[SPEAKER_00]: Hello and welcome to the Aquaman podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is an exploration of woman kind.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here we discuss what it is to be a woman in the modern world while utilizing ancient and modern modalities in tandem to create a bounty of health for the body, mind and spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good day everyone and welcome back to the Archwellman podcast before we talk all things magnesium today.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd just like to take a moment to pay my respects to the elders past, present and future, residing on the lands of Luchoia de Tasmania, where I'm recording this podcast today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Always has, always will be baby.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone talks about magnesium in the way that it is a supplement, a sleep hack, something that we use when we need to take a shit, but it is none of those things and all of those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: it is actually one of the most important minerals that we need to get from our diet every single day because it's utilized in 600 enzymatic reactions in the body making it one of the most important minerals that we need to focus on which is why there are a lot of memes and people online saying that I had 99 problems and magnesium solved like 90 of them and the reason why is because this is a foundational mineral that utilizes and manages how everything works and functions in the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: Today, we're going to cover a few different things in this episode all about magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to be talking about where magnesium comes from.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fucking sick.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why everyone is so deficient in magnesium?
[SPEAKER_00]: What I've actually does inside of your body?
[SPEAKER_00]: The best food sources, what blocks absorption, what helps absorption, what we can do when we need to supplement it, what the best supplement for magnesium can be, and the other mineral interactions we need to take into account when we supplement
[SPEAKER_00]: We're also going to be looking at specific applications for women's hormones.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a women's hormone podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to be looking at the applications of magnesium supplementation for PCOS, adenomyosis, endometriosis, everyone, everything, basically.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the end of this episode, hopefully you'll understand not only magnesium, but how we get it, how it works in the body and how you can safely utilize this amazing mineral.
[SPEAKER_00]: First, let's talk about where magnesium comes from and it's incredible cosmic origins.
[SPEAKER_00]: magnesium was forged inside of a dying star.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the really violent final stages of a star's life.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's basically where it is imploding and turning into a black hole.
[SPEAKER_00]: Basically, three helium nuclei fuse together made magnesium and fling it out into the universe.
[SPEAKER_00]: And thankfully, a lot of it landed here on Earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it's the eighth most abundant mineral in Earth's crusts, which also reflects how much we need it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's been on this planet for as long as this
[SPEAKER_00]: For the longest time on Earth though, magnesium was a pretty inner mineral, it was unusable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Until algae started to utilize it with photosynthesis and turn it into something we could use.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every single chlorophyll molecule, the molecule at the center of photosynthesis, which is basically how plants use light and water to synthesize energy.
[SPEAKER_00]: In our case, it's going to be glucose or ATP.
[SPEAKER_00]: Basically, every molecule of chlorophyll has magnesium at its center.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is what stabilizes the electron excitation that starts the whole reaction of photosynthesis.
[SPEAKER_00]: Richard Willis-Dala won the Nobel Prize in 1915 for working this out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every plant calorie on Earth traces back to magnesium atoms catching a photon, and how it has worked inside of a photosynthesizing plant.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's really quite romantic because then this mirror is inside of the human body as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: magnesium does the mirror job inside of us.
[SPEAKER_00]: ATP, the universal energy currency is biologically alert until it binds to magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you didn't know, a denocene triphosphate is a molecule that is basically our body's energy currency.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's how our body utilizes energy.
[SPEAKER_00]: we're basically taking away our phosphate group, adding it back on over and over again in different electron transport chains to utilize that energy.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we can't do that without magnesium, which is pretty amazing because that's how it works inside of plants too.
[SPEAKER_00]: When people actually talk about ATP, they're talking about ATPMG, which is ATP plus magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: So magnesium sits at both ends of life's energy chain.
[SPEAKER_00]: It catches the sun at the top and it unlocks the
[SPEAKER_00]: How cool is that, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Poetry and physics into wind.
[SPEAKER_00]: Love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Despite this, Agnesium being the eight most abundant mineral on Earth, despite the fact that we need it for literally 600 enzymatic reactions in the body, and we can't utilize energy without it, most people are deficient.
[SPEAKER_00]: In America, specifically, the 8% of adults are deficient in magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: And consumed less magnesium than the estimated average requirement.
[SPEAKER_00]: In women, the average intake hoppers around 228 milligrams per day against the RDA of 310 to 320 milligrams.
[SPEAKER_00]: In large-range cohort data from 82.5% of women falling short.
[SPEAKER_00]: In 2018, a cardiologist named James D. Mikko Leon Toyo, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.
[SPEAKER_00]: and colleagues published a paper in the journal, open heart calling, subclinical magnesium deficiency, a public health crisis.
[SPEAKER_00]: That language, the public health crisis, is not coming from a wellness influencer, is coming from peer reviewed medical journals.
[SPEAKER_00]: And three forces explained why, even though we have so much magnesium on earth, and we need it so much, why do we have deficiencies.
[SPEAKER_00]: So number one, soil depletion, as someone who worked on farms, as someone who did
[SPEAKER_00]: I know this, every single farm will tell you this, that there is no magnesium in the soil.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are at really, really risky times with our soil and how little magnesium is there.
[SPEAKER_00]: A research of Western Davis and colleagues compared USDA food consumption data from 1950 to 1999.
[SPEAKER_00]: across 43 garden crops and found statistically significant mineral declines.
[SPEAKER_00]: A UK analysis of the McCain and Witterson food consumption tables for British government's nutritional Bible basically found roughly 24% declines in magnesium content of vegetables between 1940 and 1991.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you imagine what it is like now?
[SPEAKER_00]: Some individual crops fell much further.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason is straightforward, modern high-yield cultivators grow faster and they pull more minerals from the soil.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nitrogen phosphorus and potassium fertilizers MPK fertilizers that are, I would say, overused in brood acre cropping, actually inhibit magnesium uptake from plants in the soil.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're having a mineral imbalance in the soil that's negatively impacting how plants are able to utilize minerals that they mean to photosynthesize in the soil.
[SPEAKER_00]: which means the carrots that our grandmothers were eating are not the nutritionally same ones that we are eating today.
[SPEAKER_00]: The second reason why we have magnesium deficiencies in the modern world is also because we have food processing that strips minerals from the food we're eating.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we refined wheat into white flour, it removes 82% of the magnesium, because all of the minerals are in the husk, which is the bran and the germ.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we polish rice, it removes 83%.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we refined sugar, it removes 99%.
[SPEAKER_00]: Refined oils contain essentially zero magnesium even when they're pressed from magnesium-rich seeds.
[SPEAKER_00]: A diet built on processed and refined foods is almost by design a low magnesium diet.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the third reason we have a deficiency is water.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hard water can contribute around 15 milligrams of magnesium per two liters per day.
[SPEAKER_00]: The World Health Organization concluded in 2009 that demoneralized drinking water is associated with a higher cardiovascular mortality rate.
[SPEAKER_00]: modern borders home reverse osmosis filters quietly remove this contribution entirely.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's also a fourth driver within this that doesn't really get a lot of attention because there's a lot of controversy around it and I'm going to say it fluoride.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fluoride compounds in fluorinated water and many dental products in a significant number of prescription medications bind to magnesium and make it biologically unavailable inside of the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you grow up with fluoride treatments, if you take medications that contain fluoride, if you drink fluorinated water, then this is silently working away at your magnesium deposits in your body and how your body can access magnesium as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And another thing worth flagging is hormone or birth control.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are a contraceptive pill depletes magnesium, both combination pills and persistent only pills alongside B2, B6, B12 vitamin C, E,
[SPEAKER_00]: The pure creates a mineral debt in most women and they are never told about it and synthetic estrogen actually causes magnesium to be taken out more aggressively by the soft tissue and bone which sounds protective like that sounds like it's good but that means that the overall demand goes up while the supply goes down so your body can't access those magnesium stores as easily as it previously could when you weren't on hormone or birth control.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one consequence that women who are given hormone or birth control are not really told is that low magnesium raises the calcium to magnesium ratio in the blood and that ratio favors coagulation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So coagulation is basically blood clotting in the blood system, which isn't really great.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want blood clotting in areas where we've had a cut because it means that we're going to lower the infection rate and our body is working properly but if we're increasing coagulation in the blood,
[SPEAKER_00]: It means that we have a higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease, which is why, when we look in the inserts of a hormone of birth control, that's the risk.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your risk factor for cardiovascular disease goes up on hormone of birth control, and this is one of the reasons why.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm happy thinking, okay, cool, I'm going to go out and get my blood tested, and I'm going to look for magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might not want to do that, and this is the diagnostic problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that matters most when we talk about magnesium testing, is that less than one
[SPEAKER_00]: in your blood.
