Amanda,

And if what Dr Dean said is true, then it seems logical to believe that if you have no symptoms of ill health, you probably have enough magnesium.

If someone doesn't have any symptoms caused by low magnesium, then there is nothing on which to base a presumption that their magnesium levels are too low, other than a blood test. Too much magnesium is as dangerous as not enough magnesium, so why inflict oneself with an overdose of this mineral?

By the time you show symptoms of magnesium deficiency you are diabetic. That is not a smart idea.

Mg depletion reduces insulin sensitivity and increases the risk of secondary
complications so supplementing with magnesium supplementation improves insulin sensitivity and delays the onset of complications.

Again I disagree.
Most reasonably intelligent people can put their diet ingredients through a magnesium calculator or work through Nutritional database and get a rough idea if they are around the Krispin-RDA is a total of 500-700 mg and supplement with sufficient to reach that total of food + supplement. =~600mg/d

If you supplement at just 100-200 mg at a time you will get optimum absorption and you will experience loose stools when your body has corrected insufficiency status. At that point you reduce daily intake by 100-200 mg each week until stools are optimum consistency.

Hypermagnesia is pretty rare and only involves people indulging in laxative abuse. The levels of supplementation Dr Krispin is suggesting could not possibly lead to toxicity.

So, if this is true, than it may be unreasonable or at least unnecessary for a person to take magnesium until they get diarrhea in order to ensure themselves of having sufficient magnesium.

BTW: Hypomagnesemia & Hypermagnesemia are rare....

but we do know that low magnesium status predicts both diabetes and Alzheimer's.
One down and one to go.
Some people enjoy living dangerously.
I'd have thought that knowing the neuroprotective role of magnesium you'd apply a little more common sense.

I do and I did...

I eat the right way; variety and moderation! 100+ varieties of vegetables & 25+ varieties of fruits per month. I eat some nuts, seeds, berries & grains in my diet on an almost daily basis and sometimes multiple times a day and I rotate them so I'm not eating the same ones all the time. I watch my fat sources and control dairy intake, but I don't exclude any food, or food group, as long as it is whole, fresh & or minimally processed.

Until someone has eaten this way for long enough (1 to 3 years) to let the curative effect of time heal the body and or prove that food therapy cannot possibly work for themselves, they cannot possibly understand or comprehend my experience and the health benefits I have recieved. And until my body could respond to food the way it does now, I was a meg-dose supplementer on a consistently daily basis. Check out my journal, it is well documented.

Throwing insults at another poster such as;"a little more common sense", "not a smart idea", "some people like to live dangerously" & "most reasonably inteligent people" can be a sign of unstable blood sugars in a person who cannot control their mood, which can also be a sign of unbalanced nutrition. Also, I've come to learn that people that talk like that, aren't open to learn anything new, it's called having a "narrow focus" and it is most often attributable to lack of proper nutrition.

Hutch:

We can each contribute without insulting the other. You have valid points and so do I.... You're based more on research and statistics and averages. I'm more based on personal experiences, with the guidance of a TCM Doctor who has spent the last 25 years focused on age related diseases.

I'm glad to hear it but I still think for the average reader here the advice that magnesium supplementation may not be necessary is wrong.

I have suggested the use of an online magnesium calculator and I'm sure you personally have sufficient sense to ensure you stay on the higher side of what is currently the RDA. Too many people don't understand the importance of magnesium and the role of magnesium deficiency in the onset and progression of Diabetes or Alzheimer's and so it is absolutely right for me to make the point as forcefully as I can that you run short of magnesium at your peril.

I've been studying the role of micronutrient deficiency in the development of Diabetes/Alzheimer's for so long as to regard most diabetes forums as criminally negligent in not highlighting prominently vitamin D and magnesium insufficiency.

While I accept you may think your approach is sufficient for you I do not believe it is safe or reasonable advice to offer generally to the average reader with access only to supermarket food sources.

Low magnesium status is an avoidable risk factor for Alzheimer's progression Therefore I am convinced that while it may be possible in exceptional circumstances to source all your magnesium requirement from food sources I doubt it's safe or sensible.

I'm sorry if I expressed myself in a way you took to be insulting but I do think for most readers here your approach will turn out to be dangerously misguided.

