The onset of depression has greatly increased in incidence, and it is affecting people much earlier in their lives during the late 20th century and early 21st century than before the 20th century (Meyer and Quenzar, 2005). The reasons for these findings are not quite clear, but inadequate dietary Mg is prevalent in America and is the most likely cause. There is probably a real increase in depression, coupled with a change in diagnostic habits, which has to do with the element of stigma. Lower stigma leads to a higher rate of diagnosis.
Somatopsychic medical effects are very real. I've gotten very good results with addressing nutritional deficiencies as a first line of defense for issues that often present as mood or mental health issues.
But I don't think you can reasonably conclude that magnesium deficiency is The explanation for increased prevalence of depression in a world that has had so many profound changes.
Things are more crowded. Most people now live in cities instead of rural environments. Among other things, this means people are subjected to much noisier conditions.
We have far, far better information about the world than we used to. The 24/7 news cycle is incredibly stressful, if only because most "news" is bad news.
There are just so very many confounding factors, no, you can't reasonably conclude that this one singular factor is the sole explanation or primary explanation. That's ridiculous.
1. In general, the north american diet is disgraceful.
2. Consumerism and brainwashing people into believing that they can only be happy when they achieve X, Y or Z, does nothing for people's emotional emptiness.
3. The constant barrage of shit news, most of which is largely irrelevant to most of our lives, most of the time.
4. The constant threat of automation and off-shoring meaning that people never feel secure about their income stream unless they specifically work in an industry where their ability to generate their income stream is unrelated to these constant threats.
5. Inflation of living costs escalating at a rate beyond inflation of income.
6. The polarization making people feel isolated from one another instead of connected. Nobody can talk about anything any more without fear of offending someone, being politically incorrect, being ostracized or vilified.
7. The reported growing financial disparity where the 2% have 98% of the wealth while the 98% share the other 2% and the constant message that it's only going to get harder to be able to cross that chasm.
8. Corporations subverting politics for their own profits instead of the good of the people.
The list goes on ad nauseum.
I firmly believe if the world stops behaving like assholes, learns to eat properly and talks to one another to a level that find connection instead of a divide. The depression is just going to get worse and worse until suicide becomes an epidemic.
I would add at least two more that I think are huge and largely overlooked most of the time:
a. Loss of a sense of community and the very real practical support that provides with moving from small town/rural to big city life for most people.
b. "Sick building syndrome" which I think is far, far more widespread than is generally recognized. Among other things, indoor air quality is crap more often than not.
Sleeping in a tent for nearly six years actually did my health a world of good. It also dramatically changed my perspective on the state of housing in modern America and its relationship to myriad problems, including health issues, in ways that aren't likely to be taken seriously by most people any time soon.
When I comment on such things, it typically gets downvotes and/or snarky, dismissive replies and personal attacks.
I'd always been dimly aware that I always woke up feeling more refreshed in a tent, but it wasn't until fairly recently that I noticed I got the same effect if I slept with the window open. Now I keep my bedroom window open at all times.
In general, I think society is extremely blase about possible health hazards - if it doesn't kill you instantly, people basically don't wanna know. Alcohol is huge. Smoking is even now considered basically fine by huge swathes of the population. It wasn't until 1996 that leaded gasoline was banned in the US, two decades after lead paint was banned. We tolerate absurd levels of pollution in cities, with not much more than a shrug.
For almost any given product and interaction, you can ask yourself "is there a powerful incentive structure in place to prevent this from invisibly but seriously harming me"? Usually, the answer is "no". It's up to you to pay attention, and ignore what society thinks is okay.
Ancient Romans would consider you a sissy snowflake to avoid their lead pipes - modern society will consider you likewise, if you go out of your way to be healthy. If you don't feel like a sissy snowflake - you're probably being poisoned.
> In general, I think society is extremely blase about possible health hazards - if it doesn't kill you instantly, people basically don't wanna know.
A flip side of this is that if you stopped and considered what is reported to be killing you slowly, you'd go crazy (and arguably a lot of people did, to some extent). Consider e.g. nutritional "advice" in popular press.
Having my attention constantly called to garbage information on what does cause cancer this week by random people, I developed a following rule of thumb: if the actual negative health effect is big enough to even worth spending time thinking about, the product is either already banned by the government or has huge warning labels on it. Otherwise, it's fine in moderate quantities.
EDIT:
> "is there a powerful incentive structure in place to prevent this from invisibly but seriously harming me"? Usually, the answer is "no"
There's another question worth considering: "is there a powerful incentive structure in place to blow up statistical noise out of proportion, in order to create fear around common products?", and the answer is clearly yes - this is one of the ways news portals, lifestyle magazines and small blogs drive their traffic.
Sorry that I'm focusing on one small part of your comment, but I'm genuinely curious - do you find you have the same effect if, say, you force your whole house fan to run at least five or ten minutes out of every hour?
I find that fresh air helps too, but during the winter I can't convince myself to "waste" money heating the house while at the same time leaving a window wide open letting the cold back in...
BTW I don't think smoking is considered 'fine' by any stretch - at least where I live in the US. All restaurants/bars are non-smoking, and the only place my kids have encountered smokers has been when we travel in Europe.
I don't quite know what a "whole house fan" is - is that air conditioning? I guess it might help depending on the size of the house, the size of the bedroom, and whether the air comes from outside. I feel like it's to do with gas conditions - too much CO2, too little oxygen, carbon monoxide buildup, some kind of material outgassing - who knows.
Winter is trickier, but as I live in a relatively mild climate I usually deal by keeping the bedroom door shut, the room heating off, and snuggling under a thick duvet with pyjamas. You sleep better in cooler conditions anyway. If it's really cold out, I'll air the whole house while I'm not at home and the heating's off anyway - then I sleep with the bedroom door open, in the hope that I at least get the benefit of the larger volume.
In Europe, as you say, a very large number of people smoke, even though they're just as aware of the health problems as Americans. I think America's advantage there is less to do with health consciousness and more to do with a kind of low-key puritanism - smoking is stigmatized and is seen as a moral failing in a way that it isn't in Europe.
I'm looking into setting up a window-mounted HRV in my apartment. I'm looking at the VENTS-US MICRA 150 and a DIY window vent bracket. The MICRA 150 is available at Home Depot and on Amazon. It collects condensation in a tank, rather than draining it through the vent tube.
In hot and humid areas an Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) should be chosen as it's able to remove moisture from the incoming air as well.
There are a number of companies that make whole house ERV/HRV kits and a good method of setup is to constantly exhaust your bathrooms and possibly other contaminated spaces, while delivering fresh air to bedrooms or common areas.
Energy recovery is in the 50% range.
Some can be balanced to slightly positive pressure particularly if there is an attached garage or other sources of contamination.
ASHRAE publishes standard 62.2 which recommends that for modern houses the ventilation rate in CFM = 0.03*ft^2 + 7.5(Nbedrooms+1)
I don't always keep the bedroom window open, but it's open enough, even in the middle of winter that it's not unusual. I feel way better sleeping with the window open than I do with it closed.
Hah - when we visit family in the summer, we're lucky to be able to do backyard camping for almost entire stay - reduces stress on the hosts, my young kids love it, and we have a pretty smooth process & kickass tent.
Done it for 4 years now and I can say it does make me feel more alive at the end & there have been minimal sleep incidents.
However, I don't think it's changed the way I share my opinion on housing (perhaps reinforced it?). People get ticked off when you diss their biggest investment even by proxy.
Something else to consider is that a lot of people live in food deserts, where no nutritional food is available or affordable. People who live in such food deserts often have low incomes, so they really don't have a choice but to have a really awful diet. Richer people tend to have greater, more convenient choices of nutritional food, and the wealth to afford it.
