Magnesium: One of the Core 4 Essential Supplements Every Body Needs

Brian Strickland  00:07

Hey, everyone, welcome back to Nutrition Made Simple a video series that we created that takes common or even complex ideas surrounding your health. And we break them down into natural easy to understand and actionable steps that pretty much anyone can take. Now this month, we've been talking about our core four supplements. And in case you've missed the previous episodes, our core four supplements are a multivitamin, an omega three, a greens powder with probiotics. And lastly on the list and what we're talking about today, magnesium. I am joined again today by Ed Jones, the owner, founder of Nutrition World. And if you've walked into our store, or pretty much any supplement store, it's likely that you've seen magnesium, but you've seen it marketed as like a calming supplement or a sleep aid. And while that's true, and it's really good for that, it's actually responsible for over 300 biochemical functions within our body. And that is exactly why we've included it into our core four supplements. So to start us off, let's talk about what magnesium is. And if you can answer that question for us. And then what are the sources of magnesium? And why aren't people getting enough?

Ed Jones  01:23

Great questions. And one of the most, I think, unknown pieces to this puzzle of how do we age gracefully? How do we stay resilient and optimal in our life, despite the decades coming on? Well, there's many reasons that happened that we fall apart. And that's why we talk about the core four that is the foundational basis for supporting our body, our immune system, our longevity, and magnesium is a mineral number one. So it's not a vitamin, it's not a fatty acid. It's something I guess we could say mineral something from the earth that is can be mined. And it could I don't use the word gravel, but it's like from the earth. And there's all different kinds of magnesium. And most people do not take the correct kind and you're exactly right. 300 processes within the body rely on magnesiu. Kinda like your car relies on gas to run and we know what happens when you run out of gas. Well, one of the issues is we don't eat the correct foods. Some of the foods that contain this, my number one most favorite food, avocados contain a huge amount spinach quinoa, some nuts. Yogurt can contain some. Most processed foods and junk food doesn't. And one of the issues in this country is the imbalance between calcium and magnesium. Calcium most people get about this much. And magnesium we get about this much. Why is that important? Because what happens when we don't get enough magnesium and sometimes they actually get too much calcium is the calcium goes to places that it shouldn't. We don't excrete calcium, like you would vitamin C. It actually sticks around a long time. And you know what in the bones, we want it, but we don't want it in our kidneys, in our liver, our arteries, our plaque, our brain, we don't want excessive levels of calcium. The only way to slow that down is to do magnesium. Nature has put this perfect balance together between these balancing nutrients. So calcium is important. Magnesium is important, but they work together like a symphony. And so when you don't have enough, you're going to start accumulating calcium, and you're going to start turning to a rock statue about 10 to 15 years earlier than you would have otherwise.

Brian Strickland  03:47

Yeah. And you seen really the bulk of people are deficient in magnesium, right?

Ed Jones  03:53

The bulk of people are at least modestly deficient in magnesium. Blood testing is not extremely accurate for determining this but just hearing what people eat is very obvious. And again, even if you do enough magnesium in your diet, if you're calcium rich too much, it's still not enough magnesium because it's not balancing it.

Brian Strickland  04:14

So with deficiency in mind, now it's not a for sure option, but what are some of the general symptoms that people might see if they're deficient?

Ed Jones  04:24

Well, one is if people have chronic kidney stones. Well guess what kidney stones are made of calcium oxalate most of the time. Well, we just talked about it magnesium helps to prevent the formation of calcium. Well kidney stones a calcium formation, crystal. Everything from aches and pains to migraine headaches is humongously studied for lacks of magnesium. Muscle cramps, people always think potassium is rarely potassium unless you're on a diuretic or you're sweating excessively. Magnesium is far more the reason and so there's so many varied symptoms. Insomnia, anxiety, when you're really low in magnesium, you're kind of like this because it's a calming mineral, believe it or not breathing. Sometimes difficulties like shortness of breath, if it's due to constructiveness of the bronchioles. Well, again, I just said magnesium relaxes things, calcium constricts them. Too much calcium, you're too constricted. And with magnesium, it relaxes it. So you have that balance. Again, so much of health and nutrition is about balance. And it's just plain hard to do it sometimes unless you kind of know what you're doing.

