Numerous studies have been conducted (see a list of a few at the end of this article), and in all they present strong evidence that increased magnesium intake (even with supplements) can be very effective in reducing or curing migraines. Even the USDA has climbed on the bandwagon, and suggested increased daily intake of food high in magnesium or, if needed, magnesium supplements. The USDA reports says:

Epidemiological findings and supplementation trials show that people’s magnesium status is associated with the severity and frequency of migraine headaches… controlled human studies at the Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center (GFHNRC) and elsewhere are being done to conclusively show that inadequate magnesium intake can result in these maladies.

I added the bolded phrase. Whatever the cause, inadequate magnesium has been correlated with migraines. We already know that migraines cause stress, and that stress can reduce the magnesium levels in the human body, but several studies go beyond this to show that additional magnesium in food or via supplements can be the solution for many migraine sufferers. The same report goes on to say “magnesium supplementation reduces the number and duration of migraines, including menstrual migraines, in some people.” It further suggests that “too little magnesium can worsen the suffering from migraine headaches.”

There is strong evidence that magnesium helps stabilize the blood vessels, preventing capillary and muscle spasms.

One double-blind study revealed regular use of magnesium helps to prevent migraine headaches. The subject group of patients with recurrent migraines were given either 600 mg of magnesium each day or a placebo. The magnesium group’s migraines were reduced by 41.6%, compared to a reduction of 15.8% in the placebo group. Other double-blind studies have shown similar results. One study found no benefit, but has since been criticized on many significant points, including using an excessively strict definition of what constitutes a benefit.

The patients group at migraines.org relates the following with regards to dosage and types of magnesium to use. Note that magnesium rich water is suggested, and more information is available about those at our magnesium water page.

A Canadian approach suggested that physicians advise migraine patients to consume at least 6 mg magnesium per day for each kilogram of body weight. An even higher intake of 10 mg/day per Kg of body weight may be desirable provided that it does not trigger a laxative effect. Breaking the dosage into three or four parts taken at different times of day helps prevent laxative effect. Magnesium hydroxide is NOT recommended because of poor bioavailability and because they know of no instance of it having any beneficial use other than as a laxative. Other Magnesium compounds appear to be better, including Magnesium oxide, Magnesium sulphate, and Magnesium citrate. Natural magnesium in water (magnesium carbonate dissolved in CO2-rich water) is 30% more bio-available than Magnesium in food or pill, and offers much greater cardio-protection.

As the evidence adds up, we are still left without absolute proof of magnesium’s efficacy with migraines. Yet, magnesium and migraines are strongly linked, and there is plenty to suggest that increased magnesium could not only prevent migraines, but lessen the severity of the migraines that do occur. Couple this with the minimal risk associated with increasing magnesium (unless you have kidney problems) and it would seem a no-brainer to give this a try. But remember to avoid chocolate as a magnesium source, as chocolate may be part of the cause of your migraines.

As additional ways to help prevent migraines, a calcium boost before bedtime, eating more smaller meals rather than a few huge meals, drink plenty of water, and consume a bit of cayenne pepper each day (apparently helps raise your pain threshold).

Again, some of the studies on magnesium and migraines are listed below:

* Pfaffenrath V, Diener H, Fischer M, et al. The efficacy and  safety of Tanacetum parthenium (feverfew) in migraine prophylaxis-a  double-blind, multicentre, randomized placebo-controlled dose-response  study.         Cephalalgia. 2002;22:523-532.

* Peikert A, Wilimzig C, Kohne-Volland R. Prophylaxis of migraine  with oral magnesium: results from a prospective, multi-center,  placebo-controlled and double-blind randomized study.         Cephalalgia. 1996;16:257-263.

* Taubert K. Magnesium in migraine. Results of a multicenter pilot study [in German; English abstract].         Fortschr Med. 1994;112:328-330.

* Facchinetti F, Sances G, Borella P, et al. Magnesium prophylaxis  of menstrual migraine: effects on intracellular magnesium.         Headache. 1991;31:298-301.

* Pfaffenrath V, Wessely P, Meyer C, et al. Magnesium in the  prophylaxis of migraine—a double-blind, placebo-controlled study.         Cephalalgia. 1996;16:436-440.

* Gaby AR. Research review.         Nutr Healing. March 1997.

