This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Knowledge & Support Community

okay well you have a series of possible next steps identified above, revisited here with a few others rolled in:

1. consider pursuing health as energetically as dx/rx options
2. request referral to dietitian
3. post link to your mag product details
4. clarify timing and combinations for your daily 250mg mag dose
5. order serum mag test via life extension or similar
6. google daily mag requirements for your age and gender
7. do the math: kg body weight x 7mg magnesium. kg body weight x 10mg magnesium. provides range of daily needs when stressed or otherwise subject to mag depleting factors
8. keep and post (or file for review by dietitian) a diet diary for three days, documenting food and fluids portions, plus any meds and supplements.

these are numbered for reference purposes only, not priority per se. pick the easiest ones first. worst case scenario, you gain complete confidence that your mag status is perfect and has nothing to do with your condition.

Okay according to the math I should take at least two instead of one. There is really nothing to know about it other than the name and strength. That is all that is on the bottle besides saying that it is equal to 67%.
http://www.naturemade.com/minerals/magn ... sium-oxide
The 250mg tablet. I take it every morning when I wake up. Sometimes like today that was around 4am. Once again any magnesium blood work regardless of who does it is not reliable the only exact measurement is in a tissue sample. 420 mg is what I found that the internet says I should be taking. But you think all this is magnesium related?

My Problems as I think they relate:

Nerve Pain
Migraines
Chronic Pain
Neuropathy
Muscular Skelton Problems
Ataxia
Numbness, Loss of Sensation
Twitches, Shakes, Jerks, Involuntary Movements
Memory Loss, Loss for/of Common Words
Depression, Bi-Polar, Personality Disorder, PTSD
Fatigued, Tired
Worsening Vision
Hearing Loss
Bladder Problems
Feet get Hot

ok on the surface, going for 500mg rather than 250mg sounds like a better choice than the generally recommended 420mg for your age and gender.

note that standard daily recommendations like 420mg for mag in particular are considered flawed according to docs generated by the world health organization. they're associated with preventing outright deficiency, but we know that the bar for serum mag adequacy is far too low.

sadly, magnesium oxide (the form you've been taking) is what i'd consider to be the worst option, unless you need a laxative. relatively poor for absorption into tissue. if you bump up to 500 in one day, you may be fine but you may also want to stay close to a toilet.

overall, you want to divide up your daily intake. take mag on an empty stomach and follow with food after a few mins to drive it out of your stomach and into the upper intestine for max absorption into tissue.

as for form, find magnesium glycinate if you can. magnesium BISglycinate is more readily available in my xp, but i don't like it personally. backup option (but still carrying risk of laxative action): magnesium citrate.

once again, magnesium bloodwork is reliable. tissue samples are not necessary.

i suspect that your serum levels are low normal at best. the fact that the result will not necessarily be outright 'deficient' according to problematic reference range definitions currently in use, is the reason some health care professionals insist the serum test is not useful.

if serum mag was such a useless test, it would not be used ad nauseum in the scientific literature to distinguish between chronic disease and healthy states.

check out user zyklon's ongoing xp, in the pages of his 'hello' topic. he's working on finding the balance between daily mag in context of high daily vit d3 intake.

also potentially of interest, user THX1168's ongoing issues with mag absorption via oral supplement. stubbornly low serum mag levels. transdermal and IV are the options that have worked best to date.

most of your symptoms listed above have strong links to mag status. put each one into google scholar alongside the word magnesium and see what you find.
i just did so for ataxia. this case study came up #1 even though i was out in normal web search and not in scholar:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22735253

more stupid researchers using serum magnesium:

An Analysis of Hypermagnesemia and Hypomagnesemia
free full text https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/in ... 4_368/_pdf

"The most frequent clinical finding in patients with hypomagnesemia was personality change (32.7%), followed by depression and tachycardia (22.4%), stupor (20.4%), convulsion, nausea and vomiting, and anorexia (14.3% each), dementia and hallucination, disorientation, tremor, abdominal pain,sweating, numbness, and malaise (10.2% each), articulation disorders, diarrhea, constipation, and ataxia (8.2% each), muscle weakness and dizziness (6.1%), muscle pain and muscular rigidity (4.1%), and muscle twitch and increased tendon reflex, sensory disturbances, nystagmus, athetosis, and facial flushing (2%)"

i hope, when i have time to dig in on this study further, is that they've run an analysis on the prevalence of these symptoms within the normomagnesemic subjects. since they've used a cutoff of 1.8 mg/dl to define hypomagnesemia, they've missed an entire group of potential study subjects whose levels were low normal ig 1.8 - 2.3 mg/dl. i generally suggest ppl aim for 2.3-2.7 mg/dl as a starting point.

But I had started the magnesium about two months ago even with the oxide there would be some sort of absorption even a small amount should get in me. But my symptoms are getting worse not even a hint anywhere of a minimal improvement in any of my problems.

There are many conditions, some medications, vitamin/mineral deficiencies and mental health disorders that can cause similar symptoms as those seen in MS. There is no symptom exclusive to MS and all other possible causes for a person's symptoms must be ruled out per the McDonald Criteria. Migraines can and do cause brain lesions as do many other things. Simply having brain lesions does not rule MS in.

Allodynia
Allodynia is a particularly painful sensation as a response to a normally innocuous stimulus such as a light touch, bed sheets, or clothes. It is usually short-lived, and last only as long as the stimulus remains.

