Dec2014_GET TO KNOW YOUR HEALTH: Magnesium

I heard some interesting news on the grapevine the other day.  Apparently oxygen and magnesium have hooked up!  I was like, OMg!  Now that I’ve got that one out of my system, this months article is going to be about the importance of…….oxygen.  No just kidding, everyone knows the importance of that one, but most people don’t know much about the importance of the other one, magnesium. 

From a fairly scientific standpoint, magnesium is a chemical element.  It is the 4th most common element found on earth (behind iron, oxygen and silicon), and the 9th most common element in the known universe.  From the human biology side, magnesium is the 11th most abundant element by mass in the human body and it is essential to all living cells.  Its role is played out primarily in helping manipulate important biological compounds such as ATP (the engine), RNA (the race car) and DNA (the track, stadium, people and the rest of existence).  This means that magnesium is needed by over 300 different enzymes for them to function.  

Us humans, luckily, are pretty well evolved at protecting and storing those important things (excluding oxygen) that we don’t do so well without.  As magnesium is an electrolyte, when our level of magnesium drops or shoots sky high, our kidneys will try their best to level it out by excreting excess or filtering insufficient amounts of it.  However, this has a limit in both amount and time.  An American data analysis found that the majority of participants intakes of magnesium were below recommended levels (Adult males over 71 years old and adolescent females had the lowest intakes) and it is this chronically insufficient intake of magnesium that seems to give our bodies trouble.

Magnesium is available in many common foods including in order; Almonds (1 ounce), Spinach (½ cup), Peanuts (¼ cup), Soymilk (1 cup), Black beans(½ cup), Bread (2 slices) and Avocado (1 cup).  The problem starts when even if all of those just mentioned were eaten in a day, you would still not have reached your RDI for magnesium.  The issue is that magnesium is generally poorly absorbed by normal processes from the gut.  This leads to the well known gastrointestinal side effects because also as an electrolyte, it will pull water towards it no matter where it is.  These two characteristics give rise to the secondary medical use for magnesium (Mg-sulphate = epsom salts) which is to send (often speedily) a person suffering constipation in the direction of the nearest bathroom.  To avoid these side effects in everyone else taking magnesium as a supplement, the type of magnesium is very important.  The higher the bioavailability of the magnesium complex, the less likely a person will be needing to frequent the bathroom over the next few hours.  The most ideal magnesium complex is one that has be chelated (duct taped) to an amino acid, as once the magnesium hits the stomach it doesn’t have to passively diffuse across the gut (like playing marco-polo, without someone answering in a wet n wild sized pool).  The amino acid however, gets chauffeured through the stomach lining, all the while holding very tightly (duct tape) onto the hand of magnesium.  Magnesium Glycinate is an example of this as the magnesium has be chelated to the amino acid Glycine.

Written by Andrew Harvey, (Your local pharmacist) 

Dayboro Pharmacy  Phone 3425 1435

Mon – Fri 8.30am – 5.30pm   Sat 8.30am – 12.30pm