I came across this thread by user u/Crockett (am I allowed to tag?) suggesting that big pharma gave boron bad press: https://communities.win/c/Health/p/15JnKfThq8/boron/c and I'm gonna post the content he wrote, what do you guys think?
Some facts about boron:
Boron helps calcium and magnesium levels, by regulating tissue membranes so the minerals can be pumped in and out as needed more easily. This means more calcium freed from muscle tissue, and less needs to be released from bones. Calcium level can improve just by taking Boron and magnesium, which is sufficient for calcium to be better allocated in the body.
Boron helps regulate sexual hormones. It increases testosterone and estriadol in post-menopausal women, relieving symptoms of menopause. In younger men, it increases testosterone but actually decreases estrogen. There's no evidence that it causes hormone levels to increase beyond what's healthy
Boron lengthens the half-life of sexual hormones and Vitamin D in the body, significantly increasing their presence in the blood and bio-availability over time.
Boron significantly reduces certain markers for inflammation. As you probably know, heart disease and many others are basically just diseases of inflammation.
Boron helps reverse fluoridation
Boron helps detox heavy metals
Borax (yes, the cleaning stuff) is pretty much just boron, and has been used to basically cure arthritis and osteoporosis, thanks to its anti-inflammatory, bone-healthy, and hormonal effects
Borax has been banned in the EU and Australia as a "reproductive poison", even though it is no more toxic than table salt
Borax was labeled a poison in Australia immediately following pharma lobbying the government after finding out that someone was selling it as a cure for arthritis
Borax is anti-microbial and anti-parasitic, but especially anti-fungal. It is an effective treatment for athlete's foot, vaginal thrush, and candida
Boron protects DNA damage, which is the basic mechanism of causes of cancer
Boron exposure has been shown to correlate with lower risk of osteoporosis and cancer
Studies suggest that boron helps cognitive function as well
Boron is naturally acquired from most plants we would eat. But boron content suffers seriously from soil depletion. Plants grown in mineral depleted soil, or with growth stimulated by fertilizers, will be lower in boron than they would have been in more natural history
There is no established daily recommended amount of boron, despite its health impact (it's effect on bone health alone should merit it for attention)
Those who recommend boron recommend a dosage of 6-9 mg/day, and even higher for the treatment of acute symptoms, before reducing to a lower dose for maintenance
The LD50 (measure of fatal toxicity) is a thousand times higher than any typical dose
Studies suggesting that it is harmful to fertility required doses far beyond any dosage or exposure, and was only demonstrated in animals, never in humans (even among boron miners)
Studies suggesting that is ineffective for its claimed uses used negligible amounts of it (less than the 3 mg/day)
TLDR:
Great for Bone/teeth health and calcium/magnesium levels in general
Great for Inflammation
Great for sexual hormones
Great anti-fungal
Basically cures Osteoporosis and arthritis
Good for fluoride and heavy metal detox
Possible cognitive and anti-cancer benefits
Suppressed by pharma because it's cheap and unpatentable
Modern people don't get enough because factory farming and food processing means we get it from nowhere instead of everywhere
So, what would 6-9mg be in teaspoons?
I'm not sure, you should get an mg-scale in any case though, they can be quite useful every now and then.
Time to go shopping.
According to this, 1 teaspoon of borax to 1 liter of water creates a concentrate, of which 1 teaspoon is a 3mg dose or boron.
That concentrate method is probably the way to go, but it looks like "25 to 30 mg of Borax to 3 mg of Boron" is your exact answer.
Picked up some 3mg Boron capsules this morning. Should I be taking anything else with it? Any other vitamins or supplements?
I just started taking it myself, so I'm not much of an authority. I just started exploring, and that's part of the reason I posted about it online, to collect more anecdata from others. From what I've been reading in my research, it synergizes really well magnesium. But based on the logic of why, that's really only relevant for for its bone-healthy and calcium-related effects.
There's a magnesium-calcium exchange in muscle tissue when you clench/unclench muscles. Calcium can get locked in the tissue, and that's what boron fixes. If you take magnesium with the boron, that allows the magnesium to flush out the stuck calcium, freeing it up to balance electrolytes and be re-absorbed into bones/teeth, etc. (I'm summarizing stuff I learned a few days ago, so take this all with a grain of salt).
That was the logic behind boron+magnesium (and why you can get more calcium by doing that, even without taking calcium). Maybe there's another reason, but it seems like if your bones and electrolytes are fine, then the magnesium isn't especially important.
Also, it increases the lifespan of vitamin D in the body. So if you're supplementing that, boron ought to help that be more effective.
That's all I've found so far for specific synergies.
Thanks. appreciate your time.
Thete are lots of calculators on line that will convert x to y for nearly anything. ( except chromosomes ;-)