Allodynia can have many different causes including migraines: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articl ... sk-factors

LHermitte’s Sign
LHermitte’s (also spelled l’Hermitte’s)Sign is a sudden brief, stabbing, electric-shock-like sensation that runs from the back of the head down the spine and goes into arms or legs. It is triggered by bending the neck forward, often after a cough or sneeze.

Lhermittes' sign is not exclusive to MS. When related to MS it is caused by lesions on the cervical spine, Brain lesions do not cause Lhermitte's sign. Lhermitte's sign is when you bend your head down and have abnormal sensations (buzzing/vibrations/tingling, electrical shock). These sensations will only last seconds but can be repeated each time the head is bent downward.

i'm glad i personally was not attached to any perceived merits of my existing long-term low-dose low-quality supplemental mag intake, when the pharmacist told me to change my ways. yes, it took years to build tissue stores back up, but i'm glad i did the work vs dying like i'd expected to when my deficiency symptoms were at their worst (and when serum mag was low normal vs outright deficient)

you may at some point luck out and be given a script for a pharma product that increases serum magnesium, and get the benefit of a mid to high normal range serum level as a side effect. if that does happen, will probably be a more expensive and less broadly beneficial route than increasing nutrient density in diet and paying for quality supplements, but to each their own

good luck with everything, ttfn.

I will keep all this in mind. In the meanwhile the more I posted about this, the more I became convinced that the MRI, first neurologist and my family doctor are more than likely correct about this having first hand knowledge of me. So as my desperation for something to work has grown, I am going to at least give the Betaseron a try as it was not IV magnesium that stopped the last attack from hitting it's worse. But either the steroid or the Toradol worked for me.

If you go to this page and look at the second image down I really believe this to be me. I had thought that my legs hurting the way they do was lower back pain.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-con ... c-20350269

MnRdunck wrote:I take 250mg of magnesium daily already so I am not sure, is that enough? My doctor had told me that there is actually no reliable blood test for magnesium the only way to really test is tissue samples and I am a little reluctant to give one. I have also been on 500mg of B12 for quite awhile as well.

I hope that you really meant to write micrograms, i.e., µg or mcg. 500 mg would be a HUGE amount of B12. 500 µg is the equivalent of 0.5 mg. I once tried taking 20 mg B12/day, but had to stop after a week as it altered my emotional balance in negative ways.

MnRdunck wrote:My Problems as I think they relate:
Depression, Bi-Polar, Personality Disorder, PTSD

Do you take medications for your mental health problems? Do you see a Psychiatrist and/or Psychtherapist?

I had been seeing a psychiatrist but am in between doctors so my family doctor prescribes the meds. Here is more of what happened in late 2015 early 2016 the neurologist that I had been seeing for my back based on my exams starts to think that I have MS. So much so that he orders an MRI of my brain. It comes back time and space yaddi yadda MS, and that is the diagnosis he makes. He had told me he did that based on exams and the MRI was just a confirmation. Deciding that this was just something that I did not believe as I did not want it to be true I stop seeing him. The diagnosis was in April 2016. So now on October 8th 2017 this neurological attack begins. It goes on the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th. Being completely gone on the 13th. So during this attack the pain in my lower back is amplified to where I think I will no longer walk, I call him and set up an appointment. The soonest I could be seen was November 1st. He tells me again that I have MS. After that appointment on the 8th it starts up again, I call the neurologist he tells me to go to the ER. They admit me and treat me for MS, IV steroids a high dose. The neurologist who had seen me in the hospital thinks it could be a migraine basing it on the fact that he has never heard of anyone who did not show MS on a spinal tap having it. When asked by the treating doctor if he thinks the lesions are caused by migraines he never really answers is what I am told. So now toradol is added but because of how much steroids they had been giving me they can not just stop them they have to taper. That was the second day. That night around 3am the next day it breaks. I now believe as my neurologist does that it was the steroids not the toradol that did it. So now I see the neurologist again on the 15th between seeing him and talking to him on the phone he decides that it probably was a headache but a secondary headache caused by the MS, not the sort of thing that the other neurologist thought. It was not what is known as a primary headache. Secondaries are the worst kind, as they have an underlying cause. And that because of the timing of the attacks and how long they go for that it is RRMS. He also decides that this neurological disease means that I get neurological attacks. That is just me. And as far as not having MS because the spinal tap did not show it is utter BS:

https://www.nationalmssociety.org/Sympt ... luid-(CSF)

The MS Society says between 5 and 10% will test negative and still have it. And that is where I am. This is not something that I really want to have to have. If it was I would have accepted this thing in April of 2016. The first attack was so utterly horrible and traumatic that it has done something to me. I am no longer the same person. Words can not describe it or even put into perspective how it felt. I am so terrified of these things and now I will have them the rest of my life. With the best I can hope for is maybe they won't be as often and maybe they won't be so bad. The first was so bad and painful that I almost killed myself. It was my intent to do so. I wasn't sad or depressed I was in that much pain pure quality of life issue. The amplification of the chronic pain is only the chronic pain along my spine. It does not bother with my left shoulder. That thing has had four separate unsuccessful surgeries. Leaving it constant pain and with no deltoid. Kind of goes shoulder bone, skin, outside. No muscle or tissue in between the shoulder bone and the skin.

it's scary at first, but you're right - the doc saying negative lp is not consistent = no ms is not (as with every. single. test. associated with ms) universally the case. also, migraine is an understood associate of ms.

docs are not all knowing and that is ok. no doc ever tested my serum mag unless i requested it. but i got it tested worked on it, got better. there are so many questions to be answered, so many things you can work on. yes scary, but the learning curve is a wild ride. msdx taught me how to pursue health in a way i had never understood prior.