Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 10:58 am
hi robbie, there's *supposed* to be some truth to that thinking, but we never check with bloodwork whether our personal ideas of healthy eating are resulting in the optimal situations in our body.
even something as simple as pop, artificial sweetener, or coffee can strip out nutrients, especially in combination with stress.
you would think all of us here should be pretty conscious of dietary issues and our health, and yet magnesium is making a big difference for some.
in fact magnesium, even with its absorption problems, is way out in front in terms of anecdotal reports back to me from a bunch of healthy eaters, ms patients and otherwise, on its effects from constipation to spasticity to insomnia to motility to twitching to pain, it just goes on and on and on. some take it for one thing and find it's helping in other ways they didn't anticipate. so good dietary habits are clearly not cutting it for this nutrient in particular.
strangely, magnesium is not a good thing to test for in blood. your bloodwork will always look pretty good as regards mg, but it's the tissues and their functions that suffer when stores are down.
nutrition indicators you could look for in some baseline bloodwork might include:
D:
-vitamin d3 (specifically, 25-hydroxycholecalciferol - NOT 1,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol)
aim for 100 nmol/L +
they'll tell you something in the 70s is fine, don't buy in
B-complex:
-b12 (serum cobalamin)
keep it upwards of 500 for optimal neurol function. current indicators of deficiency are hematologic not neurologic. this is another case where many times for MS patients "normal"=BAD - not to mention alzheimer's patients, psychiatric patients, etc etc etc
-RBC folate (b9 that is; you just run that too when you run a cobalamin test)
-b1 (thiamine)
-b2 (riboflavin)
-b3 (niacin)
-b5 (pantothenic acid)
-b6 (pyridoxine)
uric acid
another normal=bad scenario. normal range: 140-340. ms average: 194. healthy controls: 290. take your pick!
zinc (and copper)
again, normal=bad. reference range 11.5 - 18.5
not a big sample size, but these are on average lower in zinc (and copper) than controls. only some of these male ms patients would actually get a "deficient" result for zinc. it was basically the same for trend for girls. the lowest zinc value in a girl in that study was 10. mine came back 8.6 originally, so i would have been a serious bottom-end outlier in this study!
that is probably more than enough testing to start off with. perhaps just pick one to begin, so you can suss out the vibe with your doc and the test ordering thing?
i probably wouldn't bother testing magnesium, except by taking some to see what it did, if anything. i don't know what the best test for magnesium status is, but if you have to assess levels in tissue, well that sounds a bit less pleasant than getting some blood drawn!!
even something as simple as pop, artificial sweetener, or coffee can strip out nutrients, especially in combination with stress.
you would think all of us here should be pretty conscious of dietary issues and our health, and yet magnesium is making a big difference for some.
in fact magnesium, even with its absorption problems, is way out in front in terms of anecdotal reports back to me from a bunch of healthy eaters, ms patients and otherwise, on its effects from constipation to spasticity to insomnia to motility to twitching to pain, it just goes on and on and on. some take it for one thing and find it's helping in other ways they didn't anticipate. so good dietary habits are clearly not cutting it for this nutrient in particular.
strangely, magnesium is not a good thing to test for in blood. your bloodwork will always look pretty good as regards mg, but it's the tissues and their functions that suffer when stores are down.
nutrition indicators you could look for in some baseline bloodwork might include:
D:
-vitamin d3 (specifically, 25-hydroxycholecalciferol - NOT 1,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol)
aim for 100 nmol/L +
they'll tell you something in the 70s is fine, don't buy in
B-complex:
-b12 (serum cobalamin)
keep it upwards of 500 for optimal neurol function. current indicators of deficiency are hematologic not neurologic. this is another case where many times for MS patients "normal"=BAD - not to mention alzheimer's patients, psychiatric patients, etc etc etc
-RBC folate (b9 that is; you just run that too when you run a cobalamin test)
-b1 (thiamine)
-b2 (riboflavin)
-b3 (niacin)
-b5 (pantothenic acid)
-b6 (pyridoxine)
uric acid
another normal=bad scenario. normal range: 140-340. ms average: 194. healthy controls: 290. take your pick!
zinc (and copper)
again, normal=bad. reference range 11.5 - 18.5
Code: Select all
Males(n=21)
MS Ctrls
Zn(µmol/l) 13.0±1.9 14.8±1.6
Cu(µmol/l) 14.7±3.7 15.3±1.6
that is probably more than enough testing to start off with. perhaps just pick one to begin, so you can suss out the vibe with your doc and the test ordering thing?
i probably wouldn't bother testing magnesium, except by taking some to see what it did, if anything. i don't know what the best test for magnesium status is, but if you have to assess levels in tissue, well that sounds a bit less pleasant than getting some blood drawn!!