Waiting for a diagnosis of Diabetes/Alzheimer's as indicators of magnesium deficiency before correcting that deficiency is shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Hutch, if it wasn't for your informed and forceful posts on the subject, I don't know when I would have "gotten around" to implementing this important program for myself and my husband. Thank you so much! Don't change a thing!

I'm pleased Cajunboy47 has access to "100+ varieties of vegetables & 25+ varieties of fruits per month" but I'm in a small town in the mountains... and I don't.

My wife has studied, taught and practiced the role of food therapy for most of her adult life and hammered away at me (yes, I was an unwilling participant in the beginning) until I had to try it and I did and with great success. I've now tried it for so long that I feel the same way about it as you do about supplementation of D & Mag....

When reading most diabetes forums, I find it criminally negligent at how little anyone is highlighting the importance of eating real food. I think every time anyone says how important a pill/supplement is, there ought to be a law that says the following must also be written along side of it; "and when taken while following a wholesome diet filled with every kind of whole food, it can be beneficial" (or something to that effect)...

A sick body cannot absorb nutrition the same way that a healthy body can, so supplement, supplement, supplement, if you are not healthy enough to get enough nutrition out of food, but at the same time, start learning to eat real food the right way; variety & moderation.....

Food has a healing effect over a long enough period of time. No one has to have any special access to food, local stores are just fine. We tend to choose to eat what we like and not eat for balanced nutrition and that is what got most of us into trouble in the first place. Taste is for the mouth, nutrtition is for the rest of the body....

The theory that our soil is stripped of nutrients is wrong, or at least not the entire truth. Our bodies have become less able to absorb nutrition from all the junk we've ingested, much more so than what has been lost in the soil. If we clean out our bodies and eat those real foods, we can again absorb nutrition more efficiently and there is enough nutrition so that supplementing is not a daily requirement, however, I will say, I will never give up supplementing to ensure I stay healthy, but supplementation is not food replacement and people need to hear that message also, because when you read all those forums, all you read is about supplementation, and not nearly enough aoout food.

Most people do take things the wrong way. For example, someone might hear a potato is good for you and all they eat is potatoes, etc.... I have mentioned variety and moderation many times and that is the theme to my message because it is of great importance in the scheme of things. I supplement! I supplement!, but I eat real food, lots of it and even if I don't like it as much as other foods, Variety is the spice of life and moderation is key.....

Same where I live. Not everyone has the same access to decent quality produce. I sure don't. I could not find a tenth of what Cajunboy eats. At least, not in edible condition. And we have no farmer's markets, etc to fill in the gap. Nor can I grow my own. The growing season here is very short, often less than 90 days, and even with that, nights are always quite cool (high altitude desert), so that should make it obvious why no local produce. I have to eat from what is available to ME, not from what is available to anyone else in other, more fortunate areas, so by many standards my diet will never be optimal.
sol

I haven't checked this thread for a while and very glad to see the conversation is still going because I'm reading a lot of good info here! Thanks everyone for your input and contributions.

Thought I'd give yet another update on what's happening to me since supplementing with Mg and D-3.

My FBG numbers are STILL dropping!!! I've been averaging around 90 every morning so that is a another 5 points lower than where I was just a week or two ago.

My numbers have been so good I have been able to half my nightly dose of glipizide and I'm going to start experimenting with eliminating my morning dose (which I halved a couple months ago) completely and see what happens.

I saw the doctor last week for my latest A1C and the improvement in my numbers was phenomenal. My last A1C was in January about a week before I started low carb.

My A1C score dropped from 6.1 to 5.8 which is just .2 from "normal". My triglycerides dropped from 270 in January down to 167 and my HDL jumped from 41 in January to 54. So I'm well on my way to getting my numbers in line.

The biggest thing of all though is that I feel GOOD! I mean I really really feel good! Especially compared to where I was last June....I feel like a completely different person...inside and out!

I still have a long way to go with getting this weight off but for the first time, I'm actually enjoying the journey to get there!

Awesome news Patina!! Great results!!!

That is wonderful!

And I wonder if magnesium will help anyone lose weight; your experience suggests that might be so.

I don't think anyone will argue the point that getting our nutrients through 'real' food would be the ideal, but that's not always possible. Even if you had access to all the right foods, the magnesium level in those foods is very dependent on the nutrients in the soil they're grown in. Studies have been done over the last decade on soil...and the effect on the plants...due to corporate farming practices so while you may 'feel better' because you 'think' you're getting enough magnesium in your food, the reality is that you most likely are not.