[SPEAKER_00]: So 60% of magnesium is in your bone, 39% in soft tissue and inside of cells.
[SPEAKER_00]: And magnesium, when we talk about it, it is an intracellular mineral.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we do a blood test for magnesium, it's not actually showing us that much.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not actually showing you how much magnesium you have and how your body is utilizing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because magnesium is using 600 enzymatic reactions in the body, drink every time I say that, honestly, I'm going to say a multiple times in this podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your body is really, really defensive about magnesium stores.
[SPEAKER_00]: It really is quite aggressive around how it regulates magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very, very protective of magnesium stores.
[SPEAKER_00]: Understandably.
[SPEAKER_00]: When your intake of magnesium drops, it leaches magnesium from the bone and muscle to keep your blood levels stable.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can have significant tissue depletion, real symptomatic physiological deficiencies, and serum magnesium reading looks completely normal.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's why serum magnesium isn't really
[SPEAKER_00]: best indicator, I've never suggested that anyone have their blood testing done to go and look at magnesium specifically because it's just you don't really ever get a good read.
[SPEAKER_00]: Going on from this and worse, the reference range for serum magnesium was derived from the N-H-A-N-E-S data collected in the early 1970s and it has not been updated since.
[SPEAKER_00]: in the end hands, the US government's major nutritional survey since 1974.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the normal range has never been properly calibrated to clinical outcomes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just a statistical distribution of a population.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this is something that I say a lot is that nutritional deficiencies and how we categorize what is a deficiency and is not based on bloods are fairly outdated.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the nutritional guidelines in Australia, we've been waiting for an update for
[SPEAKER_00]: And the science is here and our data and our nutritional guidelines are somewhere else.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not actually matching at the moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's really tricky for nutritionists, doctors, and dietitians because we're like, oh, this is what the nutritional guidelines say.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what the RDI says.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what the upper limit is, but this is what the science is saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there is a huge gap, especially for magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: Understandably, researchers are up in arms about this, and they're really arguing that that lower cutoff for magnesium at least serum magnesium needs to be raised dramatically.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that the current range is too low to capture people who are functionally deficient.
[SPEAKER_00]: The term used in the European magnesium research literature is chronic latent magnesium deficiency, which is a persistent, small negative balance that depletes tissue stores while serum reads as normal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pretty important to know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so what do I do then?
[SPEAKER_00]: How do I test for it?
[SPEAKER_00]: You can test for magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a better test.
[SPEAKER_00]: Serum magnesium is not the one, but this one is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ask for are the C magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is magnesium measured inside of your red blood cells rather than serum or around them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have serum magnesium that travels
[SPEAKER_00]: in the blood system and then we can also test for how much magnesium is inside of our red blood cells and that gives us a better idea of how much magnesium is actually stored in your tissues.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another one you could try out is a 24-hour urinary magnesium test.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is really, really informative.
[SPEAKER_00]: The kidney retains magnesium aggressively when you are deficient.
[SPEAKER_00]: So low output suggests adequate intake.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we look at a hair tissue mineral analysis test, you can also look at calcium to magnesium ratios, which in clinical practice is understood as the blood sugar ratio, which is a really useful metabolic window, but serum alone completely misses the point.
[SPEAKER_00]: You won't get much information with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's move on to what magnesium actually does inside of the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is going to be the meat and potatoes or the lentil sausage and potatoes, for my vegan and vegetarian gollies of this podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might want to get a pen and paper.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might want to listen to this again.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to be talking about co-factors and a few other nutritional things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to try and talk about it in layman's terms, so you can listen to this and understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some pretty complicated and convoluted nutritional science, but you'll be able to understand it in lay terms.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go.
[SPEAKER_00]: So magnesium is used for 600 enzymes and it is a co-factor to the production of another 300 enzymes in the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, it's a really busy girl, magnesium's busy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you might be thinking, wow, that's a lot, 600 enzymes being regulated and it's a co-factors of 300.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: The thing is, is that this might actually be underestimating what magnesium does in the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: In a 2015 systematic review in physiological reviews, one of the most rigorous journals in Biological Science cataloged more than 600 enzymes that use magnesium as a co-factor, plus another 200 or so when it acts as an allosteric activator.
[SPEAKER_00]: The number of being quoted wellness space is less than half of what the current science is actually showing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might be thinking, okay, but what is a co-factor?
[SPEAKER_00]: I want, so the actual lock in the door, that's the enzyme.
[SPEAKER_00]: The substrate is the molecule that the enzyme axon is the one key.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the key goes in the lock, which is the enzyme.
[SPEAKER_00]: A co-factor is a second key that needs to go in at the same time to actually get the lock to work.
[SPEAKER_00]: So without magnesium, as the second co-factor going into that lock, its enzyme is basically ineffective.
[SPEAKER_00]: It won't do its job, it won't create any of the other work that it's going to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: insulin in the receptor site.
[SPEAKER_00]: If there isn't magnesium there as well, the glucose channel will not open.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need magnesium to regulate insulin at the beta cells inside the pancreatic cells that produce insulin.
[SPEAKER_00]: We also need magnesium for energy production.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need it for everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if magnesium isn't there at the same time as a metabolite going into an enzyme to create a different reaction inside of the cell, nothing will really work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this explains why magnesium deficiencies don't just come up as a one symptom, they come up as the cluster of symptoms because we need magnesium for so many different jobs in the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't go through 600 enzymatic reactions today as much as you know I would love to.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to break them down into the most important ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the first one and the most important one I think is energy production in the body through the production and utilization of ATP, identifying triphosphate.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I said before, ATP is the energy currency of every single cell in the body, but it must be bound to magnesium to work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Free ATP is effectively inert, the cell actually uses mg ATP.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every step of glycolysis that involves phosphate transfer requires magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what I was saying before ATP, we turn it into ATP so try meaning 3 or die meaning 2.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have a phosphate group that's detaching, retouching, detaching, retouching.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's how we can be really efficient with the limited glucose that our body perceives us to have.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we need magnesium for every single time we detach and reattach a phosphate group to ATP by DEP.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: The ATP synthase that suits inside of your mitochondria and physically manufactures ATP requires heaps and heaps and heaps of magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: Creatine kinase, the enzyme that recharges, the rapid energy reservoirs in your muscles and brain also requires it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, creatine, that amazing supplement that everyone's talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Creatine kinase is actually what it's called inside of the cell and how it appears and how it works.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it needs magnesium to also access and redistribute and utilize energy in the muscle tissue.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, understandably, if we don't have enough magnesium, we don't have enough energy, which is why magnesium deficiencies often associated with the feeling of fatigue and brain fault.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we cannot make adequate energy, everything slows down.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, your digestion, your detoxification, also known as metabolizing, your hormone production, your ability to handle and respond to stress.
[SPEAKER_00]: The hormonal and metabolic chaos that so many women experience doesn't just happen in isolation, it is in part a downstream consequence of impaired energy production, and impaired and impaired energy production is in part and make museum problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: Magnusium is also really important and sits inside of the machinery that translates DNA.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I really want to describe and make sure everyone understands DNA properly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone's heard of DNA and it's just like, this is the blueprint of the human, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: You have chromosomes and inside of those chromosomes you have DNA.
[SPEAKER_00]: So DNA is basically four molecules that can figure it in a pattern over and over and over again that codes for different proteins and so basically you have an enzyme so a protein that comes over on top of your DNA and it will transcribe the message on your DNA and so basically
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's say, for example, we're inside of the pancreas and the pancreatic cells make insulin.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're making insulin here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're reading this part of the DNA over and over and over again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as it's reading out, he's putting out a chemical signal to ask for a certain proteins.
[SPEAKER_00]: So each of these different messages on your DNA is asking for a specific amino acid.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that will create a protein chain, also known as a peptide.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then how these peptides are made also includes different minerals different places.
[SPEAKER_00]: So hemoglobin will have a molecule of iron.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then depending on the chemistry of these amino acids and the mineral, we'll translocate move into a certain shape.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is what is related to its job.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the shape of an insular molecule,
[SPEAKER_00]: will depend on the non-the receptor site that it needs to feed into.
[SPEAKER_00]: So all of the protein's shapes will directly correlate with its function in the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully I didn't lose you there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But basically what I'm trying to help you understand is that we need magnesium to read the DNA.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are copying, we are repairing DNA at the same time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So DNA polymerases use two metal ion catalytic mechanisms.
