Eating with a purpose

True healthy eating involves eating with a purpose. What are you eating and why? The foods that you select should be carefully selected and should possess the nutrients needed to over come some health issues and promote overall good health.

Thursday, January 5, 2017

Can Overtraining Lead to Mineral Depletion

Dana Green Remedios, Registered Holistic Nutritionist, former personal trainer, former Health Club Manager

  • Strenous Exercise itself can deplete certain nutrients, or rather, use them up quickly.
These include the antioxidant vitamins - Vitamins A, C and E (plus glutathione, anthocyanins, proanthocyanidins, polyphenols...)

Oh yes, about the process...basically, for the last 2 decades, we have believed something like this

"It has been postulated that the generation of oxygen free radicals is  increased during exercise as a result of increases in mitochondrial  oxygen consumption and electron transport flux, inducing lipid  peroxidation. The literature suggests that dietary antioxidants are able  to detoxify the peroxides produced during exercise, which could  otherwise result in lipid peroxidation, and that they are capable of  scavenging peroxyl radicals and therefore may prevent muscle damage." Sports Med. 1996 Mar;21(3):213-38.

This has resulted in an idea that too much exercise is 'aging' at the cellular level, in that there is a lot of oxidative stress placed on cells. Antioxidants are thought to reduce oxidative stress. However, that doesn't mean that you should necessarily run out and supplement with astaxanthin or another powerful antioxidant...Because in the last few years it has been discovered that antioxidant supplementation may actually reduce the insulin lowering effects of exercise. So if you are exercising to stay out of the pre-diabetes zone, think twice.

  • Perspiration will cause the body to lose minerals, so these are more of a concern if you are a heavy sweater or enjoy Bikram's yoga, or run outside in Arizona.
These include potassium, magnesium, chloride, sodium, bicarbonate and others.

Your body fluids are like seawater - full of these salts, or ions, that we call electrolytes. They get the electro portion of their name because they regulate electrical impulses in our nerves and muscles. Your kidneys regulate them, but if you lose a lot of them through urine and sweat and just replenish with water, they will eventually be depleted.

  • The increased rate of metabolism that can accompany regular vigorous exercise would also eventually cause one to generally go through micronutrients more quickly than if one were sedentary.
These include zinc, calcium, leucine, sodium, potassium and more.

They are being expelled in urine and feces and used up in the muscle breakdown/repair/regeneration cycle.

 * * * * *

If you are undertaking regular moderate exercise and eating a fairly nutritious diet without a lot of processed junk, you should be fine...

However, there is a common misconception that "if you exercise, it doesn't matter what you eat" when really, the opposite is true; if you exercise, it matters even more what you eat! So it is good that you are looking into the matter.

To help the antioxidant situation in a healthy way - eat a few more dark Green and Colourful Vegetables daily, and vary your fruits every day, looking for Red cherries and Orange apricots etc, and avoid transfats (which are sources of free radicals and peroxides) such as bakery pastries and deep fried chips.
*Eat lots of (blue)berries, salmon, red beans, and other nutrient dense foods.

To help with the ones lost to sweat, little flavoured electrolyte packages are easy to add to water for after runs in the sun...coconut water is good too, bananas are easy, and try using Real Salt or himalayan salt or Redmond salt every day instead of plain table salt. You'll get all the trace minerals that way.

Overall, eat a balanced, varied, unprocessed, colourful diet. Eat healthy fats daily, such as avocado and nuts, and eat a variety of nutritious grains like millet and quinoa, aim to get plenty of zinc and calcium (get adventurous with bouillabasse and cooked greens) and you will be alright.

If you feel you need to supplement with antioxidants, omega 3s, magnesium, zinc or other things, get some more help from a professional. You might find that a good quality chemical-free protein drink powder or greens powder mixed into water every day you do hard exercise helps you a lot.



Source: https://www.quora.com/Does-too-much-exercise-deplete-certain-vitamins-and-minerals-What-is-the-process-behind-this-depletion




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MAGNESIUM DEFICIENCY AND EXERCISE

WHY ARE WE MAGNESIUM DEFICIENT?



