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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