[SPEAKER_00]: So both metals are magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: So RNA polymerases, they share the same architecture.
[SPEAKER_00]: DNA repair enzymes also need magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: When magnesium drops, our replication fidelity drops with it, mutation rates increase.
[SPEAKER_00]: So basically, what I'm saying here is that if we are copying DNA all the time, we're actually going to start damaging this DNA.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we have other enzymes inside of the nucleus of our cell, where our DNA is kept.
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole job is to find pieces of DNA that are a bit broken and have a risk of mutating and repairs it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will fix the backbone of
[SPEAKER_00]: The DNA replaced different parts of the DNA and make sure it's really, really healthy.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we don't have magnesium to actually do this job, which is fixing the DNA, we can start seeing mutations in the DNA, and therefore we can start seeing that the proteins that this DNA is making are actually functioning properly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when we have more and more DNA damage, our telomeres, which are these caps on the end of our chromosomes, start to shorten, and that's associated with a decreased longevity.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's something that Brian Johnson's really, really obsessed with, is telling me has been really long and making sure we're always repairing them and they're always in good tact basically.
[SPEAKER_00]: And research really reflects this.
[SPEAKER_00]: That magnesium deficiency accelerates telling me a shortening.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of the cellular hallmarks of aging.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the ribosome, the machine that actually builds every single protein in your body.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is what reads the DNA and puts out the call for the amino acid and makes that
[SPEAKER_00]: preliminary amino acid chain that peptide.
[SPEAKER_00]: This ribosome is stabilized by hundreds of bound magnesium ions across the linking it's RNA helicines.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you are magnesium deficient, then you are making protein less efficiently.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your tissues, your enzymes, your hormones, themselves are all protein.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the downstream effects are everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if we have made these indifficiency, not only can we not capture and utilize energy effectively, we also cannot read DNA.
[SPEAKER_00]: We cannot make the proteins that we need to make, and everything is made out of protein in the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which is why it's so important to eat, because our body needs it all of the time to synthesize different enzymes and different constituents of our body.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's move on to your nervous system.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of people take magnesium for their nervous system.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this is really interesting if you're taking it for anxiety or if you felt a little bit down because magnesium deficiency is associated with anxiety, depression and other mental health disorders as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it plays into how it functions really intrinsically within your nervous system.
[SPEAKER_00]: Specifically because magnesium ions are really important in the NMDA receptors.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two papers published in Nature in 1984 showed something that completely changed neuroscience.
[SPEAKER_00]: Magnusium acts as a voltage dependent plug in the NMDA receptor.
[SPEAKER_00]: The main exciteratory glutamate channel in the brain.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will be explaining this so stay with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The resting membrane potential, i'm magnesium ion, generally sits in the channel and blocks calcium from flowing through.
[SPEAKER_00]: Only when a neuron is already activated, does magnesium get displaced, allowing the channel to open.
[SPEAKER_00]: So basically, how your neurons work is by eliciting different action potentials alongside its neurons.
[SPEAKER_00]: So think of your neuron basically as an electrical wire and we mediate this electrical impulse by mediating how we move different ions around.
[SPEAKER_00]: So calcium is really important in your nervous system
[SPEAKER_00]: calcium in and out of the neuron as that action potential and impulse moves along that cell.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we cannot start that action potential that electrical impulse unless magnesium moves out of the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we need magnesium to move in and out at the right time for that electrical impulse to work properly alongside that neuron.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this makes NMDA receptors what neuroscientists call coincidence detectors.
[SPEAKER_00]: They only activate when two things happens
[SPEAKER_00]: which is the cellular basis of learning and memory.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this means that when magnesium is low, those channels are left chronically unlocked, glutamate, the brain's primary excitatory neurotransmitter flows more freely, and neurons are hyper-reactive.
[SPEAKER_00]: calcium drives the state of neural stress, and we experience subjectively as anxiety.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if we don't have magnesium in the brain to a certain amount, it can't block neurons from just putting out impulses all of the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Magnesium regulates how many nerve impulses they are if they're going to the right area.
[SPEAKER_00]: Basically, and if we have a nervous nervous system that doesn't have enough magnesium, it's just going to be pulsing all of the time, no matter what it's going to be overreactive to stimuli as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this can really burn out your central nervous system, and this is the feeling of anxiety.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the same time, magnesium, potentiates, GABA, A receptors, the brain's primary inhibitory system.
[SPEAKER_00]: So shifts in excitation to
[SPEAKER_00]: inhibition, balance towards calm from both sides simultaneously.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's glue them through our more GABA urgent breaking and then there's cortisol.
[SPEAKER_00]: Magnusium modulates the HPA access so your hypothalamic pituitary adrenal access and it actually reduces ACT hate release and blunts the cortisol response.
[SPEAKER_00]: So ACT H is a hormone that our brain releases.
[SPEAKER_00]: that basically tells our kidneys or our adrenal glands, I should say, to release cortisol.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, if we've noticed the stress, we're late for work.
[SPEAKER_00]: ACT H travels throughout the blood system, goes towards your adrenal glands and the adrenal glands release cortisol.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when we have enough magnesium around, it kind of blunts that response.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, with that response isn't so excitatory, we're actually able to regulate it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, even if something really stressful does happen, if we have enough magnesium around, we're able to accurately regulate how much
[SPEAKER_00]: cortisol we release.
[SPEAKER_00]: The interesting thing though is that the amount of stress that we are experiencing in our life and therefore how much cortisol we have around also decreases the amount of magnesium in the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's catacolumines and cortisol drive magnesium out of the cells and increase urinary excretion.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yes, if you have high cortisol, it will get the cells to lead chart heat with magnesium and their kidneys pick this up and it comes out in a urine.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it basically
[SPEAKER_00]: unregulated cortisol.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when you're low in magnesium, you're actually more susceptible to stress because we don't have enough magnesium in our brain to calm down all of our neurons and make sure they're not firing all the time and giving our body a little bit more GABA to inhibit the brain and decreasing and regulating the amount of ACT H and they're four of the amount of cortisol.
[SPEAKER_00]: So cortisol kind of creates this environment.
[SPEAKER_00]: where we have less magnesium and therefore our brain starts to act in a way that we perceive as more anxiety and stress.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a really vicious cycle and I think this is something that a lot of women are caught up in.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's women saying that they cannot handle stress the way they're used to, women not understanding why they're suddenly snapping at the kids and being upset by things that they're not usually.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're feeling that you are responding to stress
[SPEAKER_00]: This might be why.
[SPEAKER_00]: I spoke about the connection between magnesium and calcium before and now we're going to go into it a little bit deeper.
[SPEAKER_00]: Calcium triggers muscle contraction.
[SPEAKER_00]: Magnesium permits its relaxation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we need calcium to contract.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm leaving magnesium to relax.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if we don't have enough magnesium in relation to the amount of calcium we have in the body,
[SPEAKER_00]: our muscles literally cannot relax.
[SPEAKER_00]: They cannot unclench.
[SPEAKER_00]: At rest, magnesium is bound to a myosin head, which is basically the milihila motor of your muscle.
[SPEAKER_00]: It holds it in a detached relaxed state when an action potential flares, so an impulse from your nerves, flares, calcium is released and that it binds to a protein called proponents C, and then when this happens the muscle
[SPEAKER_00]: had grabs the actin and pulls, powered by MGATP.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for the muscle to relax, the calcium has to be pumped back into the storage and that pump is called SERCA.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is also utilizing MGATPAs, so magnesium and ATP together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Magnesium is required for both the contraction and the relaxation of your muscle tissue.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when magnesium is low, detachment is incomplete, and you see this play out across every smooth
[SPEAKER_00]: So, nocturnal leg cramps, restless legs, eyelid twitches, tension headaches and your muscles just kind of flinching and reacting in a certain way.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you feel like this is you, or if you've been told that your muscles are always quite contracted and they're quite tight and they're not really relaxed, you might be low in magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is really important and we will come back to it later.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you have to understand basically we need magnesium to contract and we also need magnesium to relax and in the middle of these two things happening, we need calcium to contract the muscle.
[SPEAKER_00]: and if we don't have magnesium on either end of these reactions with your muscle, it stays in a hyper-vigilant contracted state that elevates your blood pressure and can cause jitteriness and generally quite a lot of fatigue in the muscle as well because it's always contracted.
[SPEAKER_00]: Next, let's talk about sleep and circadian rhythm.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think this is one of the main reasons why people will supplement or focus on foods that are high in magnesium is to improve their sleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: the central nervous system.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the calming inhibitory neurotransmitter system, and this supports the trip to fan pathway that leads to serotonin and then the production of melatonin.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of the enzymes in this pathway to make melatonin are dependent on ATP.