Add to that the fact that many people in the US work insanely long hours in unfulfilling or even demeaning work, little free time to spend with their families, on leisure, or to recover from burnout, possibly mounting medical and credit card bills, little hope for a secure retirement, their children at risk of violence in schools and few prospects when (or if) they graduate. Add in the media which worships wealth, fame, and appearances, and you have almost a sure fire recipe for depression.
It's really a wonder more people aren't depressed.
There have been a number of experiments where they gave patients more magnesium, and in response most patients reduce their depression by a statistically significant amount. The inverse was found when they gave them calcium (more calcium increases depression). It's all about the ratio of calcium to magnesium. We're a society that consistently gets way too much calcium and way too little magnesium. That's because our food source isn't diverse. Dairy is considered a food group here in the US, and almost everything in it comes from Milk, is primarily made up of milk. Milk is very unbalanced in terms of Calcium to magnesium, something like 10 to 1 ratio.
Also, there was another study where they found that treatments for depression actually increased serum magnesium levels in the brain.
EDIT:
Here is the study:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507265/#
"A dietary supplement of 500mg calcium immediately and severely worsened MD, which was extinguishable within one hour by orally treating with 400mg gel capsules of Mg as magnesium glycinate "
I stated up front that somatopsychic effects are quite real. I don't doubt that a magnesium deficiency is a culprit in depression for many people.
But are you arguing that, yea, verily, this article's foundational assumption is true and correct: Magnesium deficiency is the sole or prime cause of all (or virtually all) modern depression?
If so, I think you need to back that up with a whole lot more than a paragraph or two about things you've read, like a long list of citations that not only show the role magnesium plays, but also another long list of citations that affirmatively excludes myriad other potential causes of Major Depression that are generally understood to be contributing factors.
inadequate dietary Mg is prevalent in America and is the most likely cause.
It contains zero qualifiers suggesting it is one of many factors, a major factor among many, etc. It uses the word "the" and the singular form of "cause."
You skipped right over "most likely" and only focused on "the ... cause". To me it sounds like they are saying statistically Mg deficiency is the most widespread underlying factor. Their language is strong, but it does not come off that absolutist and the "most likely" suggests other causes.
I'm a freelance writer by trade. I sometimes write health articles. I could not say what this article says about cause.
At best, I could say something like "Given the proven widespread lack of adequate dietary magnesium and the known side effects of magnesium insufficiency, it seems plausible to suggest that at least some portion of the increase in depression is due to widespread magnesium deficiency."
That may seem like quibbling to you, but scientists get paid to quibble about the details and to be as precise as humanly possible. They should be meeting at least as high a standard as my generally low paid freelance writing.
> There have been a number of experiments where they gave patients more magnesium, and in response most patients reduce their depression by a statistically significant amount
Can you link to those studies please?
> more calcium increases depression
now that really is curious. Again, do you have a link? TIA
Read the entire article. It also talks about the increased Mg excretion effect of stress hormones.
It’s a combination of lower intake of what already is a micronutrient, increased excretion (consequence of the lifestyle changes), and hard to diagnose (because serum Mg levels stay stable, only cellular Mg reserves are depleted).
I had a couple neurological issues in the past and had a good endocrinologist suggest me Mg (quelated) and he explained all that is mentioned on the article.
I started taking magnesium supplements about 9 months ago, not for any depression issues, but more for muscle issues. I had a weird leg muscle injury a few years ago that I never really got a proper diagnosis for that happened when doing some light hiking. In doing my own research on that, a condition similar to my symptoms came up, and one of the causes was a magnesium deficiency. I had a few other minor ailments come up, and I have been biking to work for the last few years, and noticed that my recovery time is significantly longer. All of these things cited magnesium as a significant player, so I bought some supplements.
Anyway, I take about 200mg a day, for about the last 6 months or so, and I can not say I have felt any noticeable improvement. This is obviously just a single data point, but even with some specific symptoms that pointed to an Mg deficiency, I didn't see an improvement. If you feel this is some type of magic solution, you should temper your expectations.
I also began taking magnesium (a few years ago) for running, not depression.
I probably log 50-80 miles per week and low magnesium levels are notoriously low in endurance athletes. I also follow a ketosis diet for as many as 6 months at a time, low magensium is also common with Keto diet.
I take up to 10 vitamin/mineral supplements, but kind of cycle them at various times. It’s impossible to really pinpoint anything, but I tend to think I personally got great benefits to my running through the addition of fish oil, vitamin B, vitamin D and magnesium. Specifically I feel benefits to both energy and anti-inflammation, at one point I scaled up to a half marathon everyday and was never even sore, whereas previously I’d run maybe 5 times a week and sometimes be stiff the next day following 7 mile runs. It’s definately not magic, these supplements don’t run the miles for me, but I do feel better during the runs, recover better, and it just creates this feedback loop where it feels I am growing/improving.
Anecdotical but for years I had various anxiety and mild depression problems (edit: and various muscle “twitches”). As it was not severe I was always recommended Magnesium. Never had any improvement. Then 2 years ago I started taking vitamin D (thanks to HN discussions) and nearly all my symptoms disappeared (also changed job, started meditation, so the datapoint is not clear but magnesium alone didn't do much).
Also I recommend you get tested for Magnesium as contrary to popular belief (at least here in France) deficiency is not common (contrary to vitamin D).
Serum levels of vit D and Magnesium are not reliable indicators. As stated in the study for Magnesium. For Vit D, efficiency of a supplementation of Vit D3 is also not on par with real sun exposure, the skin and subcutaneous fat don't seems to respond the same way.
I sadly did not had any improvement on my side from getting my Vit D level from 15 (which is barely above the deficiency level) to a whooping level of 60 in a few month with Bio-D-Mulsion drops (Vit D3). My mag must be high as I eat a very rich diet in this nutrient, without any dairy from more than a decade now
> Serum levels of vit D and Magnesium are not reliable indicators. As stated in the study for Magnesium. For Vit D, efficiency of a supplementation of Vit D3 is also not on par with real sun exposure, the skin and subcutaneous fat don't seems to respond the same way.
Didn't know that, thanks.
> I sadly did not had any improvement on my side from getting my Vit D level from 15 (which is barely above the deficiency level) to a whooping level of 60 in a few month with Bio-D-Mulsion drops (Vit D3)
Given how well my state (physical and mental) noticeably improved these last few months I'm think the main factors were psychological instead of a deficiency (notably getting more financially secure with personal business taking off and going abroad and working remotely). Before that I was already working out and eating well for years, and even if that helped the changes weren't as noticeable. Or maybe it was all of that combined and it just took time to cross a threshold.
I had a physical a few years ago and it was noted that I had a low level of vitamin D. I took supplements for that as well (my first time ever taking a supplement). I actually stopped that after the bottle ran out because I read various things over time that said that Vitamin D deficiency was overstated and that the supplements just gave you expensive piss. I tested fine for all other levels, though I am not sure they covered Magnesium in that test.
Perhaps I could give it another go, with Vitamin D + Magnesium, thus far I just try to drink milk to swallow down the Mg pills and get a bit of Vitamin D in nutrient form.
I am personally very wary of taking supplements, it seems like a dicey business. I wasn't planning on buying another bottle of Magnesium after this one runs out either.
I'm interested in this, because it was suggested to me that I get tested for Vitamin D deficiency, and apparently I have it. I haven't started any particular supplementation, but I have read that Vitamin D has some connection to calcium absorption. I wonder if it is a good idea to take either calcium or magnesium with a D supplement. I also take medication that I'm told may remove calcium from bones as a side effect.
From the study: "Useful Mg compounds are those that have a sufficiently low first stability constant to be bioavailable and include magnesium acetate, chloride, citrate, gluconate, glycinate, lactate, malate, oxalate, succinate, sulphate and tartrate (Furia, 1968)."
People mentioning their experiences here should definitely mention what form they're taking. Magnesium oxide is pretty commonly sold but it doesn't get absorbed very well - to the point where I think it should not be sold at all. I've had good experience with chelated magnesium.
