Magnesium–The Miracle Mineral
I have always had a strong interest in nutrition but, like most people, have often been bewildered by the overwhelming amount of information and general lack of focus of what there is to be learned.
I take the GNC supplements for men over 50. It certainly has a lot of stuff in it, but in regard to two key minerals, even the GNC formula is deficient. These minerals are iodine and magnesium.
The American diet is seriously deficient in both these essential minerals. I plan to write about iodine later. For now, I want to focus on magnesium.
The array of bodily functions that can work normally only with sufficient magnesium is staggering. Every system of the body is affected, but most particularly the circulatory system. This is critical because every cell of the body depends on an adequate flow of blood.
Magnesium deficiency is implicated in cancer, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, mental illness, kidney malfunction, fatigue, migraine, elevated cholesterol, liver ailments, and many other illnesses and conditions. Magnesium is routinely used by doctors in hospitals to treat heart attacks and illnesses associated with pregnancy. There it is administered intravenously in large doses. I have a friend who is a doctor who is researching the possibility of treating numerous chronic illnesses, cancer included, with large doses of magnesium sulphate. His idea is that the cause of many illnesses is hyperactivity of the body’s stress reaction and that magnesium can slow this reaction when it has gotten out of control.
Why is no one told that magnesium deficiency may be a cause of so many disease states? Could it be that dietary magnesium is incredibly cheap to produce and purchase, whereas the prescription medications that are used to treat these diseases once they have set in makes the drug companies rich beyond imagining?
Here is an article to read about a book called The Miracle of Magnesium: Click Here.
How can you get sufficient magnesium? You can’t through food–our food supply has been so depleted of nutritional value by poor soils and growing conditions that food is no longer enough, even if, in the case of magnesium, you regularly ate green vegetables such as spinach and broccoli where it is normally found.
But there is a simple solution–take a level teaspoon of Epsom salts once a day in a glass of warm water. This meets the RDA but is far smaller than the therapeutic dose of Epsom salts used as a laxative. Epsom salts are also used routinely while bathing as a muscle relaxant.
After two days of taking Epsom salts, the muscle cramps in my legs that had been bothering me for years were gone. I felt more relaxed and peaceful, not surprisingly, since magnesium also promotes the production in the body of serotonin, the substance found in the brain that makes us feel at ease. It’s a shortage of serotonin that doctors treat with dangerous and expensive antidepressants.
So you mght find it worthwhile to become better acquainted with magnesium–the miracle mineral.
In January 1986 Cook became the first NASA official to testify publicly on the space agency's prior knowledge of flaws in the solid rocket booster O-ring joints that destroyed Challenger and took the lives of its seven astronauts. He told his story in the book Challenger Revealed, published in 2007. Publisher's Weekly wrote of the book: "Easily the most informative and important book on the disaster."
I’m glad to see Richard C. Cook writing on a health issue.
I have been grateful for his insights on our political and economic systems. More recently, he has written about moral, religious and spiritual matters. Cook’s is a wide-ranging, free-roaming intelligence that can focus on most any article in the encyclopedia and bring something new to bear.
I agree with his thesis in this article that we do not hear of the simple remedies and preventive behaviors that could forestall serious illnesses because there are huge profits to be made by drug companies, hospitals and doctors when people fall prey to such illnesses.
Cook established his credentials as a whistle-blower 2 decades ago, after the Challenger disaster. It’s good to know he remains in the people’s corner, still blowing the whistle, calling for “time-out” from the hurly-burly of deceptions and half-truths, adducing whole truths, facts and reason.
Now for my teaspoon of Epsom salts!
Comment by Gary Corseri on September 2, 2009Richard,
Another great book on Magnesium is Called Transdermal Magnesium Therapy by Mark Sircus,
Ac., O.M.D. a very good read.
Jack
Comment by Jack Eagan on September 2, 2009Thank you Richard. I wish that I had this information in 1981, when my father complained of leg cramps and then had a fatal heart attack at the age of 51 about a month later. Even at 55, which I now am, I can still say I loved this man and miss him. Thanks again Richard. I will apply the information to myself.
