dangerously low magnesium
 

hi im new,

i am NOT trying to lose weight but i'm watching my blood sugar.

anyhow, has anyone here had crticially low levels of mag. my magnesium was .5 (1.5-2.5). how long did you feel it took your body to really recuperate?

also weird question but is there any way that magnesium malate could cause constipation??

I've only had my blood levels tested, which don't tell you much unless you're severely deficient.

Any type of magnesium, even magnesium malate, should help prevent constipation. It can even give you explosive diarrhea if you take too much. If you can gradually increase your dose until you find out the dose that gives you diarrhea and then keep it just under that, you'll get the most out of it.

I make and drink Wallerwater now as well as taking Epsom salt baths. Other people apply magnesium oil directly to the skin.

this is so weird- I was coming in here to post that I got back blood work on Friday and I have a magnesium deficiency. I got 1.2 (1.6 to 2.6 for my lab).

Dr. told me to take 400mg once a day of mag oxide- took it a couple hrs ago. i hope it works really soon.

i started experiencing strange tingly/ pins and needles in my face last spring. it has continued to get worse, to the point that now sometimes my hands clamp up like claws. and i can't control them, and sometimes i feel like i can;t control my facial muscles.

really freaked me out!

Wow, I have had that pins and needles tingly thing in my face. Didn't know mag. could have something to do with it. Interesting. So much good info. here.

He suggested magnesium oxide? That's the least bioavailable form. Magnesium glycinate is the best but almost anything else is better than the oxide.

oh no......yes I specifically asked the nurse to repeat what form to get. and the pharmacist confirmed that Mag Ox is what I want, so I bought it :(


Here is what I need:
Feeling "sparkly" sounds nice and all, but my main objective here is to stop the severe muscle cramps/ pins and needles, and the much more serious outcomes- I have been hospitalized twice in one yr due to a very severe build up of acid in my blood- they can't figure out what type of metabolic acidosis it is. They think both boughts may have been DKA (diabetic ketoacidosis, but I had normal blood sugars. Both times I had a mild stomach bug, which could have triggered it- because my electrolytes were out of balance to begin with).
Obviously they ruled out accidental poisoning, chronic alcoholism, etc....

So, my question is whether the Mag Ox will correct the deficiency. I have read some of the other benefits people rave about on this board, but my primary concern is to get it back into the range where these very scary episodes stop.


Thank you all for helping me! I think I almost scared my poor husband to death a few times recently, with everything that has gone on.

I am shocked that they suggested mag oxide. Go find some chelated magnesium or I have purchased mag malate from amazon. Mag oxide is not absorbed by the body

In a way I hope it is a magnesium deficiency because that can be corrected but you'd be better off with a chelated magnesium supplement. Look for something that ends with "ate" Only 4% of magnesium oxide gets absorbed. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11794633

I wish you luck!

Ok, thanks to you both. Will go by health food store tomorrow (it has a great vitamin section).

We know i have a mag deficiency from lab work- and also that the acidosis has occur ed twice now. So, hopefully, it was just the dehydration from stomach bugs on top of having en underlying imbalance that made seriously ill those 2 times.

The other reason it might have have happened is not too bad:
1. it was diabetic ketoacidodis without high blood sugar, due triggered by the stomach bugs (I have type I diabetes)

the one really scary possible cause:
1. early stages of renal failure....have to wait another month to get more labs done......

for the meantime, i will go get that magnesium chelate or citrate- thanks!

Follow your doctor's advice and at the next visit educate him on the different type of mangesium. Get his buy in, you want to make sure he didn't tell you oxide for other reasons.

Just subscribing for now,

amanda

I use magnesium chloride brine, from the Zechstein Sea. It amazes me all the 'supplements' and vitamins in the stores still use the MagOx -- I guess it's the cheapest?

Oxide is oxygen bound to another element. Knowing that she has a magnesium deficiency and not an oxygen deficiency, we can probably conclude that it was prescribed for the magnesium deficiency. :)

I respect and agree with your advice. She should ask why he prescribed it and educate him especially if he says it's to treat the magnesium deficiency. If he decides to do his own research in peer reviewed studies, it may end up benefiting many more of his patients.

Doctors don't get much education in nutrition. http://journals.lww.com/academicmed...chools_.30.aspx Unless they keep up on the latest research, they really don't know any more than what they were taught. That's why many of them prescribe vitamin D2 or recommend low fat diets for example.