IIRC, Magnesium Oxide can be useful because it's poorly absorbed, making it a better osmotic laxative than chelated forms / free magnesium. I agree it shouldn't be advertised as benefiting anything other than that though.
Chelated magnesium is definitely better, I've also felt benefits from free magnesium (you can buy drink mixes w/ MgCO3 + Citric acid that fizz off CO2 when mixed).
Magnesium biglycinate and Magnesium l-threonate generally have the best effect with the least laxative side-effects (unless you want that); however, l-threonate is quite expensive because of patents, and l-threonate can have (potentially desirable, however potentially dependence building) effects of its own.
One form I haven't tried or researched yet is sucrosomial magnesium, which may have superior bio-availability to both biglycinate and l-threonate with relatively reasonable pricing characteristics.
I personally stopped taking magnesium a little while back, as it seems any bioavailable form pretty reliably causes insomnia for me. YMMV with magnesium, but you gotta make sure you buy it from a reliable source in a good form if you want to give it a proper chance.
I don't have the bottle handy with me, being at work, but I do know I did some basic research on this and its "chelated", not sure what exact type it is beyond that.
Agreed though that bioavailability of any nutritional supplement is always a highly debated topic, I see that the article cites a powdered form, other comments have liquid drops.
200mg is a decent bump on average daily intake (360mg), and mag isn’t managed as well as other ions. If you don’t already, please have your doc check your mag levels every couple of months while you do this. Hypermagnesemia is no joke.
Tums after every meal is actually a really good way of getting electrolyte imbalances, to the point of developing kidney stones from the amount that the kidney has to excrete to try and keep things on an even keel. If you need tums after every meal, you should be talking to your doc about a PPI.
edit: Now I think on it, actually, depending on (variables), you might need a specialist visit more than a PCP visit for some antacids. Shame on me for assuming it's just unmanaged acid reflux.
I take it because any acidic meal literally deactivates the positive effects of my stim meds and gives me a pounding headache. The only way to reverse this is with half a tums.
Kidney stones scare me, I've heard horror stories of the pain it causes. Is half a tums alright after acidic meals? How much more likely am I to develop kidney stones?
I hesitate to give anything resembling medical advice to someone whose medical details I do not know, and can't follow up with.
Speaking in broadest generalities:
1. The kidney stone risk a/w calcium carbonate intake has not been well-quantified. In a couple of studies of post-menopausal women the risk elevation was estimated to be in the range of a 20% bump. It has not been quantified any better in any other demographic segment, that I am aware of (nota bene: I'm not a nephrologist or urologist).
2. Timing-wise, the closer to the bulk of the meal the tums goes in, the better. You get calcium stones due to calcium oxalate crystal formation - when you take the calcium with food, the calcium is prone to crystallize with oxalate in the gut and get shat out, rather than both getting absorbed and crystallizing in the urinary tract.
3. The other risk of constant tums supplementation is an acid-base condition known as milk-alkali syndrome (a combination of hypercalcemia and metabolic alkalosis). Please, get your basic bloodwork done.
4. I can't speak more usefully without understanding what medications you're on and the timing of their administration. I'd strongly recommend having that discussion with a trusted physician, because this really shouldn't be your baseline condition, full stop. If you want to share more details so that I could suggest more specifically what sort of specialist you should see, if you don't currently have a trusted physician, let me know, and I'll arrange a way of sharing contact information.
There have been some very weak recent studies on PPIs and long-term dementia risk that look very flimsy. Other than that, I’m unaware of “long term damage.”
You need to make some changes and get your acid reflux under control. I had bad acid reflux. Here are things I do to keep it under control:
1. Sleep on a wedge pillow.
2. Meditate. Seriously. When I quiet my thoughts and focus on my stomach, my stomach starts to move and push the food+acid bolus down into my intestines. It happens every time.
3. Don't delay bowel movements. This prevents acid reflux during the day.
4. Drink enough water throughout the day. This helps with the bowel movements.
5. Avoid acidic foods at night: chocolate, tomatoes, and citrus.
6. Mostly stopped drinking alcohol.
7. Stop eating when I'm full.
I have found that taking Magnesium is like turning a switch on in my head and I'm suddenly happy again. I don't get upset or angry in the same way, I'm more patient and my thoughts are not obsessive.
Magnesium is best taken with calcium and vitamin D as both are used in the uptake of magnesium.
I have found that processed foods, alcohol, caffeine and sugar all make me worse, but magnesium gives me the will power to change that lifestyle that caused the problem in the first place.
I don't know about quack studies but for the cheap price and quick turnaround (3 days for small effect, 2 week for a large scale shift) it's a simple thing to try.
I was certain that I was living with depression... until I read somewhere that lactose intolerance can lead to magnesium deficiency.
I started taking Magnesium and felt the effect immediately. All of my body is physically relaxed. I struggled with muscle cramps and spasms, they are gone thanks to increasing my magnesium intake. It's as if my muscles being under stress created anxiety and that anxiety reduced my ability to be happy.
I have also learned that I need to supplement with vitamin D during the winter to avoid having SAD. Vitamin D + Magnesium are also my solution to happiness.
As another data point, magnesium supplementation doesn't do squat for my depression. Reputable brand, used the glycinate form, proper dosing, etc. No perceptible effect.
Depression is an array of conditions caused by multiple different root causes, so it's possible that Magnesium works only on some of them only and not on others.
I started taking magnesium on advice of a chiropractor, as I was getting a painful calcium deposit. I take a magnesium/calcium deposit, and later added vitamin D.
I don't know if it's the root cause, but my mental outlook has improved over the past few years.
> I have found that taking Magnesium is like turning a switch on in my head and I'm suddenly happy again. I don't get upset or angry in the same way, I'm more patient and my thoughts are not obsessive.
> Magnesium is best taken with calcium and vitamin D as both are used in the uptake of magnesium.
There are a bunch of studies which have found correlations between vitamin D and depression and (stronger) correlations between vitamin D and seasonal affective disorder.
If your supplementation is working for you, there's no reason to change it, but there's a fairly obvious alternate explanation for the phenomena in the fact that you're also supplementing Vitamin D.
I didn’t read the article, but I know you need to be careful with vit. D supplements. If you take too much, the body can’t utilize it all, and stores it in places that cause problems.
Calcium does produce harmful effects, but only if you get too much of it. If his diet has very little calcium in it he might be okay. And even if it doesn't, as long as the supplement has a 1:1 ratio, he should still be okay as it will even out the supply of calcium and magnesium in the body.
Not directly answering your question, but in general the studies and anecdotes point to around 200 mg of elemental magnesium in the form of magnesium threonate and 4,000 IE of Vitamin D to be a very good combination.
The Threonate makes the magnesium available to the brain.
Other forms of magnesium are usually taken in the 400-800 mg range.
Magnesium truly does wonders for my sleep but every single person I’ve recommended it to has not had similar results. Like many things I’m sure there’s a significant difference depending on your biochemistry.
What were your initial sleep issues and how does MG help? Also, do you take it right before bed or is it something that just builds up in increasing effectiveness after taking it daily for weeks / months?
It's a long read with a lot of data and can be hard to make sense of. Here is the TLDR:
Conclusion
The interpretation which seems to best resolve everything I know about magnesium with the data from my experiment is that magnesium supplementation does indeed help me a large amount, but I was taking way too much.
The couple paragraphs above this citation are also worth reading, in particular:
I find this very troubling. The magnesium supplementation was harmful enough to do a lot of cumulative damage over the months involved, but not so blatantly harmful enough as to be noticeable without a randomized blind self-experiment or at least systematic data collection—neither of which are common among people who would be supplementing magnesium I would much prefer it if my magnesium overdose had come with visible harm (such as waking up in the middle of the night after a nightmare soaked in sweat), since then I’d know quickly and surely, as would anyone else taking magnesium. But the harm I observed in my data? For all I know, that could be affecting every user of magnesium supplements! How would we know otherwise?
