Magnesium
by William Campbell Douglass, MD
In spite of the extraordinary advances in medicine in the past 40 years, those advances don't always translate into improved treatment for the patient. It's mysterious and difficult to explain. It would be easy to blame it all on what I call the medical-industrial complex, a collusion between the drug companies and organized medicine that leaves doctors with choices between drugs rather than a choice between a drug and something else. To the average doctor there simply isn't any alternative.
The medical-industrial complex is certainly a large part of the problem, but there are other factors. Resistance to change is part of it and sometimes things just get overlooked because there is such a mountain of information continually thrown at doctors.
Magnesium is a case in point of a lifesaving, simple and inexpensive remedy that has been known for 10 years or longer to save lives during the critical first few hours following a heart attack. Yet few emergency centers, even in the universities, give the incoming heart attack victim magnesium.
I had an opportunity to witness this recently at a leading medical school. A doctor friend had a heart attack at dinner. We rushed him to the university center. I was with him for over an hour during which time he received no definitive treatment. A little magnesium would have done no harm and would almost certainly have prevented the convulsion he had due to a heart beat irregularity called ventricular fibrillation. He had to have immediate electric shock to his heart and almost died.
The doctor survived but still doesn't take a magnesium supplement, nor was one suggested! How can something so simple and effective be overlooked? Every doctor knows about the dangers of potassium deficiency, but few recognize that almost half of patients with a potassium state often can't be easily corrected unless magnesium is also given.
By remarkable coincidence, while writing this article I received 'hot off the press' the 1989 Compendium of Drug Therapy. If I'd had to pay for this huge hardback I would have been out at least 50 bucks. But those friendly drug companies got together and paid for it for every doctor in the United States. Although intravenous magnesium is the drug of choice at the onset of a heart attack, it is not mentioned in the section on arrhythmia's (or anywhere else).
We used to think that only alcoholics got magnesium deficiency. Then doctors started using diuretics (water pills). Like most drug therapy, it got out of hand and now in many intensive care units one in five patients test magnesium deficient. In university hospitals routine testing of the general hospital population reveals that 11 percent of all patients are deficient in magnesium.
That's terrible.
The doctor's water pills aren't the only way you can get a magnesium deficiency; too much alcohol, diarrhea, too many laxatives and some antibiotics, to name a few.
A peculiar thing about magnesium: there's no "specific appetite" for it. Most mineral deficiencies stimulate and appetite for that particular mineral (1). A sodium deficiency for instance, will cause an animal to go to extraordinary length in the wild to find sodium-containing foods or a salt lick. Animals with a phosphate deficiency will chew bones until the deficit is corrected, but an animal with a magnesium deficit will avoid magnesium-containing solutions despite the deficiency.
The average American consumes only 40 percent of the recommended daily allowance of magnesium. This has serious consequences, including death, in many people, according to magnesium expert Dr. Mildred Seelig. Eighty to 90 percent of the U.S. population is magnesium deficient, Seelig says.
There's a magnesium-cholesterol connection. Rabbits just can't take a high cholesterol diet. Their blood fats go up and they get severe atherosclerosis. But if you feed them 5 times the recommended daily allowance of magnesium their cholesterol goes down and they don't get atherosclerosis.
One of the major causes of magnesium deficiency is carbonated soft drinks. The phosphate in these drinks bind up the magnesium into magnesium phosphate which isn't absorbed.
Recent studies have shown that magnesium deficiency is found in 25 percent of eating disorders such as obesity and anorexia nervosa. Symptoms such as weakness, leg cramps, anxiety and confusion will often clear up with magnesium therapy.
Magnesium is found in a lot of foods such as seafood, cereals and green vegetables, but it's hard to get enough for some reason.
Dr. Kenneth Weaver, another expert on magnesium, said at the recent Conference on Trace Substances in St. Louis: "if I were to name just one thing I'd supplement everybody with it would probably be magnesium."
Heart palpitation, "flutters" or racing heart, called Arrhythmia's in the trade, usually clear quite dramatically on 500 mg of magnesium citrate (orotate or aspartate) once or twice daily. If you go to a cardiologist with this problem, you will usually spend a lot of money on EKG's blood tests and ultrasound studies to rule out the current pop diagnosis of mitral valve prolapse (MVP). Whether he finds MVP or not he will probably prescribe a drug called Inderol that will make you feel worse.
Try magnesium once or twice daily before going to a doctor. It won't hurt you and it may partially or completely stop your arrhythmia.
1. Denton, The Hunger of Salt, Berlin, Springer-Verlag, 1984
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