By Dr. W. Gifford Jones
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
A healthy 18-year-old basketball player and health-conscious jogger recently left this world all of a sudden. Why? Because of an initial diagnosis; death from coronary artery disease due to high blood cholesterol. But the cause of death eventually proved to be due to magnesium deficiency. Magnesium has never been a super-star nutrient like calcium. But it's still crucial in keeping the undertaker away and in fighting several common chronic diseases. So are you getting enough of this mineral?
Magnesium is nature's natural antispasmodic and it's amazing this fact hasn't triggered more attention from the medical community. In 1979 Dr. J.R. Chipperfield reported in the British Journal Lancet that patients who suffered from angina often had low levels of blood magnesium and that this nutrient could ease spasm and pain.
More important, magnesium can prevent sudden death. Regular beating of the heart is controlled by an extremely complex electrical mechanism. Low magnesium levels toss a monkey-wrench into this process causing an abnormal rhythm called ventricular fibrillation. Death often results.
Magnesium also adds oil to the blood, helping to prevent sudden death in another way. Adequate amounts of magnesium decrease the risk that blood platelets will stick together forming a fatal blood clot. This is important for those with risk factors for heart attack such as obesity, diabetes, atherosclerosis and hypertension. The lack of magnesium helps to explain why 50 per cent of people who die of a heart attack have normal blood cholesterol.
Now researchers have discovered that magnesium assists in the fight against one of this nation's biggest killers, diabetes. Today 95 percent of diabetes is due to obesity. The exhausted pancreas fails to produce sufficient amounts of insulin to control the amount of sugar (glucose) in the blood. To make matters worse for obese patients, "insulin resistance" develops. Then insulin becomes less effective in clearing the blood of glucose.
Dr. Jerry Nadler, Chief of Endocrinology and Metabolism at the University of Virginia, reports that a low dietary intake of magnesium can also encourage insulin resistance.
In his study, Nadler placed patients on a magnesium deficient diet for a mere three weeks. This showed that their cells not only became deficient in magnesium, but also that insulin became less capable of transporting glucose from the blood into cells.
Dr. Nadler's message was quite clear, "You can cause insulin resistance in people who do not have diabetes. Just deprive them of magnesium".
Another huge study has demonstrated the importance of magnesium. Since 1976 Harvard University has followed the health of 85,000 nurses and since 1986 another 43,000 men. Both studies concluded that that there was a significant relationship between magnesium intake and the risk of developing diabetes.
For instance in the Nurses Health Study, researchers found that women consuming 220 milligrams (mg) of magnesium were one-third more likely to develop diabetes during the next six years than those consuming 340 mg of magnesium daily. The message? The greater the intake of magnesium the less likelihood of developing this disease.
Dr. Lawrence Resnick, Professor of Medicine and Director Of Hypertension, Wayne State University, studied the blood pressure of patients who were both diabetic and non-diabetic. He found that all patients with hypertension whether diabetic or non-diabetic had lower magnesium levels than people with normal blood pressure.
Resnick says he has treated patients who were hypertensive in spite of taking one or two medications to treat this disease. And that by adding magnesium their pressure returned to normal.
So are you getting 350 milligrams (mg) of magnesium a day? A good start would be one baked potato with skin 55 mg, one-half ounce of almonds 43 mg, one shredded wheat 40 mg, one cup of plain low fat yogurt 43 mg, one-half cup of brown rice 42 mg, one banana 32 mg, a three ounce grilled salmon 28 mg, one slice of whole wheat bread 24 mg and add more fruits and vegetables.
As well, don't forget to drink milk. Drinking two glasses of milk a day also provides 20 per cent of the daily requirements of magnesium. Once again we find that milk isn't just for kids.
W. Gifford-Jones M.D is the pen name of Dr. Ken Walker graduate of Harvard. Dr. Walker's website is: Docgiff.com
My book, �90 + How I Got There� can be obtained by sending $19.95 to:
Giff Holdings, 525 Balliol St, Unit # 6,Toronto, Ontario, M4S 1E1
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