A (0:00)

Foreign.

B (0:04)

Welcome to ASCP and the Rogue Pharmacist with Benjamin Knight Fuchs. In each episode, we will explore how internal and external factors can impact the skin. I'm Maggie Stasick, ASCP's program director. And joining me is Ben Fuchs, skincare formulator and pharmacist. Hi, Ben.

A (0:19)

Hello, Maggie.

B (0:20)

Ben, can you break down what fulvic minerals actually are and why they're getting so much attention in the skin world?

A (0:26)

Are they getting a lot of attention now?

B (0:28)

Well, I don't know. You said.

A (0:29)

Oh, I've been using them for a long time. I haven't seen them around. I'm starting to see them that. And you know, in science, as a chemist and as a pharmacist and as a researcher, we tend to see things sometimes decades before the mainstream understands it. And so when you say they're start. They're getting attention, it could be that they're starting to get attention. I've been working with them for many years because they're unbelievably powerful. But let me ask you this, because they are starting to get some press. What do you know about them?

B (0:57)

Nothing.

A (0:57)

Zero.

B (0:58)

Zero.

A (0:58)

Literally.

B (0:59)

Yeah.

A (1:00)

You're kidding me. Because you guys. No.

B (1:02)

No.

A (1:02)

Okay.

B (1:02)

You're about to teach me.

A (1:04)

