Trace Minerals

Best-in-class: Trace Minerals

Thorne Trace Minerals. The filed Supplement Facts panel declares five minerals per capsule: zinc 15 mg as the bisglycinate chelate, manganese 2.5 mg as the citrate, selenium 100 mcg as L-selenomethionine, chromium 100 mcg as the nicotinate glycinate chelate and boron 700 mcg as a glycinate complex, taken one to three times daily. There is no copper, no molybdenum and no iodine in it.

How Trace Minerals actually works

Five minerals per capsule at nutritional rather than therapeutic doses: zinc 15 mg as the bisglycinate chelate, manganese 2.5 mg as the citrate, selenium 100 mcg as L-selenomethionine, chromium 100 mcg as the nicotinate glycinate and boron 700 mcg as a glycinate. Each has its own defined enzymatic role — the argument for taking them together is that they compete for shared transporters, so correcting one in isolation at a high dose can induce a shortfall in another. Zinc against copper is the classic example, and this capsule supplies the zinc with no copper beside it.

Where to get Trace Minerals

The evidence for Trace Minerals

Graded by what exists behind each claim.

✅ Clinically validated

• Corrects sub-clinical trace-mineral gaps that impair enzyme function (well-established at the deficiency level).
• Provides cofactors for hundreds of metalloenzymes.

📊 Correlative data

• Depleted soils and processed diets track with widespread marginal trace-mineral status.

🧪 Theoretical / extrapolated benefits

• Balanced low-dose repletion is sensible; isolated megadosing any one mineral risks imbalance.

How to read these tiers: they say how much human evidence exists, not how well something works — and ✗ flags harm, never a disappointing trial. How the evidence tiers work →

What Trace Minerals actually does

A trace mineral is not a nutrient in the way a vitamin is. It is a metal ion held in the active site of a protein, and it is there because organic chemistry cannot do what it does: zinc polarizes water to generate a hydroxide nucleophile at neutral pH, manganese and copper cycle between oxidation states to handle single electrons, selenium's lower reduction potential than sulfur makes a selenol a better nucleophile than a thiol. Each mineral in this blend has a specific chemical job and a specific set of proteins that do it.

Zinc, and the number worth knowing is structural rather than catalytic. Zinc is catalytic in carbonic anhydrase, in alcohol dehydrogenase, in carboxypeptidase and in the matrix metalloproteinases. But its larger role is architectural: the zinc finger, a fold in which a zinc ion is held by two cysteines and two histidines and which is what lets a transcription factor grip DNA. Something like a tenth of the human proteome binds zinc, most of it structurally, which is why zinc deficiency presents as everything at once — skin, immunity, taste, wound healing, testosterone — rather than as one syndrome.

How zinc gets in, and how it pushes copper out. ZIP4, the product of SLC39A4, imports zinc across the apical enterocyte membrane; ZnT1 exports it to the blood. High luminal zinc induces metallothionein inside the enterocyte, and metallothionein binds copper roughly a thousandfold more avidly than zinc. Copper is therefore captured in a cell that will be shed into the lumen within days and lost in stool. That is not a subtle interaction and it is the mechanism behind the whole copper problem on this page Francis 2022Burkhead 2022.

Selenium is the only one incorporated as an amino acid. Selenocysteine is not a post-translational modification; it is encoded, inserted at a UGA codon that is read as selenocysteine rather than as a stop when a selenocysteine insertion sequence element is present in the messenger RNA. Twenty-five human selenoproteins result, and three families matter here: the glutathione peroxidases that reduce hydrogen peroxide and lipid hydroperoxides, thioredoxin reductase, and the three iodothyronine deiodinases that convert thyroxine to triiodothyronine and terminate it. That last family is why selenium is a thyroid mineral rather than merely an antioxidant one.

Manganese, and it shares a door with iron. Manganese superoxide dismutase, SOD2, is the mitochondrial superoxide scavenger; arginase, which terminates the urea cycle and competes with nitric oxide synthase for arginine, is a manganese enzyme; so is pyruvate carboxylase, the first committed step of gluconeogenesis. Absorption goes largely through divalent metal transporter 1, the same transporter iron uses, which is why iron deficiency raises manganese absorption and why manganese excess is a real risk in iron-deficient people. Excretion is biliary, so liver disease is the situation in which manganese accumulates in the basal ganglia.

