Magnesium: Why You Should Take It

magnesium Hot Topic really important element should you take it what we're going to talk about today is what it is who needs it and how to get it welcome to talking with docs I'm Dr Paul zalza I'm Dr Brad weenie so Magnesium number 12 on the periodic table of elements it's a earthy alkaline metal shiny gray substance I'm not gonna lie it's got a pretty low boiling point at about 650 degrees Celsius highly reactive fourth most common element after iron oxygen and silly cone it's too much it's too much no one wants to know that much about magnesium they just want to know should you eat it and where do you get it people want to know that they don't want to know that so add it to aluminum alloy make it very strong they don't care okay magnesium Pi why don't you take it off okay so magnesium liposite is an important element it actually is a cofactoring up to 300 enzymes it's important almost all of our bodily functions and deficiency is talked about a lot on social media and probably not very much with your doctor and you might have seen magnesium in preparations such as laxatives or sleep aids which I find kind of odd because you could end up in the scenario where you're like honey good news is I slept great bad news is we got to change the sheets you slept like a log I wasn't just sawing logs yeah um okay so magnesium it's found in Foods found in supplements found in antacids as well as laxatives thankfully magnesium deficiency is quite uncommon our body has about 25 grams total of magnesium that's less than one ounce in our entire body 50 to 60 percent of it lives in our bones the other 40 is mostly inside of our cells and our soft tissues and actually less than one percent is in our blood and the issue with that is that we have such a big store in our bones and it's in our cells and not a ton of it is circulating around and the plasma makes it hard to detect and diagnose if you've got low magnesium or too high magnesium right so some people talk about a blood test an average number of blood tests would be 0.75 millimoles per liter now this is a really low number but it actually doesn't represent how much lives inside of your body it's kind of like if you lined up 10 people and looked in their wall say they all had a hundred dollars in their wallet it doesn't really predict how much money they have in their bank account I never have a hundred dollars in my wallet cash is not King anymore I don't think anymore it's all credit e transfer right when was the last time you wrote a check I write checks for our rent at the office you're old I'm a boomer okay so the blood this is not super useful so there's other ways that you can test you can test the amount of magnesium in your red blood cells it actually is a urine test that can measure the amount of magnesium and that's actually one of the best tests because our magnesium levels are really tightly controlled by our kidneys magnesium is routinely excreted out by our kidneys and then depending on your level all of it's taken back up or some of it's loss so but this is not a practical way to do it okay magnesium pi and you're making fun of me for geeking out on me I know I know okay so where first of all magnesium deficiency like we said really uncommon what are the kinds of symptoms that you get from magnesium these symptoms are bad okay they're very similar to the symptoms my children exhibit when I say it's time to get up and go to school fatigue nausea tiredness yep vomiting yep so that's from a minor or a low-level magnesium deficiency and as it gets worse they become more serious so numbness and tingling muscle contractions and aching you can even have personality changes what yeah yeah so and a lot of people think even heart arrhythmias they think that this is more related to the hypokalemia or the low potassium as well as the elevated calcium or hypercalcemia that often goes along with hypomagnesemia yeah so you're getting into some electrolyte imbalances and you get the symptoms of that and then you're getting some neurologic symptoms later on okay their personality change yes so so where do you get magnesium from let's start with food well magnesium is abundant in certain types of foods and I guess the plant lovers are going to love this because it's a lot of plant-based products that can provide magnesium even the biggest bang for the bucks I think is pumpkin seeds pumpkin seeds number one so one ounce of pumpkin seeds actually has like 150 milligrams of magnesium which is like more than half of your daily requirement and we know you're not all getting together on Friday night to share some pumpkin seeds with the guys while you watch the football game is there a football game on Friday it depends probably baseball now yeah baseball yeah or a hockey playoffs oh my please no don't get me talking about I can't make beliefs right now pumpkin seeds is one pumpkin chia seeds beans um there's almonds uh cashews even peanuts and tuna yes Tuna Chicken a lot of meat sources they have much lower amounts of magnesium but definitely the trouble is a lot of people feel or have shown that the Magnesium is not always bioavailable it's not absorbed at the same rate so um sometimes food supplements are not enough so okay so then can we ease into who sort of at risk for being hypomagnesemic absolutely let's break it down Okay so it's either going to be not absorbed properly in your gut or you're going to be getting rid of your stores too quick so not absorbing the gut or peeing it out too quick in your kidneys so then you can kind of think of it like that when you think about who's at risk for getting it so someone who has excessive alcohol use and poor nutrition yes for sure uh with it with on the GI side of things people with crohn's irritable bowel even people taking ppis or proton pump inhibitors