"When Dr. John McNeill, dean of pharmaceutical sciences at UBC, and his colleagues Clayton Heilinger and Arun Tahiliani were testing vanadium - a common trace element found in seaweed - on diabetes induced female rats to see if it would prevent the development of cardiac problems, they made a startling discovery. Vanadium not only improved the rats' cardiovascular performance, it also regulated the levels of glucose in their blood and prevented the formation of cataracts. In fact, the rats that were fed vanadium in their drinking water appeared normal in all respects. ... Adds McNeill: 'The fact that vanadium appears to fix the whole system is a very nice discovery. It was not something we originally intended to look for.'
On average, an adult consumes one to four milligrams of vanadium every day from such foods as meat, milk, vegetables and bread: fish and marine plants are particularly good sources. The biological importance of vanadium, however, is largely unknown. A natural part of the regulatory system, it is believed to prevent cholesterol formation both in blood vessels and in the central nervous system. ... However, says McNeill, 'we never thought vanadium would do it [mimic insulin] so well. From everything we looked at, the rats were completely normal."