Feeling tired, run-down, wiped-out, knackered? Then maybe you're low in magnesium

Feeling tired, run-down, wiped out, knackered? Maybe you’re low in magnesium

Magnesium is an unsung hero. But why, when it is so unbelievably important for so many functions in the human body?

One of the cynical answers to this question is this: magnesium has no lobby. Unlike vitamin C, it has no citrus growers to tout its virtues; unlike calcium, it doesn’t have herds of cattle farmers backing it. What’s more, magnesium is just an “ordinary” ubiquitous mineral and therefore can’t be patented, so there are no reps from pharma giants foisting glossy brochures on doctors informing them of the wonders of magnesium.

One of the reasons why being low in magnesium affects your energy levels is because magnesium is needed to manufacture adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is the fuel your body uses on a cellular level. It’s quite simple, really: if you haven’t got enough magnesium in your system, you won’t have much ATP available and you’ll be low in energy.

Magnesium is also important for thyroid function, so if you have a magnesium deficiency, then your thyroid will be underpowered, which, in turn, will affect your energy levels.

How do I find out if I’m low in magnesium?

Here I’ll stick my neck out and tell you NOT to run to your doctor to get a magnesium test done. Why? It is all the rage today for doctors to run blood tests for every conceivable ailment, but these blood tests are far from infallible and often give misleading results. Testing magnesium levels by using blood tests is a case in point. If the information I have read (see references below) is correct, then only 1% of your body’s magnesium is found in your blood; most of it is in your bones and muscles. Therefore, trying to ascertain if you have ‘enough’ magnesium in your system by measuring what is in the blood is a bit like trying to extrapolate the size of the population of the USA by using Rhode Island as an example.

Dr Carolyn Dean, author of “The Magnesium Miracle”, recommends the following strategy: start taking magnesium and upping the magnesium content of your water and food and see what happens! If you feel better, if you notice that certain problems you had have gone, then you can conclude that it could well have been the lack of magnesium that was causing them! For nearly everybody, no harm can be done by taking magnesium supplements or by increasing the amount of magnesium in your food and drinks (the exception to this ‘rule’ is people with severe kidney disease whose bodies can’t get rid of excess magnesium): your body will simply excrete what isn’t needed.

What kind of magnesium should I take?

Here in Germany you can get magnesium supplements at any drugstore, but, caveat emptor!!! As far as I have been able to tell, the magnesium supplements at places like the “DM-Markt” are all, without exception, made of magnesium oxide. This is extremely cheap and therefore popular with the drugstore chains, who, presumably, make a nice profit on these products. The standard dosage is 400mg and the label will tell you, I believe, that this covers your daily requirements. Sadly, this is rubbish. This claim is based on the premise that you will absorb every single milligramme of the product and that your body will be able to use it all. This is not the case, particularly with magnesium oxide. One statistic is often quoted in articles on magnesium you might find on the internet: only 4% of magnesium oxide is absorbed. (By the way, this claim is based  –  as far as I can tell – on one single study which I found on pubmed). This statistic may seem very alarming, but, once again, this is a rather absurd assertion. With magnesium, the body takes what it needs and, particularly at a cellular level, tries to keep this level stable. If somebody who is very low in magnesium uses magnesium oxide, they may well absorb more than 4%, however, it seems that many people do not absorb it well. In fact, in low-carb circles, its favourite use is as a laxative. If you are constipated, then by all means buy some cheap magnesium oxide tablets, but if you want to actually increase your body’s magnesium levels, there are better products out there.

At pharmacies here in Germany, you will find slightly superior products, most of which are made of magnesium citrate. These are somewhat better absorbed, but also tend to work well as laxatives, too.

My experience was that magnesium oxide tablets had no effect on eliminating my obvious signs of magnesium deficiency.

Once I had finally realized this, I bit the bullet and started trying out more expensive kinds of magnesium. First of all, I tried magnesium malate and magnesium taurate (very expensive and the tablets were so massive that, even with a tall glass of water I’d find myself barely able to swallow them). Neither of these worked very well, either, sadly.

