Minerals and Self-Care: A Simple Tool for Stress Relief

You often hear about stress being “depleting.” 

It’s an appropriate word to use. When you’re stressed, especially for a long period of time, your body uses up a lot of resources trying to keep you in balance. That drained feeling you get at the end of a long day (or week) comes from stress taxing your system too much—quite literally depleting your body’s resources, leaving you exhausted. 

The good news is that almost all of the resources stress depletes are minerals—and by replenishing your mineral stores, you can dramatically increase your body’s resilience to stress. 

So, increasing your mineral stores is one of the best things you can do for stress relief. Let’s take a look at why minerals are essential for stress management, as well as how a good mineral supplement can make you more resilient to the stresses of daily life. 

Stress Depletes Your Mineral Stores

When you’re stressed—whether that’s physical stress or mental stress—your body becomes less efficient. It produces more waste products, including an increase in free radicals—damaging little molecules that bounce around your body, destroying the cells they touch. Free radicals cause most of stress’s negative effects—faster aging, fatigue, trouble sleeping, and so on.

Fortunately, your body has a built-in system to deal with free radicals. It’s called your antioxidant defense system (ADS). Here’s how it works: when you’re stressed and full of free radicals, your ADS turns on. It starts making antioxidants—compounds that bind to free radicals and neutralize them before they can do any damage to your cells. Your ADS is an amazing stress management system. It helps you stay in balance when life gets hard. 

But making antioxidants is an expensive process. It uses up a lot of your body’s raw materials, most notably minerals. If you’re continually stressed over time, your body is constantly depleting your mineral stores, trying to keep you in balance. 

• A 2020 review found that both psychological and environmental stress deplete a variety of minerals, including magnesium, calcium, zinc, and iron. 

• A 2020 study found that selenium is especially important for your antioxidant defense system, and that your ability to deal with stress decreases when your selenium levels are depleted. 

• Another 2020 study describes the “vicious circle” effect. Magnesium is one of your body’s strongest natural stress relievers. Stress causes rapid magnesium depletion, which makes you more susceptible to stress, which causes further mineral depletion, and so on. 

• In a 2006 study, college students showed magnesium depletion after taking stressful academic exams. 

• A 2000 study found that exposure to emotionally stressful situations (experiencing political intolerance and being informed of potential military attacks) depleted magnesium and calcium levels in young, healthy men. 

• A 1991 study measured the mineral stores of Navy SEAL applicants before and after Hell Week, a five-day training exercise that causes severe physical and psychological stress. Five days of intense stress led to a 33% decrease in zinc and a 44% decrease in iron. 

Mineral Depletion Affects Your Entire Body

Stress rapidly depletes your mineral stores, and if you don’t replenish those minerals, you’re going to notice major deficits in how you think and feel. 

Minerals run the body. They’re essential for energy production, sleep, muscle and brain function, emotional regulation, fat loss—all the major things that stress disrupts. 

• A 2017 review found that iron and magnesium deficiencies both decrease sleep quality, and that iron, zinc, and magnesium deficiencies all decrease sleep duration (that is, you have trouble sleeping enough hours each night).

• A 2005 study found that mineral depletion speeds up aging and reduces cellular energy production, leaving you more fatigued in daily life. 

• A 1998 study found that zinc, magnesium, and potassium deficiencies slow down muscle recovery and prevent muscle growth. If you’re going to the gym but you’re short on minerals, you likely won’t see the results you want.

• A 2018 review found that zinc, magnesium, and selenium depletion may contribute to anxiety and depression. 

If you’re chronically stressed, you’re more likely to run into the problems above—which, in turn, will likely make your stress even worse. It’s hard to feel good when you’re tired, sad, anxious, and struggling to sleep. 

Chronic stress is a terrible cycle to get trapped in. Fortunately, you can get out of it. You just need to give your body the right support. 

Replenish Your Mineral Stores to Relieve Stress

Taking a full-spectrum mineral supplement is one of the best things you can do for stress relief. 

Refilling your mineral stores restores many of the deficits chronic stress causes. Replenishing minerals also gives your body the raw materials it needs to handle future stress, making you more resilient the next time life gets hard. 

• In a 2013 study, people who took a broad-spectrum mineral supplement had lower stress levels, less anxiety, and more stable mood. 

• A 2013 review found that replenishing zinc stores relieved stress-induced depression and made people more resistant to depression going forward. 

• A 2016 study found that people who took high-absorbing magnesium for three months showed less reactivity to stress and faster recovery from stress. 

• In a 2015 study, people who had just been rescued from a natural disaster took either a broad-spectrum mineral supplement or a control pill (low-dose vitamin D) daily for six weeks. Those who took the mineral supplement showed significantly faster recovery from stress and lower anxiety. 

• A 2023 review found that magnesium significantly lowers stress levels and improves sleep quality and duration in chronically stressed people. 

• A 2019 study found that taking selenium reduced stress response and protected cells from stress-related damage. 

How to Replenish Your Body’s Minerals

Stress depletes a lot of different minerals, and it can be hard to replenish all of them. Magnesium, iron, zinc, selenium, calcium, potassium—how do you know the right doses for each? And what about the most absorbable forms? 

Replenishing your mineral stores can be a complicated process. That’s why we started BEAM Minerals. We offer balance and self-care in a single pair of supplements. 

Our humic and fulvic supplements come in a highly absorbable form, with cofactors that deliver the minerals straight to your cells. You can feel them working within minutes. 

Best of all, our minerals are full-spectrum—they have every essential mineral you need. You don’t need to research doses, forms, suppliers, or anything else. Just take a shot of our minerals every morning (don’t worry; they taste like water). 

A good mineral supplement is the easiest self-care tool you can use. If you’ve been feeling stressed, give BEAM Minerals a try. You can take them in under a minute every morning, and they’ll make a difference you can feel. 

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