[SPEAKER_00]: being attached to magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's just something that really underpins that whole point of this whole podcast is that because we need energy to do literally everything in the body, to make every single nutrient neurotransmitters digest everything in the body to make all of the proteins, we need ATP being attached to magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: So therefore literally everything, every single biological function in the body depends on magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is also true in this.
[SPEAKER_00]: We cannot make melatonin and serotonin without magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: Animal research has shown that magnesium deficiency also lowers plasma melatonin.
[SPEAKER_00]: In a 2012 double-blind randomized control trial, gave elderly insomniacs 500 milligrams of magnesium daily for eight weeks.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it reduced insomniac severity, improved sleep efficiency.
[SPEAKER_00]: It also raised serum melatonin and lowered serum cortisol.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a single supplement moving five sleep and stress markers in the right direction simultaneously.
[SPEAKER_00]: Going on from this, in a 2016 paper published in Nature, they used cells from humans, mice, and marine algae and fungus.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are four organisms that are separated by billions of years of evolution.
[SPEAKER_00]: They show that an intracellular magnesium concentration of all of these cells oscillate on a 24-hour cycle.
[SPEAKER_00]: This oscillation is a part of a cell autonomous circadian clock, and magnesium in this study has been shown to regularly sleep wax cycles in alky fungus mice and humans.
[SPEAKER_00]: It might also be a part of the cellular function and circadian clock rhythm of all biological life on Earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, okay, magnesium seems pretty good for sleep, but I started taking magnesium and I started to have really weird prophetic dreams.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there a connection here?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, there is a really interesting connection here.
[SPEAKER_00]: When a nervous system has been stuck in chronic flight or flight, a magnesium begins to shift towards a parasympathetic system, it enters a deeper REM sleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is rapid eye movement sleep, and this is where humans most commonly drain.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's almost like the brain has a backlog, and it needs to get all of the dreams out of the system.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's really needed to start having rapid eye movement drain.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when people start taking magnesium, if they've previously been quite anxious, they'll notice that they have really strange vivid dreams and they wake up feeling a little bit more tired and they've heard of people stopping magnesium supplementation if they've been low in it because of this and I would just say, you know, maybe decrease your dose.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're low in magnesium from the test that we previously spoke about and you're stopping it because you're having really weird dreams, I would just say lower your dosing keep going with it because that's a good sign that your body's just getting all of the rims sleep out of the way, basically.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ideally, it's just kind of a sign that your nervous system is recalibrating.
[SPEAKER_00]: It won't be like that forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your dreams will go back to normal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another element of magnesium in the body is your bones and we're going to be talking about magnesium and vitamin D and how we can put them together and how they work together in synergy
[SPEAKER_00]: As I said previously, 60% of your magnesium is stored in your bones, and one third of that, so about 20% of your overall stores, is utilized by your body when you're low in magnesium from your diet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Multiple large studies, including an analysis of the women's health initiative, with over 73,000 women, have shown significant associations between high magnesium intake,
[SPEAKER_00]: and higher bone mineral densities.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the more magnesium you have in the diet, the better bone density you need.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is really important, you know, you might be a young woman right now, bone densities and not something you're thinking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it is something you'll be thinking about in your 60s and your 70s, your 80s, your 90s and onwards because bone densities is made right now when we are young and we have lots of magnesium in our diet, lots of estrogen as well, because this is where we're producing lots of our bone densities.
[SPEAKER_00]: go time right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're in your 20s and 30s, it's really important to focus on bone density right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I digress.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so how does this connect to vitamin D?
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of people take vitamin D. It's really popular at the moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think everyone's finding out how vitamin D is a steroid, how it works in the body, how amazing it is for all of these different reactions in the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of people are supplementing with vitamin D. They might be taking cod liver.
[SPEAKER_00]: They might just be taking 5,000 I use of vitamin
[SPEAKER_00]: for the absorption and utilization of vitamin D in the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if we're taking vitamin D without a magnesium supplement as well, we can also decrease magnesium stores in the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every enzyme that activates vitamin D requires magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: A 2018 paper in the journal of American osteopathic association made this explicit.
[SPEAKER_00]: The hydrooxilase enzyme in your liver converts vitamin D into its storage form, which is magnesium dependent.
[SPEAKER_00]: The enzyme in your kidney that converts it again into the active form is also magnesium dependent.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we also bind vitamin D to a protein in the body to carry it around the body for various reasons, it's also magnesium dependence.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need a lot of magnesium to store, utilize and move vitamin D around the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're taking vitamin D and you have low magnesium, this can be a huge problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: Vitamin D supplementation cannot only fail, but it can backfire completely.
[SPEAKER_00]: High dose vitamin D increases calcium absorption from the gut.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you already have high tissue calcium from chronic magnesium depletion, adding more calcium absorption into the picture increases calcification, not bone density.
[SPEAKER_00]: So bone density and calcification, not the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Parathirate hormone, which regulates calcium, requires magnesium for normal secretion.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have chronic magnesium deficiency, this produces a calcium problem that will not correct with calcium or vitamin D, until magnesium is addressed first.
[SPEAKER_00]: So magnesium always first.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we can see this reflected in women's health data.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a study showing postmenopausal women with low vitamin D and low parathyroid hormone who are also found to be magnesium deficient.
[SPEAKER_00]: When they supplemented with magnesium, no vitamin D at all, their vitamin D levels corrected.
[SPEAKER_00]: magnesium deficiency was the reason their vitamin D appeared.
[SPEAKER_00]: low.
[SPEAKER_00]: How cool is that?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm not saying that you shouldn't take vitamin D. I'm just saying if you do take vitamin D, you might want to think about taking a magnesium supplement or focusing on foods rich in vitamin D. And I'm also saying that taking a high dose vitamin D, so 5,000 I use is kind of what's being popularized at the moment without understanding your magnesium and calcium status and without understanding the difference between your storage and your active vitamin D, it's not the complete
[SPEAKER_00]: And for the think for a lot of women, this is actually making things worse.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're going to take a vitamin D supplement, just take a magnesium with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully you will be able to find a good supplement that actually combines magnesium and vitamin D. They're becoming a little bit more popular.
[SPEAKER_00]: Magnesium is also really, really important for cardiovascular function.
[SPEAKER_00]: A 2016 metronolysis of 34 randomized control trials found that a median dose of 360 milligrams of magnesium daily for three months lowered systolic blood pressure from 2 to 1.8.
[SPEAKER_00]: In hyposensitive and magnesium deficient populations, the drops were larger, around 6 and 5mm HD.
[SPEAKER_00]: magnesium also keeps blood vessels relaxed and dilated.
[SPEAKER_00]: It also stabilizes cardiac electrical conduction and also known as arrhythmias.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, if someone has really dangerous heart arrhythmias, they are given intravenous magnesium sulfate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Magnezium is also really important for blood sugar and insulin resistance.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you are a woman with PCOS, you'll want to listen closely to this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: The insulin receptor itself is a tyrosine kinase.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like every kinase, its activation requires MG ATP.
[SPEAKER_00]: Downstream insulin signaling through IRS 1, PI3 kinase and AKT, and eventually glut4 transporters that move glucose inside of muscle and fat cells is also magnesium dependent.
[SPEAKER_00]: we need magnesium to do the job inside of the cell that insulin tells it to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when we have low intracellular magnesium, so magnesium inside of the cell, you might have insulin at the receptor site, but it's not actually able to do anything, which is why we have all of this amazing information coming out about how magnesium can improve PCOS.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's because magnesium improves intracellular storage,
[SPEAKER_00]: So, if glucose cannot get inside the cells because insulin is not working, it stays in the blood which increases blood glucose.
[SPEAKER_00]: The pancreas releases more insulin and over time cells become desensitized to insulin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Insulin resistance develops.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we have high glucose, if we have high insulin and then high RGF1, this causes hormonal chaos.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is the foundation of PCOS.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why magnesium supplementation works so well for women with PCOS.
[SPEAKER_00]: Significant mechanism underlying insulin resistance is usually a magnesium deficiency.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we see this reflected in the data.
[SPEAKER_00]: A landmark 2003 diabetes care trial gave magnesium deficient type to diabetics.
[SPEAKER_00]: Approximately 382 milligrams of elemental magnesium daily
[SPEAKER_00]: and significantly improved insulin sensitivity, fasting glucose and HB-A1-C. Our subsequent meta-analysis of 18 trials confirmed this benefit as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Magnusium is also incredibly important for the digestion of estrogen in the liver.