Comment by Robert on September 2, 2009I have been taking Magnesium supplements for several years in the dosage of 250 MG. I also get magnesium through a Natural Multi-Vitamin. I have found that I sleep better when I take magnesium at night.
Several years ago, I was having a lot of pain in my gums due to some exposed nerve which sometimes happens when you brush your teeth too hard. There seemed to be another problem and my dentist wanted to perform a root canal. Long story short, I began to very faithfully take magnesium supplements every day, especially after I read that the mineral calms the nerves in the body. Moral of the story, I didn’t have to go through a root canal and my gum problem cleared up. Magnesium also works well when taken with Calcium supplements.
Comment by Dixie Dawg on September 2, 2009I was useing magnesium sulfate to fix lead acid batteries (it removes the oxide from the plates), I always wondered what the meical symbols were for on the bag !, I just took a teaspoon now and downed the nasty taste with some red wine (also good for people, it has resveratrol), thanks for this tidbit of info. !.
Comment by Charles Hoyenski on September 2, 2009“You can’t through food–”
So no matter what country I live in, no matter whether I eat organic vegetables, it is not possible, according to you, to get it from food? When anyone in a position of responsibility makes statements like this they lose credibility. If you want more readers I’d consider being a little more careful, and accurate, about what you write.
Comment by Mike S on September 3, 2009richard do you think it would help those with adhd?
Comment by axelnelson on September 3, 2009Mike S, Please elaborate with proof that YOU DO RECEIVE the proper amount of magnesium from your organic veggies…
Comment by Michael on September 3, 2009I found out that magnesium helps to rid the body of the fluoride that we are exposed to also. I use epsom salt baths three times a week. Really helps with sore muscles that I fought with for years. The bone pains in my feet I had from years of fluoride exposure disappeared with the epsom salt baths.
I also found the benefits to taking iodine. I use betadine on my skin daily. I am still so low it absorbs into my skin in less than an hour. I sleep harder and my nails are getting thicker. Fluoride that is in the water and in antibiotics and antidepressants are halogens and it strips the body of iodine. Iodine is no longer put into breads it was replaced with bromine which is another halogen which strips the body of iodine.
I found this out by researching bromine which is in mountain dew and similar sodas. I could not find any links online on how to get rid of the fluoride from the body in normal searches.
http://www.acu-cell.com/fcl.html
Great to read your blog. Thank you.
Comment by Lisa B. on September 3, 2009Smiles.
Lisa B.
Interesting, Richard.
Comment by rcook on September 3, 2009I remember Dr. Eva Hill, a friend of my parents and our first candidate here in 1954, saying much the same. She worked on the Hoxey (US, then Mexico) cancer cure system and had some fantastic results. And some bad failures.
You will, of course, be aware that Mg is the centre atom of chlorophyll, as iron is to haemoglobin. Can’t be a lack of it in green plants; they will turn yellow. All energy-manipulating molecules in nature seem to have a metal atom with a variable valency (outer shell electrons that can be manipulated in different ways) but I don’t know how Mg fits that category. Bivalent, but apparently linked to 4 C atoms. Maybe it rotates like an armature!!
We had an interesting occurrence of it here in a pine nursery in the acidic central N. Is pumice. Everything else grew well but pine seedlings work on the top 4 inches or so of soil after they are “wrenched”, i.e. their vertical roots are cut. Kodachrome seedlings! A dressing of dolomite fixed it. Then we got a query from the Dept’s Head Office “Why … expensive dolomite…. lime so much cheaper?”!!
NZ soils are very iodine-deficient. Didn’t worry the Maori, with mainly sea food, but we had many cases of goitre earlier in our history. Our standard salt here is iodised. though one can get uniodised salt.
Regards.
John R.
