Magnesium: The Master Mineral That is a Key to Overall Health

by Paul Fassa
Health Impact News

There is what many consider a master mineral – magnesium. Why? For starters it is involved with over 300 metabolic processes in our bodies, although one doctor, Dr. Carolyn Dean, believes that number is even higher.

Magnesium is a nutrient among nutrients more important than vitamins. Without minerals, vitamin functions are greatly hampered, almost useless, according to Ed McCabe, deemed “Mr. Oxygen” for his book Flood Your Body With Oxygen and countless lectures on the subject. He surveyed nutritional and medical experts to come up with this pecking order of nutritional importance:

Oxygen
Pure water
Enzymes
Minerals
Vitamins

Adding to the importance of magnesium is the fact that magnesium is a co-factor for enzyme activity throughout the body, a case where sometimes both minerals and enzymes are equally important.

Magnesium’s Major Health Influences

Magnesium is at the core of green plants’ ability to synthesize sunlight and carbon dioxide into oxygen. It is the heart of chlorophyll, which serves us by carrying oxygen into red blood cells and preventing anemia.

Supplementing calcium gets a lot of attention, but without magnesium it isn’t carried into bone structures where it belongs. Yes, there are other factors for absorbing calcium into bones, such as vitamins D and K2. Magnesium is a major factor though.

Some advocate supplementing with magnesium only. Too much calcium not absorbed into bone matter can lead to arterial calcification, which is likely more of a factor for heart disease than the mainstream medical bogey man cholesterol. This calcium issue over-simplifies magnesium’s role in our health. Consider it one example among others.

Cholesterol is vital for our cell walls and brain matter, including the myelin sheath. Lesions on the myelin sheath are symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS). Cholesterol helps create hormones in our bodies and help convert sunlight into vitamin D. Many Alzheimer’s cases can be associated with low cholesterol.

Talk about a bad rap, cholesterol has taken the brunt of medical disinformation. And magnesium is involved in the creation of cholesterol as well.

Amazingly, this relatively ignored mineral is a life giving foundational building block. There are well over 300 other functions known now even according to an interview of Dr. Carolyn Dean, MD, ND, author of Magnesium Miracle says,

I used to use the often quoted amount of 325 enzymes being activated by magnesium, but Dr. Andrea Rosenoff has increased that very old estimate to 700-800. To put this in perspective, zinc activates about 200 enzyme systems and calcium only about 50! So you see where magnesium is far ahead of the crowd.

And here’s what Dr. Dean also mentioned in an interview that blew this writer away:

Magnesium is a co-factor for the enzyme ATP (adenosine triphosphate) the main source of energy in 100% of cells. It stabilizes membranes and is required for protein production and DNA and RNA production. It’s a co-factor for over 700 and perhaps up to 1,300 enzyme systems, making it the hardest working mineral in the body. Magnesium also regulates the ion channels, determining which minerals – like potassium and calcium – are allowed inside the cells. It’s involved with muscle action and nerve conduction. (Emphasis added)

This is amazing. Poor ATP cellular levels cause more than low energy and fatigue. It’s an underlying source of many autoimmune diseases and early death, especially when they become acute. Remedying low cellular ATP is vital for returning to good health. (Source)

Magnesium positive ions perform within cells to aid many different metabolic functions, including insulin regulation and sensitivity. Without insulin sensitivity, there is insulin resistance, which leads to diabetes type 2 and type 3. The insulin is being produced, but cells are not taking it in enough to metabolize glucose for energy. (Source)

Diabetes type 3 is considered a causal factor for Alzeimer’s and other neurological diseases. It’s not an official designation, but brain insulin resistance has been noticed and remedied by using coconut oil’s medium chain triglycerides (MCTs), processed by the liver to provide ketones that don’t require insulin for brain cell energy metabolism. Often Alzheimer’s victims lose most of their symptoms from using coconut oil. (Source)

When it comes to heart health, magnesium is also a strong factor, especially regarding heart beat rates and rhythms. Magnesium deficiency often expresses itself as arrhythmia or tachycardia. Mainstream medicine prefers prescribing toxic pharmaceutical drugs instead of recommending increased magnesium intake. Many have reversed these issues with magnesium.

Anxiety, panic attacks, irritability, and chronic fatigue may also be a sign of magnesium deficiency. Ditto for muscle cramping, constant muscular tension, sleep issues, and that often advertised “restless leg syndrome,” for which many pharmaceutical drugs have vied for attention with TV ads. Again, ignoring magnesium boosts pharmaceutical industry’s bottom line.

Fluorides are often added to pharmaceutical drugs to purportedly enhance their efficacy. According to Dr. Dean,

“When fluoride and magnesium bind together they make a magnesium fluoride compound that blocks enzyme activity in the hundreds of systems dependent on magnesium and this magnesium fluoride compound is deposited in bone, making it brittle.”

Avoid drugs with the letter “f” in their name, she added.

Compensating Magnesium Deficiency

Most of us are magnesium deficient. This is mostly due to poor diets and poor topsoil from decades of Big Ag farming practices. Most of our non-organic food crops get their potassium, an important essential mineral, from fertilizers. But there are no fertilizers containing magnesium.

It’s important to know your sustainable food sources have cultivated the soil to higher level of mineral content than when it was used for conventional farming. Fresh leafy green veggies are very high in magnesium as are some legumes and even peanuts. Even so, the importance of magnesium in our toxic environments almost demands some level of supplementation.

Most magnesium blood level testing by physicians overlooks this basic fact: Your serum level magnesium might read as normal, but in order for the heart to beat normally, it might be drawing magnesium from bone matter into the bloodstream, giving a false normal reading as your real body magnesium level is actually being depleted.

Dr. Dean recommends the Magnesium RBC test to read true magnesium levels. If your doctor or co-pay doesn’t allow this test, you can obtain it through www.requestatest.com at a reasonable price. Dr. Dean’s caveat is that the “normal” range reading peaks at just below optimum, 4.2 – 6.8 mg/dL (deciliter). She recommends accepting 6.5 or above readings for optimum health.

The most cost effective and easily assimilable magnesium supplement is magnesium citrate, which most magnesium knowledgeable medical experts recommend. Other forms of magnesium taken orally make terrific laxatives. They are met with very low bowel tolerance, so very little gets absorbed into the body.

There is a pricier off the shelf or online product called Natural Calm, which is mixed in hot water to produce a fizzy solution that gets into your cells rapidly. Many use this to relax muscles and calm nervousness or restlessness quickly. Then there are topical solutions, often called magnesium oil. They are not really oils. They are usually a slippery solution of highly concentrated magnesium in underground trapped sea water.

Dr. Dean has found the perfect highly assimilable oral magnesium available out of her need to meet the challenge of her body’s “magnesium wasting.” It’s a Pico-ionic magnesium called ReMag.

“Magnesium processed into picometer-size makes it 100% absorbed directly into the cells, high up in the GI tract so it doesn’t even reach the large intestine. So it doesn’t cause a laxative effect,” according to Dr. Dean.

However you go about remedying it, magnesium deficiency is not to be taken lightly. Many chronic poor health and autoimmune disease situations that were beyond mainstream medicine’s effective reach have been handled by supplementing magnesium effectively and without side effects.