* Titus F, Davalos A, Alom J, et al. 5-hydroxytryptophan versus  methysergide in the prophylaxis of migraine: randomized clinical trial.         Eur Neurol. 1986;25:327-329.

* Bono G, Criscuoli M, Martignoni E, et al. Serotonin precursors in migraine prophylaxis.         Adv Neurol. 1982;33:357-363.

* Maissen CP, Ludin HP. Comparison of the effect of  5-hydroxytryptophan and propranolol in the interval treatment of  migraine [translated from German].         Schweiz Med Wochenschr. 1991;121:1585-1590.

* Santucci M, Cortelli P, Rossi PG, et al. L-5-hydroxytryptophan  versus placebo in childhood migraine prophylaxis: a double-blind  crossover study.         Cephalalgia. 1986;6:155-157.

Calculate your daily needs for magnesium. This data was taken from the USDA as well as objective research sites, and is not intended as medical advice (as I am not a medical professional, but simply using available research). Please consult your doctor for more information. However, they may provide an idea for those over 18 years of age (calculator not applicable to children). Though diabetes and other health conditions may increase your need for magnesium, I have not included many of them. Enjoy…

So, just look at the right sidebar and use our calculator to determine your magnesium needs.

Enjoy!

I came across this list, and was wowed by the number one magnesium super food right at the top. None other than coffee. 15,999 milligrams! That’s an outrageous number, considering your daily requirements are less than 500, or at most 800 if you follow the strongest proponents of magnesium. What does almost 16 grams of magnesium actually mean here? That’s enough to give diarrhea to you even if all you eat are rocks and starchy white rice.

This demonstrates a problem that many such lists have. If they list according to magnesium per 100 gram (about 4 ounces) servings, you’ll get things at the top of the list such as soy sauce, and fresh ground coffee (not the water, just the ground coffee beans).  Try downing 4 ounces of soy sauce or coffee beans in a sitting. You won’t enjoy it, and most likely you’ll stop to get sick before you get even close.

The items at the top of nutrition lists based on one serving size will be top-heavy with things that aren’t meant to be eaten in those volumes.

Lists based on calories have the same issue. While they can be helpful, you will find very low calorie things such as salt, coffee, and kombu seaweed that, once again, cannot be eaten in any bulk.

This is why we need to talk about magnesium foods one by one. So, let’s talk about coffee…

I love coffee, and so I love any excuse to drink more of it. However there’s a problem. Coffee both drains your body of magnesium and contribute. First the contribution:

One 8 oz. cup of coffee will provide you with 7 mg of magnesium. That’s it. If you drink 5 or 6 such cups per day, you’ll get the benefit of 35-42 mg of magnesium. Now, compare that to a cup of spinach, which will give you about 150 mg of magnesium, and a whole lot more nutrition to boot. So yes, coffee gives you some magnesium, but it’s hardly the preferred source.

Now the bad news. Caffeine causes your body to lose magnesium, mainly through the urine. In the long run, coffee probably costs you more magnesium than it gives you.

So, all in all, coffee is not the place to to to get your extra magnesium. On the other hand, if you enjoy drinking coffee, go for it. It does contribute a bit of magnesium to make up for what it takes, and it is one of the most enjoyable things a person can drink.

For a little more on coffee, head over to the Harvard School of Public Health. No matter how much magnesium in coffee there is, this will make you feel good about drinking it.

Maybe it’s a happy coincidence, but foods high in magnesium also tend to be incredibly healthy. In that vein, two studies by Harvard researchers suggested that a diet of magnesium rich foods can help prevent the onset of Type II diabetes.

The 2007 National Diabetes Fact Sheet estimates that 23.6 million people in the USA suffer from diabetes, the vast majority of those being Type II. It was also the 7th leading cause of death in the USA in 2006.

Two separate teams of researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School (HMS) published their findings on magnesium and the associated reduced type II diabetes risk in the January 2004 issue of Diabetes Care.

One study used data from the Women’s Health Study (WHS) to track 38,025 women from 1993 through 1999. The other study looked at 85,060 women identified by the Nurses Health Study (NHS), and who were tracked for 18 years, and 42,872 men chosen from the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study who were tracked for 12 years.

The participants in both studies were adults. None had any personal history of diabetes, cardiovascular disease or cancer.