[SPEAKER_00]: Estrogens are metabolized or broken apart in the liver in two phases.
[SPEAKER_00]: Phase 1 and Phase 2.
[SPEAKER_00]: Phase 1 breaks down estrogen into different metabolites, most importantly, root, 4 and 16.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we have too much of this four type estrogen metabolite, so we've had an enzyme that's broken apart estrogenile, so E2 into this four type metabolite.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we have too much of this metabolite around, it's associated with breast cancer.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we don't want these metabolites around, we really need to get rid of them quite quickly.
[SPEAKER_00]: In that phase two, this clears the estrogen's primarily through an enzyme called catechol o methyl transfer rise, or the compt gene and compt enzyme.
[SPEAKER_00]: Compt takes those reactive metabolites and methylates them so they can be safely excreted.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this basically means this enzymes takes this two for an 16-type estradiol metabolite that has been partially digested and says I'm going to attach a methyl group to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So no one can use you and you're just going to go out through the P or we're going to P you out basically.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to get rid of you and you're not going to cause any damage.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this comp to Jane and this comp to enzyme is really protective.
[SPEAKER_00]: But comp needs two things to work.
[SPEAKER_00]: It needs SAMA as a methyl dyna and it also needs magnesium as a co-factor.
[SPEAKER_00]: So remember magnesium here is a co-factor in order for comp to do its job and attach methyl groups to
[SPEAKER_00]: It needs magnesium there at the same time in order to do that job.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, understandably, if magnesium is low, estrogen metabolites just stay around, because they're not able to have a methyl group attached to them and for them to be chucked into the digestive systems and excreted.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, these estrogen metabolites, they stay around for a little bit longer.
[SPEAKER_00]: They can be reactivated and they can circulate throughout the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: and this underpins what we talk about as estrogen dominance.
[SPEAKER_00]: So your liver is not doing the job it needs to do in decreasing estrogen effectively out of the body and these metabolites sustain around and causing a bit of a ruckus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another important part of estrogen clearance here is our bowels.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our bowels we have to remember coated with smooth muscle and remember muscle needs magnesium at the start and end point.
[SPEAKER_00]: to contract and relax.
[SPEAKER_00]: And our muscles, they like, they pinch along this tube and they basically push all of the ways alongside the digestive tract.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we have a huge digestive tract.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a small intestine in our large intestine.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the metabolites of estrogen end up here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me actually poo out part of our estrogen metabolites.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if we don't have enough magnesium,
[SPEAKER_00]: to activate those action potentials and to let those muscle fibers basically pinch in and move the waist alongside our digestive system, we actually reabsorb all of those estrogen metabolites because we have low magnesium because the muscle tissue in the digestive system isn't working properly.
[SPEAKER_00]: So magnesium is important for all three phases of estrogen metabolism in the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've spoken about estrogen, let's talk about progesterone because progesterone is a really magnesium hungry hormone.
[SPEAKER_00]: We make progesterone from cholesterol, so all of our hormones have a cholesterol backbone, and to make progesterone from cholesterol, we need magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we need magnesium and ATP together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we see this because magnesium levels fluctuate throughout the hormonal cycle.
[SPEAKER_00]: Research is showing that women with PMS have lower intracellular magnesium, measured inside the cells not serum.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is where serum looks normal throughout their cycle, but when we look intracellily, women with PMS have more likely to have lower magnesium inside of the cells, which is why eating lots of magnesium rich foods in your lodeur phase is one of the best things that you can do for your mood, for your digestion, for energy, fatigue, etc.
[SPEAKER_00]: Alongside this as well, progesterone increases your metabolic rate, which means it increases your need of magnesium as well, because we are doing more jobs, basically.
[SPEAKER_00]: Magnesium is also really important for your thyroid to function optimally, so I have a whole podcast with Tire Nelson all about the thyroid, who interested in the thyroid, go and listen to that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Magnesium's role in the thyroid works on multiple pathways.
[SPEAKER_00]: It supports the conversion of inactive T4 to active T3.
[SPEAKER_00]: It helps to protect your thyroid from inflammation and oxidative stress.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has a really huge influence on the HBA axis, and this is because chronic stress suppresses TSA.
[SPEAKER_00]: So TSA is a hormone that comes from your brain, basically tells
[SPEAKER_00]: your thyroid to make thyroid hormone.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we're chronically stressed and that can be put down to magnesium deficiencies, then we have lower TSH and therefore lower thyroid hormones.
[SPEAKER_00]: So everything slows down.
[SPEAKER_00]: For autoimmune thyroid diseases, so Hashimoto's thyroiditis and grapes disease, 2018 scientific report of over 1,200 people found that those lowest in serum magnesium
[SPEAKER_00]: and significantly higher prevalence of Hashimoto's thyroiditis and hypothyroidism.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hashimoto's is an inflammatory condition and magnesium deficiency is measureably pro-inflammatory.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if we have low magnesium, it basically means your thyroid cannot protect itself and it cannot lower autoimmunity.
[SPEAKER_00]: So autoimmunity, specifically with your thyroid, has a strong association with low serum and low
[SPEAKER_00]: There's also a connection between Cyrula Plasman, which is a protein that carries and transports copper around the body and magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: Magnesium is required to convert copper into Cyrula Plasman.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we need magnesium to put copper in Cyrula Plasman, so we can use it throughout the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: Copper is used for 16 or 17 enzymatic reactions in the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not as important as magnesium by any needs necessary, but we do absolutely need copper.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason why this is so important is because we generally don't have a lot of free floating copper around the body because it can cause a lot of problems, so we need a lot of several of the plasma and we need magnesium to do its job.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if we have low magnesium basically, we can't use copper efficiently in the body, which means we cannot utilize our blood cells properly because copper and iron in the blood system is really important.
[SPEAKER_00]: So magnesium deficiency impairs copper metabolism, which impairs everything's the rule of plasma and copper.
[SPEAKER_00]: It does.
[SPEAKER_00]: I in regulation anti-oxidant defense, your immune system, the list can go on.
[SPEAKER_00]: So hopefully you understand that magnesium is important and now you know the detail is behind why some of the reasons why it's so important.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's start talking about the RDI, so recommended daily intakes.
[SPEAKER_00]: What they actually mean and whether they're right and what the controversies around them are.
[SPEAKER_00]: The current RDI for adult women is around 310 milligrams per day for ages 19 to 30 and 320 milligrams for ages 31 and over.
[SPEAKER_00]: In pregnancy increases to 350 to 360 and for supplemental magnesium, the tolerable upper intake is 350 milligrams per day.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of people are looking at their supplements thinking, I see 420 here that's 100 milligrams above what the RDI is, what's up with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just so you know, the upper limit only applies to supplemental and pharmaceutical magnesium, not to food sources.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you might be thinking, okay, this doesn't really make any sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is magnesium set at a lower RDI?
[SPEAKER_00]: Then what is actually required?
[SPEAKER_00]: Kind of sounds like that's what's going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the numbers were set by the Institute of Medicine in 1997.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were based on balance studies of 34 adults on self-selected diets.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's where we got our RDI's from.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they haven't really been updated for a couple of years then.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yikes.
[SPEAKER_00]: A research and named Forest Nielsen has spelled as spent literally decades for taking the methodology extensively.
[SPEAKER_00]: The question those studies were trying to answer was how much magnesium prevents the body from going into negative balance.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a very different question from how much magnesium is required for optimal cardiovascular metabolic hormonal and neurological function.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that study was
[SPEAKER_00]: But the question that I want to ask and he wants to ask and a lot of other researchers want to ask is, how much make these into a need to thrive and be our best selves?
[SPEAKER_00]: Basically, the RDA was calibrated, prevent overt deficiency, not to achieve optimal function.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a meaningful difference between those two targets and the research that has been mapped.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the research literature has been making this argument for decades.
[SPEAKER_00]: Years and years and years, people are pissed off about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I get it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Andrea Ross and Hoff, Connie Weaver, and Robert Roode, published a paper in nutrition reviews in 2012, and they called this out directly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Self-optimal magnesium status is likely contributing substantially to the burden of chronic disease in Western populations, and the RDA is not designed to address that.
[SPEAKER_00]: In 2018, we've been heart papers said that Paleolithic intake was around 600 milligrams per day, roughly double the current average that modern adults are given.
[SPEAKER_00]: And most people had need an additional 300 milligrams daily above current intake to reach optimal status.