I'm gonna teach you. Okay, so how should I put this? Okay, so Earth, our lovely planet Earth is different from the moon. But in the center of the Earth is the moon. The moon is a dead rock and in the center of the Earth is a dead rock. But Earth is different than the moon because we have fauna, we have flowers and fauna and animals and living creatures, et cetera. And the moon doesn't. So what is the distinction? Well, it turns out that on top of the Earth, on top of the moon that's at the center of the earth, you have 6 to 12 inches of magic. And when I say magic, I mean everything that brings us life, terrestrial life that is, and I'm not talking about the oceans, but terrestrial life is derived from this 6 to 12 inches that's on top of the dead rock. The 6 to 12 inches are called topsoil. I call it dirt just because it's graphic. You know, we have this. This kind of. When you hear the word dirt, it doesn't have a positive connotation, but to a farmer it has incredibly positive connotation. Or to a gardener. And so what is it about the 6 to 12 inches of topsoil that allows the live a life to be created that's not on the rock? What's the distinction well, it turns out that on top of the rock, this moon like substance in the center of the earth, you have creatures. And these creatures have an ability to eat rock. They call them lithotropes. Litho means stone and trope means eating. They're literally rock eaters or stone eaters. And when they eat the rock, they transform the rock into this amazing, amazing substance. If you take rock, piece of rock and put it in water, what's going to happen? Go sink, right? It's not. Nothing's gonna. It doesn't interact. And quick digression. In order for chemistry to occur, it has to interact with water. Without water, chemistry doesn't occur. And that's why they dehydrate things. They take the water out so they'll be stable. So once you add water, activity occurs and, and food becomes perishable, et cetera. So water's the linchpin here. Rock doesn't interact with water, and that's why the moon is dead, and that's why the center of the earth is dead. But these lithotropes, these stone eaters, have an ability to digest rock, to eat rock and secrete out, turn the rock into long chains of what we call minerals. But we're really atoms. Now if you're. Have you ever been on a subway or bus or something where you're packed tight and everything, you can't move your arms, you're just like squished in. If people are separated away from you, you can move your arms, you can have some action. A rock is a bunch of atoms that are like people on a bus or people on a subway, or people who are packed and it doesn't do anything. But by virtue of these lithotropes ability to spread out the rock. Now you have places where these atoms can interact with water. And given that the interaction with water of all chemical substances, what creates energy? This stringing out of atoms turns the dead rock, which when I say dead, it can't interact with anything into living atoms. And these living atoms, by virtue of their ability to interact with water, conduct electrical charges. In fact, we have a term for atoms or elements. They call them minerals. But atoms are elements that interact with water when they're in water. We call them electrolytes. You've heard the term electrolytes, right? It's almost like. It's kind of like a. It's kind of like a meme. Do you ever see the movie Idiocracy Memory? It's got electrolytes, right, Brondo? It's got electrolytes and they made a joke of it because electrolytes has a connotation of being started out like, what are they and why are they in this sort of pseudoscience. But really, electrolytes are nothing more than atoms, elements off the periodic table that dissolve in water. Once they dissolve in water, they become electrically active. They go from dead rock into electrically active substances. But what's more, wherever you have electricity, you have magnetism go together. They call it electromagnetism. So wherever you have electricity, you have magnetism. So now you have these long chains of atoms from the previously dead rock, which is like the moon doesn't do anything. Now you have these long chains of atoms that are interacting with water, conducting electrical charges and having a magnetic property. And this magnetic property pulls things in. So you got this center, long chain of atoms or elements. They're interacting with water in a way that they couldn't previously before the lithotropes. And on top of that, they have a magnetic ability to pull in other substances, particularly amino acids and fatty acids and vitamins and plant nutrients from dead plants that have been dropped into the, into the dirt. And so you end up with these complexes with a center of atoms from previously dead rock that is now interacting with water and is able to attract and pull in vitamins and minerals all the stuff you need for life. This combination of water and the long string of electrolytes form something called clay or clays. This is what clays are. And so these clays have this ability to pull things in. They're very, very electrically active. All clays in water are electrically active. They pull vitamins and minerals and amino acids. And now from this previously dead rock, you've got these clays that can pull in nutrients. And they have phytonutrients from dead plants, and they have vitamins and they have amino acids. There's incredible nutritive substances that support life. And in biology today, there's something called the clay theory or the clay hypothesis of evolution. And it's believed that this is how life began on Earth, is you have these rock, these stone eaters eating the rock and then creating long strings of elements that were electrically active that could interact with water, that would pull in amino acids and vitamins, et cetera. And this is what biologists now believe, life, how life began. And any farmer will tell you this is the best kind of soil, clay kind of soils. So these long complexes of water soluble elements, along with all the other substances that they pulled in, are called technically fulvic acids. They call them fulvic acids, because they have a fulvic means yellow. They have a yellow color. And these fulvic acids are the water soluble part of dirt. Dirt is not water soluble completely, but the water, if you take dirt and put in water, what'll happen is some of the stuff will sink and some of the stuff will dissolve. The stuff that dissolves is the fulvic acid, not fulvic minerals. Fulvic acid. Sometimes people get confused, like, what's the distinction between fulvic acid and fulvic minerals? Well, fulvic acid is an acidic substance that's water soluble. It's made up of these long strings of elements that can interact with water, plus everything else. The mineral part of the fulvic acid, those long strings, those are called fulvic minerals. So you have fulvic acid, which is the water soluble part of dirt, which has a central core of. I, I call them poly electrolytes because they're electrolytes, but there's long strings of them. So I call them poly long has a central core of poly electrolytes and a bunch of nutrients that are, that are attracted magnetically attracted to them. The mineral part of that, the electrolyte, the, the string is called fulvic minerals. And this is what has the electrical properties, the vitamins. Those are, those are important obviously for life. But the long string is incredibly valuable for a lot of reasons. First of all, the electrical properties are so unique in nature because they have an ability to protect against oxygen and to deliver oxygen, right? So you got an antioxidant and an oxidant. You got oxygen and an antioxidant in the same molecule. That's unbelievable. That's first of all, Second of these negative charges that are associated with these long strings have wonderful organizing properties. So what, what is a negative charge? A negative charge is electricity. And we've talked about in the past, remember, we talk about negative ions and negative ion generators and going out in nature to get negative ions and how when you go out and after it rains, you can breathe that wonderful smell. We go to the beach and we go to the. I walk on barefoot on the ground. This is all in an attempt to deliver negative ions into the body. Fulvic minerals are powerful sources of negative ions. And so these negative ions, in addition to being detoxifying and having antioxidant properties, also have an organizing property. They help organize things. One of the things that happens as we age and this gets, gets to skin, but it's also true about the entire body. One thing that happens as we age is we decohere. I call it blobification. We blobify, we turn into a blob. Why is it that we turn into a blob? We lose our organization, we lose our structure. What do fulvic minerals do with. By virtue of these long chains and lots of negative charges, they organize. They help the body cohere. And a specific. They help a specific part of the body cohere. And this part of the body that they help cohere is the most important part of the body. In fact, it's the most abundant part of the body. So what is the most important part of the body? And the most abundant part of the body, in other words, makes up the highest percentage of the body?