Magnesium was shown to have played a positive role in reducing the risk of type II diabetes in both studies. The WHS team concluded that only overweight and obese women would have a reduced risk of type II diabetes onset with increased magnesium intake, while the NHS study found that men and women of all weight groups would have decreased type II diabetes risk.

HMS Assistant Professor of Medicine Simin Liu, the study’s author, said he believed the studies differed because of differing definitions of “overweight.” In the WHS study, a woman was considered overweight if her BMI (total body fat), was above 25, which is the lower limit of an overweight categorization as defined by the National Institute of Health.

The NHS study, though, used a BMI of 27 to define an overweight person. HMS Assistant Professor of Medicine Frank B. Hu, the study’s author, said this was because 27 is the median BMI for overweight people. He added that his findings on dietary magnesium intake were independent of BMI and would not have changed with a different BMI index. He defended his study as the more accurate study because of the larger pool of participants in the NHS group.

In spite of these disagreements, both studies agreed that the general population would benefit from increased dietary magnesium intake, and that Americans generally fall short of the recommended levels of magnesium rich foods in their diet. This has been one factor suggested as a cause of the increasing cases of type II diabetes in the population.

A previous Harvard study, published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, suggested that higher dietary magnesium intake may reduce the risk of developing type II diabetes, because women with higher magnesium consumption tend to have greater insulin sensitivity. Decreased insulin sensitivity, also called insulin fasting, is the immediate cause of type II diabetes.

“The primary concern here is not which group is affected the most,” Hu commented“Whether you are overweight or obese or not, you need enough magnesium.”

Magnesium Supplements Do Not Have This Same Effect

Even while magnesium rich foods have shown a positive effect in preventing diabetes, the studies further found that multivitamins and other magnesium supplements have not shown similar effects.

“The NHS study didn’t show any supplemental effect of magnesium, only of magnesium-rich foods,” said Dr. Liu.

“This suggests that there may be something else in those foods that works with magnesium to reduce diabetes risk. For now, I can only recommend foods that are rich in magnesium.”

Magnesium rich foods include whole grains, nuts, and green leafy vegetables, broccoli, tofu and other items.

Hu and Liu both agreed there should be continued research to better determine the effects of magnesium and magnesium supplements on type II diabetes.

For comparison, Crystal Geyser has 6mg per liter.

San Pelligrino has enough magnesium for me...

That expensive water from Fiji? Only 13mg.

Vittel? 19.9mg
Evian? 24mg
San Pellegrino? 55.9mg (Not too bad. Comes with bubbles, too!)
Perrier? A miserable 3.2mg!

Want to look for your favorite water and see how it measures up? Head over to this comprehensive bottled water guide and check it out.

Additional news about mineral water….

I was rather put back to be told that San Pellegrino has high levels of uranium, especially as I had never considered drinking uranium as a possibility. This was upsetting, because I love San Pellegrino and I like the minerals in it (well, except for the uranium mineral).

Rather than rush back and warn all my readers that they should don protective gear and line their intestines with lead (not a good idea either), I decided to research this a bit.

First the good news…it seems we are taking in uranium all the time – in our food, our water and the air we breath. Doesn’t that make you feel better?

Since we are not all dead or glowing, however, it seems that there are after all tolerable amounts of uranium in nature. So I looked into that, too. It seems there are worse things than uranium.

Many nations have a requirement that the amount of uranium in mineral water be less than 10 micrograms per litre. In other words, they consider that safe for drinking water. For water for other uses, such as agriculture, it might be something like 50 micrograms. (For your reference, the human body passes out 99.5% of the uranium we ingest. That means we absorb 0.5% of the stuff – which, remember, is a natural mineral.)

San Pellegrino has 8 micrograms, Perrier has 4, some other waters have over 20.

Here, I’m going to defer to a British government survey of drinking water in Devon.

Buckwheat Soba Noodles

Buckwheat tastes great. This didn’t used to be a secret, as buckwheat pancakes were a southern staple. But, somehow it all got lost to us. So, buckwheat tastes great… even though it’s maybe the best source of natural magnesium out there. One cup of buckwheat gives you about a third of your magnesium needs for the day. It also gives you as much protein as eggs….but actually reduces your cholesterol and blood sugar levels! A study published in a study published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology that covered 16 years and 69,000 women demonstrated a 13% to 17% reduction in gallstones. Another study, in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry reported in success in controlling diabetes through increased buckwheat consumption. Heart and colon conditions have also been known to respond favorably to buckwheat’s goodness.