Interesting, this is just another example where simple, cheap, nutritional & lifestyle habit changes can prevent many of the modern day ailments & diseases that afflict people today. I believe as I’m sure many people do, that this is but one side of a two edged sword; the other side I think is the numerous chemical additives the governments allow food industries to use to preserve & flavour our foods; not to mention the soil, pesticide & animal feed chemicals used. It would be interesting if someone with no government ties or commercial interests could make a serious study of this as well. I’m reminded of two stories in recent years both here in Australia & New Zealand where a mother of two & two school children respectively did what the authorities supposedly in charge of food industry nutrition & health standards – with all their professional expertise & government &/or commercially funded money could (or would?) not do. The mother as I recall, rather than dose her two young children up with medically prescribed Ritalin to combat their ADD I think it was, did her own homework and eventually concluded beyond a shadow of a doubt that two artificial preservatives were directly attributable to her children’s uncontrollable behaviour. Shortly after this the major bread companies advertised the fact that their bread now has no artificial preservatives. The two children over in New Zealand (again as I recall so don’t take these two stories as 100% correct in every detail)as part of a school project did for their assignment tests on vitamin C content on a particular black current cordial product. They approached the company to tell them there was not nearly as much vitamin C in the cordial as claimed by the company, who marketed their product with the high Vitamin C content claim. The revelation was of course ignored by the company and so the kids went public after further independent laboratory testing was conducted and results verified. A company CEO soon afterwards then had to make a national (perhaps international) TV ad campaign costing who knows what, to try and calm the waters of discontent their potentially lost customers must have been feeling in regards to the false claims that helped sell their cordial so well.
Comment by Kerry on September 3, 2009To Mike S. It is hard to get enough magnesium in our food. Because the soil is so depleted. Magnesium comes from the soil into our plants, and here in the Gerat Lakes regions our soils are greatly depleted of this. Heis not lying
Comment by Barb on September 3, 2009Magnesium is great for your dog too. Check it out!
Magnesium Deficiency and Your Animal’s Health
Dr. John H. Kirk, DVM – “The clinical signs for magnesium deficiency may include the following:
* Restlessness
* Hyper-reactivity – aggressiveness, violent movements
* Incoordination – exaggerated movements, inability to stand
* Tetany – stiffness of legs and neck particularly when they fall
* Convulsions, coma and death
* Some animals may be found dead without observed signs
Holistic veterinarian Roger DeHaan, DVM states that some forms of epilepsy respond to supplementation of vitamin B6, magnesium, and manganese. Drs. Wendell Belfield and Martin Zucker stated that “It has long been known that a deficiency of vitamin B6 or any interference with its function can cause seizures in any mammalian species, including man and dog”. Magnesium as well as certain other minerals can be a valuable addition to your dog’s diet ensuring they have a healthy body. If your dog is in ill-health, irritable or stressed, magnesium supplementation could be a very helpful addition to their daily diet. Magnesium in the form of supplementation has been found to be effective in either correcting or preventing the various ventricular arrhythmias and atrial fibrillation, while its effect in atrial flutter is noted to be poor in experimentally induced arrhythmias in dogs. Magnesium can be very beneficial for your dog’s heart. Magnesium deficiency, even when mild, increases susceptibility to various types of neurologic and psychological stressors in dogs. Mild magnesium deficiency appears to be common among dogs with disorders considered functional or neurotic and appears to contribute to a symptom complex that includes sleep disorders, irritability, hyper-arousal, spasm of striated and smooth muscle and hyperventilation.
