finally. Finally! The never-ending rainfall that lasted the entire month of March seems to have passed, and our horses are now back out on the spring grass, which thanks to all that rain is now surging through like a runaway train.

After 3-days our 29yo connie, Murphy, came in looking like he was in shock and could barely move, so needless to say I’m restricting his grass access significantly, doubling up on our MetaTonic and with added Alcar, plus our WildFed going into his feedbowl to give him plenty of natural prebiotic roughage. Thank all the gods that his pulses were nice and slow ...

And so to balancing the minerals to the change of seasons, and it's a given that the grass chemistry has changed significantly following the barren winter growth, so it’s really important that we’re mindful of what changes, if any, need to be made to our horses’ nutrients.

When it comes to vitamins, a horse will (apparently, according to Dr Christina Fritz) absorb sufficient A and E vitamins from just 30-minutes on growing grass. Apart from the fact that an oversupply of vitamins can cause just as many issues as a deficiency, most vitamins supplied in feeds or as a supplement are synthetic so completely pointless anyway, as the liver will simply discard them as unrecognisable and unusable, and send them straight out for excretion in the waste. As the saying goes, “An expensive way to make urine,” (and a Top Tip - always check the ingredients of what you're feeding).

Equally, Saccharomyces cerevisiae in the form of brewers yeast should also be reconsidered, especially if you’re still feeding it as a source of the B-vit complex, which as we've now known for a couple of years is unnecessary as they’re not in the necessary ‘activated’ form. With many peer-reviewed studies out there now questioning feeding S.cerevisiae generally, it's also now known that brewer's yeast promotes the colonisation of lactic-acid bacteria in the horse's hindgut, causing a major issue in the gut microbiome generally because they acidify the GI tract with lactic-acid, which lowers the pH value, which is never ideal as the microbiome is dependent on a neutral pH environment, and especially so for foals (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jpn.12923?campaign=wolearlyview&fbclid=IwAR1mDtjhJ-NWnZy7w9ifZOdAOHzz_I9Qqitb8WKCYDl1THhZOybZMbfwGLM).

It’s also useful to be aware that the hype about ‘organic’ (chelated) minerals is not what it seems, and is more about the goal of the various marketing departments promoting what they think is a USP over competitors’ ‘inorganic’ (natural) minerals. So, a perfect moment for a well-timed reminder of the actual science.

If you hark back to our June’21 Blog – ‘Minerals and it’s All-Change’, you’ll see the very first sentence saying “ … synthetic - and organic - minerals, are the same thing.” Yep, I was baffled too. How can synthetic be organic? Have to say that it was a real hands-in-the-air moment for me, having spent years previously and proudly promoting the fact that we (used to) only used organic ‘chelated’ minerals in our EquiVita/VitaComplete range.

It was the 'organic' word that really put the cat amongst the pigeons, because it suggested that ‘chelated’ minerals were a more natural, uncontaminated product, which made the former mineral type used, ‘inorganic’ sulphates, sound chemical, themselves being the synthetic version, and therefore completely inappropriate to feed.

Wrong! As it turns out, when it comes to minerals, the term 'organic' has a very different meaning to what we all think of when it comes to plants/veg/fruit. In mineral terms, organic is actually the chemical, made-in-a-lab chelated version; 'inorganic' is the natural mineral form such as sulphates, coming directly from soil or rock. So, in this instance, organic v. inorganic is completely the reverse to our normal way of thinking, unless you're a biochemist, of course.

And here’s the rub. Sorry to say but organic chelated minerals aren't recognised by the gut mineral receptors/transporters or the liver, which then has to try and biotransform them to be utilised by the body. (And if you’re doubting what I'm saying here, sign up to the ‘Feed your horse fit’ course run by Dr Christina Fritz. It's intense science, just a bit mind-blowing, but worth every penny and second of your time - it'll change everything you ever thought you knew about caring for your horse.)

Back to organic chelated minerals aren't recognised, and here’s why. Horses actually have a very sophisticated absorption system for minerals in their intestinal wall, which works via specialised receptors and transporter molecules. These transporters are individually tuned to recognise a specific mineral (or vitamin, or any other nutrient such as amino acids), and are only activated when the levels in the body of the relevant mineral (or any other nutrient) are low, with the transporter deactivating as soon as the specific nutrient's level is full. Which means - minerals are only absorbed when the body needs them, otherwise they remain in the digesta and are excreted on out with the waste.

With me so far? Okay, so now we get to those ‘organic’ synthetic minerals, as in not the real deal, because they’re man-made in a lab by scientists who (very cleverly) bind the perfectly healthy, recognisable mineral to another molecule, usually an amino acid. Which isn’t how nature made them. And no surprise - the horse’s gut receptors don’t recognise them as a mineral, because something synthetic isn't natural nutrition (even if the word ‘organic’ suggests it).

So what happens? This 'organically'-bound mineral bypasses the actual mineral transporter in the intestinal wall and is taken up by the amino acid transporter instead. However, when this tweaked amino acid with the attached mineral reaches the liver, the liver realises that a mineral is mistakenly attached so considers the amino acid defective. It then splits it off and converts it ready for excretion, sending it on its way to the kidneys for elimination via the urine, while sending the perfectly fine inorganic mineral out into the bloodstream to be utilised.

Great! You'd think ... However, what we have now is a mineral stowaway, happily circulating in the bloodstream whether the body needed it not because remember, the mineral gut receptors ignored it, because they didn't recognise it, so never had a chance to decide whether the body needed it or not. So we’re now risking potential toxic overload, and especially when it comes to selenium (see further on).

