Hey wellness fiends, your friendly neighborhood guest blogger is here, and she is back this week to share even more delicious, nutritious facts with all of you. This one is a shorty but a goodie
-Magnesium.
Magnesium is a micro-nutrient that your body needs just about as bad as Vitamin D (more about this in a minute). I won’t overwhelm you with a bullet list that would be too long to read, but Magnesium is responsible for over 300 different functions in your body. Now, most people get all the magnesium through their diet because their kidneys control the amount of magnesium to keep and how much to get rid of through, well, peeing. Also, magnesium is in a variety of various foods, including spinach, peanuts, avocados, raw pumpkin seeds, and baked potato skins. It’s also in chicken and beef, wheat, and chia seeds (protein smoothie anyone? If you are looking for a yummy chia seed pudding, here is a good one, but nix the maple syrup).
Adequate intake of magnesium ranges for different age groups, and between females and males, but overall, the Recommended Dietary allowance, otherwise known as “RDAs” is about 350 – 400 mg. Although the absorption rate of magnesium is fairly high (about 30%), people with autoimmune conditions (especially for the GI tract like Celiac Disease), as well as type 2 diabetics, and alcoholics (or recovering alcoholics) might have a greater propensity for being deficient because they may not be able to absorb it as well. When you become deficient, fatigue can set in, as well as muscle cramps, and even nerve numbness and tingling.
When we experience micronutrient deficiencies, they often have a cascading effect on other absorption rates. This is evident in what are called redox reactions between certain micronutrients in our body – these reactions influence the way cells function. For example, in the love story that is vitamin E and C, after Vitamin E repairs radical damage to cells, it requires regeneration from Vitamin C before it can continue to fight tissue damage. Without enough Vitamin C in your system, Vitamin E can’t function the way it’s supposed it, it gets lonely, and tired, and gives up on healing and protecting.
In this same way, one of the most fascinating outcomes from magnesium deficiency is its impact on Vitamin D. Many doctors often overlook magnesium deficiency when they find that their patients are deficient in Vitamin D.
There was a large-scale study back in 2001-2006 that studied over 12,000 individuals as a part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. What they found was that individuals with high levels of magnesium intake, whether from dietary sources or taking supplements, were less likely to have low levels of vitamin D. More importantly, the same study found that treatment with a magnesium supplement led to an increase in vitamin D levels in people who had low levels initially, and, and AND – It reduced levels of the sunshine vitamin in those with high levels. Basically, it is the babysitter micronutrient for Vitamin D, helping you stay in a healthy range. Why not just let Vitamin D go rampant? Well, it is a fat-soluble vitamin, so your kidneys won’t just get rid of excess, and therefore you can actually reach toxicity. Yikes. Vitamin D toxicity can do a lot of nasty things, but one of the key issues around too much Vitamin D in your system is that it can lead to excess calcium in your blood, which in turn leads to other serious health complications.
It’s all one BIG, intermingled, interconnected micro-nutrient family, and it’s of utmost importance to make sure that you keep yourself balanced. Balance is not just a mental state after all. Your whole body, ALL of it, is always searching for homeostasis, and micro-nutrients are the gatekeeper here.
Make sure you have the right gatekeepers doing the right jobs, supporting the right Vitamins – otherwise, your body will start to break down, little by little, down to a cellular level.
Thanks for spending time with me today learning about the interconnected world of vitamins, and about the support role that Magnesium plays in Vitamin D synthesis.