Magnesium chloride is nothing short of a miracle mineral in its healing effect on a wide range of diseases as well as in its ability to rejuvenate the aging body. Approximately nine out of ten people will show dramatic improvements in the state of their health when they replete their magnesium levels and the very best way to do that is with ancient minerals magnesium drawn from an ancient inactive seabed 2 miles beneath the earth in Europe. With such “brine solutions” one can simply apply the concentrate to the skin or pour it into ones bath water and one will have a medical treatment of primordial priority. Nothing short of a miracle is to be expected in ones health status if one is ill when one increases the cellular levels of magnesium. more…
I add a teaspoon of ancient mineral magnesium oil to my dog’s food or drinking water. (a quart bowl). I also add magnesium chloride to my bath water and I use the magnesium gel on my skin. Educational info: Magnesium Deficiency Can Seriously Impact Your Health Shirley
Comment by rcook on September 3, 2009This is a little outside this article (A great article, I might add!…) but since “we” are discussing so much Chemistry here, I thought I would DE-MYSTIFY yet another Socio-political –under the umbrella of “Religion” HOAX!…. Look up CARBON in the Periodic Table …. and what do you find?…. the numbers 666!… the so called number of the Beast!. In other words; the BEAST is OIL / Petrochemicals. WHAT are (maybe indeed ALL) pharmaceutical Pills made from?… all the lab-made Synthetic Drugs made of? yup, you got it: PETROCHEMICALS = OIL!
Now, how does this info relate to 5000 year old “religion”/ “The HOLY Bible”. IT DOESN’T…. Fishy indeed!….
The Crooks have admitted ON RECORD that all “Western Mainstream Science” is a CUSTOM JOB, dreamt up by the Crooks/ Queen/s Elisabeth I etc)to interfere/interrupt/divert our INHERENT oneness, hence our intuitive-living-in-harmony-with -Nature severely disturbed!…
I have for the longest time insisted that a glass of OCEAN Water and or Water from alkaline lakes do have a given place in the chain of bringing us the trace minerals we need!
Richard, could you maybe elaborate on this a little?
THANKS for being there, Rich!
Comment by MissIahhh on September 3, 2009It was a pleasure to read your articles on money and magnesium.
In addition to your recommendations on magnesium and iodine, please consider those of Linus Pauling and Dr. Eli Wallach (Dead Doctors Don’t Lie) that we need a lot of vitamin C daily. I believe that Pauling took at least 10 GRAMS daily, and he lived to be 94, outliving and outlasting all of his critics. He typically worked 14 hour days and I suspect that had he led a more balanced lifestyle, he could have lived a lot longer. He was a very driven, wonderful man.
Wallach says that animals produce 1 gram per ten pounds of body weight daily. However, our food sources are generally cleaner than animals, so I believe that we can be healthy with 1 gram per 40 pounds of body weight daily, and that is what I take. I am 71, and increasing my daily intake to that level has decreased my fatigue and sore muscles to a level of 10 to 20 percent of what it was, and the results are dramatic, just as yours were with the magnesium in stopping leg cramps. It works within hours of when you do it.
High vitamin C dosage is a very potent factor in preventing and curing bodily inflammation and neutralizing free radicals, a major factor in disease and aging.
Comment by Dan Haines on September 3, 2009Thanks for the article & comments!
Jack Eagan above refers to ‘transdermal magnesium’. There is a liquid form of magnesium supplement called magnesium oil (Richard Cook also alludes to this in the last comment also) that you can apply topically to your skin and is very well absorbed without going through your digestive system. Here is another article I just found, for example:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Whats-All-the-Buzz-About-Magnesium-Oil?&id=1718838
Magnesium oil is basically the same thing as nigari, the Japanese term, which is produced from seawater and used to coagulate tofu.
Comment by Aivar on September 3, 2009Magnesium takes away my leg, hand and body cramps.
I took prescription drugs, for years, for leg cramps, until my pharmacist told me about magnesium.
Comment by m on September 3, 2009Spread Epsom Salts around in your garden too, it’s good for plants and would most likely be there when you eat them!
Comment by Deet on September 3, 2009… A little research reveals sufficient Magnesium is found in many common foods:
Artichokes (101mgs/cup); Barley (158mgs/cup); Buckwheat (301mgs/cup); Oat Bran (221mgs/cup); Wheat Flour (166mgs/cup); Almonds (156mgs/2oz); Black Beans (120mgs/cup); Cornmeal (155mgs/cup); Tomato paste (134mgs/cup) …
etc.