Moreover, buckwheat is not technically a cereal grain. It’s a fruit seed. That means it can be eaten by people who cannot tolerate grain or gluten foods.

So why isn’t the whole world raving about this food? Well, in Japan (where buckwheat is called soba), this is nothing new. There is delicious buckwheat noodle soup, cold buckwheat noodle salads (zarusoba), fried buckwheat noodles (yakisoba) and many other variations -  all of them delicious.

You can use buckwheat flour to make your pasta at home, or buy already prepared buckwheat noodles at the shop. Buck wheat grains can be added to soups for a hearty flavor, used in place of oatmeal, added to whole wheat to make fantastic bread, or used to make muffins and pancakes. It is also often added to rice to give it extra flavor, texture and color.

And of course, you can fry up the noodles yakisoba style, which means throwing in all your favorite stuff and making a very filling meal.

However you do it, once you start to add buckwheat to your diet, you won’t want to stop. And your body will thank you.

Mary joked that she felt as though she was constantly being run over by a slow-moving bus. Cramping in her legs startled her awake at night, making her an insomniac, and she had heart palpitations daily. Her doctor also found that she had high blood sugar — not bad enough to need injections of insulin, but he prescribed pills to try to stimulate more insulin production. Finally, frightening panic attacks came out of nowhere and made this vibrant, fun-loving woman afraid to go outside.

To try to relieve her leg cramps, Mary began taking calcium at night, having read that it was good for cramps and sleep. At first, the calcium seemed to help, but after a week or two, the pains got worse. If she yawned and stretched in bed, her calf muscles would seize up and catapult her to the floor, where she would lie frantically massaging her muscles to try to release the spasm. All the next day, she would limp about with a very tender, bruised feeling in her calf.

Although Mary’s heart palpitations had improved somewhat after she’d given up her three cups of coffee a day, they too resumed after a few weeks. Every time the palpitations occurred, which was several times a day, they made her cough slightly and catch her breath. She found it frightening, even though her doctor said her stress tests for heart disease were fine and she didn’t need further testing with an angiogram.

Both Mary’s parents had adult-onset diabetes, and Mary knew that she should watch her diet, but she was overweight and craved sugary and high-carbohydrate foods that were hard to resist. When the panic attacks hit on top of everything else, Mary knew she had to seek help, and came to my office. She was only fifty-three, far too young to be feeling so bad, and was worried about her future health.

Sam was only forty-nine and experiencing chest pains. At first, he thought they were indigestion, but sometimes the pains would occur in the middle of the night. Concerned, he went to a cardiologist, who found two slightly blocked arteries, not serious enough for bypass surgery. Sam’s cholesterol was somewhat elevated, as was his blood pressure, which he attributed to his high-stress occupation and the fact that he had not exercised regularly for the past six months, when he was sidelined with back pain. The cardiologist observed that his arterial blockage would almost inevitably worsen over time and eventually necessitate surgery. The doctor offered him medication for his high cholesterol, told him not to eat butter or eggs, and gave him nitroglycerine to take whenever he had the pain. If the symptoms got worse, he would prescribe other medications. Sam couldn’t imagine having to wait to get worse before doing something about his chest pain; he knew there must be something more he could do to avoid surgery and came to me for advice.

At thirty-five, Jan had actually begun to look forward to going through menopause. That’s how bad her PMS symptoms were. As soon as those horrible feelings lifted, she was hit by the sledgehammer of menstrual cramps. She also had migraines, which for years had come before her period but now were occurring once or twice a week. She was so miserable that she was considering a complete hysterectomy, with removal of her hormone-producing ovaries, but wondered whether the migraines, since they were happening all month, were not hormonal.

Different as their symptoms are, Mary, Sam, and Jan all suffer from magnesium deficiency. While women and men seem equally susceptible to magnesium deficiency, women may become deficient faster than men due to hormonal fluctuations because pound for pound, they have fewer circulating red blood cells, which carry magnesium, and so perhaps less magnesium available. There are a few other gender differences. Because of magnesium’s effect on hormonal regulation and vice versa, women can have deficiencies in pregnancy, when breast-feeding, with premenstrual syndrome (PMS), and with dysmenorrhea (painful periods). Osteoporosis, which affects more women than men, is evidence of a deficiency of both calcium and magnesium. An overactive thyroid, which afflicts more women than men, increases the metabolic rate, which uses up magnesium-requiring ATP (adenosine triphosphate — the energy packets made in each cell in the body). Without magnesium, ATP would not be produced.