I love this: "The reasons for these findings are not quite clear, but inadequate dietary Mg is prevalent in America and is the most likely cause." Ah, to be publishing in a book, not a journal. And to know that your reviewers are like-minded magnesium lovers. Imagine submitting an article to something like Junior Forensics, the journal of high school debate. You could include something like, "All the factors that lead to success in life are hard to account for; participation in debate is the most influential."
> "Deficits of Mg may result from inadequate intake, malabsorption, or renal loss"
Unless I missed it, the paper didn't consider another possible cause of magnesium deficiency: depression.
I.e., the paper seems to conflate correlation with causation (i.e., magnesium deficiency may cause depression), and doesn't consider that the causality may go in the other direction: that magnesium deficiency is a physiological manifestation of depression and other types of chronic negative emotion.
My experience with this is that I've worked for a long time to address chronic illness that has included conditions like depression, anxiety and chronic fatigue syndrome.
One of the many things I've tried has been to substantially increase magnesium intake, both via food sources and supplements.
My measured magnesium levels didn't change simply by increasing intake.
What has made a difference was directly addressing the emotional and outer-life causes of my depression/anxiety.
Even then it took a while, and the work/improvement is still ongoing, but it's very clear that my magnesium readings stayed low even when supplementing, and only started rising after a solid stretch of deep emotional healing work and significant improvements to life circumstances.
The still-nascent and controversial topic of epigenetics may be relevant here.
Did you test your magnesium level by blood tests? Less than 1% of magnesium (AFAIR) is stored in blood and its level can fluctuate a lot depending on your body state.
Correlation is not causation but what HN readers should remember is that most researchers are aware of that fact.
So yes, I'm pretty sure you've missed it among those 350 pages, especially given that results of treatment are mentioned in the abstract.
> Did you test your magnesium level by blood tests?
No, hair tests. Which I dread talking about in forums like this as it can be a red cloth to motivated skeptics/cynics (of which I used to be one until I was blessed with the opportunity to endure this experience), but the results have been consistent with my experienced-symptoms over a long period of time (10 years so far), and the correlation with my emotional work and subjective mood/life experience has been clear.
> Less than 1% of magnesium (AFAIR) is stored in blood and its level can fluctuate a lot depending on your body state
Yes, that's hair tests are used for this type of healing work.
> So yes, I'm pretty sure you've missed it among those 350 pages
I wish you would take more of a good-faith approach to the discussion and point to where this is mentioned.
I read over the abstract as thoroughly as I could for evidence that they properly considered this.
I can see mention of the observation that magnesium levels seemed to respond to antidepressants, but it still seems to assume that the cause is physiological, and that any mood-change is an effect not a cause/influence.
Nothing I can find in the abstract suggests that depression-causing-magnesium-deficiency was considered, studied and disproven, yet such possibilities are often raised in other circles, and it aligns with my own experience (and available evidence).
Please understand that people like myself and a few others on HN, who have been trying to share perspectives like these for many years, get rather tired of reflexive dismissals, despite having done vast amounts research and experimentation/data-collection.
I mean the fact that it works as a treatment. We don't have much more than doing a blind test and checking improvement to test causality. There are so many real world factors that elimination wouldn't work.
I see that you like Jung so I'm sure you're aware that there's more than neurochemistry that can influence it, but when talking about drugs, incentives seem to be aligned such that one should expect patented substances to have the most papers showing positive results vs something cheap and readily available.
Plus I thought you were only basing this N=1 on blood tests so I didn't like dismissal of paper based on that, thus the tone of my prev reply, I'm sorry about that.
Right yeah, I see those mentions of past studies, which suggest some positive results but don’t say much about long-term outcomes. (My own experience has been that in early stages of feeling impaired, supplementation of Mg and other nutrients would bring about short-term mood benefits but subside in the medium to long-term (and show no measured changes in hair tests), even with consistent ongoing supplementation, suggesting that the emotional/life issues are an overriding factor long-term.
I don't doubt that a simple dietary deficiency of Mg may be a causal factor for some, perhaps even most people. But studies like these often seem happy to report positive outcomes after finding, say, 70% short-term efficacy, but ignore the remainder, in which the causation may be very different.
> incentives seem to be aligned such that one should expect patented substances to have the most papers showing positive results vs something cheap and readily available.
Yes, which has been a source of frustration, but I understand modern economics, so I get it.
> Plus I thought you were only basing this N=1 on blood tests so I didn't like dismissal of paper based on that, thus the tone of my prev reply, I'm sorry about that.
I once tried supplementing magnesium while in the midst of moderate depression. Interestingly enough, the effect was not relief, but rather major, absolutely crushing depression (i.e. cannot get out of bed all day depression). I went back to moderate depression after stopping the supplementation and a subsequent second attempt brought back the major depression. By that point I gave up on the whole thing.
Anyone have a similar experience or maybe some insight that might explain this?
There are many kinds of depression all shoveled into the one diagnosis. It's as if malaria, flu, bacterial meningitis, and every other infection were called "ague". (They were, once.)
The only way we know to tell one from another is by what med helps, if any. If none do, it's "non-responsive depression" or some other catch-all. Depression, like schizophrenia and a host of other DSM diagnoses are the DSM's equivalents to "wastebasket taxa" in taxonomy.
People insisting that randomized controlled trials ("RCTs") prove that depression meds, and other psychiatric meds, don't work demonstrate their ignorance of the major failure mode of RCTs: unreliable diagnosis. Given that last, the RCT tells you nothing, positive or negative, absent very careful, detailed deconstruction of individual outcomes.
1. You may have taken a form of supplement you don't tolerate well. I have trouble with sulfur. A lot of iron supplements are sulfur based. They cause negative side effects for me.
2. In order to be properly absorbed, magnesium needs to be taken with some other things, like calcium, vitamin D and vitamin K. Maybe you weren't absorbing it well because you weren't taking it with these other things.
3. Maybe you have some unidentified genetic quirk that impacts the processing of magnesium.
4. A nutritional approach to addressing health issues is a case of "Things get worse before they get better." A lot of people use the term "healing crisis" to describe this process. If you think you have never heard of such, think again. The best known form of this phenomenon is drug withdrawal.
5. You aren't magnesium deficient, so you were actually causing yourself an overdose of magnesium. There is some other explanation for your depression. Magnesium deficiency is not it.
First of all, check the ratio of calcium to magnesium. A lot of supplement companies put in 2 to 1 ratio of calcium which is incorrect because they're going off the USDA's (big agra influenced) incorrect recommendation.
Most people get too much calcium in the first place. So, you'll want to stick to a supplement that only has magnesium in it. But supplement companies aren't regulated by anyone so, you really need to trust the brand that what they're putting in there is what they say they're putting in there. Because they're so unregulated I wouldn't trust them at all.
Better yet, try some whole foods. The very highest densities of Magnesium are (per calorie): Wheat Bran, Zuchini, Pumpkin Seeds, Hemp Seeds, most beans. Green veggies are also super high but I know most people won't eat a ton of those. So, Cashews are also fairly high in magnesium and delicious. Put Wheat bran in your oatmeal to increase the magnesium content. if you want more ideas, check out: https://kale.world/c (sorry to link to it twice, but that's where i've done all my nutrient density analysis)
First I had toothache. After a while it occurred to me that this coincided with my stress level at work and that it actually was caused by my teeth grinding at night. And then I remembered how Mg helps me to become much more relaxed when under stress. Tried it and it worked.
Also very skeptical, and I try to test carefully. So far, it seems that Passionflower extract does boost my sleep quality and helps with early-morning-waking style insomnia. In the evening, CBD helps me downshift to a relaxed "end-of-day" mode that makes falling asleep much easier. Magnesium's next on my list.
