What you should know about Magnesium

Do you experience frequent fatigue and exhaustion? You're having trouble unwinding before bed. If this happens, it's probably because your body needs extra Magnesium. You may not be improving the state of your mind and body.

What is Magnesium?

Magnesium, a "helper molecule" for over 300 enzymes, is a crucial dietary element. Their activity speeds up and makes possible the body's numerous chemical processes.

Calcium and vitamin D assist in maintaining bones, muscles, and blood pressure.

As the body breaks down, stores, and uses carbs, it generates energy. Magnesium is also necessary for cell regeneration, repair, and function.

What does Magnesium do?

The Magnesium we ingest via food doesn't function alone, like many other minerals. The advantages result from its interactions with physiological processes as well as the methods it directly supports, such as:

1. Having healthy teeth and strong bones

Your bones and teeth are where your body stores the majority of the Magnesium that is present. You probably already know how vital vitamin D is for bone health, but you might have yet to give Magnesium its due.

Sunlight exposure on our skin provides us with fat-soluble vitamin D.  Low levels can make you more susceptible to conditions impacting your neurological, musculoskeletal, and cardiovascular systems. Fatigue, bone pain, muscular weakness, pains, cramps, and mood swings, such as sadness, may arise from this.

Magnesium aids in the body's process of converting stored vitamin D into active form. Therefore, you won't receive the most health advantages if you take a regular vitamin D pill but do not obtain enough Magnesium through your food or supplements.

It also has two directions. Magnesium absorption from meals also increases by higher levels of vitamin D's active form.

2. Improved cardiac health

MMagnesium should be a significant element of your daily meals if you have a family history of heart disease. According to research, magnesium supplements lower your heart attack or stroke risk.

It is also essential for maintaining appropriate blood pressure because it prevents blood clots, maintains regular heartbeats, and controls calcium concentrations, which help modulate blood vessel width. Also, it encourages the body to make nitric oxide, opening blood vessels and lowering blood pressure.

Additionally, it has been discovered that supplementing with Magnesium helps people with high cholesterol's blood lipid profiles and considerably lowers total cholesterol.

3. Lower risk of type 2 diabetes

The hormone that transports sugar (glucose) to muscles and other cells for energy causes insulin intolerance, associated with low magnesium levels. 

Additionally, it controls insulin synthesis and the electrical activity of the pancreas. 

4. Enhanced mood and cognitive performance

Magnesium helps the body turn vitamin B6 into a form the brain can use. Vitamin B6 is vital for healthy brain growth, keeping the nervous and immune systems in good shape, and controlling mental function and mood.

Calcium and Magnesium together govern the neurological system. Accordingly, a decrease in magnesium or calcium levels might result in a rise in hyper-systemic excitability. Cramps, irregular heartbeats, or psychological issues might result from this.

5. Expanded muscular size and strength

Magnesium is essential to maximizing your physical performance in the gym.

It promotes several mechanisms controlling muscle contraction, including oxygen absorption, energy generation, and sodium, potassium, and calcium electrolyte balance. You may bid those winnings farewell as it halts this series of actions.

Additionally, there is proof that even a mild magnesium deficit reduces exercise capacity and heightens the adverse effects of vigorous exercise, such as oxidative stress. Oxidative stress may harm DNA, proteins, and cells and hasten age.

6. Reducing inflammation and boosting immunity

Magnesium keeps inflammatory levels regular. Chronic, low-level inflammation raises the risk of diabetes, several cancers, heart disease, high blood pressure, and other illnesses and hastens to age.

Magnesium is also required to produce glutathione, the body's main antioxidant. Your immune cells need glutathione to be protected and perform at their best.

Magnesium is also quite helpful for reducing the consequences of long-term stress.

A long-term study examined the effects of strength-endurance training and magnesium supplementation on heart rate variability, a health indicator gauging the variance between successive heartbeats.

For three months, participants consumed a 400 mg magnesium supplement each day. The parasympathetic neural system, which governs digestion, heart rate, immune system, and vagus nerve activity, is strengthened.

But that's not all.

Magnesium controls several metabolic processes in the body, including brain metabolism.

You need how much Magnesium, exactly?

Magnesium consumption should be 420 mg for males and 320 mg for women. Pregnant and lactating women need at least 360 mg of Magnesium daily.

Magnesium can short-term induce diarrhoea in large dosages (above 400mg). The results of consuming large amounts of Magnesium over an extended period remain to be seen. The majority of doctors advise eating a diet that is around 2:1 calcium to Magnesium.

"What causes a magnesium deficiency?"

Rarely do healthy individuals have a genuine magnesium shortage. However, subclinical deficiency, which is characterized by low magnesium levels but no outward symptoms, can result from

• An unhealthy diet
• Type 2 diabetes, digestive issues such as IBS or Crohn's disease, 
• vomiting, or diarrhoea, 
• kidney failure
• long-term use of diuretics

Some medicines (for example, fluid tablets and medication for ulcers or reflux) can cause low magnesium levels if taken for extended periods.