10 Alarming Signs Your Body Needs More Magnesium

Hey, it's J.J. here.

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I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout. Sorry, mom turned four time New York Times bestselling author. Yes, I'm a certified Nutrition Specialist, Fitness hall of Famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe. But I'm driven by my insane, insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep.

Asking questions, digging for answers, and sharing.

The information I uncover with as many people as I can. And that's why I created the well Beyond 40 podcast to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. In each episode, we'll talk about what's working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness.

Join me on the journey to better.

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Look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out at 100. Hey jj Virgin here.

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Magnesium has hundreds of jobs in the body that keep you healthy. And nearly half of us aren't getting enough. Which is crazy because there's so much responsibility for your health that magnesium has that a deficiency can take a huge toll on everything from muscle protein synthesis and energy production to your bone health, your muscle function regulating, your neurotransmitter, even your blood sugar control. So we're going to talk through the common signs of deficiencies and then I'll share some of the different places that you can get your magnesium from. Now the first one are muscle twitches and cramps. I don't know if you've ever had one of these wake you up in the middle of the night. I sure have and I'm gonna share my hack with what I do for that. Magnesium is essential for muscle relaxation. So if you're experiencing those muscle twitches or cramps, it is a big red flag that your magnesium levels might be low. There was a 2021 randomized double blind placebo controlled multi center study published in Nutrition Journal that found that magnesium can be an effective, well tolerated treatment for reducing the frequency and duration of nocturnal leg cramps and improving sleep quality. Now I'll tell you magnesium every night before bed and I also do electrolytes throughout the day. But every once in a while, especially if I've been wearing stilettos, I get those crazy cramps in my calves that wake me up. So what I use when that happens is I keep by my bed this amazing magnesium cream. It's my magnesium cream hack takes it away in couple of minutes. The next one are mood swings and mental disorders. So if you're feeling a little off your game and turns out magnesium plays a huge role in managing mental health, particularly things like ADD and adhd. And a deficiency might manifest itself as like more anxiety or trouble focusing. Magnesium, it turns out, has a really nice calming effect on the nervous system. So if you're feeling irritated, you've got some mood swings. Try boosting your magnesium and see what it does for helping to Stabilize your mood. There was a 2021 randomized control trial that was published in the journal Stress and Health. And it found that magnesium supplementation, particularly when it was combined with B6, can significantly improve mental health outcomes, including reductions in depression and anxiety symptoms in stressed individuals with low magnesium levels. Next one is persistent fatigue and muscle weakness. Now, if you're always feeling tired and your muscles feel weak, it could be a sign that your magnesium levels are less than ide. Magnesium is crucial for energy production, so without enough, you might feel like you're always running on empty. There was a 2022 randomized control trial that was published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research that looked at the effects of magnesium supplementation on muscle soreness and performance in college age males and females. And they found that magnesium significantly reduced muscle soreness and improved perceived recovery as after eccentric exercise sessions that induced muscle fatigue and soreness. Now, by the way, eccentric exercise is what is known to make you sore. I will tell you that a couple nights a week I do an Epsom salts bath. I of course, take a lot of magnesium as well, but that's one of the things I like too if I've done an especially hard workout. Epsom salts bath for the win. The next one is high blood pressure, because magnesium helps to keep your blood pressure in check. So if you've got high blood pressure, it could be a symptom of magnesium deficiency. There was a tooth 2016 meta analysis that was published in Hypertension that found that magnesium supplementation significantly reduced systolic blood pressure by 2.00 mms per Hg and diastolic blood pressure by 1.78 mm per Hg. And the study concluded that magnesium supplementation has a modest but significant effect on lowering blood pressure in adults. The next one is irregular heartbeat. Now, with its critical role in maintaining a steady heartbeat. Low magnesium levels can lead to arrhythmias or irregular heartbeats, which could lead to that feeling of palpitations or an unusually fast or slow heart rate. There was a 2017 journal article published in European heart journal Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy that found that up to 38% of people with ventricular arrhythmias have a magnesium deficiency and 72% have excessive magnesium losses. Next one up is osteoporosis. You know, we always think calcium when we think bone health, but magnesium is vital for bone health and