[SPEAKER_00]: In integrative and functional medicine practice, the usual target is 400 to 600 milligrams total per day from food and supplement combined with the upper yet and use for specific clinical applications under supervision that was above the supplemental UL, which is the upper limit, which is why the emphasis on combining food sources with well absorbed supplement forms, rather than just taking a single high dose tablet is advised.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to follow up from that in 2015, the US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee designated that magnesium is a nutrient of public concern.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's talk magnesium and dietary sources because we always want to focus on how we can get it from diet before we supplement.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number one is pumpkin seeds.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in 28 grams of pumpkin seeds, you can get 156 milligrams of magnesium, chia seeds in 28 grams.
[SPEAKER_00]: You get 11 milligrams.
[SPEAKER_00]: almonds, dry roasted, which is delicious, I will say, you can get 80 milligrams of magnesium in 28 grams.
[SPEAKER_00]: In boiled spinach, so cooked greens, you get a lot of magnesium, so half a cup of cooked greens, you get 78 milligrams of magnesium,
[SPEAKER_00]: 28 grams of cashews, you get 74 milligrams of magnesium, duct chocolate, the funnest way to get your magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: So 70 to 80% is where you want to be going.
[SPEAKER_00]: Black beans and edamame.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in half a cup of these beans, you get 60 milligrams of magnesium, and peanut butter, two tablespoons, so fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can get 49 milligrams of magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: Going on from that brown rice cooked in half a cup, you can get 42 milligrams of magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can start fitting these into your day.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love making protein balls with pumpkin seeds.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love putting brown rice on the side of my soups.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like adding in nuts into my diet.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're just really easy, yummy ways to get magnesium into the diet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Alongside this, and also worth noting, Swiss chard, quinoa, tofu, salmon, avocado, banana,
[SPEAKER_00]: cooked, dark, leafy greens and beans are consistently the highest food sources and easiest ways and cheapest ways to get it into.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're probably noticing that I'm saying cooked and the reason why I'm saying cooked beans, cooked greens, I mean who's eating raw beans anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: These foods contain oxalates and oxalates block the absorption of magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's really important to cook your greens, cook your beans, a raw vegan diet is going to be really low in magnesium for this reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: So just make sure you're cooking this foods.
[SPEAKER_00]: so you can remove the oxalate and you can access that amazing magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you might be thinking, okay, but I don't really eat that much magnesium rich food.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if you eat an objectively good diet and you supplement, you're getting more than enough magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you eat a cup of spinach, if you have a handful of pumpkin seeds, a square of duct chocolate and cup of
[SPEAKER_00]: And a half a cup of black beans in a day, you're getting around 380 milligrams of magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're supplementing on top of that with a magnesium glycine, which we're talking about later in this podcast, you're going to be hitting every all of your needs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like your intracellium magnesium is going to be super, super happy.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's talk about what helps and hinders magnesium absorption dietary rise.
[SPEAKER_00]: Helpers vitamin D really loves to help magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: It enhances intestinal magnesium absorption, but remember the reverse is also true.
[SPEAKER_00]: magnesium is needed to activate vitamin D, so we need them together.
[SPEAKER_00]: B6 is also a really helpful for magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: It helps magnesium cross into the cells and research shows that severely stressed out individuals benefit from magnesium plus B6 together with reductions in stress scores close to 45%.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're a stressed out fatty, getting a B6 and getting a magnesium supplement is going to be more boner for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: The lenium also really helps a lot, specifically for thyroid synergy, and alongside that, if you're trying to conceive selenium and magnesium having found to improve fertility outcomes pretty significantly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Boron, so no one talks about Boron, but Boron is also really helpful for magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: It increases magnesium absorption and helps to retain it inside of the cells.
[SPEAKER_00]: If your magnesium levels are not rising despite adequate supplementation, low-biron is worth
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so what blocks magnesium?
[SPEAKER_00]: So number one is fight hates.
[SPEAKER_00]: So unprepared grains, legumes, and nuts, if you soak and sprout and ferment them, this reduces them significantly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oxalate, so we spoke about these.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are in greens, they're in beans, cooking them, gets rid of them, excess calcium supplementation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So ideal calcium to magnesium ratio is closest to 1 to 1 or 2 to 1.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many Western diets run 4 to 1 or 5 to 1.
[SPEAKER_00]: So
[SPEAKER_00]: 5-1 and 4-1 being 5 calcium-1 magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's a ratio we don't want to be going for.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really the aim is 1-1 or 2-1, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Alcohol is awful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please don't drink alcohol.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a whole podcast on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: It basically increases magnesium being taken out of the cells and put into your urine and peeing it out, which is why people with alcoholism have really, really low magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: caffeine?
[SPEAKER_00]: in excess so if you're having like two or three coffees a day question mark you know that's going to increase magnesium output it's a diuretic so it's going to get rid of all of these different minerals sorry to add into the rhetoric of like caffeine being a mineral each are you know if you have a martyr a day or a coffee a day you're not going to be in any issues but if you drink like multiple diacose or multiple monsters and multiple black coffees a day your magnesium's not going to be in good shape.
[SPEAKER_00]: Flora, as we spoke before, binds to magnesium and makes it biologically unavailable, also alongside is an interestingly enough excess B vitamin supplementation, because this operates energy production and increases magnesium demand, and also gut disorders.
[SPEAKER_00]: So IBD, Celiac, bariatric surgery, they all reduce absorption directly in the gut.
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, let's talk about supplementation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know everyone's probably skipped to this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shame on you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know it's really interesting to talk about supplementation, but I think you need to listen to the other parts of the podcast first, so you can actually understand how to supplement safely.
[SPEAKER_00]: But let's talk about the different types of magnesium supplementation, because there's just not magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: magnesium is an umbrella and all these different magnesium suit underneath it and they're all great for different parts of the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other thing I really need to touch on is the magnesium supplementation market is a fucking mess.
[SPEAKER_00]: The amount of people I see online saying take this magnesium supplement for sleep and it's magnesium citrate.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a friend who's an ultra marathon runner and I looked at his electrolyte packs the other day and I had magnesium citrate in as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: My disease citrate that just makes you shit.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't do anything else.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not good for cramping.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would you put that in that supplement?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's so mean.
[SPEAKER_00]: My disease citrate also doesn't help you sleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm not hating your magnesium citrate.
[SPEAKER_00]: magnesium, we need to be really particular on what magnesium you use and why you're using it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I need to make a few distinctions.
[SPEAKER_00]: One, a supplement's elemental magnesium percentage is really important.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how much of the molecule is actually magnesium?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not the same as bio-availability.
[SPEAKER_00]: Magnesium oxide is 60% elemental magnesium by weight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Magnesium glycine is about 14% but oxide is only absorbed around 4% and glycine absorbs at 40% or more.
[SPEAKER_00]: 100 milligrams of magnesium oxide delivers about 20 milligrams of useful magnesium and 200 milligrams of magnesium glycinate to live as around 80 milligrams of magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: So high elemental content is not the goal, absorption is the goal.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here is every form of magnesium supplementation you will encounter and these are my professional opinions on each of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, magnesium glycine.
[SPEAKER_00]: A fucking love her.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love magnesium glycine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so magnesium bound to two molecules of glycine, which inhibits self-access and inhibitory transmitter.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really well absorbed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really gentle in your gut.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's calming.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the gold standard for sleep, anxiety, pms, hormonal support, and general replacement in women.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're choosing one form and only one,
[SPEAKER_00]: this is it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your typical dose is going to be 200 to 400 milligrams of elemental magnesium per day, usually taken in the evening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Next is magnesium L38.
[SPEAKER_00]: This form is actually developed in MIT, which is really interesting, and it was made specifically to cross the blood brain barrier more effectively than other salts.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the foundational study published in year on in 2010, it showed increased hippocampal synaptic density.
[SPEAKER_00]: It regulates NMDA receptor expression,
[SPEAKER_00]: It improved memory in animal models as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Human data is still limited and many trials are still industry connected, so treat the marketing claims with appropriate skepticism.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the mechanism is real.
[SPEAKER_00]: This form does appear to raise brain magnesium levels in a way that others do not.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really great for cognitive function, brain fog, paramount of causal memory, compliance anxiety and cognitive component disorders.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to also know that the elemental magnesium content dose is lower here around 144 milligrams.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's usually used alongside a glycinate rather than instead of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're dealing with a few of the problems we've just spoken about, it else reenate is a little bit more expensive, I would say, and it's usually also used with the magnesium glycinate.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would argue, and other people also argue, that just go for a glycinate, but if you've tried out else reenate and you're like, this really works for me, just stick with it, it should be fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Next is magnesium citrate.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have a magnesium supplement, go and find it and look on the back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because 95% of that magnesium supplement that you have is going to be magnesium citrate and the reason being is because it is the cheapest one that the market has access to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look, it has okay bioavailability.