I then tried chelated magnesium glycinate. (I even still have records of that first purchase, made back in 2010). This has been one of the best kinds of magnesium for me. The brand I use is made according to the “Albion” method of chelation, which does seem to make a difference. I once bought a different kind of magnesium glycinate that didn’t have the “Albion” stamp on it from the UK and I had the feeling it didn’t work half so well as the brand I had tried before.

This is the one I have used over the last few years:

http://www.iherb.com/Doctor-s-Best-High-Absorption-Magnesium-100-Chelated-240-Tablets/16567

I have just bought my first batch made by a different company, which contains a somewhat higher dosage:

http://www.iherb.com/Bluebonnet-Nutrition-Chelated-Magnesium-90-Vcaps/14198

(If you decide to use iherb.com for your supplements, please use this code: AMA 168 and you'll get a $5 discount on your first order. It is my way of trying to get a small financial bonus from passing on my experiences.)

These seem to work well, too. I have noticed that I had a stiff neck around 10am over the last couple of days. I have then taken one of these capsules and the stiffness has then gone in an hour or so.

The next instalment on magnesium will be coming soon!

Gluten intolerance or coeliac disease? How do I find out if I’ve got it?

So, what do you do if you think you’ve got coeliac disease?

Well, there are quite a few options. I’ll tell you what the standard options are and then tell you what I did. I’m not saying that everyone should do it “my way”; I just want to show you that there isn’t only “one” way to deal with this problem, although some doctors and coeliac groups seem to put it that way.

What symptoms do you have?

Anyone who has internet access can find out in an instant what the “classic” symptoms are. These include diarrhoea and bloating, as well as smelly gas and stools (this is not a subject for the squeamish!!!). However, there is a large number of people who don’t get any of these intestinal troubles, which is what makes coeliac disease such a slippery customer. Having frequented a German forum for coeliacs for just over a year now, I have noticed that there are often posts from people who have had symptoms which indirectly pointed to coeliac disease being at the bottom of their health problems, but who had no obvious tummy problems. This is where the diagnosis of coeliac disease becomes so problematic because, if someone turns up at their doctors complaining that they’re tired and depressed, the doctor isn’t necessarily going to say, “Ah, well, you’ve obviously got coeliac disease! Stop eating bread and pasta and decontaminate your kitchen and you’ll be fine in a year or two!” However, the root cause of the tiredness and depression could well be malabsorption problems. If your digestive system isn’t working properly due to a long-undiagnosed case of coeliac disease, you will no longer be able to make the best use of the food you eat. You might be serving yourself the most perfect diet ever but, if your villi are flattened, then there’s hardly anybody working deep in your guts to haul the goodness out of all that great food. The result is that you may be suffering from mineral and vitamin deficiencies which can cause a myriad of symptoms. To make matters worse, the same mineral or vitamin deficiency can produce different symptoms in different individuals.

Take magnesium deficiency, for example. One person who is low in magnesium might experience it as night-time cramps, the old “charly horse” that has you hopping up and down in agony when you stretch your leg whilst sleeping; in the next person it may affect the adrenal glands, resulting in dizziness and tiredness, or even producing panic attacks and anxiety. Another effect low magnesium can have on the adrenals is that you find it difficult to cope with stress, loud noises and those daily annoyances that life brings us. You find yourself flying off the handle at the slightest thing and snap at your nearest and dearest over minor issues that never used to bother you. Yet another invdividual might have back pain, neckache and clamp their jaw at night. Magnesium deficiency also affects how we feel: if you are low in magnesium, you can’t make serotonin, the so-called “feel-good hormone”, so we end up feeling depressed because we are low in magnesium.

Other deficiencies which are common in coeliac disease are iron deficiency, copper deficiency and low B12. Again, the range of symptoms that these deficiencies can cause is extremely wide so, if you suspect that gluten intolerance may be at the root of your symptoms, don’t let your doctor fob you off with Prozac for depression or some supposedly consoling remark like, “Well, that’s normal at your age!”

