The body needs selenium and expects you to get enough of it through a well-balanced diet. If you don't manage it one day, that's okay, you'll be fine the next day. But if you continuously fail to get enough selenium, that's when trouble starts. The problem is, you can't stockpile selenium, and a day with too little selenium can't be made up for later. It's crucial to maintain consistent intake.

Selenium is a powerful antioxidant that helps with joint repair, combats cancer, and heart disease. A deficiency in selenium can permanently damage the thyroid gland and the immune system. Frequent one-day illnesses are a typical sign that your body has been lacking selenium for several days.

It's not just thyroid issues that come with low selenium. Mood swings, "brain fog" (you notice this when you often forget things), sudden anxiety, fatigue, muscle weakness, acne, pimples in new places, dry skin, and a host of other issues are common. Detecting a selenium deficiency in time is quite difficult. We usually notice it only when it's too late.

To avoid all these problems, you should eat a handful of nuts daily, one egg for every 50 kilograms of your body weight (if you weigh 70 kilograms, you should eat 2 eggs a day!). It's also good to eat a handful of sunflower seeds or as much tuna as you weigh in kilograms.

One more thing: the need for selenium increases with age, and generally, you should consume twice as many micrograms as your age in years. The minimum daily requirement is between 30 and 50 micrograms. However, since we get selenium from foods that absorb it from the soil, and the soil in Europe (and in China too!) is becoming increasingly depleted, we often have to rely on dietary supplements or a more varied diet.

And that's becoming more challenging, isn't it?