for acid reflux lowering the gastric acid concentration actually limits the amount of magnesium that can be absorbed right uh people with diabetes because their sugars are high they're urinating a lot and just leaking out a lot of their magnesium kind of pulls the Magnesium with it and older adults because of the reasons we talked about they actually absorb it less and their kidney function is almost is usually not as good so they're not absorbing as much are we older adults do you think not yes maybe you are okay so those are the kind of people that are at risk for lower magnesium okay longer term magnesium plays an important role they believe in six different things and there's certainly some good studies that show correlations but not direct relations between the amount of magnesium and these Health outcomes but I think they're worth mentioning because there is significant literature to support but not really a good randomized controlled trial the gold standard but just some supporting literature that suggests hey there may be an association here like the majority of actually supplements and and food studies there's not a lot of good rcts because there's not a lot of money in magnesium supplementation so number one is it has a direct effect on your blood pressure Studies have shown that if you take a magnesium supplement and lower your blood pressure three or three or four millimeters of mercury bones baby osteoporosis definitely increased risk of osteoporosis for those that have low Magnesium number three is relation to cardiovascular disease and ischemic heart disease so it has a heart protective effect possibly related to the Rhythm and possibly related to the cholemic issues Moods Food disorders can affect your mood we've already talked about some of the neurologic issues with magnesium and it can affect your mood our chance of having anxiety and depression for sure um sleep so there's a recent meta-analysis in 2021 that looked at all the studies and certainly there have been some studies showed that taking magnesium supplements improves your sleep and relaxation and others that didn't so the take home from the meta-analysis was that it didn't have a hard recommendation to take it but that there was a possibility that was related yeah if you're using it for sleep and you're finding it works then that's good that that's that could be entirely a real thing just we haven't been able to prove it yet in the scientific literature and the last one was diabetes there's some evidence to show that people with low magnesium or more normalized magnesium have better control of their blood sugars okay there's the skinny on magnesium and some of its long-term health effects yes now we've got to talk about supplements we do actually so in people that are not getting it through an adequate diet and and even others some people feel even if you are getting it this is worth considering if you have some of the symptoms that we talked about so in a supplement there are a bunch of different kinds of magnesium so it's the second word that's going to make the difference so citrate and aspartate seem to be ones that are better absorbed um think careful you can't take zinc when you're taking magnesium because it inhibits the absorption now remember zinc sub metal magnesium is a metal if you take an iron pill you're probably going to assemble a bike frame in your stomach and that's not a good thing so yes careful when you're taking it with zinc and the amount so the average person adult male or female is between 300 and 450 and some people also discuss 5450 milligrams Oh I thought you can say grams grams that would be too much so it's like a pound of metal that's like a pound of metal that'll be too much why are you eating the toaster but but it's hard to know how much to take so some people would say slowly incrementally increase your dose and then once you actually start to get diarrhea that's when you know you've reached the point it back right which seems like a little bit of a weird way to do it but because we don't have a reliable test some essentially the side effects of having too much magnesium because it's not dangerous at that level is some of the best ways to do it change the sheets change the sheets okay A to Z of magnesium and it's a really important element um It's relatively cheap to purchase it's easy to take the side effects are low side note if you were taking Mega doses like up to 5 000 milligrams that some antacids and laxatives have then you could be at risk and there have been anecdotal reports of unfortunately even fatal events related to this so obviously common sense when it comes to that kind of stuff but in general it's very very safe in general don't take a mega dose of anything no agreed everything in moderation well there it is except us yeah a mega dose on talking with Doc there it is magnesium the element the element LMN tree my dear Watson number 12. if you like this video please like it subscribe to our Channel please leave some comments about whether you have some of these symptoms whether you've taken magnesium and what's working for you stop drop and comment and remember you are in charge of your own health we'll see you next time thank you

Channel: Talking With Docs

Views: 1,211,170

Keywords: magnesium, magnesium deficiency, magnesium benefits, magnesium citrate, magnesium supplements, magnesium foods, magnesium glycinate, magnesium deficiency symptoms, magnesium malate, low magnesium, magnesium taurate, magnesium oxide, benefits of magnesium, magnesium rich foods, low magnesium levels, signs of magnesium deficiency, magnesium orotate, magnesium sulfate, signs of low magnesium, low magnesium symptoms, magnesium sources, magnesium chloride

Id: 97y5gQQ3gTA

Length: 9min 35sec (575 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 22 2023