In this topic I introduced my discovery of Deep Ocean Mineral Water (DOM) in the form of carbonated YHB Ocean Bomb:
I liked it! So I started drinking a couple cans of this daily. Unfortunately, I quickly bought out the complete inventory at Osaka (TnT) Market at Park Royal and was told by an employee that they don’t intend to restock. There are a few more TnT Supermarkets here in Vancouver so I intend to visit and buy out their stocks as well. I also began searching for alternatives and turned up two: Aussie Trace Minerals (ATM) and Whole Earth and Sea DOM (WES). Both are concentrated liquids intended to be added to either still or carbonated water.
ATM is not DOM. It’s extracted from surface water near the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef off southeast Australia. WES, on the other hand is DOM from the same source in Taiwan as Ocean Bomb, at a depth of 660 meters.
Why? My initial motivation for this experiment is night leg cramps. In my research for available sources of DOM I read that DOM (or just ocean minerals) might be effective treating/preventing cramps. I’ve participated in several discussions on these forums related to dealing with cramps. The general consensus seems to be that electrolyte imbalance is at least part of the problem and possibly the major part of it. Thus, for the past couple of year I’ve been trying various combos of sodium, potassium and magnesium salts trying to adjust my macro electrolytes.
I’ve had some success. I no longer get cramps nightly or every morning, only occasionally. The cramps I get usually aren’t as severe or long lasting as in prior years and I am able to stretch my leg(s) to stop nearly all as soon as they start. Only once or twice in a couple of months do I get a cramp that is bad enough to get me out of bed to ‘walk it off’. And only very rarely do these even severe cramps last longer than 10-15 minutes. For comparison, before keto I got severe cramps several times per week. Many were so bad that I had pain in the affected muscle(s) for days afterwards.
So, I’ve made a lot of progress and I’m quite happy about it, thank you! But I still suffer cramps and still suffer the occasional cramp severe enough to send me limping around the apartment. Interestingly, the cramps have moved from my feet, ankles and calves up to the inner and backsides of my thighs. When I get a cramp in my thighs it seems to be much deeper and more painful. So I don’t want to get them - at all! Period. Even though I can still stop 99% of them by stretching my legs as soon as I feel the first pang of tightening, I’d much rather not wake up every morning wondering if today is going to be a big one.
I think I’ve probably gone about as far as I’m going to get by adjusting electrolyte macro minerals. Originally, I worked with Redmond’s Real Salt for sodium, French’s NoSalt for potassium, and epsom salt for magnesium. Unfortunately, for some reason French’s NOSalt has been unavailable in local groceries for a year. Although it’s available online, the cost is 5-6 times what it was in the grocery. So I haven’t bought or used any for about a year now. I also stopped adding epsom salt. It’s not particularly bioavailable so I wondered if dropping it would make a difference. It did, but not much. I substituted a magnesium supplement which seems to have helped a bit. But again not very much. I switched to Himalayan pink salt because I can buy it at Walmart for less than half the price of Redmond’s Real Salt. They both contain a host of trace minerals. For about 7-8 months I’ve consumed only Himalayan pink salt for electrolyte supplementation. No potassium and only a small amount of magnesium (couple hundred milligrams). My cramps got no worse for it.
So on to … Trace minerals. After reading that trace mineral balance might be involved in muscle cramps I decided to test whether they be helpful to reducing my cramps even more or even to eliminating them. Trace minerals in ocean water approximate the natural/healthful mineral balance of blood, hence the claim that ocean minerals (both DOM and otherwise) help a lot of issues related to electrolytes and mineral proportions.