Magnesium Deficiency: Symptoms, Causes & How to Fix it

Aside from absorbing it, what else would help magnesium and be synergistic? Well, the number one synergist with magnesium that is used when magnesium operates in its enzymatic role as a cofactor is the most common vitamin paired with magnesium as a cofactor. Hey, I'm Dr. A. Welcome to the YouTube channel. I use the channel to answer your questions. Magnesium deficiency is not uncommon. Magnesium insufficiency, where maybe we have some magnesium, but it's just not quite enough, is extremely common. And that's for a number of reasons. And we get into that in some of the other magnesium content, but a lot of places in food where we would normally get higher magnesium amounts, we, especially in the plant kingdom, might have lower amounts as there's been some degradation in the ability to get the right minerals in the soil. So the plants have the right minerals and a number of other things. Also, we might be having foods that are processed and packaged that bring more sodium. And so when we have our primary minerals— there's tons of minerals the body uses, but primary minerals that are used for neuromuscular activity being calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium— if our diet has a lot of one of those, like sodium, it can disorder some of the other minerals that it plays off of. So that's another way that that can happen. But just to go over some common things that might say that you should look into your magnesium levels. Now that this may be not the reason for it, because for example, a lot of magnesium deficient symptoms also are similar to calcium deficient symptoms, et cetera. Or you could have excess of one and deficiency of the other, but you look at the whole picture. Things such as constant twitching of the muscles can be a magnesium deficiency. Cramping of the muscles, whether that's your digestive system or your bigger muscles that operate your skeleton or The reproductive system, cramps in that area. All cramping can be not enough magnesium going on. Certainly abnormal heart rhythm can be aggravated by low magnesium, or if it's low enough, triggered by low magnesium. Sometimes nerve function, numbness and tingling is part of a low magnesium state. And that again can be because the excitable tissues in the body use magnesium, calcium, sodium, potassium to create The electrical impulses from action potentials. And so, for example, that quartet of minerals trade places across the cell membrane, and because they each have different charges, they will change the membrane potential and allow you to trigger an action potential. In the case of your nerves, that's how the nerve sends its signals back and forward. And so if I have deficiency in one of those minerals or excess in one of those minerals, I can get Dysfunctional nerve activity. Numbness and tingling is one of those. You can also get false nerve activity, which might be, you know, a burning feeling due to— you're not, you're not having any heat, but it feels hot or burning, et cetera. You can also get central disorders, meaning central brain problems. Low magnesium can trigger seizures. It can aggravate seizure activity. Low magnesium can cause, if it's real low, personality changes, but maybe on a moderate level, it might aggravate— low magnesium might Aggravate something you've already got going on. So maybe your personality doesn't totally shift, but maybe you're already prone to be more anxious, or you're prone to sleep disturbance, or you're prone to some depression or some other thing. Low magnesium can aggravate all of those situations and symptoms. And that's again because your brain, just like your peripheral nerves, use calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium to move back and forth and create signals and action potentials and everything. Your brain uses a lot of those minerals as well. the electrical currency that is really from minerals and the ionic structure of the mineral that you've got going on. Now, one of the things is people look at this list, whether it's muscle twitches or nerve problems or cramping or whatever, and they'll say, well, you know, I took some magnesium, but it didn't seem to help me with those symptoms. Well, there's 3 reasons for that, maybe more. One is maybe you're not absorbing the magnesium well. Magnesium has to be what we call ionized. So it gets in the stomach, mixes with stomach acid, gets ionized, It absorbs better when it's ionized. If you're taking acid-blocking medications and other stuff, you can have problems absorbing your magnesium. Also, if you just have general digestive dysfunction, you'll have trouble absorbing your magnesium. The next reason that the magnesium supplement you took might not be working is that maybe the form of the magnesium was either hard to digest and absorb or was not as well received by your digestive tract. Good example of this would be there is a form of magnesium used for constipation, so its purpose. Mostly a form that doesn't absorb very well, and it's called magnesium oxide. There's over-the-counter or even in some countries a drug called Magox, which is magnesium oxide for constipation. And the reason it works is it doesn't absorb very well, and the magnesium oxide goes through your digestive tract and pulls water to it and makes you have bowel movement because you have more fluid in your feces. So magnesium oxide is not a good one to take to increase your magnesium in your blood. So if you took magnesium oxide, for example, I mean. have helped your muscle twitches or whatever, might, might've given you diarrhea. And then the other is if you actually don't have a magnesium deficiency and you have these symptoms, they may be from a non-magnesium cause. And so magnesium isn't going to really help with that. Just sort of a little caveat there as we're going along. Now, what helps magnesium? Let's say we've taken a form of magnesium that's absorbable and it's gotten into our system. Now, not— we've done a whole Piece of content on forms of magnesium, but just quickly, magnesium glycinate is highly absorbable. Magnesium aspartate in some people is highly absorbable. And there's magnesium threonate and others that are pretty good and absorbable. So aside from absorbing it, what else would help magnesium and be synergistic? Well, the number one synergist with magnesium that is used when magnesium operates in its enzymatic role as a cofactor Is the most common vitamin paired with magnesium as a cofactor. So cofactors are things that help enzymes do their job at optimal rates. So an enzyme takes something, a substrate, turns it into a product, and it helps the transfer from substrate to product. Coenzymes make the enzyme work at its fastest activation energy or rate. So if I have magnesium as a coenzyme, there is usually a nonionic coenzyme that goes with And that's usually a vitamin. And in most cases it's B6. So a lot of times in people where they're taking magnesium and they're trying to help with magnesium function and all that, because a lot of the magnesium symptoms that we went through there are due to the magnesium, but also maybe enzymatic activity. If you don't have enough B6 with the magnesium, it will not work as well. So I've had some people where, for example, taking the B6 but not enough magnesium or vice versa. And when we balance them out, they actually got benefit with those things that we lifted off as symptoms. And then the final thing is things that help the magnesium traverse across the cell membrane. So there's a process that is called an osmolite process. And in humans and many mammals, one of the things that supports the osmolite activity, which is the movement of calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium back and forth to create these action potentials at the membrane, there are some transporters, but there's also just helper molecules. And one of the biggest ones for magnesium, calcium, sodium, potassium is the amino acid taurine. And so a lot of times in people where they're not getting what they need out of the magnesium and we've tried B6 and stuff, we'll give the person taurine and taurine will actually help and they'll suddenly get a benefit from the magnesium that they were using or taking. We've also done this experimentally and clinically in people where they were having say a neuromuscular problem or a cramp or whatever, and you give them intravenous magnesium and you have to titrate up to a particular dose to get the benefit of the magnesium. And in some people it would just be real high doses required for that person. What we found is if we intravenously gave them taurine along with the magnesium, the dose of magnesium could come down because the taurine's actually helping it move in and out of the cell like it's supposed to. So taurine, and you can take taurine orally as well, is a helper along with it. So absorption is important, pairing it with vitamin B6, using the osmolite taurine. All of these come together to help the magnesium work as well as it possibly can. And we do want to keep in mind that because these neuromuscular or even enzymatic things could be from other nutrient deficiencies or toxicities, if we've done magnesium and taurine and B6 and it's not helping, we want to look at those other areas as well. All right, that was a wonderful question. I'm really glad that got triggered. We will put a up here to other magnesium content. I want to thank you all for listening. 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