Taking Magnesium Can Help With These Health Conditions – Health Digest

With so many diets emphasizing macronutrients such as protein or eliminating foods like bread, it’s easy to forget how a balanced diet can provide you with the essential vitamins and minerals you need for your body to function optimally. Do you often eat foods like spinach, almonds, black beans, and whole wheat bread? If you skip out on these foods, your diet could be relatively low in magnesium.

Magnesium helps your body produce energy, synthesize protein, and create DNA. Your body also needs magnesium to produce ATP to signal muscle contractions and nerve impulses. Magnesium is also an electrolyte that helps move other electrolytes like potassium, sodium, and calcium through your cells. More than 600 enzyme reactions, including breaking down glucose, need magnesium.

Men need at least 400 milligrams of magnesium a day, and women should aim for 310 milligrams. If you eat a lot of processed or refined foods, you might not be getting much magnesium. Taking a magnesium supplement could help regulate many of your body’s essential processes while also helping with health conditions such as high blood pressure, dementia, and psychological disorders.

As much flak that’s generating these days about the minerals and additives to drinking water, there might be some benefit to having some magnesium in your drinking water. Hard drinking water has more magnesium and calcium in it. Researchers noticed years ago the states with the hardest drinking water had lower rates of stroke, according to a 2021 review in Nutrients. Although sodium and potassium can affect your blood pressure, both calcium and magnesium also play secondary roles in regulating your blood pressure. Low magnesium can also lead to hardening of the arteries, problems with metabolizing fat, and plaque buildup in your blood vessels. Supplementing with magnesium could reduce this plaque buildup.

A different 2021 review in Nutrients looked at the overall effect of magnesium supplements in 49 studies. In people with untreated high blood pressure, 600 milligrams of magnesium can lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Magnesium supplementation can’t do much for your blood pressure if your blood pressure is normal or you’re taking blood pressure medication.

People with high blood pressure are usually told to lower their sodium while increasing potassium in their diets, but low magnesium levels might also be linked to high blood pressure. Diets high in sodium deplete the body of magnesium, and low magnesium could make the blood vessels overreact and raise blood pressure. On the other hand, foods rich in magnesium tend to also be lower in sodium and higher in potassium.

One of magnesium’s functions in the body is to help regulate your blood sugar. High blood sugar or insulin causes the body to excrete more magnesium through the urine. People with type 2 diabetes or problems with insulin sensitivity tend to have magnesium deficiency, which can make it harder for the body to regulate blood sugar levels. A blood test might not show this magnesium deficiency because the low magnesium is at the cellular level. A 2016 review in Nutrients found that diets high in magnesium can reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes by 17%.

Magnesium supplements might help reduce fasting blood sugar levels in people with type 2 diabetes, according to a 2016 review in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. However, this difference was slight. In people with a high risk of diabetes, magnesium supplements reduced plasma glucose levels.

Even if magnesium supplements don’t balance blood sugar levels well, they could help improve the heart function of people with diabetes. In a 2019 study in JCI Insight, diabetic mice given magnesium supplements had better heart function. Magnesium also boosted energy production in their heart cells and reduced mitochondrial damage.

It may come as a surprise to learn about magnesium’s role in asthma. Because magnesium controls your muscle contractions, magnesium may help relax your air passages and reduce constriction in your lungs. If magnesium levels are low, it could cause these muscles to spasm. Although magnesium deficiency doesn’t cause asthma, it could worsen asthma symptoms. According to a 2016 study in Pulmonary Medicine, low levels of magnesium and vitamin D are linked to more severe asthma.

Magnesium has been helpful for children with asthma. A 2016 article in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews investigated how well intravenous magnesium sulfate reduces the likelihood of needing a hospital visit due to asthma. Magnesium sulfate reduced the odds of hospital admission by 68%.

Magnesium might help with lung function for people with asthma. A 2019 review in NPJ Primary Care Respiratory Medicine found that magnesium supplements improved lung function in people with mild or moderate asthma after eight weeks. Because magnesium didn’t improve lung volume or reduce the frequency of asthma symptoms, more research is needed to recommend magnesium supplements to treat asthma.

Magnesium is involved in many processes involved in your body’s ability to handle stress. If you have a magnesium deficiency, your nervous system can go into hyperdrive, causing stress-related symptoms such as muscle weakness, chronic fatigue, and pain. You’re also more susceptible to stress, anxiety, and other mental health symptoms. Magnesium helps regulate your brain’s neurotransmitters, reduces inflammation, and supports your body’s ability to fight free radicals.

According to a 2020 review in Nutrients, magnesium supplements can reduce symptoms of psychological stress, such as fatigue, irritability, and sleep problems. Magnesium also supports your sleep by helping your body relax. Taking 250 milligrams of magnesium a day for four weeks can lower your cortisol levels. Supplementing with higher doses of magnesium has been linked to improved heart rate variability (which measures stress response) and a 45% reduction in stress scores.

Magnesium might also help with mild or moderate depression. In a 2017 study in PLoS One, people taking almost 250 milligrams of magnesium a day for six weeks significantly lowered their symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Although there’s no cure for dementia, magnesium might help protect your brain against cognitive decline. Magnesium can cross the blood-brain barrier to help regulate the processes tied to memory and learning and support overall cognitive function. Magnesium helps with brain processes such as reducing inflammation, clearing out brain toxins, and protecting the brain cells from damage. Older adults who eat more magnesium-rich foods have better cognitive performance than those who consume less magnesium in their diet, according to a 2020 article in the European Journal of Nutrition.

A 2021 article in Clinical Chemistry matched blood magnesium levels in more than 100,000 people with their risk of dementia. Low and high magnesium concentrations are associated with a higher risk of vascular dementia. The analysis also found that type 2 diabetes partially explained this link, and factors like smoking, stroke, and high blood pressure also played a role in dementia risk.

Magnesium valproate might supplement treatments for people with dementia. A 2022 systematic review in Medicine analyzed the results of 22 studies to find that magnesium valproate can improve cognitive function, daily activities, and behavioral symptoms associated with dementia when combined with standard treatments. Magnesium also improved their sleep quality and reduced inflammation.