Why is magnesium so important and why are we so deficient?
If you were pressed to do it, could you name the top 4 minerals your body needs for life? Calcium, potassium, and sodium are three and magnesium is the fourth. Yep, that stuff in the icky liquid you maybe had to drink for constipation and the reason granny rested her feet in a bath of Epsom salt. Magnesium is a big deal and we almost never hear about it. Care to guess what percentage of people are deficient in magnesium?
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I crave sugary foods after I eat. Always have. Even with a very altered diet which includes a few grains or starches, after I eat, my body is expecting something sweet. I have found that bleu cheese and walnuts are a satisfying substitute since it’s rich and fatty. Salty homemade peanut butter and whole butter also scratches the itch, mostly.
I commented about that craving on a friend’s Facebook page. I can’t recall the question but his response was interesting. Maybe I have a magnesium deficiency.
Well, maybe I do.
I looked at a few sites and it seems the range of Americans who are magnesium deficient is between 50% and 80%. Seems at least safe to say this is a common problem. And, it is a problem.
Now, let me make a few points clear for the overlords. I am not a doctor. I am not giving medical advice and I’m not prescribing anything. If you need medical advice, see your healthcare practitioner.
Point number 2. Covering the how and why of magnesium deficiency in one podcast is too much. There is a lot of information online, and much of it seems to contradict the very next thing you read.
Getting a simple straight answer is one of my biggest frustrations when reading about pretty much anything food and health. I know magnesium isn’t food exactly, but it can be sourced from foods.
Point three. I’ve been slightly critical of government overlords overlording in nearly all areas of our lives. How or why should we trust that the recommended daily allowance of any mineral is right? I asked that of two smart people who study health and food and the basic response was what else ya got? Yes, government can be less than plain, but micronutrients are seemingly much less politicized than macronutrients are so the RDA seems a good place to start.
The Recommended daily allowance of magnesium for men is 420 mg per day and 320 mg per day for women.
That’s the easy part. Why are we magnesium deficient? Here’s a partial list.
The Standard American Diet which includes
high sugar,
high PUFA fat,
refined flour and
chemicals you can’t plant, pick, or pronounce.
Inferior farming practices are less obvious, but plants that are magnesium deficient make animals or products that are magnesium deficient.
Nerd alert. Some of the science about this gets deep fast. I’m mostly restating some of what I read since biochemistry isn’t my strength.
It seems every cell of a living thing, ant to corn to cow to you, requires energy in the form of ATP, which is Adenosine Triphosphate.
If the soil is poor in magnesium, and one site suggested the massive amounts of fertilizers used don’t include magnesium, nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium are the main elements in fertilizers, anything that grows in the soil is magnesium deficient and anything that eats that plant will be, too.
Poor soil makes magnesium deficient plants which makes megnesim deficient animals which makes magnesium deficient humans. Big deal. We’ve gone this long and there doesn’t seem to be an issue. Why is magnesium so important?
The human body is wildly complex and complicated. A lot of what happens just happens, or doesn’t, and we never seem to know about it.
Magnesium is involved in hundreds of enzymatic activities in every cell. As stated on the Ancient Minerals website, magnesium, “allows enzymes to function properly, which in turn enable a vast majority of the body’s chemical reactions.” Enzymes do a lot of the heavy lifting in the cells by various chemical reactions. If enzymes are the lifters, magnesium is the spotter, making sure that the enzyme can lift the load. It’s an imperfect analogy, of course. The main point is that enzymes cannot do their jobs without magnesium to help. Some of the specific tasks, from that same ancient minerals website are breaking down glucose and fat, creating RNA and DNA, regulating cholesterol production, and producing proteins, enzymes, and antioxidants.
The question was why we need magnesium and the answer is for the complete and efficient operation of our body.
What happens when there isn’t enough magnesium to help with the heavy lifting? Cholesterol may get out of control. Insulin resistance builds and metabolic syndrome can develop. Those sound familiar as outcomes of the standard American diet.
If you look at the keto folks, and the paleo folks and carnivore folks, one reason they might appear healthier is the omission of processed commercial foods. For the most part, they are cooking from scratch and avoiding packets of heat and eat foods.
Since many of us are magnesium deficient, just eat more magnesium-rich foods, right? Yes, and no. I mentioned there was less politics in micronutrients, but not no politics.
One site listing food high in magnesium seems clearly to be on the anti-animal plan.
Eatthis dot com website lists some seeds and grains and vegetables as good sources of magnesium. They then highlight the line that “animal products—beef, chicken, and fish–are all low sources of magnesium” and start the meat list with mackeral with 82 mg per 3 ounces. To their editorial credit, they point out that mackerel is the only animal considered to be a great source of magnesium and then point out that chicken, 2% milk, and farmed Atlantic salmon are about equal to bananas and avocados. Contrasted to an average whole banana of 32 mg, it seems like eatthis has a clear preference. Pumpkin seeds and Swiss chard are the only two entries on their list that have more magnesium per serving than the mackerel. The point is read carefully.
Despite the challenges of poor soil making poor crops, food sources remain a good source of magnesium. The other source is supplements. That’s a whole other kettle of fish which I’ll get to in a moment.
Here’s a short list of some of the ways magnesium helps your body help you.
Help manage type 2 diabetes
ease constipation
Improve mental health
Assist with sleep regulation.
Support heart health
Every one of those items on that list was qualified to say magnesium might or could or may help with this or that. I’m not a fan of those qualifications. They seem lawyery, like they’re protecting something that isn’t so. And, just as that might be what happens on the good side, here’s a list of some symptoms that might be—see what I did there—from long-term magnesium deficiency. These are pretty general symptoms and may have more than one source. Here’s part of the list from the Journal of Nutrition and Food Sciences, “symptoms such as muscle weakness, cramps, fatigue, neurological and cardiovascular dysfunctions, reduced bone mineralization and strength.”
Supplements of magnesium come in a variety of forms. That is, magnesium and then something else attached. Magnesium citrate or carbonate or glycinate or others. In any case, food or supplement, magnesium is absorbed in the small intestine. Those added compounds are called counter ions. I don’t know how each functions or why there’s more than one choice.
At least two more important points. Magnesium doesn’t necessarily play well with other minerals or vitamins. Calcium can lower magnesium. Calcium from cheese is enough to do that. Vitamin D requires magnesium to become bioavailable. Diuretics can reduce magnesium. Many of the kinds of medications that we take for problems from the Standard American Diet, antacids, acid blockers, antibiotics, steroids, and more also deplete magnesium. It’s an almost insane web of this helps and this doesn’t and it’s a wonder any of us are walking upright.
If you want your magnesium checked, a blood test won’t help much. Serum magnesium, the stuff in your blood, is a very low percentage. From what I’ve read, somewhere near 1%. The rest is in your stuff: cells and such.
There are plenty of good reasons it seems to get enough magnesium. Stress. I forgot to mention that stress is a source of magnesium depletion. Now, here’s a real kicker. There’s the Oh crap, I’m late for work stress and the Oh crap, I’ve just been given 5 days of work to do in 4 hours stress, and then there’s the my body is overfed and undernourished stress that you don’t feel in your heart and head. It’s a stress we never see until there’s a problem and then that makes more stress.
Mackeral is a good source, as mentioned. Legumes and artichokes are too. Okra is also a decent source of magnesium. That makes next year’s planting easy to plan.
I learned more than I expected to about magnesium and I hope you did too. The quest included learning why low magnesium created my sweet tooth and that remains a mystery.
Sources
https://www.eatthis.com/best-foods-to-eat-for-magnesium/#:~:text=Animal%20products