I’m also one where magnesium has almost magical positive effects on my sleep. When I started getting some anxiety several years ago, taking magnesium before bed was the only thing that kept me both asleep at night and sleeping deeply. I still take it often to get deeper sleep. I’ve always taken the citrate type.
Glycine’s not a filler in this instance. It’s used to aid absorption [1]. Mag glycinate is one of the only worthwhile forms of magnesium for supplementation, unless you’re using it as laxative. The latter being caused by gut irritation from unabsorbed magnesium.
But yes, glycine also has many of its own benefits. Including a very interesting theory regarding life extension due to its interaction with methionine. [2]
Thanks for that second link. I had read about glycine for sleep, mood, bipolar and schizophrenia (via Glenn Close family study) but not for possible life extension. It does improve my own mood with a dose of several grams per day but the best mental effect seems to be the day I stop taking it. Lower dose does not produce that, it seems to be a dynamic response. So it seems important but complicated, but that's just my anecdote.
For the last couple of months I've been taking a 500mg magnesium and a .30 mg melatonin 10 minutes before I get into bed. Some nights I feel like I don't even roll over, I just wake up the next morning feeling like I've had really deep and uninterrupted sleep.
Add me to the list of happy magnesium supplementers. I always recommend it to anyone who mentions sleep problems and I've had good feedback from a couple of people who actually went through with it based on my recommendation.
Your right to be skeptical of supplements. Supplement companies are completely unregulated, so in theory, they don't even have to put into their product what they say they're putting in.
I take magnesium in the form of trace mineral drops. These are de-salted sea water deposits. Besides magnesium they contain other rare trace minerals which would otherwise be difficult to obtain, particularly lithium which has quite strong evidence of mellowing mood.
The liquid form leads me to believe they absorb well but not sure if that's actually true.
Edit to say I believe these drops have reduced my anxiety and improved relaxation. If nothing else I sleep better due to the mg (no more Jimmy legs).
I've personally had great success with this particular product. At the end of a long day of coding, when my brain seems "burnt out"/fuzzy, 20-30 drops of this in a glass of water has an almost-immediate and noticeable impact (most of the time).
I found CBD to provide temporary relief - I think my depression was inflammation related. The world is still dark and compressed but also comfortable, like the dark corners fill with algae and the ground with grass.
What ended up working was improving my oral posture and articulation using ortothropics and self-developed speech exercises (the important part is having designed the exercises yourself). Suddenly it's vastly easier to maintain correct spinal alignment and breathing. Depression is just an emotion again.
I supplement fish oil, gradeschool-tier mathematics and meditation, from Vigyan Bhairava Tantra.
The entire endocannabanoid system in humans is interesting. If you think about it less than 100 years ago hemp and CBD oil was in our diet. Almost like we evolved with a system for it.
Hemp is a weed and was growing prolifically all over the US until the 1920's and 1930's, when it was outlawed. Free range cattle still is a big thing but was even larger then. Most of the beef in the nation consumed hemp, and the people consumed hemp 2nd hand by eating the domestic and wild animals that grazed on this wild growing weed
It isn't hard to extrapolate that humans have been digesting the weed and cannabinoids for a long time and it is an integral part of the human system
Of course you can say humans and the plants evolved parallel and they arent related. I have no evidence to prove otherwise but typically when you see similar systems in the same ecosystem they are related.
> Hemp is a weed and was growing prolifically all over the US until the 1920's and 1930's, when it was outlawed. Free range cattle still is a big thing but was even larger then. Most of the beef in the nation consumed hemp 2nd hand by eating the domestic and wild animals that grazed on this wild growing weed
1. The link you provided states that hemp contains varying amounts of CBD, and does not claim that cattle have ever consumed any CBD.
2. Even if cattle do/did consume CBD, the link does not claim that any of that CBD is passed down to humans consuming beef--there's no evidence in that link that beef from cattle who consume CBD contains any CBD.
> It isn't hard to extrapolate that humans have been digesting the weed and cannabinoids for a long time and it is an integral part of the human system
> Of course you can say humans and the plants evolved parallel and they arent related. I have no evidence to prove otherwise but typically when you see similar systems in the same ecosystem they are related.
1. I don't buy the claim that "typically when you see similar systems in the same ecosystem they are related". Proving such a claim would require a wide survey of a bunch of ecosystems to prove a hypothesis that doesn't really build toward any theory: in short, this isn't even a good hypothesis, let alone a hypothesis which is likely to have been tested.
2. Even if we accept hypothesis 1 is true, that doesn't show what the relation is--it doesn't show that humans have been digesting cannabinoids. There's lots of evidence that cannabinoid receptors are involved in hunger and metabolism, and while I won't claim to fully understand that, I think we can agree that humans need to eat to survive, so there are some pretty clear reasons for the cannabinoid receptor system existing in humans that have nothing to do with cannabinoids originating in plants. Also, humans aren't the only species with cannabinoid systems. It's just as possible that humans or another mammal are integral parts of cannabinoid survival than the inverse.
I can certainly appreciate the romantic aesthetic of a plant coevolving with humans to expand our minds or some such, but the fact that it's such an aesthetically pleasing hypothesis should be recognized as bias, making me doubly skeptical.
2. You should post links that contain evidence for your claims, instead of links that don't.
I'm sorry to be glib here, but surely you can see the problem with telling ME to go find evidence for YOUR claims, when you can't even be bothered to find evidence for your own claims. Given that you aren't presenting any evidence for your claims, I think it's highly likely that no such evidence exists, and I'm not going to waste my time searching for evidence that likely doesn't exist.
Beating a dead horse a bit: the link you've posted still does not say that cannabinoids have ever been part of the human diet.
I strongly suspect that I've actually read more on this subject than you have, as you've failed to mention Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire, which actually explores the coevolutionary history of humans and marijuana. Although Pollan still doesn't make the claims you're making about CBD oil, he does at least survey some evidence for coevolution between humans and marijuana.
So you have read enough to see but you need some sort of proof aside from the fact humans have been using it as feed for as long as history has been recorded ?
Given the fact humans didnt even know they had the endocannabanoid system until the 90's I am not surprised there isnt technical evidence showing the correlation.
Common sense should prevail here, but you are correct... even though the cannabanoid receptors are one of the most populous receptors in the brain and folks using CBD oil have been reporting all sorts of interesting reactions to it ( I personally can tell you it relieves pain from nerve damage ). Nothing in the links I posted directly correlates anything.
Odd how the money in the cotton industry lobbied and killed the hemp industry isnt it?
Trivia ... US Constitution is written on Hemp Paper
It is true that paper, and a very large proportion of fabric, were made from hemp until William Randolph Hearst orchestrated a fear campaign about "devil weed" to create a larger market for his timber holdings.
There was quite a lot of resistance to paper made of wood. It was acidic, so turned brown and crumbled in a short time, and was generally of lower quality than hemp paper. The quality problems have been addressed, since, but wood still takes quite a lot more processing to make into useful fiber.
Can you elaborate on oral posture and articulation? I have a major snoring (apnea) and breathing issue due to dentistry mistakes (taking out teeth when I should not have as a kid) and my face caved in which compresses my breathing. This is my theory at least. I am curious because this is the first time I hear about the concepts you brought up
The most important thing is to have the tip of your tongue (almost) touching your teeth and then gradually increasing the amount of tongue-to-roof-of-mouth surface, beginning it the front - your current limit is where it blocks nasal breathing. This stimulates horizontal (forwards) bone development vs. vertical (downwards) development.
A "drill" I can recommend is writing out words a defined number of times (pick a number you like between 10 and 100), as you write also pronounce them without letting your tongue lose contact with the roof of your mouth. This may feel very unnatural at first. If you don't like the result just recycle the paper.
There's also the habit of sucking or pulling in your tongue - don't do that. I think it causes jaw clenching. If you want a fast way to get rid of that, invent metaphors for it and then watch yourself do it automatically in social interactions.
