The Magnesium Story Every Single Person in America Needs to
Read
Heart attacks are the nation's single leading cause of death, all
this despite all the advances modem medicine has made in the last
two decades.
Osteoporosis and diabetes are rampant illnesses. Millions of
Americans are battling anxiety and depression. At least ten
percent cope with allergies, either to foods or to substances in
the environment.
A Growing Volume of Evidence Clearly Shows Magnesium to be
the Nutritional Connecting Link to All These Crippling
Ailments.
Magnesium is critical to heart health; it is essential for the
heart muscle to function and orchestrates the complex process
which keeps the heart beating with smooth regularity. Magnesium
allows arterial muscular tissue to relax. A severe lack of
magnesium can precipitate muscular spasm, a catastrophic event
when a coronary artery supplying the heart muscle with oxygen
clamps shut without warning.
It would probably surprise most of us to learn that 25% of all
heart attacks occur in people with clean coronary arteries -
arteries free of the plaque buildup generally associated with our
number one killer. Even more important are numerous studies
showing that people who die suddenly from ischemic heart disease,
and oxygen-starved heart, often have tissues severely deficient
in magnesium.
Our body cannot assimilate calcium without sufficient
magnesium which is why so many people suffer from "hardening of
the arteries" and arthritis - it is all a magnesium deficiency
situation and so easily corrected using Mother Nature and not
some harmful drug.
The millions of women suffering osteoporosis are not being
told the facts about minerals and bone health. Ignoring magnesium
while overemphasizing calcium not only fails to address the total
bone nutrition picture, it may contribute to the problem of bone
deterioration! Magnesium is needed for calcium to be incorporated
into bone tissue - when magnesium is lacking, an excess of
calcium builds up in the soft tissue causing additional unwanted
problems.
If this occurs in the muscular tissue surrounding a coronary
artery, which feeds the heart with blood and oxygen, the result
can be sudden death. For this reason, people with signs of
coronary artery disease are frequently placed on "calcium channel
blockers" - drugs which slow the influx of calcium into the
cells. But the cells need calcium! In the right amount and at the
right time!
Cells cannot contract properly without it. Calcium channel
blockers leave the arteries in a more or less dilated state. In
fact, common side effects of these drugs include symptoms such as
dizziness which are due to this unnatural state.
The solution is to maintain the normal flux of calcium in and
out of the cells, and magnesium is the key. Magnesium is
described as "Nature's calcium blocker," in an editorial written
by leading heart disease researchers (American Heart
Journal.)
How many lives could be spared if this message were to get the
attention it deserves? Are we well nourished in magnesium with
our current diet? Unfortunately, the answer is - not well
enough!
The majority of our population is not getting calcium and
magnesium in the right ratio, meaning too much calcium is being
consumed relative to magnesium. When it's noted that many
Americans are on calorie-restrictive diets, the magnesium message
becomes still more urgent.
What is more, the RDA on magnesium needs to be re-evaluated.
First, the RDA assumes that 50 percent of all magnesium consumed
is absorbed. According to current research this is not so.
Studies with subjects on controlled diets indicated that as
little as 24 percent of magnesium eaten is absorbed. In
self-selected diets where people are free to choose their own
foods, as little as 16 percent of all magnesium is absorbed.
Secondly, the RDA also assumes that there is no excessive
urinary loss of magnesium. Again, for many people this may not be
true.
Diabetes (also on the rise), coffee consumption, commonly used
medications, excessive psychological stress, sweat loss during
exercise and working in the heat, breast-feeding and an
overactive thyroid, all deplete magnesium from the body.
And we wonder why heart disease is the number one killer in
this country - and rising? Most people don't realize that our
modern diet has changed drastically over the last 50 years, and
not for the better. We eat less magnesium-rich foods than we did
in the past when the rate of heart disease was much lower. What's
so ironic about this is that we are now considered to be more of
a "health conscious" society than ever before.
More and more authorities are making the case for more
magnesium in the diet, particularly magnesium that is easily and
completely assimilated by the body such as ionized magnesium.
This page was first uploaded to The Magnesium Web Site on
November 22, 2002
http://www.mgwater.com/
Healthy Water
Association--USA