Let’s follow Mary, Sam, and Jan and see how they overcame their magnesium deficiencies.

When Mary visited me, I charted her health history in detail, according to procedures commonly used by naturopathic doctors, and found several symptoms of magnesium deficiency. In her case it had been made even worse by too much calcium, so simple magnesium supplementation wouldn’t be enough for Mary. Her diet and lifestyle needed a complete overhaul.

I gave Mary a list of magnesium-rich foods that she needed to start eating, which included nuts, beans, greens, and seeds such as sunflower and pumpkin. Mary realized that she’d been avoiding almost all of these foods: She thought nuts were fattening, beans gave her gas, and greens never seemed fresh enough at the supermarket. She had never even thought about eating seeds.

After a week of enthusiastically eating a lot more magnesium-rich foods, Mary felt somewhat better. To make sure she could get fresh organic greens regularly, she tracked down a local community-supported agriculture (CSA) program and bought a share in a neighboring organic farm. Mary also learned how to soak and cook beans to prevent them from causing gas, and began eating nuts and seeds rich in magnesium and healthy oils, such as almonds, walnuts, pecans, sunflower seeds, and pumpkin seeds.

After her second visit I recommended that she begin taking magnesium supplements. Starting with a dosage of 200 mg a day, we added another 200 mg every two days to build slowly to 600 mg. I cautioned her that it could take months to eliminate magnesium deficiency symptoms and that not all her symptoms would necessarily respond. Within two months, however, Mary was singing the praises of magnesium. Her palpitations and panic attacks had disappeared. Her cravings for sweets were fewer, she was able to control her blood sugar with diet alone, and tests for blood sugar were normal. Her leg cramps were gone, and with them her insomnia. At three months we added calcium along with magnesium so that she would not develop an imbalance of the two. Mary’s internist was quite surprised at her improved health and told her to keep up the good work with her diet and supplements.

Sam had an inquiring mind, and I encouraged him to start reading about heart disease. He found that up to 30 percent of angina (chest pain) patients do not have badly blocked arteries but may be suffering from an electrical imbalance that is driven by mineral deficiency, most commonly magnesium. An astonishing 40 to 60 percent of sudden deaths from heart attack may occur in the complete absence of any prior artery blockage, clot formation or heart rhythm abnormalities, most likely from spasms in the arteries (magnesium is a natural antispasmodic). Moreover, he found that magnesium deficiency has been linked to sudden cardiac death. Sam didn’t want to wait around for that to happen to him; he was determined to find out what was causing his problem and treat the cause. The more he read, the more intrigued he became. When he read that magnesium deficiency is also associated with muscle pain, especially back pain, that really got his attention, since he had begun having back pain four or five months before he began to develop chest pains.

With a packet of information on magnesium, Sam went back to his cardiologist. Before the doctor saw him, however, a nurse took Sam’s blood pressure; it was unusually elevated, even though at home it was usually only a few points above normal. (Doctor-induced hypertension is commonly reported by patients.) The cardiologist swept into the room and immediately began talking about blood pressure medication. Sam countered with magnesium. The cardiologist visibly cooled and said that magnesium was used to control hypertension that occurred in pregnant women because there were no side effects, but that there were plenty of effective drugs for everyone else. When Sam said he would rather not have side effects either, the cardiologist gathered up his file and told him to come back when he was ready to take medications for his heart disease.

When Sam came back to see me, he was still pretty upset by this encounter; he didn’t like the specialist refusing to discuss a possible magnesium deficiency as part of the picture. Sam and I agreed that magnesium seemed the best treatment for him to initiate at this time since he was not willing to take medications.

Sam began adding magnesium to his diet by eating magnesium-rich foods. After a week he felt much calmer, but he still had chest and back pain. So he added magnesium and calcium supplements, and in about three months he felt almost normal.