I do have a question though. People talk about excess magnesium causing diarrhea. I'm taking 1500mg of magnesium daily and that has never happened to me. Is there a test that can be done to determine my magnesium levels or is the fact that I'm not getting diarrhea an indication that I'm still low on magnesium?

When I first started taking it, I was told to start at 300mg and keep increasing until I had diarrhea...then back off the dosage. I'm a little leery of going over the 1500 and would be interested in some thoughts and direction to any websites that might help?

Thanks!

Hi Elfie,

Hutchinson might be a bit more qualified to talk about magnesium in connection with diabetes, but I would say that you could stay at your present dosage for a while and see how you feel. It does seem like a lot, but, as far as I remember, diabetics may have an increased need for magnesium due to increased urination which means the magnesium goes through the system - so to speak - more quickly.

If it hasn't yet caused diarrhoea, then I would say you can safely take that amount. It would have done in my case, as I recently found out!!!

What kind of magnesium are you taking and how are you dosing it?

If you are taking Mg glycinate, you should take it between meals so as not to make your stomach acid more alkaline than it should be for good digestion.

Hope this helps,

amanda

Elfie wrote:



I supplement with magnesium occasionally, but the problem with magnesium deficiency is less to do with the soil, then the amount of magnesium rich foods that we eat. The average person doesn't nearly eat enough variety of foods. Honestly, I've yet to meet anyone who eats as much variety as I do. Until someone actually has done what I do for a long enough period of time, they can only speculate based on research they've read here and there. Almost all research is biased and that needs to be factored into our thinking. I supplement with magnesium occasionally to compliment what I might not get from eating enough foods containing magnesium, because I don't eat as proper a diet as I know I should on occassions.



It's already been said in a prior post by someone that testing is useless as only a small percentage of our magnesium is stored in our blood. We're not machines, we're human, right? So, we have feelings, and we need to learn to trust doing things by how we feel. It was also said in an earlier post that magnesium deficiency can exist and we don't have symptoms of deficiency until it is too late and damage might get done and it could take a long time to build our magnesium levels back up again, well, that may be true, but it may also be true that we can take in too much magnesium without the diarrhea side effect and have it built up too much for too long thus causing damage also, so we could panic and worry ourselves to death.... I've read enough research to satisfy myself that both hyper & hypo magnesium conditions are rare, so there is all likely hood that the diarrhea will happen before damage is done at 1500mg per day...



My wife is a retired TCM Doctor and if I can share one thing about concerns for healthy levels of magnesium, here it is:

I'll try to explain it in a simple way:
If we have a car that is designed to operate at a fuel efficiency rating of 25 miles per gallon and all of a sudden it only gets 10 miles per gallon, do we fix the problem by just putting in more gas? The answer is "NO". We try to fix the problem.

Our bodies are designed to operate on a certain amount of magnesium, and if it is deemed deficient in magnesium, sure, we can supplement, but shouldn't we also find the root cause of what is causing the deficiency. For most people, it is simply, eat more magnesium rich foods, but whatever it is, the imbalance or deficiency needs to be corrected at the root level.

Excess calcium can deplete our magnesium stores. We lose magnesium through excessive urination & diarrhea, so we should address these concerns. Excessive urination for diabetics, means reducing blood sugars, while some people have weak kidneys and this means they need to eat foods to strengthen the kidneys. There are many other factors, but the point being, we need to do something about our human condition when things go wrong and not just throw supplements at it....
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Improving our diet is almost always the biggest improvement needed. I shop in Houston, 4 1/2 hours away once or twice a month to get enough variety in the foods that I eat. I also shop in nearby cities, one is 20 minutes away and one is 1 hour away. My city does not have enough variety to meet my needs/goals/desires. I also go to New Orleans about once every 2 or 3 months and buy a lot of foods there too and that is 2 1/2 hours away from my hometown. I guess I could make the excuse I don't have access to good foods locally and thus not eat as well, but my health is more important than that to me. If necessary, I'd utilize some of the online food supply sources. We also grow a garden, which produces about 10% of our dietary vegetables, herbs & fruits and my lot size is only 90X120 and my home occupies most of it.... If I lived up north where the growing seasons are short, I'd probably invest in a green/hot house. Whatever the case, I wouldn't short change myself when it comes to getting enough variety in my diet.

Here is a good reference site which puts a few things in perspective:

http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/magnesium/