[SPEAKER_00]: It works okay in the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just not the best magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just the cheapest, which is why it's so popular.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things it does really, really well is pull water into your stool.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you have constipation, magnesium citrate is the girl, but if you are running a marathon, for example, and you want to have a magnesium as an electrolyte, a magnesium citrate is literally the worst you can have ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, don't take it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're running, don't take it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have loose stools, don't take it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have migraines, or if you have PMS, it's just not going to be very effective.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just go if you're three and eights, and you'll
[SPEAKER_00]: magnesium malate.
[SPEAKER_00]: So magnesium with malic acid, it's a really important crebs cycle intermediate.
[SPEAKER_00]: It supports mitochondrial energy production.
[SPEAKER_00]: The classic use case is fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, where the combination of magnesium and malic acid has to historically shown benefit in some trials.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's also a really good choice for daytime energy support.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many women find glycinate is better at night and melee is better taken earlier in the day.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you are wired and tired at night and you are really fatigued during the day, you could try doing a melee in the morning and a glycinate at night.
[SPEAKER_00]: It could work really really beautifully.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just have to make sure you're not taking too much magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: Magnesium Tori is next, so it's bound to an amino acid called Torin.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really important for cardiovascular and insulin-sensitizing properties.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's best positioned for cardiovascular health and blood sugar regulation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the thing about this though is human RCT evidence is really limited, but the rationale is sound and the combination of the two nutrients with overlapping cardiovascular mechanisms is logical.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you are a woman with PCOS and you've been diagnosed later in your life and you're a little bit worried about your cardiovascular system,
[SPEAKER_00]: for you magnesium oxide.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is also really popular because it's really really really cheap and supplement companies love using this and sit straight to buff up their magnesium formulations because they're just really cheap and really affordable.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has a really high elemental magnesium content approximately 4% absorbed.
[SPEAKER_00]: So really high magnesium elemental content but it's not really well absorbed.
[SPEAKER_00]: So again, it's kind of a shit magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just going to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really useful as a laxative though, so if you are a girl who's a bit constipated, this could be really effective, it's not useful at all for replenishing magnesium status and if you've been taking magnesium oxide for a while and you're not feeling any different, this is probably why next.
[SPEAKER_00]: is magnesium chloride.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the magnesium you find in your bath salts and I have to break a bubble.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've just got a puppet really quickly here because in 2017 I review in nutrients specifically examined the evidence for trans-dermal magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: So trans-dermal is magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: We put an asking do we actually absorb it?
[SPEAKER_00]: It actually concluded that there is insufficient evidence to support meaningful systemic uptake.
[SPEAKER_00]: So magnesium sprays magnesium bath salts are there's
[SPEAKER_00]: It might be relaxing.
[SPEAKER_00]: There might be some benefit that we're unaware of at this point in time, but this is not useful for increasing magnesium in the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're a low magnesium person and you're like, I'm going to take a magnesium salt bath every single night this save your money.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no proof that that works at all magnesium sulfate is next.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is also known as your Epsom salts.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's used medically and intravenously for eclampsia, severe asthma or exacerbations, and if we have some type of heart arrhythmia as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's genuinely powerful in that context, but our use has similar limitations to magnesium chloride topically.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's pleasant, it's traditional, but it doesn't actually deliver any benefits.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we don't actually absorb this nutrient through the skin.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we have to keep in mind that this type of magnesium is a really, really, really strong laxative, which is why we don't find it really easily in cell phones stores because this is something that we usually use for medical use, and topically for relaxing effects, but you don't really want to take it early, I wouldn't recommend it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anisium orotate, so this is magnesium with orotic acid, there is a notable but small clinical trial with 79 severe heart failure patients, showing significantly better one-year survival on magnesium orotate versus placebo.
[SPEAKER_00]: One industry-connected unreplicated trial is not enough to hang a strong conclusion on.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's the basis for niche use in advanced cardiovascular support and athletic performance.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we have to keep in mind that we don't have that much research on its applications for nutritional strategies outside of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is an industry funded paper.
[SPEAKER_00]: So quite skeptical around magnesium oritate.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are better magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you don't really have to worry about that one either.
[SPEAKER_00]: magnesium by carbonate, this is a liquid form, it's really, really highly bio-available, and because it's a liquid, it can be titrated in very small amounts, starting with Harvard T-Spoon and increasing gradually.
[SPEAKER_00]: This makes it particularly useful for sensitive individuals who react to standard supplements, and for people who struggle to tolerate other forms of magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're one note, though, is because it's a very carbonate,
[SPEAKER_00]: It temporarily neutralizes stomach acid, so you have to keep it away from meals.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're taking it, just make sure you're having it away from when you're consuming liquids or food.
[SPEAKER_00]: And finally, we have magnesium lactate.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is really gentle on digestion.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's used in some slow-release formulations.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's good options for people with sensitive digestive systems who don't do well with other forms.
[SPEAKER_00]: So those are a lot of different types of magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just from how you heard me speak about it, the best one you could probably go for is magnesium glycine.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's affordable, it's really viable.
[SPEAKER_00]: It works for different systems in your body, and it's been shown to replenish low intracellular magnesium stores as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the gold standard magnesium you should be going for.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you wanted to know how you can take magnesium throughout the day, if you were interested in more than glycinate, so using glycinate as the foundation for most women I think is really effective, you can take that in the evening for sleep, I personally take my glycinate throughout the day and it doesn't affect my cognitive function at all, I've actually found taking it in the day helps me and better than just taking it at night, but everyone is so different so you just play around with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can add 3 in 8, so magnesium 3 in 8 for cognitive function, brain fog, if you're perimenopausal, and if you've noticed a bit of cognitive decline and brain fog, taking that in the morning can be really, really effective.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can also take malate in the morning for daytime energy, and if you are a bit constipated, so citrate is really great to keep in your suitcase when you're on a trip.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you are one of those girlys who just can't go in new places, citrate can be really effective.
[SPEAKER_00]: Alongside this, there's also a research on splitting your magnesium dose throughout the day, so instead of finding a magnesium with 600 milligrams, you take once a day, because our gut can only take a certain amount of magnesium at a time.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really important to dose it throughout the day.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you can, it's actually more effective to take lower doses multiple times.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you take one in the morning and one at night, but also keeping in mind, if you have a balanced
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's a little tidbit to understand as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just taking one big dose because you could be taking 600 milligrams but you're peeing out 400 milligrams worth of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're peeing out 60% of what you've bought.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if your supplements worth like 60 bucks, you're peeing out 40 dollars a month basically.
[SPEAKER_00]: So keeping that in mind, if you can have your supplements and take it in the morning and at night, that's gonna make it more absorbable in your gut.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's move on to magnesium's application for specific hormonal disorders.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's start with pmdde, it is pmdde awareness month.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's do this first.
[SPEAKER_00]: For pms and pmdde, magnesium is actually the best evidenced women's health application of magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now,
[SPEAKER_00]: 1991 a double-blind randomized control trial in the journal of obstetrics and gynecology, it gave women 360 milligrams of magnesium daily from day 15 of the cycle through to menstruation, so in the ludial phase.
[SPEAKER_00]: It significantly reduced total pre-menstrual distress scores with the strongest effect on mood-related symptoms.
[SPEAKER_00]: Subsequent trials have also combined magnesium with these six or fluid retention symptoms and found magnesium plus B6 was more effective than magnesium alone for those specific complaints.
[SPEAKER_00]: So breast tenderness and bloating B6 magnesium really effective.
[SPEAKER_00]: Formants from migraine, the American Academy of Neurology rates magnesium as a level B evidence for prevention, so probably effective at a dose of 600 milligrams per day.
[SPEAKER_00]: That dose is above supplemental yappel limits and it's typically taken under clinical
[SPEAKER_00]: You want to be looking at looking over the dietitian or nutritionist who knows about mineral balance in the body and how to prevent vitamin D and calcium in balances in relation to magnesium if you're taking a lot of magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also alongside this, an element of PMDD and PMS is also elevated cortisol in relation to progesterone and
[SPEAKER_00]: If we have magnesium, more magnesium in the Ludio phase at least, you will notice that you are less stressed, you will sleep better and you will have less constipation, all things that have a lot to do with that cortisol and progesterone balance because we're supporting the production of progesterone and we're supporting the metabolic benefits of progesterone upregulating the overall metabolic system in the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about endometriosis and dysmenorrhea, which is also just painful periods, so endometriosis, lesions produce excess prostate glandas, specifically your PGE2 and PGEF2, alpha, which drive pain, inflammation and uterine hypercontractility, so magnesium acts as a smooth muscle relaxant through its calcium antagonism, mechanism and appears to suppress prostate gland and production directly.