To be fair, you could say that these synthetic chelated minerals could be useful in the case of proven mineral deficiencies, because they’ll certainly replenish the stores in the shortest possible time, but emphasis has to be on the word ‘proven’. However, they’re pointless for use in a mineral balancer which are only ever intended to compensate for the well known, and let's face it, fairly minimal deficiencies in our grass and dried forage.

However, with selenium it's a completely different case. When we look at organically-bound selenium (known as selenium yeast in your list of ingredients), we need to take this seriously as there’s a very fine line between safe selenium intake and selenium toxicity. And here I’ll quote from our original 2021 Blog …

“So, as before, the liver meets the tweaked 'chelated' selenium, usually attached to either cysteine or methionine amino acids (so hence known as selenomethionine or selenocysteine). Gets a bit science-y now but hang in there as it all comes out in the wash, promise, and it's only one sentence long, so stand by your guns and here we go …

🤓Science Alert!🤓 In nature, cysteine/methionine are usually bound to sulphur in a specific position, which stabilises the protein structure, but the protein can only work when this structure is fixed, which is only completed by that sulphur bond. 

I know, I know ... read it again, rinse and repeat. But put simply (I hope ...), when the liver sees selenium inside cysteine or methionine, instead of the sulphur they’re normally bound to, it recognises these amino acids as – you've guessed it - yet another unstable, defective protein!

But - here's where selenium is now different to those other chelated minerals. The liver doesn't know what to do with these particular unstable proteins so instead of sending them on to the kidneys for excretion, it sends the whole thing out to the cellular tissues to be stored. (Don’t ask me why – I’m no biochemist, but Dr Christina Fritz is!)

Now here's the thing - it can take up to a year for these proteins to be degraded – seriously. Yes you read that right -  up to a year for these proteins to be degraded. Which means ... they remain in the body, unused, for a very long time, which risks considerable selenium excess being stored in the tissues, which means there's now the risk of subclinical selenium toxicity bubbling under the surface, and worse, can apparently only rarely be detected via bloods, so there may be subclinical selenium toxicity and we won’t even know it.

So how might we see the effect of this? Typically we'll see this in the hooves – we know both cysteine and methionine as important proteins to build hoof wall/keratin and body hair, but when you feed chelated selenium it's been noted that the hoof capsule's quality changes. The hoof wall may become weaker/softer, as well as being behind multiple hoof abscessing, white line disease, and a brittle mane/tail that breaks.

Back to today, and as at 2023, a number of other health conditions such as coronet ruptures to EOTRH, or EMS/IR and Cushing's symptoms are now suspected to be related to selenium oversupply due to chelated selenium yeast. Courtesy again from Dr Christina Fritz.

The take-away message here is that it's absolutely not advisable to supplement the diet with chelated selenium, and only replenish the deficient selenium requirement with inorganic, as in natural, selenium - sodium selenite - in the mineral feed. Which for the record is what we use here at EquiNatural.

WIth us you can be assured that we only use inorganic ‘natural’ minerals throughout, balanced to our UK grassland deficiencies (as per the NRC guidelines), and with no palatability additives such as molasses, apple pectins, wheatfeed, or any other junk filler. Our EquiVita and VitaComplete are formulated to be fed safely and gut-appropriately, i.e. feed our VitaComplete during winter/if your horse is on a full hay diet, and our EquiVita during summer when out on grass. Or if your summer routine is out during the day/in at night, so grass and hay, add in a pro-rata amount of micronised linseed to balance the omega-3. Oh, and don’t forget the salt 😉.

Happy Spring,

Carol

Edited to add ... So now we get to the potential backlash :

(Again copy/pasted from our 2021 Blog post)

"Of course there will be some that say they've been feeding chelated for years and their horse is fine. There'll be others that say that the associated liver stress hasn't been well documented, or that chelated minerals behave like inorganic minerals anyway.

As for selenium yeast, again some will say there's no more danger of toxicity than with inorganic because with selenium it's dosage dependent, and that subclinical (aka asymptomatic) toxicity is a meaningless claim unless toxic levels are confirmed by blood work. Thing is though, like chelated copper and zinc, the selenium in bound in the protein, hidden like a Trojan Horse, so bloods won't show selenium levels, just the proteins.

For me this has to be a no-brainer, and with my EquiNatural hat on, the clue's in our name - we are nothing if not as natural as we can be, and this is no exception. Evolution has made the gut receptors only recognise the natural, inorganic mineral form and they know whether the body needs it or not, which means evolution’s design for the horse’s natural gut:liver function operates as it’s meant to. Whereas ... chelated minerals mess with the body’s biological metabolism and confuse the whole process, putting extra work on the liver and kidneys, as well as risking dysbiosis in the microbiome.

And, lest we forget, chelated minerals also provide a lot less mineral for your buck - they provide much less elemental mineral compared to the sulphate form, so we need to feed much more of it, and they're considerably more expensive so the overall cost of the balancer is higher. Sulphates go a lot further, so your balancer lasts longer, and is cheaper with it.

To conclude, and in my humble opinion, In order to ensure a natural, evolution-appropriate absorption of what's needed into the bloodstream to then be utilised directly by the cells, thereby avoiding stressing the liver biotransformation process and the already fragile equine metabolism, inorganic natural minerals in sulphate form have to be the better choice."

For numerous peer-reviewed studies, see our 2021 Blog Post Minerals - and it's All-Change.

Originally posted 22.4.23