a deficiency can lead to weaker bones, increasing your risk of osteopenia and osteoporosis. And remember, when your estrogen drops, your Bones are at risk. Magnesium is essential for maintaining bone health and helping to regulate calcium and vitamin D levels and in the body, which of course is going to help you maintain bone density during menopause. There was a 2014 clinical trial published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that found that lower dietary magnesium intake is associated with lower bone mineral density and an increased risk of fractures. For instance, in postmenopausal women with higher magnesium intakes, they had better hip and whole body bone mineral density, although this did not consistently translate into a reduced risk of fractures. Which is why we also got to do resistance training and power training and agility training. Okay, gotta get off my band my soapbox on that. Another one is increased sensitivity to noise. This is an unusual one, but it's a telling sign of a magnesium deficiency. This hypersensitivity to noise. And it could be due to magnesium's role in in nervous system regulation. There was a 2003 review in the Journal of American Academy of Audiology that found that low magnesium levels can make your ears more sensitive to noise and more likely to get damaged. Magnesium helps control how calcium enters your ears. Without enough magnesium, too much calcium gets in, causing the release of too much glutamate. Glutamate is a very excitatory neurotransmitter that overstimulates the nerves in your ears, which which can then lead to nerve damage and increased sensitivity of sound. Along with that, oh boy. Increased sensitivity or increased severity of hot flashes. If you are finding that you're getting more frequent hot flashes or that they're getting worse, this could also be a sign of magnesium deficiency because magnesium helps regulate body temperature and not having enough can make hot flashes worse. There was a 2010 review in Nutrition Reviews that found that about 60% of adults in the United States do not consume the estimated average requirement for magnesium. And low magnesium status is associated with chronic inflammatory stress which can exacerbate other health conditions, including hot flashes. Next up is sleep disruption. So if hot flashes aren't disrupting your sleep enough magnesium can also cause sleep disruptions. And this again this struggling with sleep. This insomnia is a sign that you have low magnesium because magnesium plays a big role in supporting deep restorative sleep because it helps maintain healthy levels of gaba. GABA is that calming neurotransmitter that promotes sleep. The observational studies in the 2023 systematic review published in Biological Trace Element Research revealed an association between magnesium status and sleep quality and looked at things like daytime falling asleep, sleepiness, snoring and sleep duration. So if you are having any kind of struggles with your sleep, look to magnesium and then memory issues and brain fog. Sounds like all the menopause systems symptoms, doesn't it? Magnesium supports cognitive functions and if you're noticing like memory lapses or periods of brain fog, increasing your magnesium intake might help clear up your thinking and improve that cognitive function as well. There was a 2019 non randomized controlled trial published in Brain Research Bulletin that found that a lack of magnesium impairs memory in mice. And although their brain cell structures remained unchanged. And ensuring optimal magnesium intake supports these brain functions and can improve memory without altering any brain cell structures. So therefore maintaining sufficient magnesium levels in your diet is essential for keeping your memory sharp. So you might have listened to this, gone, oops, that's me, that's me, that's me. So how do you really know? Well, first of all, there is a test, it's called an RBC red blood cell magnesium test and it's going to measure the magnesium content in red blood. Cel is going to give you a better indication of long term magnesium status as compared to if you just do a serum magnesium. But again, my favorite thing to do is take magnesium. And one of the things you can tell is when you're taking magnesium is if you take too much, you'll get loose stools. So back it off. So I just keep taking it till stools get a little loose, then back down a little bit and that's the dose. There's also some ways you can get it through food, but what I recommend is, is improving your food intake of it and then also supplementing with it. So deep green leafy vegetables like spinach and kale and Swiss chard are rich in magnesium. Nuts and seeds, almonds and cashews and pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds, they're all rich sources. Whole grains. I'm not a big whole grain person, but things like oats, I want to do the gluten frees and buckwheat and quinoa legumes, different pulses. So lentils and chickpeas, black beans and then fatty fish, salmon for the wind, halibut, sea bass, fruits like avocados and bananas. Dried fruits are a great source, but dried fruits to me are candy. And then you're going to love this one.

Dark chocolate.

And remember, do not make a good thing bad. Look for dark chocolate that is sweetened with allulose or monk fruit or stevia. And again, I take a chelated magnesium. I take my magnesium body calm, I do epsom salts, baths and I also do my electrolytes so I'm getting a lot of magnesium in. Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure.

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