Chromium, stated honestly. The proposal is that chromium is held by a small oligopeptide, chromodulin, that amplifies insulin receptor tyrosine kinase activity. No chromium-dependent enzyme has been isolated, no deficiency syndrome has been defined outside long-term parenteral nutrition, and the dietary reference is an adequate intake rather than a requirement. Chromium is the ingredient in this blend with the weakest claim to being essential at all.

Boron has no human enzyme either, and its effects are endocrine. Supplemental boron alters the metabolism of sex-hormone-binding globulin, estradiol and testosterone and influences magnesium and calcium handling, most likely through borate ester formation with cis-diol groups on nucleotides and glycoproteins. It is a real signal with no named target.

Cell, rodent, human — and where it stops

Population data first, because this product is sold on a claim about populations. Trace element concentrations measured across a large population-based survey establish what the distribution actually looks like in a developed country, and the answer is that most people sit within reference ranges with a long tail rather than a widespread deficit Syversen 2021. The card's premise — that depleted soils and processed diets have made marginal trace mineral status general — is a plausible story that the population measurements do not confirm.

The measurement problem, which comes before every other argument. A systematic review and meta-analysis of methods for assessing zinc status concludes what practizing clinicians already suspect: plasma or serum zinc is the least bad marker available and it is not a good one, because it is homeostatically defended, falls acutely during inflammation and infection, drops after a meal, and moves diurnally Ceballos-Rasgado 2024. So the central claim of a trace mineral blend — that it corrects sub-clinical gaps — is a claim about a quantity nobody can measure reliably in an individual.

Harm has been demonstrated in randomized humans for one of these minerals, at a dose people take. Two hundred micrograms of selenium daily, long term, was associated with a higher incidence of type 2 diabetes, with the risk concentrated in participants whose baseline selenium was already in the top third Stranges 2007. That is the shape of the whole trace mineral problem in one result: supplementing a replete person with an essential element is not neutral.

And harm from the interaction has been demonstrated in people. Zinc-induced copper deficiency produces anemia, neutropenia and a myeloneuropathy that mimics subacute combined degeneration, and it is reported often enough to have a literature of its own, including cases mistaken for paraneoplastic syndromes Francis 2022Osadchyi 2025. Copper's own nutritional review sets out how narrow the useful range is Burkhead 2022.

The specific obstacle, and for a blend it is unusually concrete. Everything in the repletion literature was measured in deficient people. If you are not deficient — and in a developed country, for these five minerals, you probably are not Syversen 2021 — the expected effect of this product on any enzyme in the section above is zero, because a metalloenzyme with its metal in place does not run faster when you supply more metal. What is not zero is the interaction: adding zinc without copper has a direction of effect even in a replete person Francis 2022. A blend that cannot help a replete reader can still move something in them.

Trace Minerals — which form, and does it matter

Start with what is in the bottle, because the card and the filed label do not agree. The most recent Supplement Facts panel filed for this product declares, per capsule: zinc 15 mg as the bisglycinate chelate, selenium 100 micrograms as L-selenomethionine, manganese 2.5 mg as the citrate, chromium 100 micrograms as the nicotinate glycinate chelate and boron 700 micrograms as a glycinate complex, taken one to three times daily Office of Dietary Supplements. There is no copper in it, no molybdenum and no iodine. This site's card describes the product as a blend of zinc, copper, manganese, chromium, molybdenum, selenium and boron. Two of those seven are not in the panel and one has never been in it: an earlier filed formula contained molybdenum 50 micrograms and vanadium 50 micrograms, and it contained no copper either Office of Dietary Supplements.

Why the missing copper is the important half. The card's own argument is that these minerals compete and that a formulated blend beats random single minerals. That argument is correct and it is exactly why a zinc-containing blend with no copper is the formulation you would not design Francis 2022Burkhead 2022. A reader who bought this product because balance was the selling point has bought the one imbalance the mechanism section warns about.

The selenium form changes what a blood test means. L-selenomethionine is incorporated non-specifically into body protein wherever methionine would go, which builds a large, slowly-exchanging tissue pool; sodium selenite is not, and goes directly into the selenoprotein pathway. A plasma selenium on selenomethionine therefore rises further and stays raised longer than the same dose of selenite, and the number partly reflects a protein store rather than selenoprotein saturation. That distinction is invisible on a label and it changes the interpretation of the one marker on this page that is worth ordering.

