Mr. Edwards, what is your opinion about this:
Orotates are the mineral salts of orotic acid, a natural substance found in our bodies and also in various foods including dairy products. As theorized many years ago by the pioneering German physician Hans Nieper, orotates are a component of a natural system of electrolyte carriers for distributing minerals throughout the body. [
1] (A different compartment of this same system uses amino acid complexes such as aspartates and arginates to deliver minerals.) Based on his observations of cells in culture, Nieper concluded that molecules of
calcium orotate and magnesium orotate can pass through cell membranes intact without "dissociating" or breaking apart into their component ions, and thereafter release their respective ions only at specific membrane sites within the cell. [
2] Subsequently he extended this principle to include other orotates such as lithium and zinc.
Working at his clinic in Hannover, Germany, Nieper applied his unique discoveries to many diseases, including autoimmune conditions. Over the course of more than four decades Dr. Nieper treated thousands of patients with his innovative mineral transporters, many apparently with great success. However, in later years he published relatively little in medical journals, preferring instead to reserve his time for seeing patients and for presenting occasional seminars about his work to medical professionals and consumers. As a result, his discoveries have been considered controversial by mainstream medicine or simply ignored, at least until recently.
Hans Nieper died in October, 1998 at the age of 70-ironically just at a time when many of his ideas had finally begun gaining wider acceptance. Only a few weeks before his death, in fact, the collected papers from a symposium on the medical uses of magnesium orotate were published in the journal Cardiovascular Drugs and Therapy. Overall, the symposium lent credence to Nieper's claims for the cardiovascular benefits of magnesium orotate while calling for additional human trials. [
3
3. Rosenfeldt FL. Metabolic supplementation with orotic acid and magnesium orotate. Cardiovasc Drugs Ther. 1998;12(Suppl 2):147-52.