Lee - Just Keep Calm & Take Some Magnesium: Why a boring mineral is suddenly hot property for soothing bodies and calming minds

Welcome to another of my quick guides to individual supplements. The over-riding philosophy of these guides is to

• Provide a summary of all the available information on a particular supplement including clinical trial results, method of action and user experiences
• To attempt to whittle the fifty-plus clinical trial results and pharmacological reviews I gathered from PubMed down to a document of the shortest possible size.
• Gather information from a variety of sources and collate into a single, easy-to-read eBook

If you are looking for a weighty, 300 page tome on the history of magnesium through the ages, this is not the guide for you. However if you just wish to learn everything you need to know to establish whether it is appropriate for you, I think I can be of assistance. Also, note that I have removed the table of contents and avoided page breaks to keep the overall experience compact.

Recently, I have noticed that slowly magnesium is becoming the next hot supplement, which, on the face of things seems rather strange at first glance. After all, magnesium is supposedly ubiquitous in our diet, with actual deficiency previously believed to be quite rare. However, research studies and anecdotal reports are emerging which appear to cast magnesium in a new light.

Up until a few years ago, I had always thought that magnesium helped treat anxiety for one reason - muscles need magnesium to relax . They use calcium to contract and magnesium to relax, which is why magnesium deficiency is associated with muscle tightness and cramping. Also, for many years we have known about the relaxing effects of Epsom salts baths (Epsom salts is magnesium sulfate). To be honest, for many years I believed that Epsom salts were just placebo - that people were just getting relaxed by having a hot bath. Then I read a study that appeared to demonstrate that a large amount of magnesium is absorbed through the skin when we take an Epsom salts bath. This is now known as transdermal magnesium therapy and can be extremely effective in certain situations where oral magnesium is not recommended. There is also a growing minority of health professionals who believe that transdermal therapy is a much more effective way to treat a magnesium deficiency than taking oral supplements.

Originally I thought that magnesium helped anxiety because it aided in physical relaxation. As anyone who suffers anxiety will know, there is a feedback loop that occurs between anxious thoughts and physical sensations of anxiety. By breaking that feedback loop with magnesium, anxiety can dissipate. However, recently research has emerged showing a strong correlation between magnesium levels and serotonin levels. Low magnesium is now clearly linked with low serotonin. Not only this, but a certain study also concluded that for certain patients, magnesium therapy was as effective as antidepressant medication! Please dont take this as a signal to go off medication and start magnesium therapy as it depends on the person and the nature of the particular case of depression or anxiety. Magnesium supplements would do little to ameliorate suicidal depression. Nevertheless, it does point to a potentially potent alternative to antidepressant or antianxiety medications in certain scenarios.

One of the reasons I wanted to write this guide is that, as part of my research into the brain and body, I keep unearthing new research and new theories regarding magnesium. Along with omega 3 fatty acids and vitamin D, magnesium has the widest range of effects on the body of any substance, as I will now show.

So how do you know if you are deficient in magnesium? Symptoms can include anxiety, restless leg syndrome (RLS), sleep disorders, abnormal heart rhythms, blood pressure abnormalities, muscle spasms, weakness and insomnia.

However, if we are looking at potential applications for magnesium therapy, we need to first clarify what we are talking about. Magnesium therapy can either be used for correcting a medically-diagnosed deficiency or for treating a specific disorder. This is a key point as there are occasions where magnesium therapy can be helpful despite the lack of an actual deficiency. We can draw parallels with lithium, which is used to treat bipolar disorder, where we are not actually correcting a lithium deficiency per se. More on this in a minute.

Of all the nutrients, supplements and herbs that I have studied, magnesium has by far the longest list of potential applications. Magnesium therapy has demonstrated the ability to treat or ameliorate conditions such as hypertension (high blood pressure), arthritis, type 2 diabetes, insomnia, problems with energy levels (due to ATP abnormalities), cholesterol problems, bladder spasms, menstrual cramps, muscle spasms and twitches, fibromyalgia, palpitations, heart arrhythmias, anxiety and panic attacks, DHEA deficiency plus a range of other nervous system, cardiovascular and musculoskeletal system problems.