Among the studies Sam read was one that looked at the correspondence between type A personalities and magnesium deficiency. From the description, Sam realized he was a type A, an aggressive guy who lived on adrenaline, time pressure, and stress. This type of behavior drains the body of magnesium and can lead to disorders such as heart disease, muscle spasms, hypersensitivity, and irritability. Prolonged psychological stress raises adrenaline, the stress hormone, which depletes magnesium. Both Sam’s back and chest pain would hit when he was under stress. So Sam worked on ways to control his stress and added more magnesium when he knew he couldn’t avoid it. On days when he exercised, Sam added an extra 200 mg of magnesium to his diet, since sweat loss during heavy exercise (cycling and jogging) and working in the heat deplete magnesium. Just drinking water won’t replace all the minerals lost. By paying attention to the many factors that affected his mind-body health, Sam lowered his cholesterol and stress levels and reduced his chance of a heart attack and of needing surgery to unblock his arteries.

Jan heard that yoga might help her PMS and painful periods, and she really needed to learn to relax, so she took classes at a local health club. The teacher also ran regular detox and cooking classes, which Jan decided to join when she realized she didn’t have to “give up everything” and become a vegetarian. One of the first things Jan learned in the detox class was the importance of having regular bowel movements. Jan was lucky if she had one a week. If the bowel doesn’t empty once a day, toxins can be reabsorbed back into the body from the colon. The longer debris sits in the colon, the more fluid is reabsorbed, making stools solid and difficult to pass. PMS and endometriosis, which causes painful periods, are considered by some natural health experts to worsen with constipation and toxicity.

During cooking classes, Jan faced the fact that she was a junk food addict. Magnesium is necessary in hundreds of enzymes in the body but is almost totally lost during the processing of packaged and fast foods. The older women in their class were suffering from a variety of problems that included cancer, heart disease, and osteoporosis. Is that how she would end up in ten or twenty years if she didn’t take care of her health now? Learning how many basic nutrients she lacked in her diet made her marvel that she wasn’t even more ill. Her new diet included greens, beans, nuts, and seeds, which cleared up her constipation and almost eliminated her PMS and painful periods. When she came to see me on the advice of her yoga teacher, it was clear she was on the right track. I recommended that she begin taking a magnesium supplement along with calcium and a multiple vitamin; with all her lifestyle changes, she felt like a new person.

The Body is Electric
The impulses for any and all movement in the body arise from electrical transmission. These microcurrents of electricity that pass along the nerves were first measured in 1966. Scientists soon discovered that the conductor for these bodily electrical currents was calcium and that magnesium was necessary to maintain the proper level of calcium in the blood. More recent research indicates that calcium enters the cells by way of calcium channels that are jealously guarded by magnesium. Magnesium allows a certain amount of calcium to enter a cell to create the necessary electrical transmission, and then immediately helps to eject the calcium once the work is done. Why? If calcium accumulates in the cell, it causes toxicity and disrupts cell function. Too much calcium entering cells can cause symptoms of heart disease (such as angina, high blood pressure, and arrhythmia), asthma, or headaches. Magnesium is nature’s calcium channel blocker.

About 60-65 percent of all our magnesium is housed in our bones and teeth. The remaining 35-40 percent is found in the rest of the body, including muscle and tissue cells and body fluids. The highest concentrations are in the heart and brain cells, so it is no wonder that the major symptoms of magnesium deficiency affect the heart and brain. These are also the two organs that have considerable electrical activity measured by EKG (electrocardiogram) and EEG (electroencephalogram). Our blood contains only one percent of the body’s total magnesium.

Magnesium mostly works inside our tissue cells, producing ATP energy packets for our body’s vital force and triggering production of all the body’s protein structures by revving up messenger RNA. It is also a requirement for the production of DNA, our genetic code. Both of the basic building blocks of life, RNA and DNA, are dependent on magnesium to maintain stable genes. In addition to its stabilizing effect on DNA and the structure of chromosomes, magnesium is an essential cofactor in almost all enzyme systems involved in the processing of DNA. Research shows that without sufficient magnesium, DNA synthesis becomes sluggish.

What Does Magnesium Do?
Magnesium’s hundreds of activities in the human body can be divided into five essential categories:

1. Magnesium is a cofactor assisting enzymes in catalyzing most chemical reactions in the body, including temperature regulation.

2. Magnesium produces and transports energy.

3. Magnesium is necessary for the synthesis of protein.

4. Magnesium helps to transmit nerve signals.

5. Magnesium helps to relax muscles.

1. Cofactor in Chemical Reactions – Enzymes are protein molecules that stimulate every chemical reaction in the body. Magnesium is required to make hundreds of these enzymes work.