The Weekend Warrior, Over training
It has been found that exercisers that feel weak and tired are highly likely to be suffering from mineral deficiency. Magnesium is lost via sweat and can bring on fatigue, muscle cramps, impaired glucose and oxygen transport into muscle cells, especially the heart. Sweating from exercise or saunas, steam rooms, when done regularly require the regular replacement of magnesium. In severe cases, with extreme athletes, body builders and long distance runners, depletion of heart tissue magnesium can cause Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD), myocardial infarction, angina pectoris, and heart arrhythmias.

The mechanism of sudden death after a stressful event can be traced to magnesium depletion that causes oxygen depletion in the heart muscle, and increased arrhythmia from increased catecholamine output.  Magnesium loss was the first electrolyte derangement seen even before potassium loss. Intravenous magnesium therapy has increased survival rates.

Without optimum “cellular magnesium” levels (our ATP/cellular energy synthesis) optimum muscle contraction and oxygen utilization suffers, sometimes with fatal consequences. Therefore, over-training, overexertion, excessive sweating, either done in one event or done repetitively, especially without sufficient electrolyte replacement will burn magnesium at a faster rate and send us into intracellular deficiency of magnesium.

A runner need not drop dead on the course of sudden cardiac death to be magnesium deficient. Sudden cardiac death strikes the youth and prime even post event when intracellular heart magnesium is not replenished. Over training, and not becoming aware of the state of one’s intracellular magnesium could be fatal as you might not have other magnesium deficient symptoms such as cramping of muscles to warn you of a problem!

In a treadmill study of 44 healthy male athletes and 20 untrained men, the athletes’ their average maximum oxygen consumption was higher, their work capacity increased 50% and they had lower lactate after exercise than the untrained men. This is to be expected. What was not expected was to find a correlation between oxygen consumption and serum magnesium. When magnesium was depleted, oxygen consumption declined along with endurance and performance. Therefore, magnesium’s role in facilitating oxygen delivery to muscles is significant.

Another interesting study was performed on marathon runners measuring their free fatty acid levels during a 26 mile race and their serum magnesium levels. They compared their values against an untrained runner who was given magnesium supplementation of 375mg/day for a week before the run. The marathon runners showed increasing levels of free fatty acids as they approached 26 miles (indicating increasing levels of stress perceived by the body and stress hormones released as a result) and corresponding decreasing levels of serum magnesium levels, but not with the untrained runner! Because he was talking magnesium, his body was able to burn the magnesium to ward of an increase in stress hormones. He had lower stress hormone excretion, less lactic acid build up and more magnesium to spare. The end result, he ended the race healthier metabolically than the marathon runners who did not take magnesium supplementation! (Pratt K, Moody ML, Cinlee RK, Rueddel H, Frnz KB; Changes in serum free fatty acids and magnesium during a marathon. Magnesium 4:207-208, 1985.

Another study found that the stress of marathon running had caused these runners to have increased platelet aggregation factor TXB2 levels as serum magnesium levels were depleted. TXB2 causes vasoconstriction as well as sticky blood. Clearly, magnesium replacement during runs are as or even more important than plain water to prevent dehydration during and after a race!

Additional silent damage, the consequence of magnesium deficiency, induced by strenuous exercise, leads to calcium overload, resulting in cell membrane lipid anti-per oxidative activity. In lay terms, this means magnesium deficiency increases one’s free radical activity, leading to increased stress on one’s heart muscle, leading to aggravation of all heart conditions. Free radical accumulation from extreme exercise and magnesium deficiency was buffered by taking vitamin E and magnesium. The fact that extreme athletes and those regularly engaging in strenuous exercise do not have a longer lifespan may be attributed to magnesium depletion leading to increased oxidative stress and metabolic induced inflammation which could be avoided by paying attention to one’s magnesium!

Therefore, even before we begin to push our bodies for strenuous exercise, if our tissue magnesium stores are low, we will notice more fatigue, decreased exercise capacity despite regular exercise. We will feel dragy, winded and have a hard time picking our energy up from exercise. If we continue to push our bodies, we will then suffer muscle stiffness, spasms or strains and sprains from the stiffness that results from low intracellular magnesium. Biochemically, we will increase our stress hormones even more when we are magnesium deficient, and suffer more free radical synthesis, increased cholesterol! and oxygen depletion to our heart muscle. However, our heart tissue can become deficient in magnesium before other tissues of the body. Thus we might not have any body symptoms to warn us of a more serious heart muscle deficiency. The consequences to the heart can be fatal. Beware the stressed executive that dies on his/her treadmill as this can be the silent vicious cycle of mineral depletion.