Also check out ortothropics, it's the emerging science of facial development through oral posture. They have a large collection of instructional material on YouTube.
There are basically 2 schools of thought on oral health:
1) The establishment/western orthodontics school where teeth are the root of the problem so are moved around or removed in order to achieve flatness in the face profile. Maintaining results might require wearing a retainer for life.
2) The holistic orthotropic approach where misaligned teeth are a symptom of other issues. It emphasizes myofunctional exercises (for tongue and cheek posture), osteopathic adjustment to realign skull sutures, neck posture and breathing exercises to train the body to regulate its CO2 during sleep. The results are permanent since the patient's efforts help drive bone growth in the palate and changes in the jaw joint.
I sucked my thumb until I was 9 which left me with a severe overbite, then had braces and headgear for 8 years as a child (luckily had no teeth removed) but it left my mouth too small. I am a late bloomer, probably 10 years behind my peers. I began weightlifting in my early 20s and basically have a different body type now than I did in adolescence, so my jaw grew and constricted my throat, which caused sleep apnea for at least 10 years. I've been chronically exhausted most of my adult life and didn't know why. That led to poor self image/self esteem and chronic melancholy/depression although I have never been diagnosed or taken medication for it.
I got fitted with an A.L.F. appliance about 9 months ago and the results have been nothing short of miraculous. I'd say my throat has opened by 1/4 inch or more, my skin has cleared up, my eyebrows have grown back, even my digestive issues have improved dramatically. And to top it off, I just look healthier/happier and feel more attractive in public because I used to have a gummy smile with no teeth visible at the sides and a recessed chin (which are the main causes of babyface).
For anyone reading this, I'd be very wary of orthodontic treatment that requires extractions or headgear. Get a second opinion, and opt for a Herbst device, A.L.F. or D.N.A. appliance instead. Invisiline is fine. Also look on youtube for exercises to improve your jawline, such as chin and tongue frenulum stretches. The most important exercise I've found is to keep your tongue suctioned to the roof of your mouth and learn to swallow with it up like that. The constant pressure of the tip of your tongue above your front teeth causes the nerves to stimulate bone growth to provide room for your top teeth. Then the bottom jaw conforms to the top, which can cause the bottom teeth to spread and straighten as well. But really, find a myofunctional therapist because this is only the tip of the iceberg. You can usually train with them remotely.
My theory for why this is not mainstream knowledge is that there is not as much money in a simple wire and holistic treatment/exercises as there is in orthodontics.
I hope this issue gets more attention. We're so undernourished when it comes to Magnesium. Also, closely related is Calcium. Calcium and Magnesium work closely together in the body for huge number of functions related to brain health. Of particular importance is the ratio of calcium to magnesium. A Significant portion of the population has their calcium to magnesium ratio way too high, something like 10 to 1 or higher. This is not only due to too little magnesium but also due to way too much calcium. It's not commonly known in the US (because big food companies run the USDA recommendations), but you're only supposed to get 500mg of calcium a day, not 1000mg like the USDA recommends. There are so many studies that show that 1400mg+ is approaching a danger zone. this is exacerbated by unusually low magnesium levels.
If you're looking to get more magnesium into your body, I'd recommend whole foods rather than supplements. Supplements are often not absorbed by the body. Whole foods high in magnesium include: leafy greens, nuts (especially cashews), oatmeal, whole grains, beans. and if you want to find more high nutrient foods try my nutrient based food search: https://kale.world/c (put the selector on magnesium)
The first author has a publication called "zinc lozenges as a cure for the common cold" here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19906491 and given that the author has his own "research institute" I'm highly skeptical of this guy's ability to do science. Seems like some kind of crackpot
Wow, that website has a lot of red flags. The second line alone, "this is a multi-gigabit sized site," is enough to make me doubt the info on that page. This NYT article from 1995 says he is a "city planner turned self-educated pharmacologist" so I'd be surprised if any of his "research" was properly done or reached accurate conclusions
Medical view: Magnesium is one of the most ordered tests in the hospital setting. Definitely in top 10 most places, probably top 5. Almost certainly over ordered. We have tons of data from which to draw conclusions. Not that we can assume that just because the data is there it has already been studied, but if there was a true signal there it would be very easy to study and I’d be surprised if it hadn’t been.
Very few otherwise healthy people have low magnesium levels. The reasons are usually related to severe kidney dysfunction, severe malnutrition, certain blood cancers/blood disorders, alcohol abuse (also because of malnutrition), and being on diuretics.
I was under the impression that it was really hard to detect magnesium deficiency in bloodwork, because most of it is either supposed to be in our bones or cells, so a blood test doesn't paint a complete picture of total Mg stores.
He may be a crackpot, and this book is not a well-written summary of the literature, but the idea of magnesium levels influencing depression is not a crackpot idea.
Magnesium is a cofactor for the enzymes that convert tryptophan into serotonin. Most of the body's serotonin is synthesized in the gut, where it helps control the muscles that move the bowels. (I assume this is why magnesium salts act as laxatives).
Magnesium is also implicated in other serotonin related disorders (e.g. Migraine).
FYI, The title of his paper is "Zinc lozenges as cure for the common cold – A review and hypothesis". I haven't read it, but the title seems reasonable.
" Zinc lozenges slowly dissolving in the mouth over a 20-30 min period releasing adequate iZn (18 mg) used each 2h are hypothesized to shorten common colds by 6-7 days, which is a cure for the common cold."
There is plenty of evidence that zinc has effects on the progress of rhinoviral infections. I don't know of any detailed determination why, but it seems tied up with preferential activation of certain immune system components. People who respond well to zinc treatments often report immediate dizziness after remarkably small doses, when taken as cold symptoms are emerging.
They used to sell a gel that, it turned out, caused permanent loss to sense of smell if snorted (against pkg instructions, but who read those?). Now you find lozenges, which seem to work about as well.
I can't speak for depression, but I was suffering from muscle spasms and tremors last year (both external and internal). Magnesium was suggested, I now take two a day and they have almost entirely dissipated. It certainly wouldn't surprise me that the presence or lack of such substances could have significant effects upon the brain too though I have noticed no changes in that regard.
Same thing here. last year I had an almost constant spasm in my right eyelid, after a cure of magnesium it disappeared. I did not find that it altered my mood, I just happy to be relieved from the spasm.
Needs a [2011] and some scepticism: Many people have tried Magnesium because it is cheap and available without prescription. If it were as effective as "success in 220 out of 250 cases" claims, that would show up.
The 220 of 250 claim also doesn't fit with "as effective as the tricyclic antidepressant imipramine". No antidepressant is 90% effective.
Most cheap magnesium is magnesium carbonate which is least effective and causes diarrhoea (should be taken with calcium to prevent that). Magnesium aspartate is sometimes prescribed as "working one", but can be neurotoxic (according to this paper).
Me too. I haven't tried other versions which are recommended by this paper, but I can recommend bis-glycinate. I tried carbonate and it didn't work for me. Recommended dose is 150mg/day, but I've found I need even 300mg/day (heavy cofee drinker).
I take Mg Taurate against extrasystoles and it works very well for me. I also tried Mg Citrate together with Carnitine which enhances the Mg uptake in the gut. Mg Carbonate or Oxide are hardly soluble and also basic which makes it not very digestable.
An unusual but effective way of taking magnesium is taking epsom salt (magnesium sulfate) baths. This way, the magnesium is absorbed through the skin, so one does not have to worry about possibly not absorbing it through the stomach when taking supplements orally.
The cells in our body depend on two essential minerals for normal function: Calcium and magnesium. Cells go into ON state when calcium goes in, and OFF state when calcium goes out. Calcium doesn't go out on its own: magnesium has to go in and displace the calcium. When you are low on magnesium, cells can't go into OFF state. When that happens your muscles become stiff and you need massages, and your brain can't turn off and you can't sleep.
I have some personal experiences to share - anecdotal and not that scientific.