2. Producing and Transporting Energy – Magnesium and the B-complex vitamins are excellent examples of energy nutrients, because they activate enzymes that control digestion, absorption, and the utilization of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. Because magnesium is involved with hundreds of enzymatic reactions throughout the body, deficiency can affect every aspect of life and cause a score of symptoms. Of the 325 magnesium-dependent enzymes, the most important enzyme reaction involves the creation of energy by activating adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the fundamental energy storage molecule of the body. ATP may be what the Chinese refer to as qi or life force. Magnesium is required for the body to produce and store energy. Without magnesium there is no energy, no movement, no life. IT is that simple.

3. Synthesizing Protein – Magnesium is used in synergy with dozens of other vitamins and minerals to create structural components of the body. Under the direction of magnesium, enzymes and nutrients modify the building blocks from food to create the body. Without magnesium, there is no body. RNA and DNA, which contain the genetic blueprints for the formation of all the protein molecules in the body, are also dependent on magnesium.

4. Transmitting Nerve Signals – Magnesium permits calcium to enter a nerve cell to allow electrical transmission along the nerves to and from the brain. Even our thoughts, via brain neurons, are dependent on magnesium.

5. Relaxing Muscles – Calcium causes contraction in skeletal muscle fibers, and magnesium causes relaxation. When there is too much calcium and insufficient magnesium, you can get sustained muscle contraction: twitches, spasms, and even convulsions. Smooth muscles directed by too much calcium and insufficient magnesium can tighten the bronchial tract, causing asthma; cause cramping in the uterus and painful periods; and cause spasms in blood vessels, resulting in hypertension.

The Dance of Calcium and Magnesium
Calcium and magnesium share equal importance in our bodies. Newton’s law says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and calcium and magnesium dance within this law. Neither can act without eliciting a reaction from the other. At the biochemical level, magnesium and calcium are known to act antagonistically towards each other. Many enzymes whose activities critically depend on a sufficient amount of intracellular magnesium will be detrimentally affected by small increases in levels of cellular calcium. Growth of cells, cell division, and intermediary metabolism are also absolutely dependent on the availability of magnesium, which can be compromised if excess calcium is present.

To understand how you can create a calcium/magnesium imbalance in your own body, try this experiment in your kitchen. Crush a calcium pill and see how much dissolves in 1 oz of water. Then crush a magnesium pill and slowly stir it into the calcium water. When you introduce the magnesium, the remaining calcium dissolves; it becomes more water-soluble. The same thing happens in your bloodstream, heart, brain, kidneys, and all the tissues in your body. If you don’t have enough magnesium to help keep calcium dissolved, you may end up with calcium-excess muscle spasms, fibromyalgia, hardening of the arteries, and even dental cavities. Another scenario plays out in the kidneys. If there is too much calcium in the kidneys and not enough magnesium to dissolve it, you can get kidney stones.

All the muscles, including the heart and blood vessels, contain more magnesium than calcium. If magnesium is deficient, calcium floods the smooth muscle cells of the blood vessels and causes spasms leading to constricted blood vessels and therefore higher blood pressure, arterial spasm, angina, and heart attack. A proper balance of magnesium in relation to calcium can prevent these symptoms. Calcium excess, stimulating the cells in the muscular layer of the temporal arteries over the temples, can cause migraine headaches. Excess calcium can constrict the smooth muscle surrounding the small airways of the lung, causing restricted breathing and asthma. Finally, too much calcium, without the protective effect of magnesium, can irritate delicate nerve cells of the brain. Cells that are irritated by calcium fire electrical impulses repeatedly, depleting their energy stores and causing cell death.

The Calcium Distraction
The irony of the calcium-magnesium story is that without magnesium calcium will not work properly. Both our current diet and tendency to oversupplement with calcium, however, make getting enough magnesium almost impossible. Research shows that the ratio of calcium to magnesium in the paleolithic or caveman diet — the ancient diet that had evolved with our bodies — was 1:1, compared with a 5:1 to 15:1 ratio in present-day diets. With an average of ten times more calcium than magnesium in our current diet, there is no doubt about widespread magnesium deficiency in modern times.

(The Miracle of Magnesium is available at Amazon.com in an updated version entitled Magnesium Miracle)