If you think you have developed some physical problems you didn’t use to have, or have noticed  any other unwelcome changes, make a note of these and ask yourself if you always had these problems. They may be differences in behaviour as well as issues affecting your physical health.

How do I find out if I have coeliac disease?

As I mentioned above, deficiencies in various vitamins and minerals can have their origins in coeliac disease, due to the malabsorption it causes. A first and not-too-painful step to discovering whether this is the case with you would be to have some of these deficiencies tested. However, there are a few caveats with this one!!!

Some mineral and vitamin deficiencies can be relatively easily detected through taking a blood sample and measuring the quantity of the substance in question in your serum. However, this is not the case with all minerals and vitamins. Magnesium, which is such an important, yet seriously underrated mineral, is a case in point. Most of our magnesium is in our bones, some is in our tissues and muscles and the rest – an estimated 1% of the total – is in our blood. It is very important that intracellular levels of magnesium remain constant, however, so the human body will extract every last available iota of magnesium from wherever it can to keep this level at an even keel. Therefore a blood level may appear to be “normal”, but that doesn’t reflect what’s happening in our muscles, tissues or bones: they may well be very low in magnesium, causing pain, cramps and general malaise, but this will not show up in the blood test.

However, it can be helpful to test your iron levels and B12 levels. If these are low (more on what “low” actually means later), then this may be an indicator of an underlying problem, such as coeliac disease.  It must be remembered, though, that low iron and low B12 can be caused by many different things and that coeliac disease is only one of the possible factors.

OK, so let’s consider the following scenario: you’ve got some intestinal troubles and wonder if it’s coeliac disease. You go to the doctor’s and get your levels of B12 and iron tested and find out that they’re on the low side, or even very low. What next?

The standard procedure and some major drawbacks with it

If you’ve done some reading about testing for coeliac disease by this point, you may have come across the recommendations that you get a blood test done and have a biopsy. At the time of writing, I can’t recall all the different names for the blood tests, but basically, one of the aims  of the blood tests is to find out if you have antibodies to the various kinds of gluten proteins found in wheat, barley and rye in your bloodstream. The standard procedure is to take a blood sample, look for the antibodies and if your blood doesn’t have any, then you will be pronounced to be free of coeliac disease or gluten intolerance. My advice here would be to take this diagnosis with an extremely large pinch of salt because there are a number of problems with this conclusion.

Coeliac disease is an autoimmune disease which causes the body to destroy the villi in the intestines, which are the little finger-like protrusions that perform one of the most important steps in the digestive process. However, coeliac disease is a disease which can progress from one stage to the next. If the disease has not got to the stage whereby the antibodies produced by the body’s reaction to gluten get through the intestinal barrier and into the bloodstream, then you may well have these antibodies in your digestive system but not in your blood. Hence you may be told that you have tested “negative” for coeliac disease on the basis of the antibody test, but may still have coeliac disease. The intestinal wall is the last line of defence in our bodies: it is there to stop unwanted substances getting into our blood and is meant to be a pretty tough customer. Therefore, if the disease has not progressed very far, your stomach wall may still be relatively robust and still able to stop the anti-gluten antibodies from passing through the gut barrier.

So, a blood test alone is not infallible.

The next step which is recommended is the biopsy. This, too, is not the infallible “gold standard” which it is often made out to be. From my reading so far, what I understand is that about four or five small tissue samples are taken from the intestine (don’t ask me which bit exactly) to see if the villi are still present or already totally atrophied (i.e. not even there). The problem here is that the biopsy can miss those places where there are already signs of damage so, once again, as with the fallible blood test for antibodies, you have a situation where you are told that you are free of coeliac disease when, in fact, you’re not. Those practitioners who rely solely on such tests are forced to draw the conclusion that you do not have a problem with gluten and can therefore merrily continue to eat wheat products, which will cause more and more damage to your insides.

As an invasive procedure (I am not yet familiar with all the gory details), the biopsy is also not entirely without danger, regardless of what the doctors might tell you. Biopsies that go wrong or cause pain are not usually a source of “breaking news” on CNN, unfortunately, so it is possible to lull people into a false sense of security by telling them that it is a perfectly harmless procedure. I am sure that it is in most cases, but do you want to be one of the exceptions?