Stress
We all underestimate stress because we live in it daily and take it as part of our daily lives. But stress takes it’s toll on us. Stress, both physical and mental aggravation, frustration, irritability, causes you to burn magnesium at a faster rate. Stress makes your body more acidic. Magnesium is used to buffer that acid. Therefore, stress causes you to burn magnesium faster to neutralize the acid.

Our adrenals and nerves secrete stress hormones called catecholamines and corticosteroids, when under emotional or physical stress. Do you know when your body is releasing these stress hormones? No! Like using up the gasoline in one’s car, it’s a slow and steady drain. These stress hormones cause the loss of cellular magnesium leading directly to problems with cellular energy production, and skeletal and heart muscle performance that lead to blood clotting and heart arrhythmias.

There was a study comparing Type A and Type B individuals that found that Type A personalities excreted more stress hormones in response to noise and mental stress and depleted their magnesium faster than Type Bs! This explains the increased risk among Type A’s for mitral valve prolapse, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. Becoming aware of our stressors, managing how we react to stress and increasing one’s magnesium will help to buffer us from daily stress.

The bad thing about stress is that as it depletes you silently of your magnesium, low intracellular magnesium causes the excretion of MORE stress hormones. Therefore, magnesium is protective in preventing excessive release of these stress hormones! In addition, adrenal stress that causes the adrenals to release the hormone epinephrine (our fight or flight hormone) burns intra cellular magnesium at such a fast rate that one quickly becomes depleted.

What causes our adrenals to release more epinephrine? Physical stress, as in strenuous exercise, strenuous training, runners, especially marathon runners and those suffering from prolonged emotional, familial, and work stress. Please see our other articles about cortisol function.

The stress hormones also signal the body to release free fatty acids as an energy source. However, there is a price to pay for this extra needed energy boost during times of stress. These free fatty acids bind and inactivate magnesium in your blood stream and heart, slowing down the transport of glucose and oxygen into muscles and prevent magnesium from being used by the Kreb’s cycle to make ATP as energy, using a more inefficient free fatty acid source for energy. Fatigue, cellular oxygen deprivation especially of heart tissue, increased free radicals, loss of glucose transport, and our cholesterol ratios are thrown out of balance. We hit a wall energetically.

Imagine the typical stressed executive, by nature of his/her lifestyle is already burning magnesium at a faster rate because of their adrenal output of stress hormones. He wakes up and has a high acid breakfast of coffee, eggs and a muffin that consumed intracellular magnesium to neutralize the breakfast. He dashes to work out already feeling short on time. Then this driven executive goes to the gym and does a rigorous 30 minute treadmill run, sweating out magnesium and continuing to push his adrenals to excrete epinephrine for energy to keep up with his strenuous activity. If the night before, he had to entertain clients and had several alcoholic drinks (causing him to urinate extra magnesium) and he ate a large steak for dinner (high acid meal), then his lifestyle continues to deplete him of magnesium. If there was a work deadline pending the next few days, or this executive had a fight with his wife the night before or with his kids that morning before hitting the gym, his body is in peak demand for magnesium. Depending on the duration of his life stressors and duration of his acid diet, combined with his life stressors, it becomes no surprise when this executive drops dead on his treadmill from sudden cardiac arrest, in large part from severe depletion of myocardial intracellular magnesium.

If this stressed executive does not drop dead that morning, then continued stress hormones coupled with consumed intracellular magnesium cause calcium overload in the tissues. This will lead to heart arrhythmias and calcium deposits in blood vessels, accelerating atherosclerosis, the development of kidney stones and bone spurs, accelerating osteoporosis for men and women. It will push his cholesterol out of optimal range despite his efforts to eat a heart healthy diet!

Now that we know that our food and lifestyle predisposes us to magnesium wasting, what do we have to fear aside from sudden cardiac death with chronic depletion of magnesium?
Part 3 will discuss why magnesium is so essential to our health. It will also go into what medical conditions pre-dispose you to magnesium deficiency and discuss specific conditions and their mechanism of depleting us of magnesium, in turn making the condition worse!

