hey there. not sure if it is captured in your links above LC but i think carolyn dean connected the societal d3 problem itself to low mag. certainly those who have higher sun exposure but low mag, also have lower d3 than expected. that's documented in a few different studies. a fave read re magnesium:
http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_hea ... 563550/en/
there's also that bit in the literature about night shift nurses being at higher risk of ms, specifically due to reduced exposure to sunlight. then there's the latitude effect etc etc.
now for stress. your body excretes magnesium when stressed whether emotional, or physical (from exercise to injury to surgery). this is easy to verify in the literature but for convenience here's one link
http://www.jle.com/fr/revues/mrh/e-docs ... icle.phtml
stress is just one thing that can impair magnesium status. you can also be taking in things that might mess with your magnesium status (and other essential nutrients). some of these include certain medications (eg PPIs), d3 (bummer), alcohol, coffee, and/or improperly processed phytates (which is why my preferred bread is made from sprouted grains) to name a few.
depending on lifestyle, you need about 300-400mg a day to maintain mag status. more if you are trying to increase stores. it's more complicated when supplementing d3.
taking d3 is a drain on your body's mag resources. for anyone taking d3 daily, some mag should be taken with the d3, and some at another time of day to allow your body's other processes access to the mag input. if taking supplemental d3 50,000 once weekly, you should have no problem balancing out the impact on magnesium absorption.
besides minimizing the stresses and antinutrients described above so that you can benefit properly from mag intake, food and good quality water are your next best bet. unfortunately if you're on city water, the magnesium is removed so that the pipes don't crust up with mineral deposits. see WHO link above for full discussion re magnesium and drinking water. to get the most magnesium from food depends to a large extent on preparation and serving sizes. dark leafy greens like spinach and chard are great, but you need to eat a full cup serving of *boiled* greens to get a solid 150mg magnesium input. lots of people will say 'oh i eat spinach' and figure that should be fine, but they don't do the math. you have to keep greens and/or other high mag foods on the daily agenda to keep up with day to day requirements. with chard you boil for 3 mins then drain (have to get the oxalic acid out) and for spinach it's a 1 min boil. one of my personal little magnesium maintenance practices is prepping greens per the above, then freezing them in a cookie sheet, then cutting them into blocks so i can add them to recipes, into sauces, soups, etc. i have ziploc bags of little blocks of spinach and chard in the top drawer in my freezer as we speak, and use them pretty much daily. a quarter cup serving of sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds or cashews can represent about a third to a half of your daily requirement. top mag food details:
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tnam ... #foodchart
i confess i am not up to snuff when it comes to phytate/antinutrient mitigation via soaking of grains etc. i don't eat a ton of grain anyway, and all this stuff is a process right, can't take all the steps at once. more info here
http://wholelifestylenutrition.com/heal ... pare-them/
i don't have time to dig up any science related to the phytate/food prep debate right now. i feel like if i had previously found anything major, i would likely be taking more action in this dept now.
more about non-food sources: you can also absorb magnesium through the skin. epsom salts baths are an option. they say magnesium chloride flakes are more biologically appropriate than mag sulfate crystals. i have no science at my fingertips to back that particular nuance up, and should be working on my thesis right now not procrasinating :S you can also make a high potency solution of epsom salts (or alternative) and water, and apply topically.
as for oral supplements, not all are created equal. that is kind of an understatement. they are very very very different. at first i just went with what i could find easily (mag oxide) and regretted it. sure mag oxide is fine as a laxative, as LC noted above. but for absorption you need a higher quality product.
if you take too much mag oxide, you will know as you race for the nearest bathroom facility.
if you take too much mag glycinate, you could feel a sluggishness in your muscles.
you can also mistime mag intake. i learned the hard way not to take highly absorbable mag bisglycinate on an empty stomach at bed time. (which had been fine using mag citrate). it gave me an awful cough (to the point of dry heaves) which deprived me of sleep and i suffered for a year before making the connection.
ultimately i settled on magnesium glycinate. one powder capsule delivers 180mg. because my diet is reasonably good and my antinutrient habits negligible, i don't need to take this daily.
so backing out of the weeds a bit, overall, i personally think how these widespread nutritional issues play out in individuals depend to various degrees on genetics, maternal nutritional status
http://www.who.int/nutrition/publicatio ... isease.pdf , and how different lifestyle factors (such as diet, activity levels, and so on) either mitigate or exacerbate risk. k back to thesis i go.
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