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Magnesium Supplementation: Brain, Lungs, Sleep, Urination — No Doubt It Works
Related: concussion, electrolytes, ethics in medicine, gears of the machine, health, magnesium, magnesium deficiency, nutrient deficiency, nutrition
Read the books that may save your life; see Your Doctor is NOT Responsible for Your Health—YOU Are! Recommended Reading to Open Your Mind and Ask the Right Questions, Because Your Life Depends On It, in particular, The Magnesium Miracle by Carolyn Dean, MD, ND @AMAZON.
Update: see the June 7 2020 updated version of this post.
Recent experiences with magnesium follow below.
The prelude speaks to decades of needless suffering and harm. Shame on MDs who ignore nutritional deficiencies.
Prelude
Some readers might think my prior posts on health have been a bit too critical of doctors, to put it mildly. But the more I learn and prove to myself the reality that I was ill served by modern medicine, I am now thinking I was too kind.
So I am now doubling down: I assert that most doctors are grossly ignorant of nutrition and therefore incompetent because they fail to consider nutrient deficiency. Willful ignorance in the face of tends of thousands of studies rises to medical malpractice.
See: A Prescription for Harm: the Modus Operandi of Modern Medicine
No organism can enjoy health when deprived of critical nutrients, yet this is precisely how modern medicine operates. I speak especially of magnesium deficiency, but also of Vitamin D3 and Vitamin K2 and a few others.
Shame on every doctor who fails to consider*, for example, magnesium for hypertension, blood sugar, migraines, neuropathy, neurological protection and repair, coronary artery calcification, and dozens of other conditions before resorting to dangerous drugs. Yes, all those things can result from magnesium deficiency and it is only one of many nutrients.
Not trained in nutrition and apparently uninterested in the health robustness that comes from proper nutrition, doctors as a group wallow in their ignorance and have become dispensers of poisons of many types (eg statins), with unjustified cognitive commitments and confirmation biases instilled in medical schools where “knowledge” is regularly debunked and studies are conflicting, barely plausible due to statistical manipulation to suit funding sponsors, and shot through with financial and ethical conflicts—but taken as the basis for one-size-fits-all guidelines which often are little better than quackery. Doctors now apply epidemiological pseuedo-science to individuals in so many areas even while ignoring critical nutritional requirements: “here are your drugs, you will never be cured, take them the rest of your life”. The whole pile reeks of intellectual and ethical bankruptcy.
Were I a doctor, I don’t know how I could look myself in the mirror until I thoroughly expanded my knowledge of nutrition, since everything in health rests upon it. If only 10% of my patients could be helped and perhaps cured by nutritional means, wouldn’t I have the strongest moral and ethical obligation to do so? And at the least, there can be no basis for overall health so long as the patient is deficient in key nutrients like magnesium. It seems that most doctors have a strong cognitive commitment that nutrition is mostly irrelevant, which in the context of health is a rationalization that causes real and serious harm.
It is a sad state of affairs for anyone with a health problem.
Recent experiences with magnesium supplementation
Correlation is not causation, but supplementing with a high grade magnesium supplement is about as risk-free as it gets and most of the population is deficient in magnesium (very poor food supply these days), so the smart move is to supplement.
Comments apply to magnesium supplementation was built-up over ~2 weeks to ~1500mg/day using magnesium citrate and magnesium L-Threonate.
Here I detail multiple health issues, and how magnesium has helped (or not).
Reflecting on many past health problems, I assert that magnesium deficiency was the likely cause in whole or at least in part. Everything I detail here is known by scientific study to be strongly correlated with magnesium deficiency yet not one doctor in 35 years ever has even mentioned magnesium to me.
* Or not tested-for, or tests known to be highly unreliable are used, e.g., serum magnesium test.
Asthma
Since I acquired asthma and allergies from a very bad viral infection at the age of ~21, I have had asthma that for the first 10 years or so after was quite bad. For the past 20 years, it has largely been a “treat as needed” thing with a prescription inhaler, set off by dust or allergies or cold.
Personal experience: magnesium supplementation has calmed my lungs down very effectively so much so that I have given up the prescription inhaler. Instead of the inhalre, I used 400mg magnesium citrate when needed, such as inhaling dust in very windy conditions. I can feel the bronchospasms ease and then go away within 30 minutes. This is at least as effective as the prescription inhaler, with no side effects I have noted.
Brain and memory
After a horrible time last year (lingering issues from concussion ), I resorted to a prescription stimulant for ADD and mental fatigue, lest I be financially devastated by an inability to focus or concentrate (months of very poor work are extremely discouraging, to say the least).
Personal experience: a year of that stimulant was critical. It helped with neurogenesis and brain repair, of that I am sure. But about 2 weeks after considerable magnesium supplementation, I now definitely have better brain function (attention span, alertness, concentration, etc). Not only that, I feel no desire for the stimulant (stopped it cold turkey for a week now, as I write this), though it remains to seen if I might still need it occassionaly for attentional problems (one of the lingering side effects of my concussion). OTOH maybe the magnesium will completely resolve attention issue. My memory also seems stronger and I am not forgetting things—a known benefit of magnesium.
There is considerable scientific support for magnesium being neuroprotective and neuro-repairative. And yet... none of my doctors never mentioned magnesium before or after my concussion (or ever). Not internists, not ER doctors, not neurologists. Such ignorance rises to medical malpractice, damaging me more and longer than necessary (years). Ditto for the neurologists and my peripheral neuropathy. Willful ignorance is at best a rationalization unworthy of any professional. Shame on all of them.
Muscle spasms
Muscle spasms (sometimes extremely painful) have been an ongoing problem for some years now, so much so that a prescription muscle relaxant was my only recourse. There is considerable science to support the effectiveness of magnesium for muscle relaxation and elimination of muscle spasms.
Personal experience: muscle spasms GONE and muscles more limber and flexible.
Irregular heartbeat
When highly trained in past years, I suffered an irregular heart beat (skipped beat, then extra powerful beat), so annoying that it would keep me from sleeping. I now believe it was caused by magnesium deficiency. To test that theory, I have to attain a comparable level of fitness.
Sleep
I’ve been suffering sleep quality issues ever since my concussion.
Personal experience: waking up less often, deeper sleep.
Frequent urination, difficulty urinating
Getting up to pee 5 to 10 times a night blows. That has been going on for years.
Personal experience: frequency is down to 2 to 3 times per night. Flow is much improved, steady and without problems. Maybe it might improve further but this is already a sea change. It is known that calcium can be deposited in the bladder (and elsewhere) due to inadequate magnesium, and in the bladder it results in the need for frequent urination.
Coronary artery calcification / atherosclerosis / cholesterol
This one will take longer to assess and requires therapeutic doses of magnesium via ReMag. At the least, I expect to see a halt to my coronary artery calcification — I was tested this year again and saw a troubling substantial year-over-year worsening vs last year. I hope for reversal and will know in one year when I get retested.
Night vision
This has been a problem for me in recent years, and getting worse.
Personal experience: I was able to see adequately last night using the light of only (roughly) half the moon while hiking back on an 18 mile hike.
Left chest wall pain/tightness
This issue is not cardiac in nature. It has been bad enough to disable me for part of a day with fatigue/pain.
Personal experience: diminishing, have hardly noticed in recent 10 days, no attacks.
Blood pressure
Has been generally good but variable from 116/68 to 130/84. I want to see a consistent 116/68 or so. I don’t have my blood pressure monitor along this trip, so this one is a TBD.
Immune system
Only time will tell. But last year’s nasty prostate infection which resulted in horrible malaise from the nasty antibiotics are not something I care to repeat