However, the biopsy does have one advantage: if it does indeed reveal that you have coeliac disease (I keep reading about “Marsh 3c” on the German internet forum for coeliacs), then you will have this officially confirmed and may then feel more confident about speaking up when eating out or confronted with some food issue that affects you staying “clean”. If you can get an official confirmation in writing from your doctor, then you may also be able to take advantage of some small priveleges, such as being able to carry extra luggage at no charge when flying abroad, or you may have less trouble asking for a gluten-free menu if you go into hospital or for a spa cure, for example.

Another way of testing

Another way to get some kind of semi-official medical confirmation of your condition is to have a stool sample tested. This method, however, is not accepted by medical orthodoxy as proof of coeliac disease and your doctor cannot – I believe – prescribe this to you. This means that any testing by this method will have to be funded out of your own pocket. In the USA the lab which does this kind of testing is called “enterolab” and is run by a Dr Kenneth Fine. Here in Germany there is a lab called “enterosan”, which also does testing of stool samples. I believe that both companies test for many other gut-related problems besides coeliac disease.

Here is a link to the German company:

http://www.enterosan.de/

The advantage with giving a stool sample is that it is not a dangerous procedure. A bit gross and icky and embarrasssing perhaps, but not dangerous!!!

So, these are the medical options available to determine whether you have coeliac disease. However, there is a simpler option which, however, does cost a certain amount of money and involves some sustained effort on your behalf.

The simplest method: go gluten-free and see what happens!

And this is what I did. And, after four or five weeks, my persistent diarrhoea went. Completely. Going to the loo became a source of pride and pleasure, rather than a desperate race against time. I could do normal poos again!!! This alone has been enough to convince me to stay gluten-free and be as diligent as possible in staying away from sources of gluten. I haven’t been perfect by any means and I am still learning to speak up and ask what something is made of when I’m at a restaurant. I have my weak moments when I eat something when I’m out that I know probably has gluten in it, but I have never allowed a piece of “normal” bread or pizza or pasta to cross my lips since I took my gluten-free vows on November 22^nd 2010.

The disadvantages of the “just-go-gluten-free method”

If you go gluten-free, then any antibodies that may be in your system will soon disappear. This means that you can no longer use a blood test or a stool test to see if you have coeliac disease and would have to undertake a “gluten challenge” to make them appear again.

So, if you want to find out if you have coeliac disease, you really need to consider all the options and take the decision carefully.

Magnesiumpräparate, die ich empfehlen kann

Ich leide seit Jahren unter Magneisummangel und habe verschiedene Präparate schon ausprobiert. Mein "Lieblings"-Präparat ist dieses Produkt:

http://www.iherb.com/Doctor-s-Best-High-Absorption-Magnesium-240-Tablets/16567?at=0

Wenn ihr dieses Produkt bei iherb.com zum ersten Mal bestellen (aber aufpassen, es kann in Deutschland zolltechnische Probleme geben!!! Lest bitte weiter, bevor ihr etwas aus den USA  bestellt), könnt ihr gerne meinen Code AMA168 angeben, sodass ihr einen Preisnachlass von $5 auf eure erste Bestellung bekommt. Ich bekomme dafür auch eine kleine Belohnung - also eine "Win-Win"-Situation für alle!!!

Aber jetzt weiter zu den Vorzügen von Magnesium-Glycinat: Von diesem Produkt bekomme ich keinen Durchfall, wobei ich auch darauf achte, dass ich nicht mehr als insgesamt 400mg pro Tag davon nehme, welches 4 Tabletten entspricht.

Ich habe dieses Produkt auch schon mehrmals in einem englischsprachigen Diätforum empfohlen und sehr positive Rückmeldungen bekommen. Einmal schrieb mir sogar eine Dame, dass ich durch meine Empfehlungen ihr das Leben gerettet hätte!!!