I found it slightly helpful in my own treatment of depression. Not a miracle cure - it was suggested essentially because Proton Pump Inhibitors I am already on were known to worsen/cause it. In my case it seems to make medication a bit more effective and helped thinking a little bit. A few times when I ran out for a week or so waiting for the next bulk order to arrive it eventually caused a mild worsening of mood that went away when resumed. I don't know if I ever actually had deficiencies because needle phobia has meant avoidance such that I can only list my blood type as a question mark.
People that rely on desalinated water can become magnesium deficient. There was a study in Israel about a rise in heart attacks based on magnesium deficiency from desalination. [1] I wonder if there might be a mental health angle to this as well.
I'm a cardio addict and do 250mg liquid Citrate and 200mg of Bisglycinate before sleep. Otherwise restless legs syndrome would kick in badly during the night. Sometimes adding 1.000mg of Gaba also helps with recovery and falling asleep.
Just make sure to stay away from cheap Mg Oxide since bio-availability is somewhere in the 4% range and usually comes in Multi-anything pills.
Someone recommended magnesium to help with my migraines (turns out it was an eye imbalance), so it's been sitting in a drawer but I also have a hard time staying asleep, and am wondering if I should crack it back out. I have some stuff called "Natural Vitality" and it is magnesium carbonate 325mg, does this sound decent to you?
I've never seen Mg Carbonate in a sport supplement but I usually look for the highest bio-availability and the least laxative effect. Hence, Bisglycinate is my best choice. Usually comes in pills and rarely also (expensive) in liquid shots w/ sweeteners.
I've found that the Citrate works best for me. I don't want to quote a brand but it's a well-known brand that's found in every store in my area that sells vitamins as well as online.
If you are still experimenting .... for my RLS, it turned out that B3=Niacin is very helpful, even after onset; And also sufficient iron.
When I take iron in the morning and B3 whenever (morning/day), I don't get RLS.
And important: if you do experiment, I found that only "real" flush-causing B3 works; Not niacinamide/nicotineamide, which apparently has some of the (many) benefits of niacin, though no RLS relief (or flushing). And especially not inositol-hexanicotinate, which I have not found a single reference describing any useful property of (but still gets sold as B3).
There are two huge confounding issues here which make it impossible for me to conclude that Mg has an effect of depression based on the studies I've seen:
1. Magnesium may treat anxiety rather than depression. This is analogous to various SSRIs which arguably treat anxiety better than depression[1]. Anxiety and depression are highly comorbid, and both doctors and patients may be bad at differentiating between the symptoms, leading to "I feel better"-type reporting. This might mean that Mg supplementation is a good thing for depressed people because it treats their anxiety, not because it treats their depression. This alternative hypothesis is particularly compelling because magnesium deficiency has a variety of well-understood effects on muscle tension[2] which mimic physical symptoms of anxiety.
2. Magnesium is frequently supplemented concurrently with vitamin D, vitamin K, calcium, and zinc. All of these are known to be active in humans, and vitamin D in particular has been correlated with depression and seasonal affective disorder.
Remember that it depends what type of Magnesium you take. Not all are created equal. I recommend Doctor's Best High Absorption Magnesium. Since taking that one for many years, digestive issues massively improved with slight improvements in sleep and overall mood.
Another one that may work better for people: magnesium malate.
For some people it can be more easily absorbed than other forms, and the malic acid (which occurs naturally in apples and other fruits) can support the Kreb's cycle that produces mitochondrial energy (which is also linked to mood and general healthy functioning of the body).
I'll add my own story to the anecdata: my young daughter suffered from chronic constipation for years, nearly her whole life in fact. About two years ago I started her on magnesium supplementation, and within two days the constipation stopped. It has only returned once, on vacation when I had neglected to bring the magnesium with us.
The supplementation is simple and rudimentary. I add epsom salt to the tea that we drink as a family each morning. The dosage ends up at about 90 mg of elemental magnesium per day for her. From what I've read this is below the accepted therapeutic dose, but the I believe the cessation of her constipation is unlikely to be a coincidence.
I see lots of manganese, but you would need to be consuming truly absurd amounts of syrup for the magnesium in maple syrup to amount to much. It says it has 11% of your DV in a cup, which is also 840kcal of mostly sugar
as the other comment stated, there isn't much magnesium in maple syrup. Magnesium is not the same thing as manganese. Furthermore manganese is abundantly available in numerous foods. So much so, that it's extremely unlikely that you need more of it.
I first read about magnesium supplements in a random Hacker News comment a year ago. Taking them cured my insomnia. If anyone thinks they might benefit from Mg, I definitely encourage you to do the research.
Am I the only person that magnesium makes feel, well, dumber? Pretty much everything that's anxiolytic or GABAnergenic makes me feel dumber (along with nicely relaxed).
I just started magnesium again after a month or so off the stuff. I have the bottle right here in fact...
What I originally got it for was percieved joint pains in the morning jogging routine I had just started. I seemed to get some results but wanted to do an A/B, and while I don't have lab results to correlate, I did start noticing some joint issues again by the end. So we'll see where I stand after a week.
Tried it briefly and then quit after I realized it was causing excruciating chest pain. Would be nice to have stayed on it to realize the mood effects, but not even close to worth it for me.
> "Since 99% of Mg is intracellular, serum Mg testing of the remaining 1% found in serum will produce misleading results (Mann and Truswell, 2002) and it should not be used in future research."
Elsewhere in the article they reference testing being of "negative utility"
Considering how many diseases are caused by lack of, or an excess of specific coumpounds, they are often right. Disease does not always refer to virus/bacteria caused malaides.
I have heard folks say one of the best ways to absorb magnesium is an empsom salt bath. Not sure if there is "science" on this, but hear it is one of the great benefits of a float tank.
Just another mineral you need enough from to add to the list... It'd be useful to have permanent monitoring of your body to know which ones you have too much and too little from imho
Interesting. Maybe, eat more green leafies? Magnesium is what makes plants green (as the center atom in the organo-metallic molecule known as chlorophyll).
>Magnesium has been largely removed from processed foods, especially refined grains, in the Western world, harming the brain and causing mood disorders.
This seems to be the case with many such nutrients.
I almost wonder if the most effective solution isn't a medical approach but a medically-informed, government-led incentive program to convince food manufacturers to reintroduce the essential nutrients they strip out of food.
When the US government is in charge of feeding people healthy foods, they came up with the now defunct "Food Pyramid" and school lunch, which featured classic gems like "government cheese", "square pizza" and my favorite, mystery meat "salisbury steak"
But weren't they simply following the lead of the most widely accepted science at the time? As science has learned more the government recommendations have evolved as well, albeit perhaps not as rapidly or comprehensively as they could.
The "food pyramid" you saw plastered all over your school cafeteria was concocted and distributed by the Dairy Council, a powerful marketing organization that has succeeded in establishing taxing authority over dairies in many states. If you wonder who's paying for "eat more cheese" billboards, they are paid out of that tax. It is more of an advertising cartel than anything dairies want.
As you might expect, it is the billboard owners and poster printers who benefit most from the expenditures. The American Cancer Society, similarly, is mainly a printer of junk mail.
The free market is responsible for the biggest large-scale change in sustainable farming and organic produce, meats, and dairy we have seen so far, why not double down on that and accelerate the progress made?
If you would have told me 10 years ago that organic produce, meats, and dairy would be commonplace in a Walmart grocery store, I would have laughed, but here we are.
Conversely it is only through large government subsidies of corn and soy that we have all these cheap, non-nutritious soy and corn byproduct snacks that fill 80-90% of grocery store isles, of which the free market, driven by consumer demand for something different, has now started to penetrate even the snack isles. For example, pea snacks are all the rage now, and I see way more pea snacks, pea crisps, etc than ever before at my local chain store.
