Magnesium Benefits

Unless you live under a rock, you've heard about the link between calcium and strong teeth, but did you know you need magnesium to get the benefit of calcium? Magnesium obviously doesn't have the huge PR that its partner calcium does. The milk industry pushes calcium as the huge benefactor to your health but there's no lobby for buckwheat flour, so you don't hear all the wonderful health benefits of magnesium.

Magnesium is necessary to operate many of the functions in the body. Magnesium is an activator. It makes over 76 percent of the body's enzymes go to work. A deficiency in this seldom praised mineral often doesn't show itself in the form of a craving like many minerals but plays an important role in your health. In fact, people with heart arrhythmias can often get relief with the addition of magnesium to their diet. While most doctors recommend the supplementation of potassium if you take water pills, many forget that magnesium depletion also occurs.

People with depression often display lower amounts of magnesium. Other conditions that tend to accompany depression include ADD, mitral valve prolapse, fibromyalgia, asthma, allergies and migraines. Most of these conditions come in clusters and all have a relationship to low magnesium levels.

While it's important to have enough calcium in your body, you also need a balance with the magnesium. If you're out of balance, it slows down the use of the body's calcium and the cells begin to calcify because of its excess. Calcification leads to cell death and eventually the death of an organ and aging.

Studying the geological anomaly of higher incidence of Parkinson's-dementia and ALS on the Western Pacific areas, scientists noted high amounts of aluminum, iron and manganese but low amounts of magnesium and calcium resulted in another observation. When the introduction of food and water from a different area occurred, the incidence of ALS-PD decreased dramatically.

Not only did that information link magnesium shortage to mental conditions, an experimental study showed that rats with a high aluminum intake had no problem but if they had the high intake and low levels of magnesium, it increased the calcium levels and aluminum levels in the nervous system. This increased the development of hydroxyapatites causing the neurodegeneration of Alzheimer's disease.

Magnesium also might take the grouchiness out of PMS. Scientists find that patients with PMT, premenstrual tension, have a deficiency of magnesium in their blood serum. While there was no further study or recommendation by the scientists, it seems that every smart husband would put a bottle of magnesium pills on the shelf or hide some in the food of a wife with PMT.

Studies with lab rats deprived of magnesium show increased histamine levels similar to those when someone has an allergy. Low levels of magnesium increase the incidences of TMJ, tooth grinding and low levels of hyaluronic acid. Hyaluronic acid is necessary for skin repair and other functions throughout the body.

Until magnesium hires a better PR team, it will sit at the sideline watching calcium and potassium get all the fame and fortune. However, as soon as people realize all the benefits of magnesium and the conditions and diseases an adequate supply of magnesium could prevent, a grass roots movement will put it right on the path to celebrity. Magnesium truly is one of the unsung heroes of the path to wellness.