Am Besten nimmt man - meinen Recherchen zufolge - Magnesium zwischen den Mahlzeiten, etwa eine halbe Stunde danach, da zu diesem Zeitpunkt einiges an Magensäure im Magen noch vorhanden ist. Die saure Milieu soll die Aufnahme von Magnesium fördern. Der Grund, warum es nicht zu empfehlen ist, dass man Magnesium vor oder während des Mahlzeit zu sich nimmt, liegt darin, dass Magnesium alkalisch ist. Deshalb würde es die Magensäure entsauern, und somit die Verdauung verschlechtern. Komischerweise liest man oft, dass man Mg zu den Mahlzeiten nehmen soll.

Ich habe aber auch gute Erfahrungen mit Magnesium Chlorid gemacht. Dieses Präparat kann man in der Tat vorm Essen nehmen, da das Chlorid sich spaltet, und hilft dem Körper die nötige Säure für die Verdauung herzustellen.

In Deutschland, in den Drogeriemärkten, bekommt man vor allem Magnesium Oxid. Dieses Präparat hat mir kaum geholfen und bei leichter Überdosierung bekommt man schnell Durchfall. Also, nicht zu empfehlen, da es vom Körper schlecht aufgenommen wird. Man kann in den Apotheken Markenprodukte kaufen, die allerdings meistens aus Magnesium-Citrat sind. Diese Form von Magnesium wird etwas besser vom Körper aufgenommen, wirkt aber auch abführend, wenn man eine leichte Überdosierung erzielt.

Wenn man also ein gutes Präparat will, lohnt es sich, meiner Meinung nach, das Produkt, das ich oben genannt habe, zu finden. Innerhalb der EU gibt es keine zolltechnische Probleme. Aus diesem Grund habe ich  auch öfters aus England etwas bestellt.

Ich habe ein paar Mal direkt von Deutschland aus Ware aus Amerika bestellt, und es war leider öfters problematisch. Manchmal kam die Ware nach ca. 7 bis 10 Tagen an, manchmal wurde es zum nächsten Zollamt gebracht. Ich bekam dann ein Schreiben vom Zollamt, in dem stand, dass ich die Ware bitte dort abholen könnte, was natürlich ein bißchen lästig war. Ich durfte zwar dieses Produkt behalten, als ich es einmal bestellte, aber mußte ein paar Stunden in der Gegend rumfahren, bis ich es in der Hand hatte.

Inzwischen habe ich einige Internethändler in Grossbritannien gefunden, die auch die Dr's Best Präparate führen, und bestelle sie dort. Wenn die Ware innerhalb der EU verkauft wird, landet sie nicht beim deutschen Zoll, weil sie schon vom britischen Zoll überprüft wurde. Oder ich lasse die Ware nach England verschickt werden und hole sie dort ab, wenn ich dort zu Besuch bin. Ist ein bißchen umständlich, aber so kann ich den Ausflug zum Zollamt umgehen!!!

Magnesium dosage

DO I HAVE MAGNESIUM DEFICIENCY AND, IF SO, HOW MUCH MAGNESIUM SHOULD I TAKE?

1) How do I know if I am deficient in magnesium?

There are some “classic” magnesium-deficiency symptoms that are a very clear sign of low levels of magnesium in the tissues: if you have any of these, you can bet your bottom dollar that you wouldn’t do yourself any harm (see warnings below for exceptions) if you went out and got yourself a magnesium supplement and some magnesium-rich food and water pretty pronto.

These are:

· any kind of muscle cramping, especially the kind that wake you up in the middle of the night (what Americans call a “charly horse”), trying to work out the cramps in your calves or toes that turned up when you innocently stretched;

· a stiff neck or shoulders;

· twitching eyelids;

· arrhythmias (although these can have different causes, an irregular heart beat can also be caused by a lack of magnesium and/or an abundance of calcium;

· general tiredness and being easily fatigued, especially during sport.

The best magnesium supplement I have tried so far (and, believe me, I have tried a lot of different kinds) is this one:

http://www.iherb.com/Doctor-s-Best-High-Absorption-Magnesium-240-Tablets/16567?at=0

If you want to try this and haven't used iherb.com before, make sure to use this referral code AMA168 to get a $5 discount on your first order.