Please note:
Information on this site is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for the advice provided by your physician or other healthcare professional. You should not use the information on this site for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease, or prescribing any medication or other treatment.


Source:

http://chronicfatigueandnutrition.com/vitamins-and-minerals/why-are-we-magnesium-deficient/ 





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Hypomagnesemia (Low Magnesium)

What Is Hypomagnesemia?
Hypomagnesemia is an electrolyte imbalance and is indicated by a low level of magnesium in the blood.  The normal adult value for magnesium is 1.5-2.5 mEq/L.   

Magnesium is one of many electrolytes in your body and normal levels of magnesium are important for the maintenance of heart and nervous system function.

What Causes Hypomagnesemia?

Your body regulates magnesium levels by shifting magnesium into and out of cells.  A shift of potassium into the cells causes hypomagnesemia.

Magnesium can be excreted by your kidneys. Any damage to your kidneys, when they are not working properly, may cause a decrease in magnesium levels.
There are other causes of hypomagnesemia.  These include:


  • You may be taking in too little magnesium in your diet.
  • If you have stomach or bowel problems, you may not be able to absorb the magnesium you take in.
  • Magnesium may not be absorbed properly due to alcohol use, diarrhea, or laxative use.
  • Increased excretion of magnesium from your body
  • Renal (kidney) damage - Losses of magnesium from the kidneys are a common cause of magnesium deficit.
  • Certain drugs, including Cisplatin, Amphotericin B, or certain antibiotics may affect your kidneys.
  • Endocrine disorders - such as Aldosteronism, or dysfunction with the thyroid and parathyroid glands or diabetes.
  • Pregnancy
What Are Some Symptoms of Hypomagnesemia To Look For?
You may not have any symptoms, unless your blood test results show that your magnesium levels are significantly decreased.
Muscle weakness, confusion, and decreased reflexes with severely low blood magnesium levels.  You may also notice "jerky" movements, high blood pressure, and irregular heart rhythms with severely low blood magnesium levels.
Things You Can Do If Your Blood Test Results Indicate Hypomagnesemia:

  • Follow your healthcare provider's instructions for increasing your blood magnesium level. If your blood levels are severely lowered, he or she may prescribe medications to lower the levels to a safe range.
  • Take all of your medications as directed.
  • Drink 2 to 3 liters of fluid every 24 hours, unless you were told to restrict your fluid intake. 
  • Follow all of your healthcare provider's recommendations for follow up blood work and laboratory tests if blood test results indicate hypomagnesemia.
Drugs That May Be Prescribed By Your Doctor for Hypomagnesemia:

  • Magnesium supplements - This medication is given usually intravenously, to increase your blood magnesium level, if you have severely low blood magnesium levels. You may also take magnesium oxide in a pill form.
  • Calcium and potassium supplements - If you have severely low blood magnesium levels, you may also have low calcium and potassium electrolyte levels. Your healthcare provider may order supplements in an IV or a pill form. Magnesium, potassium and calcium levels will not return to normal, unless all of these electrolytes are corrected.
When To Call Your Doctor or Health Care Provider About Hypomagnesemia:

  • Feeling your heart beat rapidly (palpitations).
  • Nausea that interferes with your ability to eat, and is unrelieved by any prescribed medications.
  • Vomiting (vomiting more than 4-5 times in a 24 hour period).
  • Diarrhea (greater than 5 stools per day).
  • Muscle weakness, or twitching.
  • Shortness of breath, chest pain or discomfort; swelling of your lips or throat should be evaluated immediately. 
  • Source: http://chemocare.com/chemotherapy/side-effects/hypomagnesemia-low-magnesium.aspx 

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    Increase mental & physical performance while reducing exhaustion. Keep driving while competitors are fading. WorkoutExtreme™ contains a unique blend (caffeine, ginseng, taurine, glucuronolactone) that is designed to increase exercise focus, performance, and intensity without the weight gain associated with creatine products. Higher quality training sessions can ultimately improve performance, boost total calorie burn and enhance weight loss results, especially if you’ve hit a plateau. www.truefitnessbootcamp.com
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