Comment by Harry Budd on September 4, 2009I developed atrial fibrillation as a side effect of taking Metoprolol. How do I know? After several years of AF getting worse and worse, I finally quit listening to my doctor and gradually weaned myself off of the beta-blocker. My blood pressure did NOT sky rocket to dangerous levels, it stayed the same, 150/95, average. However, within 2 weeks, my AF attacks stopped. I had by now, been getting them 3 to 4 times a week, average duration 4 to 6 hours.
My attacks were extremely powerful, it felt like my heart was going to explode. A month went by and still no attacks. However, my doctor convinced me that this was coincidental and I resumed taking the drug. Ten minutes after taking ONE does I had a very powerful attack. Since that ONE dose, the AF came back and despite not taking the Metoprolol any more, the AF stayed and continued to get worse. Some weeks I had one attack per day.
After reading that Magnesium was helpful with arrhythmias, I began supplementing with this mineral. I started with 250 mgms per day, up to 2 GRAMS a day. Yes, I was VERY regular. But, that first day, that first dose, I felt something positive. After a month of 2 grams a day, the AF slowed and finally, STOPPED within two months. After that, I reduced the dose to 1 gram and am normal in my body functions. Your body DOES adjust. I’ve been doing this for over three years now and I’ve only had two, very mild episodes,during that time and they only lasted a few minutes.
I have my theories as to how it worked for me, but suffice to say, for a very small expense per month for this supplement, I saved the medical cost of 40 to 60 thousand dollars for the “maze procedure”. Look it up, it’s pretty bizarre compared to my safe and CHEAP cure.
Comment by Andy on September 5, 2009[...] more at: http://www.richardccook.com/2009/09/02/magnesium-the-miracle-mineral/ Posted in magnesium | Tags: circulatory system, [...]
Pingback by Magnesium–The Miracle Mineral on September 5, 2009There is a very comprehensive yet readable book written by an MD/MPH who is a university researcher: The Magnesium Factor
By Mildred S. Seelig
Among many points, it provides an explanation of the benefits reported by Andy here in these comments, namely Mitral Valve Prolapse and cardiovascular disease generally. Cited therein is a Finnish study following on a government push to get Finns to consume more fresh fruits and vegetables, thus when followed obtaining a proper calcium and magnesium ratio and intake, shows that this alone significantly reduced heart disease rates when compared to a US population measure.
Comment by Joe Wheeler on November 11, 2009I take a magnesium supplement by Jarrow Formulas called Magnesium Optimizer. It is a wonderful easily dissolvable tablet. It eases what my husband and I call caffeine aggression. http://www.VitaminLab.Net has the best prices on Jarrow products which mix well with my bodies chemistry. Magnesium has changed my life.
Comment by DEllis on January 7, 2010Nice article. Question for anyone who tried mg but had odd sensations and spasms at first. I started taking 1 tb spoon of Naturalcalm mg for maigrains and it has helped greatly and helps my RLS; however, since starting this mg the first night my heart beat was very hard and ‘jumping’ and I felt my limbs jerk, the next night was better, but with muscle spasms here and there which I never had. Is there occassion when mg first taken causes such? Should the spasms go away? I thought mg should be good for muscle spasms. Actually, other than RLS I rarely had any muscle spasms.
Thanks,
B.
Comment by Bryan on January 9, 2010Mike – due to overfarming of the soils that foods are grown on and pesticide/fungicide use, the magnesium content of our foods has dropped by three quarters in some cases. You might want to look at the following published article:
Oakley GP (1998). Eat Right and take a Multivitamin. New England Journal of Medicine 1998, 338:1060-61.
Harry Budd – those figures are the official quoted amounts of magnesium in those foods. Unfortunately, all these figures are based upon the 1941 measurements, and have less significance in 2010 than we might imagine.
Regards, Marek
Comment by Marek Nutritionist on February 23, 2010