Woah woah woah, I miss rectangle pizza and 'country fried steak' (maybe decomposing cardboard and ground shoe leather?). It may not have been food but it tasted good.
Of course it tasted good! Those food additive and chemical plants in NJ can do wonders to stale, ammonia-washed meats to trick our brains into thinking what we are eating tastes good! I still indulge in some fast food pink goop chicken nuggets from time to time. With enough sugar-filled "barbecue" sauce, anything can taste good!
Heart burn meds are often Mg Oxide or sulfate, which isn't that well absorbed. [1,2] for anxiety and depression, Mg Citrate works well, as does Mg Glycinate [3]
I think it might not be absorbed as well, but often there is just a lot more magnesium in oxide than glycinate. So even though it absorbs worse more actually ends up being absorbed in the end.
Personally I've felt a more potent reaction from oxide than glycinate, possibly for that reason.
Poor man's TLDR: we're not sure yet, but consider taking magnesium supplementation to help with or prevent MD. The downside of light Mg supplementation seems trivial, and the upside could be strong.
That's why I'm taking it. I have an absorption disease (Celiac) and I was having terrible cardiac issues at 38 (and with a minor family history of heart issues at older age, but nothing like what I was having). Magnesium is one of the things it has taken to straighten it out.
If you have heart issues, you may have to try to balance magnesium and potassium. If the problem is a deficiency, this is a rather annoyingly difficult balancing act to pull off, because as per the comments in the beginning of Gwern's article about magnesium, magnesium has a very slow-moving component to it, where it depletes slowly but also only fills slowly, and a fast moving component that responds relatively quickly, and based on my experience, the heart's use of magnesium seems to be related to both. Potassium, by contrast, appears to take nearly instant effect. So you're balancing something you can't see that changes over the course of months or years against a nutritional input that is instant. This is not easy.
Several times I've settled on a dosing schedule that seemed to work for me, but had to be changed after a couple of months as the slow-pool magnesium (I hope) continued to improve. I've actually learned the difference in my body's reactions to a potassium deficiency (a tightness in the chest) vs. a magnesium deficiency (restless legs, heart that may not be "racing" but is not slowing down for sleep properly). YMMV; n=1, etc.
I have HOCM and afib and Mg and potassium helps wonder with the extrasystoles. I also take taurine against the extrasystoles in combination with Mg and K in the evening before going to bed and I can sleep much better.
Yeah, I didn't go into the whole spiel as off-topic (and this comment isn't the whole spiel, either...), but taurine for heart issues seems like something that should just be tried by almost anyone experiencing them. It has basically no overdose risk, as it's an amino acid everybody consumes anyhow, and there are many papers showing it can help. So, very cheap, basically no downside, possible significant upside, abundant scientific support. It was one of the first things I tried that had an immediate, positive effect.
Digging into this sort of thing did convince me there's a lot of truth in the idea that you can't get the medical world very interested in solutions that don't come with a patentable treatment. There's a lot of papers I've found about how much heart stuff can be treated by correcting various deficiencies, such as taurine, or magnesium & potassium, but it all seems very under-utilized by the medical community themselves.
(Incidentally, just as that abstract says, the literature suggest adding L-Arginine to your taurine may also be beneficial as they work together. If you're fine now, I wouldn't suggest rocking the boat, but if it's only 80-90% effective or something, you may want to consider adding that as there's a decent chance it could take you to 100%.)
Magnesium also promotes muscle relaxation and “calms the brain”. Here in Switzerland it’s commonly taken over-the-counter. I had never heard of it as a supplement in the US.
This smells like a crackpot. The first author’s affiliation is his own “research institute”: https://m.george-eby-research.com/ and they claim a simple, somehow overlooked solution to a difficult problem, citing flimsy and ancient studies.
I generally agree with you, but lithium is also used to treat bi-polar disorder (among others) and it was discovered by accident. People used to recommend it without any data supporting it. I suspect this is how most treatments start
Discovery by accident is normal psychiatric science. Lithium came into use to treat gout, depression being seen a a "brain gout" [1]. The first MAO inhibitor was developed to treat tuberculosis, but doctors noticed that their patients were unusually cheerful [2] - and it was only synthesized in the first place because there was a lot of hydrazine left over from the V2 rocket programme!
I'm sorry - you are wrong. John Cade found the effects - with animals - by accident. And he was widely ignored because of his lack of fundamental, industry-wide standards for exploration.
Neverless: lithium is now the way to go with clinical treatment of a wide range of disorders and reducing self-harm and suicide rates.
The problem so far: nobody is sure why it works.
The dose is worth mentioning. Clients receive a dose of 200-500mg per day. The lithium you can buy without prescription contains around 1mg. Effects are still there, but the dose on the subjects of matter are quite high and can be toxic if done wrong.
Wish we knew why it works. But it's also nice that something is accepted based on data alone. Many people in science tend to reject claims based on a lack of explanation alone. But that's the whole point - observe and then try to figure out why or how.
Psychiatrists say the difference between a dose where you start to see some effect, and the toxic dose, is often only 1:2. So experimenting with lithium is hazardous and needs careful, almost, titration.
From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_(medication)): "Cade needed soluble urate for a control. He used lithium urate, already known to be the most soluble urate compound, and observed that it caused the rodents to become tranquil."
I recognized the author from another study where he claimed that he found a cure for atrial fibrillation. So I would take it with a grain of salt. Although there is obviously an effect of Magnesium on many important body functions, but the same is true for potassium or other minerals and amino acids. e.g. tryptophan against depression.
Also the first entry in the reference section is "ABC Homeopathy (2010) Magnesia Muriatica [..]" - without any mention in the text itself that it is used as some quip.
If you are self-experimenting to figure out if X nutrient makes a difference, supplements are vastly easier to work with. Dietary changes are far, far more complex and introduce many confounding factors.
If you establish that, yea, verily, magnesium helps, dietary changes to make sure you get enough magnesium can make sense.
I used to take about $300/month worth of supplements of various sorts. I no longer do so and haven't for years. I just note that "Based on x, I need more of thus and such." and tailor my diet to get what I need.
You seem to be extrapolating that since refined grains do not contain Mg, no foods do. This is not the case. OP can eat other foods instead of processed grains to obtain Mg.
"Dietary magnesium intake has steadily declined over the preceding century, due to...(b) making dietary choices low in magnesium-rich foods such as whole grains, rice and wheat bran, nuts, seeds, chocolate, peanuts, peanut butter and green leafy vegetables..."
If the root cause is insufficient dietary magnesium -- due to poor dietary choices -- eating foods that are rich in magnesium, and cutting out refined foods, might be a good start. It would have other benefits, too.
I don't like to see people taking tons of supplements whilst eating poorly.
I don't get it, why do I so regularly see these random solutions to depression on the homepage? Are startup founders really depressed or something? Is there a rash of suicides in this community? I don't get it.
Overwhelmingly, normal-ass anti-anxiety, SSRs, and therapy is to be the best form of treatment. Pumping your body full of magnesium is a hack that falls in to the bucket of exercise or sleeping more.
If you're scared about going to the doctor and getting prescribed, that's one thing. But mainlining crushed up magnesium vitamins to fix your depression is a complete lack of understanding of depression.
Magnesium is not treatment. Mushrooms and Ketamine is not treatment. Get actual treatment.
Somatopsychic medical effects are very real. I've gotten very good results with addressing nutritional deficiencies as a first line of defense for issues that often present as mood or mental health issues.
But I don't think you can reasonably conclude that magnesium deficiency is The explanation for increased prevalence of depression in a world that has had so many profound changes.
Things are more crowded. Most people now live in cities instead of rural environments. Among other things, this means people are subjected to much noisier conditions.
We have far, far better information about the world than we used to. The 24/7 news cycle is incredibly stressful, if only because most "news" is bad news.
There are just so very many confounding factors, no, you can't reasonably conclude that this one singular factor is the sole explanation or primary explanation. That's ridiculous.