Treatment

Preventing Magnesium Deficiencies

Caution: If you have kidney disease (renal failure) you must not take any magnesium supplements without the close cooperation of and monitoring by a physician.

The benefits of a healthy magnesium status include a true lowering of your risk of cardiovascular disease including heart attack and stroke plus the vitality you can achieve when you get enough of this life-giving, energy-boosting mineral.

How can you tell if you are getting “enough”?

How is your health? If you

• Are generally healthy and

• rarely or never have low energy days,

• have no muscle aches or pains,

• have no symptoms of heart disease such as high blood pressure or abnormal cholesterol values,

• take no medications and if you

• have none of the magnesium deficiency symptoms listed on this webpage,

If you answered yes to these questions you probably are adequate in your nutritional magnesium status.

Quick-Fix Generalized Recommendation

You should be able to prevent heart disease, maximize health and maintain your energy by maintaining this good magnesium state as you age. This means closing any daily magnesium gap (See below), which is the difference between what your body needs and what you take in each day. Most people on a modern, processed food diet do not get enough daily magnesium from foods to have a zero magnesium gap. {See Table 2 below} This means that each day their magnesium stores deplete a bit. If this goes on too long, a deficit can manifest, bringing with it clinical symptoms of Magnesium deficit. You will want to build up any depletion of your body’s magnesium stores that may have already occurred, and then maintain your healthy magnesium status for the rest of your life.

We recommend that you increase your magnesium intake by 100 to 250 mg per day. You may do this with conscious food selections, magnesium-containing salts, remineralized water treatments, magnesium supplements, or a combination. Choose the method or combination of methods most comfortable for you.

If a particularly stressful period arises in your life, add 100 to 200 mg more daily magnesium during the time of excess stress, or as soon after it as possible. If you eat a lot of dairy foods or take calcium supplements, use the higher magnesium range as your target. If your diet changes to add more high magnesium foods, reassess your magnesium supplement.

Remember, building up magnesium stores is different for everyone. For some the process is rapid. Some, however, can take magnesium supplements for even two or three years before their magnesium stores are replenished. Be patient. Do not compare your results with anyone else. We are all different.

Individualized Recommendation

Here is what you can do for a more refined program, targeted to your individuality to maintain your adequate magnesium status and/or rebuild any depleted magnesium stores:

Closing Your Daily Magnesium Gap

Low magnesium diets, including regular use of “soft” or deionized drinking water, give many of us a daily “magnesium gap.” This means that we are generally healthy and have no clinical symptoms of a magnesium deficit, but each day we are getting less magnesium than we need. You will want to close your magnesium gap to ensure your future health.

The average daily shortfall or gap in nutritional magnesium was quantified 20 years ago at 72 to 161 mg per day. [J. R. Marier. Magnesium content of the food supply in the modern-day world. 1986. Magnesium. 5. (1). 1-8. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Citation&list_uids=3515057.]

This means that some people are getting plenty of magnesium while others are falling short of their need by anywhere from 1 to several hundred milligrams each day. It’s entirely possible that you are one of the few who can eat a purely refined, processed food diet and still meet your magnesium requirement. It is also entirely possible that you may be one of the individuals who eat a totally healthy diet and still not meet your daily magnesium requirement. Most of us fall in between these two extremes. Where are you? How can you know?

I. In the table below, find your age and gender group. What percentage of your group doesn't get enough nutritional magnesium each day?

Table 1 - % of people not getting enough magnesium from foods:

From: A. Moshfegh, J. D. Goldman and L. E. Cleveland. What We Eat in America, NHANES 2001-2002: Usual Nutrient Intakes from Food Compared to Dietary Reference Intakes. 2005. www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/12355000/pdf/usualintakestables2001-02.pdf

II. Take the Magnesium Assessment Questionnaire. Is your risk of a magnesium deficit low or mild, is it moderate, or is it high to very high?

III. Determine the RDA for Mg for your age and gender [go to RDA/AI Table 3 below]. This amount of magnesium daily should meet the needs of almost all (97.5%) healthy people.

IV. Try to determine how much nutritional Mg you take in daily. Use the food sources section of this webpage. Compare it to your RDA for magnesium.

V. If possible, have your doctor order a serum magnesium test (or other measure of magnesium status such as Exatest, ISE Mg2+, or magnesium load test). If your serum Mg is above 0.85 mmol/l and your health is excellent, you will want to use food sources or supplements to close any daily Magnesium gap you may have.

VI. If you are very healthy and over age 70, your diet has probably been adequate in magnesium. You have made it this far in good health. But even if you are very healthy, as people age above 70 they absorb less magnesium and other essential nutrients from their diets. Maintaining your good health for the rest of your life may mean adjusting your diet or adding appropriate supplements.

Table 2: The RDA (Recommended Dietary Allowance) is the amount of an essential nutrient that will meet the daily requirement for 97.5% of HEALTHY individuals in a given gender and age-range group. AI (Adequate Intake) is an essential nutrient’s average intake by HEALTHY persons of a given age/gender group.

From: A. Moshfegh, J. D. Goldman and L. E. Cleveland. What We Eat in America, NHANES 2001-2002: Usual Nutrient Intakes from Food Compared to Dietary Reference Intakes. 2005. www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/12355000/pdf/usualintakestables2001-02.pdf

Summary

Using your results from the Magnesium Questionnaire, the RDA for your age/gender group and the other information in this section, choose your program: if you are shown to be at low, mild or moderate risk of a magnesium gap, you can choose either the diet, salt, or supplement approach to bridge any magnesium gap and can taper off supplements as magnesium stores are built up. Those of you with high or very high risk of a magnesium gap deficit will need to use supplements as well as make diet changes to ensure future health. This may take time, care and some attention to detail.

Warning: If you have kidney disease (renal failure), you must not take any magnesium supplements.