Again, I'm glad that you didn't tell her to ignore these people on the Internet and take her doctor's word as gold just because he has an "MD" after his name. I do like the way you put it and I commend you for that. :)

Robin120 is doing the right thing by researching her diagnosis herself and taking her doctor's recommendations into consideration without blindly following them.

Thanks, everyone.

My Dr. is one of the most progressive and the BEST endos in the field. He is extremely knowledgeable and supportive of low carbing. Also, he turned me onto the vitamin D3. Knowing that he keeps up with the articles, I decided to utilize his new "web portal" which allows me to e-mail him. How cool is that?

I hate to be a bother and play the phone message game with the nurses, so this is awesome! And i got my labs super quickly, because they get posted.

Also, please let me apologize to the OP for completely hijacking your thread!

Will let you all know what i hear from my Dr.

If you're taking D3, you really need to take a good magnesium supplement, such as Dr's Best High Absorption Magnesium with it, otherwise your symptoms of magnesium deficiency might just get worse!

I hope your endo is aware of this!!!

amanda

Hi Amanda- why does D3 mean i need the other kind of magnesium? I don't know if it matters, but I have also been deficient in vit D before- taking the d3 has allowed to get into the mid-30's (obviously the low end, but still within normal).

Update- nurse called and said my Dr. said he suggested the MagOx, hoping it will raise my level enough that i can stop taking it in a month when he wants me rechecked. He said he hoped the MagOx would work since it is so much cheaper.

Soooo, I think maybe I want to stay on it, even if my levels do end up back at the low end of normal, so i don;t get into this situation again. And since he was just trying to save me $$$ i will try the chelate after i run out of the ox?



thanks again, guys- i have been feeling overwhelmed by the conflicting info on the net ;)

Hi Robin120,

You wrote this question above:



When you take vitamin D3, the body needs magnesium, too, to do the work that D3 is supposed to do, so the uptake of magnesium from your food is higher than it might otherwise be. However, the not-so-good thing is that many of us don't get enough magnesium in our food so that when we take D3, our bodies "steal" it from elsewhere, such as from our muscles, leaving us feeling tired and prone to cramps. If this happens and people aren't aware (or their physicians aren't either) of this possibility occurring then, understandably, people blame the D3 for the new symptoms they have, when it is highly likely that a lack of magnesium is causing the problem.

As another poster pointed out, the body absorbs Mg oxide very poorly, so if you are deficient, this is not the best or quickest way to build up your magnesium stocks. It might be cheap, but if it doesn't work, then it is still a waste of money.

I took Mg oxide for years, thinking I was being really clever because I got 400mg in one tablet, whereas the ones I'd taken previously (Mg citrate, I believe) had been much lower dosed per tablet and, what's more, they were really cheap and I could get them at any drugstore here in Germany!!! Eventually, however, I began to notice that they weren't making any diffference whatsoever to my symptoms: no matter how much I took, my night-time toe and calf cramps just would NOT go.

Finally, I started trying out different kinds of magnesium, some very expensive, others not so expensive. After testing various kinds, I now use this brand:

http://www.iherb.com/Doctor-s-Best-...lets/16567?at=0

I have also recommended this brand to many people on this forum and have received good feedback from lots of them.

240 tablets cost $17.17, plus a bit for shipping, so, for the sake of argument, let's round it up to $20. Each tablet contains 100mg, so you'll need to take about 4 of them a day to make sure you're getting enough Mg into your system (although you should maybe start on 200mg a day and then work upwards). So that bottle would last you for sixty days, which means (I think!!!) that we're talking about the princely sum of 33 cents per day.



It's kind of nice, really, that your Doc is thinking of your cash situation, but still, even if you're on a really tight budget, 33 cents a day doesn't seem a lot to me, even for someone on a tight budget, given that those 33 cents might give you back your energy and improve your health in a multitude of ways.



I think all this means is that you should regularly supplement with vitamin D3, throughout the winter, probably 5K every day, or every other day.



Seems like a plan!



We all know that feeling!!! This is why I still rely on plain old books when I want to read about something "properly". I can recommend "The Magnesium Factor" and "The Magnesium Miracle", both of which I have read (and re-read!!!) and found most enlightening!

amanda

wow, thanks for all the info, Amanda. This is so incredibly helpful!