The chelates are a real advantage in the population that buys this. Bisglycinate and glycinate chelates present the metal as a neutral amino acid complex rather than as a free ion, which reduces dependence on gastric acid and reduces competition at divalent metal transporter 1. Manganese citrate is the outlier in the panel — a simple organic acid salt rather than a chelate Office of Dietary Supplements.

And the market status, stated because it changes what a reader should do. Every Thorne Trace Minerals record in the NIH label database is flagged off market, the most recent as of 22 October 2024 Office of Dietary Supplements, with no current filing to replace it. The numbers on this page are the last panel that was filed. Read the bottle.

What would have to be true, and how you would know it was not

1. Plasma zinc at eight weeks, and predict it barely moves. This is the marker everybody orders and the one that answers least. Plasma zinc is defended, drops in inflammation, drops after eating and swings across the day Ceballos-Rasgado 2024. Draw it fasting, in the morning, with an hs-CRP alongside so you can tell a real fall from an inflammatory one. Predict a small rise at most, and predict that a flat result tells you nothing about whether your tissues needed it.

2. Serum copper and ceruloplasmin at six months, which is the prediction that cuts against this product. Three capsules daily delivers 45 mg of zinc with no copper Office of Dietary Supplements, above the 40 mg tolerable upper limit for zinc on its own before you count any multivitamin. Predict serum copper and ceruloplasmin drift downward over months on that intake, and predict that the earliest clinical sign is a normocytic or macrocytic anemia with neutropenia rather than anything neurological Francis 2022Osadchyi 2025. This is a cheap pair of tests and it is the one lab result that would make this product's central design decision visible.

3. Plasma selenium at three months, with a ceiling in mind. One hundred micrograms per capsule as selenomethionine Office of Dietary Supplements will raise plasma selenium and keep raising it for months because of the protein pool. Predict a rise; predict that at three capsules a day plus a high-potency multivitamin you approach or exceed the 400 microgram upper limit; and treat the randomized diabetes signal at 200 micrograms as a reason to add a fasting glucose to the same draw Stranges 2007.

4. Fasting glucose and HbA1c at three months for the chromium claim, and predict nothing. Chromium is in this blend for glucose handling and has no isolated enzyme, no defined deficiency in ordinary eating, and a randomized literature that is largely null in non-diabetic people. If the chromium in this capsule did anything to your HbA1c it would be a surprising finding rather than a confirmation. Predict a flat result and read it as information about the ingredient rather than about you.

What will fool you: the word deficiency. Because there is no reliable individual status marker for zinc Ceballos-Rasgado 2024, any symptom — fatigue, poor healing, low libido, hair shedding — can be attributed to a trace mineral gap and any improvement credited to correcting it, with no measurement able to contradict either claim. That is a comfortable position for a product and a bad one for a reader.

What nobody has tested yet

Nobody has run a copper-free zinc blend for a year with ceruloplasmin as the endpoint. The zinc-copper interaction is textbook and the clinical cases are published Francis 2022Osadchyi 2025, but there is no prospective study of the exposure people actually have — 15 to 45 mg of supplemental zinc a day, for years, with no supplemental copper. Serum copper, ceruloplasmin and a full blood count at baseline, six and twelve months, in two hundred supplement users, would settle whether the ordinary use of this ordinary product does anything measurable to copper status.

Nobody has produced a usable zinc status marker. The methodological review is explicit that the field is working with a bad one Ceballos-Rasgado 2024. Candidate alternatives — erythrocyte or leukocyte zinc, metallothionein messenger RNA in leukocytes, zinc-dependent enzyme activities, exchangeable zinc pool size — exist and have never been validated head to head against a repletion response in ordinary adults. Until somebody does that, every claim about correcting a marginal zinc status is unfalsifiable, including the claims on this page.

Nobody has tested this specific combination against its own parts. The blend's premise is that formulated balance beats isolated minerals. Nobody has randomized zinc alone against the blend with any shared endpoint, which means the premise has never been examined even though it is the product's entire reason to exist.

And nobody has followed the selenium signal into supplement users. The diabetes association came from a cancer prevention trial at 200 micrograms Stranges 2007. A cohort of people taking a trace blend plus a multivitamin, which is how 300 micrograms a day happens in real life, with fasting glucose over five years, has never been assembled.