[SPEAKER_00]: In 1989, a German double-blind trial showed that six months of magnesium supplementation reduced a certain prosthetic landin, so PGF2 alpha in menstrual blood.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the group that took magnesium, they saw a decrease in this prosthetic landin by 90% in comparison to the other group that only saw a reduction of 45%.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that basically means that the group that took the magnesium had easier periods, so weren't as painful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something to really say here though is that it took six months to see a reduction in pain for this group of women with endometriosis.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can't just take magnesium on the day of the period.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to take it every single day to see effect.
[SPEAKER_00]: Next let's talk about adenomyosis.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a podcast all about adenomyosis.
[SPEAKER_00]: I released last time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So direct clinical trials in adenomyosis specifically are pretty limited.
[SPEAKER_00]: The condition has been dramatically under research relative to its prevalence as I covered in a dedicated episode of just speak about.
[SPEAKER_00]: The mechanistic case for magnesium here is strong, though.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the defining feature of Adonomy is from a symptomatic perspective is myometriol hypercontractability, which is basically your myometrium is really interested in staying super contracted all the time, which is really painful.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's your uterus being constantly contracted in a state of non relaxation and so this drives up cramping heavy bleeding and the pressure of pain.
[SPEAKER_00]: pain.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we can apply different research to identify your sis here in a way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we can theorize and other people are theorizing like this as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're at 32 weeks and you're waiting for 40 weeks to give birth and you're noticing you're getting some back and hicks.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're starting to get contractions.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's really early.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a quite that's a preterm birth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we want to avoid that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that's two months early.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a no brainer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doctors will do and what
[SPEAKER_00]: magnesium sulfate.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this decreases contractions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this kind of proves that point that if the uterus in women with a denomyosis is really contracting all of the time, the idea that we could increase intercellular magnesium, it could decrease the prevalence of pain that women with a denomyosis are experiencing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you have a denomyosis, it could be a really good idea to take a glycine
[SPEAKER_00]: Alongside omega-3 fatty acids and anti-inflammatory dietary chains, changes, and the evidence base is mechanistic and clinical observation, rather than any large randomic control trials at this point.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have that many research papers on a denomiosis, which is just terrible, because it's such a really, it's such a painful condition.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's something you could do that's based on other research we have on the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: PCOS, so we've spoken a little bit about PCOS, so PCOS sits at the intersection of insulin resistance, hyper-androgenism, and chronic low-grade inflammation, and consistently low magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is something that we see classically with a women with PCOS.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we look at intracellular magnesium, it is bare bones.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's down the bottom.
[SPEAKER_00]: One study found that women with PCOS had nearly 19 times the odds of magnesium deficiency compared to women without PCOS.
[SPEAKER_00]: A large Chinese cross-scent sectional study found that women in the highest serum magnesium quartile had significantly lower fasting glucose, insulin resistance, and testosterone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are things that we generally see highly associated with PCOS, so we could possibly theorize that increasing magnesium, interestingly, we'll get rid of those problems.
[SPEAKER_00]: intervention data are more mixed, so magnesium alone in most trial does not produce statistically significant effects on PCOS markers in isolation.
[SPEAKER_00]: The honest summary is this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Magnesium is probably not sufficient as a standalone intervention for PCOS, but is a part of a metabolic foundation that needs to take place for other interventions,
[SPEAKER_00]: in nostitol, vitamin D and dietary changes to work well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can't just go on going to keep eating a really modern diet rich in refined carbohydrates and low in protein.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to exercise, but I'm going to take this magnesium supplement.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good luck, girl.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good luck with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to work.
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to make sure you're taking dietary change.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're also changing exercise and you're also working in things like supplements as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perry menopause and menopause.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is probably one of the most exciting applications for magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this four domains worth separating for this population group.
[SPEAKER_00]: So number one is bone.
[SPEAKER_00]: I spoke about this previously, but let's go into a little bit more here.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you're Perry menopause or and post menopause or so you're menopause or you have no estrogen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Basically you're very, very low estrogen unless you are doing HRT.
[SPEAKER_00]: and falling estrogen reduces the efficiency of magnesium uptake, and estrogen enhances how aggressively magnesium is taken into bone and soft tissue, and when it declines that protective mechanism is reduced.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is one of the most under-appreciated reasons why postmenopausal bone loss accelerates is because low estrogen equals low magnesium uptake into the bone.
[SPEAKER_00]: This recommendation to simply take calcium and vitamin D without addressing my museum is incomplete at best as a huge burn of contention along my colleagues magnesium vitamin D K2 is the evidence based trial.
[SPEAKER_00]: So instead of just taking calcium and vitamin D you should probably just focus on calcium from the diet and supplementing in K2 vitamin D and magnesium like that is the evidence based triad that actually works for enhancing bone.
[SPEAKER_00]: density for women post menopauseally.
[SPEAKER_00]: In parry menopause and menopause sleep is an issue.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in 2020, our CTI mentioned earlier is the strongest single piece of clinical evidence for magnesium and sleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: So parry menopause or insomnia has multiple drivers.
[SPEAKER_00]: So number one, falling progesterone.
[SPEAKER_00]: We also see low magnesium and GABA access being one of the most directly addressable inputs here as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if we increase magnesium status, we increase GABA and we can also increase melatonin production as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number three is cardiovascular risk cardiovascular disease.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was one of the leading causes of death.
[SPEAKER_00]: in women.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like young women, old women, postmenopausal premenopausal.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just something that Dr. Amibat and I talked about on a previous episode if you're interested and magnesium could be the key in the lock that decreases this risk.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have lots of evidence from meta analysis that strongly suggest that magnesium supplementation can decrease the risk of cardiovascular events significantly.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you come from a line of people who had cardiovascular events, it doesn't matter whether it's your father or your mother's side, if it's in your genetic makeup, it could be something that you need to look out for, eat, magnesium rich foods, or consider a supplement.
[SPEAKER_00]: And number four is blood sugar.
[SPEAKER_00]: So insulin sensitivity decreases as estrogen falls, many perimenopausal women experience weight changes, dehydrated intolerances, and a sudden inability to manage blood sugar.
[SPEAKER_00]: the way they use to.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the magnesium insulin connection is really relevant to this transition.
[SPEAKER_00]: I tissue calcium combined with low magnesium, the pattern we always see in hair mineral testing can also relate to blood sugar ratios as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we have low magnesium, we have slow glucose entry into cells, which means glucose stays in the blood, which means insulin keeps going up, which means that glucose keeps going up, which means you tend to gain a little bit more
[SPEAKER_00]: horrible negative feedback loop you want to get out of as quickly as you can.
[SPEAKER_00]: We also see slower thyroid hormone utilization and this can create a metabolic environment that can really be quite dangerous and one of the things that can shift that is magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: And finally let's talk about fertility if you're TTC.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a small study here that I found that I think is really, really interesting with the one caveat that it needs replication, which well, previously infertile women all with either unexplained infertility or recurrent miscarriage was supplemented with magnesium and salineum together, and all 12 conceived within eight months of normalizing that are these C magnesium levels and delivered healthy babies.
[SPEAKER_00]: that's pretty cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's pretty hopeful, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_00]: 12 women is not clinical, though.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this study needs to be replicated.
[SPEAKER_00]: So basically, they need to find a thousand women and replicate this study and see if it does increase the rates of fertility in these groups of women.
[SPEAKER_00]: The broader
[SPEAKER_00]: For the case of infertility in relation to magnesium being available intrusually is indirect, but we have to be really coherent about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: You cannot ovulate consistently, produce adequate progesterone or sustain an early pregnancy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Under conditions of an adequate energy production and disregulated stress hormones, which are all underpinned by what mineral, what its magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully you enjoyed this episode and this deep, gorgeous dive on magnesium.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me know what you thought.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me know if you're supplementing with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me know what foods you think are high in magnesium that you prioritize in your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day to listen to this episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you loved it, please remember to like, subscribe and send to a loved one.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to learn more from our quorum and please check out the website at arquorum.com.au where you can find a pothora of offerings like charts, master classes, courses and organic clothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can also head over to patreon.com slash archwomen or substack.com slash archwomen to join the community.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope you have a really beautiful morning, afternoon or evening wherever you are in the world and I will see you on the next episode.