Interesting article by Michael Eades about cramping, electrolytes, dehydration, etc: http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/...low-carb-pt-ii/

Very helpful article by a nutritionist about magnesium: http://www.krispin.com/magnes.html She recommends the patented Albion Labs magnesium glycinate.

One provider is Swanson Health Products. I haven't tried this yet myself but just ordered some as it's very economical. http://www.swansonvitamins.com/SWU074/ItemDetail Taking 3 a day, providing about 400 mg, is only 12 cents a day.

Thanks Amanda, I say your post and bought a bottle. It was still $17 something or other, because new customers got 10% off, and shipping for that bottle was $2 something.

I get tingles in my legs and feet and it gets really uncomfortable. Its always worse when I eat a lot of carbs but I still have the problem. I also take Vit D, maybe the magnesiam suppliment will help.

i want to add my two cents-- i would not recommend waiting until your mag oxides run out. i took too much vitamin d a couple weeks ago and it seems i am still recovering from not having enough magnesium for the vitamin d to soak up. not a fun situation!

Just so everyone knows, the one I recommended above is also made according to the Albion Labs chelation method and has their stamp on it.

It is also recommended by a site run by someone with atrial fibrillation, which is a condition where you need very very good magnesium. If they recommend the Albion Labs patented brands (Dr's Best High Absorption, Bluebonnet), then I guess they know what they are talking about: for them, magnesium is the difference between life and death!

amanda

I have decided to stop my Vit D and Calcium supplaments till the magnesiam gets here and I have a few days on it.

sexym2- have you seen this about calcium?

http://www.trackyourplaque.com/blog...-vitamin-d.html

Just did! I will think on that! It is a tough theory to get over and us not require calcium. I will defanitly cut back though and do more research. Thanks!

yeah, I quit taking mine. hopefully I am getting enough dietary calcium.
taking supplements is not always so simple like you would think, hey?

No, its not. I like to think the supplements are there to help us. I know I don't eat dairy or any veggies that contain much calcium. My mother always pushed milk as a kid because "we got to get our calcium." I'm not certain how much of everything that we need, but I try. I've been trying to read articles that folks post so I can think on it myself. It can all get very confusing!

I do take Vit D in the winter, to try and help with my depression and I'm hoping the magnesium will help also. Plus my sleeping problems, tingling in my legs and feet and defanitely my depression!

mag has definitely helped my depression! I used to overreact to so many things in my life. I even knew I was overreacting but could not help it. It has not happened since I started it. amazing stuff- wish I had found it earlier.
I used to always take mag oxide and it did nothing for me(except send me to the bathroom)

Hi there sexym2,

The tingling in your legs and feet, insomnia and depression could possibly be also related to a vitamin B12 deficiency. I say "could be" and "possibly" because, of course, this is only conjecture based on what I have read about B12 deficiency, mostly in this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Could-Be-B12-...17559223&sr=1-1

This is also good - and free!!! - because it's on this guy's website:

http://chriskresser.com/b12-deficie...us-consequences

One of the best kinds of B12 to take is the one that appeared on the amazon.com site: the Jarrow Formulas 5000mcg methylcobalamin sublingual. This is a LOT of B12, though!!! Taking it sublingually (you dissolve it under your tongue) means that the B12 is absorbed via the membranes in your mouth and doesn't go via the normal intestinal route.

I am still trying to get my B12 levels up a bit because, despite the fact that I'm not a vegetarian or vegan and eat plenty of animal products, my levels are still not that good. I have been supplementing, too, though not so regularly lately. I am beginning to wonder if I do in fact have pernicious anaemia, but my levels are not low enough to warrant testing.

Anyway, look into it!!! In most cases, B12 deficiency is easily corrected with either B12 injections or sublingual tablets. And, if you read the article above, you'll discover that it is a deficiency that you definitely don't want to get worse than it might already be!!!

All the best,

amanda

Hey guys- just wanted to update, since you all helped me so much.

I stuck with the mag ox (will upgrade to chelate soon- i am almost out!). Repeated the labs one month from when deficiency was dx'ed.

Taking 600mg of the mag ox/ day (Dr said 400- but i upped a bit, since i read that it is not well absorbed), labs are much improved and i have only had 1 episode of extreme tingling sensation since.

However, there is still an electrolyte imbalance and a high ATL (one of the liver tests), so we are still figuring things out.

anyway, at least the magnesium is improving- thanks for all your advice,

Robin