Trace Minerals — its own safety story, not its category's

Do the addition first, because this product's risk is entirely an addition problem. The label permits three capsules a day Office of Dietary Supplements. At three capsules that is zinc 45 mg, selenium 300 micrograms, manganese 7.5 mg, chromium 300 micrograms and boron 2.1 mg. The tolerable upper limits are zinc 40 mg, selenium 400 micrograms, manganese 11 mg and boron 20 mg. So the maximum suggested intake of this product alone exceeds the zinc limit and reaches three quarters of the selenium limit before food, before a multivitamin and before any standalone.

Add the multivitamin most buyers are also taking and the arithmetic gets worse in a specific way. The high-potency panels in this cohort declare zinc 15 mg and selenium 200 micrograms each Office of Dietary SupplementsOffice of Dietary Supplements. Trace Minerals at three capsules plus either of those is 60 mg of zinc and 500 micrograms of selenium daily — over both limits, from two products that each look conservative on their own label.

The copper story is this product's own, not the category's. A zinc-containing blend with no copper in it Office of Dietary Supplements is the exact formulation that produces zinc-induced copper deficiency when taken long enough at a high enough dose Francis 2022. The clinical picture is anemia and neutropenia first, then a sensory ataxia and spastic gait from posterior column and corticospinal involvement that can be irreversible even after copper is replaced Osadchyi 2025Burkhead 2022. This is not a warning about a rare idiosyncratic reaction; it is a predictable consequence of a known transport mechanism, and the reason to state it here rather than on a generic mineral page is that this bottle is the one that creates the exposure.

Manganese, and the two people who should be careful. Manganese is excreted in bile, so anybody with cholestasis or significant liver disease clears it poorly and accumulates it in the basal ganglia. And because it shares divalent metal transporter 1 with iron, an iron-deficient person absorbs substantially more manganese from the same capsule. Iron deficiency plus a manganese-containing blend is the combination worth avoiding, and it is common in exactly the people who buy mineral supplements for fatigue.

Selenium excess has a recognizable early presentation. Brittle nails with white streaks, hair shedding, a metallic taste and a garlic-like odor on the breath, with gastrointestinal upset. It appears well below the dose that causes serious toxicity and it is routinely attributed to something else.

Timing, for the one drug that matters. Divalent minerals bind levothyroxine in the gut and reduce its absorption enough to move a stable TSH. Four hours' separation, every day, is the whole of the advice and it is not optional.

Sources read for this page

• Office of Dietary Supplements, National Institutes of Health. Trace Minerals (Thorne) -- filed Supplement Facts panel: per capsule, zinc 15 mg, selenium 100 mcg, manganese 2.5 mg, chromium 100 mcg, boron 700 mcg; no copper, no molybdenum, no iodine; off market as of 22 October 2024. NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database, DSLD ID 291799
• Office of Dietary Supplements, National Institutes of Health. Trace Minerals (Thorne Research, earlier formula) -- filed Supplement Facts panel: per capsule, zinc 15 mg, selenium 100 mcg, manganese 2.5 mg, chromium 100 mcg, molybdenum 50 mcg, boron 700 mcg, vanadium 50 mcg. NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database, DSLD ID 15809
• Francis Z, et al. The COVID-19 Pandemic and Zinc-Induced Copper Deficiency: An Important Link.. American Journal of Medicine 2022 · PMID 35367442
• Osadchyi V, et al. Zinc-Induced Copper Deficiency Myeloneuropathy Masquerading as Paraneoplastic Syndrome: A Case Report.. Cureus 2025 · PMID 40416147
• Burkhead JL, et al. Nutrition Information Brief - Copper. Advances in Nutrition 2022 · PMID 34940824
• Ceballos-Rasgado M, et al. Methods of Assessment of Zinc Status in Humans: An Updated Review and Meta-analysis.. Nutrition Reviews 2024 · PMID 38917458
• Syversen T, et al. Trace Elements in the Large Population-Based HUNT3 Survey. Biological Trace Element Research 2021 · PMID 32897510
• Stranges S, et al. Effects of long-term selenium supplementation on the incidence of type 2 diabetes: a randomized trial.. Annals of Internal Medicine 2007 · PMID 17620655

How you would know if it worked

Trace Minerals — safety & side effects

Bloodwork to run alongside Trace Minerals

Baseline first, then again at 8–12 weeks.

The Full Micronutrient Screen panel covers these in one order — 11 markers, $363.60 with the discount applied.

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Trace Minerals — frequently asked questions

Trace Minerals inside a finished plan

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What Trace Minerals is used for

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