Brian Strickland  05:34

Yeah. So let's get into one of the more confusing parts about magnesium is that there are probably seven or eight different forms really, that are popular, or that we would even have in our shelves. So let's talk about what we need to look for as far as forms and addressing maybe particular health issues and then what to stay away from.

Ed Jones  05:56

You know, it's a lot easier for me to say, probably what to stay away from because magnesium oxide, is the most commonly sold magnesium anywhere. I don't care where you go, most of the time, it's going to say magnesium oxide. Guess what? That's awesome. If you need to maintain regularity, because oxide doesn't absorb well, so it stays in the gut, it tends to absorb moisture. So that helps sometimes people who have irregular movements, because it's helping to build more moisture. And that's fine, if that's what you want. But if you want it for brain health, heart health, and all the other health, you're going to need something that actually gets out of the colon and gets into the body parts. So my first recommendation is for the overall health just don't buy oxide. But there are superior forms like this one here that we're offering, and many of them that are made from fancy words like glycinate, and even chelates. And, you know, this one hears, you know, got bisglycinate. And other forms we have every kind there is. But the main thing is if you stay away from oxide, you're probably gonna get some results. There is one special form called magnesium threonate that does only one thing. It's the one of the few minerals that pass the brain barrier, we have this barrier like here, that's a filter, it won't let almost anything in the brain. But it less is special magnesium in. Studies are pretty clear that it may help memory and certainly help prevent decline of memory with age. So I personally take this particular magnesium with a little bit of magnesium threonate just for the mental status.

Brian Strickland  07:34

Now let's go. I didn't know you took both of them. Yeah. So just for general information. I know you mentioned chelate, can you give just a general definition of what a chelate is, and why it's important?

Ed Jones  07:45

When you see these fancy words that say the word chelate. Chelate actually means I think in Latin claw. And so what is done is taken a piece of mineral like magnesium could be any mineral, it could be zinc and calcium, well, those things aren't super easy for us to absorb. But if you connect them with something that's like a carrier or a claw, then it will help pull that into the human body. And it just aids absorption. There's no downside to it, it costs a couple dollars more, but that's the way it works. You could literally go out probably in your yard and if you dug down and found some rock, you could probably ground it up and have some magnesium in that rock, but you're not going to get absorption because there's nothing to help carry it. So chelate carries it more into the body. 

Brian Strickland  08:30

Cool. Well, thanks. Yeah, so this particular magnesium is an offering by Nutrabio, it does have two, two or three different forms of magnesium, let me check. So it does have di magnesium malate. And then it does have magnesium bisglycinate which is another chelate. So it's covering your bases, you're getting a couple different forms, which is good, it is a highly absorbable form. And this serving is two capsules and that's going to give you 200 milligrams of magnesium every day. So can you do more if you wanted to? Or is it necessary to do more?

Ed Jones  09:10

You know, a lot of nutrition is individualizing the plan based on what you eat your health, your age, however, I honestly believe that we should shoot for 400 milligrams per day, minimum and maybe even go higher because sometimes when you have people with heart arrhythmias, extra amounts of magnesium can help balance that heart arrhythmia and bring it back into balance. So I've seen it work at 600 milligrams where it didn't work at 200. Again, if you have medical conditions, check with your doctor. But I really think you should shoot for 400 milligrams of a good magnesium that's not causing loose stools. If you get a loose stool, you just cut back on the dose.

Brian Strickland  09:49

Right. So this is capsules if you're tired of pills, we do have powders that you can mix with water that are they tastes pretty good actually. It's great for evening if you're wanting something to try to help calm down. And of course you have bath salts, you have a ton of different magnesium products that are really great. You're not going to get the absorption with something like that, that you would with a powder or capsule, but it can definitely help relax and calm those muscles. So, hey, we hope this was helpful. This is our last product on our core four. So be sure to check out our website, be sure to check out the core four products. We are offering an auto ship now. So you can have the core four products delivered to your door each and every month for one low price. So you can look at that on our website. Thank you so much, everyone. We hope this was helpful and we'll see you next time.

Ed Jones  10:39

Thank you so much.