WHY YOU MUST KNOW YOUR BODY’S MAGNESIUM STATUS AND HOW YOU CAN EASILY DO SO
by Morley M. Robbins aka “Magnesium Man”
Before beginning a road trip in your car, would you set out without first checking to see if you had enough gas in your tank to get you to your destination? Of course not!
Unfortunately, when it comes to our health, the vast majority of people, including most doctors and other health practitioners, fail to consider how much “gas” (energy) is in their patients’ “tank” (cells, tissues and organs, most especially the heart!).
As I explained in the first installment of this Magnesium Primer [add link to part 1], Maggie is essential for the production of ATP, your body’s main source of energy, or fuel. Simply put:
Lack of energy = lack of ATP… Lack of ATP = lack of Maggie!
Sadly, this formula applies to nearly all people today because of how widespread and chronically pervasive Magnesium deficiencies are. And the fact that the medical profession continues to ignore the direct link between Mg deficiency and chronic fatigue and disease is one of the primary reasons why our nation is in the midst of such a dire health crisis. By failing to check their patients’ Magnesium status, they deprive patients of knowing whether they have the fuel they need to meet all of their body’s energy requirements as they continue their journey through life.
Fortunately, you don’t have to rely on your doctor to determine if you need to add more Maggie to your daily life. Here are a few tips and methods you can use to find out.
Honest Self-Evaluation
Answer the following questions honestly.
- Do you frequently experience stress?
- Do you have trouble sleeping?
- Do your frequently find that you are tired?
- Do you regularly eat sweets and/or consume simple (white) carbs (breads, pasta, white rice, etc)?
- Do you daily consume coffee, caffeinated teas or other caffeine drinks?
- Do you drink alcoholic beverages?
- Do you take calcium supplements either without Maggie or with Maggie in a less than 1:1 ratio?
- Do you use prescription drugs, diuretics or birth control pills?
- Do you suffer from diabetes?
- Are you 40 or older?
- Have you recently been hospitalized or have you had surgery?
If you answered Yes to any of the above questions, you need more Magnesium. And the more Yes answers you gave, the more Maggie you need.
Common Indications of Magnesium Deficiency
Another easy and effective way to determine if you need more Maggie is to pay attention to how you feel, as well as to any symptoms you may be experiencing.
What follows is a checklist of some of the most common symptoms related to Magnesium deficiency:
- Anxiety
- Anorexia
- “Brain fog” or impaired memory or cognitive function
- Changes in, or loss of, appetite
- Chest pains
- Difficulties breathing
- Difficulty falling or staying asleep
- Eye twitching or involuntary eye movements
- Facial tics
- Feelings of hyperactivity
- Frequent headaches, especially cluster headaches and migraine
- Gastrointestinal problems
- High blood pressure (hypertension)
- Irregular or rapid heartbeat
- Lethargy
- Muscle cramps or spasms
- Muscle weakness
- Premenstrual syndrome (PMS)
Again, if you regularly experience any of the above symptoms, you need more Maggie.
While Magnesium supplementation alone may not always be enough to completely resolve your symptoms, oftentimes simply increasing your daily intake of Maggie is all that is necessary to provide longstanding relief.
Testing For Magnesium Deficiencies
There are two tests that I recommend for determining your Magnesium status: the Mag RBC blood test and a Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA).
Mag RBC Blood Test: The Mag RBC test is a simple and inexpensive blood test that you can order for yourself. It’s a very efficient and cost-effective way to get a reading on your current Magnesium status.
This Mag RBC Test costs $49 and you’ll usually have results emailed to you within 72 hours.
The normal reference range for Maggie is between 4.2 – 6.8 mg/dL. But in my experience, any score below 6.0 mg/dL is a signal of Magnesium deficiency.
Your can order the Mag RBC Test from Request A Test, a nationwide consumer lab testing company. For more information, and to order, see http://requestatest.com/magnesium-rbc-testing or http://www.directlabs.com/
Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA): Although it is hardly known, let alone employed, by most physicians today, a hair tissue mineral analysis test is one of the most useful screening tests, not only for determining Magnesium status, but for testing your overall mineral status, as well as the way in which you metabolize (oxidize) the foods you cnsume. Knowing both your mineral status and your metabolic type and how to maximize your diet and nutritional supplementation program to your specific biochemical and metabolic needs can make a dramatic difference inyour overall health and wellbeing. That information is precisely what the HTMA test provides. In addition, the HTMA also is an accurate measure of how stress may be impacting your health, and of the level of toxic metals in your body.
I am indebted to my friend and mentor, Rick Malter, PhD, for my knowledge of the HTMA and the benefits and insights that it provides. Rick, who, along with his wife Rosalie, is the founder of the Malter Institute in Cottonwood, Arizona, and credits the HTMA with saving his life in the 1980s after it revealed that he suffered from severe Magnesium deficiency that put him at a very high risk for a fatal heart attack.
Here are some of the advantages of the HTMA over blood tests.
First, it is painless, and involves simply cutting the first inch and one-half of growth of hair closest to the scalp at the nape of your neck. This hair sample is then sent to a lab without any special handling requirements.
Second, clinical results have shown that HTMA samples can give an accurate reading of your body’s overall mineral status – at a tissue level — and any toxic metal accumulation you may have due to both long-term and acute exposures.
Third, the HTMA reveals your body’s intracellular activity, which cannot be seen through most other tests. This provides a blueprint of the biochemistry that is occurring inside your body during the period of hair growth and development.
Other advantages of the HTMA compared to blood and other diagnostic tests include:
- It can detect toxicity long after exposure. Thirty to 40 days following an acute exposure, for example, elevated blood levels of lead may be undetectable. This is due to the body removing the lead from the blood as a protective measure and depositing the metal into such tissues as the liver, bones, teeth and hair.
- Nutrient loss from the body can become so advanced that severe health conditions can develop without any appreciable changes in those same nutrient levels being detected in blood tests. HTMA reveals such imbalances even when blood tests can’t.
- Other symptoms of nutrient deficiencies and imbalances can be present long before they can be detected in blood, whereas HTMA can accurately detect them long before they manifest as health problems.
(By the way, the above benefits of HTMA are among the reasons why hair is used as one of the tissues of choice by the Environmental Protection Agency in determining toxic metal exposure.
I will have more to say about the importance of HTMA as a health screening tool in future articles. In the meantime, I highly recommend that you consider ordering your own HTMA to get a better picture of your overall health status. You can do so by contacting the Malter Institute (www.malterinstitute.org) or Trace Elements (www.traceelements.com), a leading providing of HTMA in both the US and over 40 other countries.
Conclusion—Maggie As Teacher
Now that you better understand why it is so important to know your own Magnesium status, I want to conclude this article by telling you a story about a Jesuit priest named Benno-Jose Schorr. For years, Fr. Schorr was, in his own words, “a virtual cripple,” due to what he was told was incurable calcification of his lower spine. For more than a decade, his condition worsened and his health declined. Then he discovered the power of Maggie after reading a book about Magnesium written by another Jesuit priest whose mother had suffered from a similar condition as Fr. Schorr’s and was completely cured by Maggie.
“From that day on,” Fr. Schorr wrote, “I have taken every day a dose of this [Magnesium] salt solution…After 20 days I woke up without pain, although I was laying fully stretched!… After 30 days I thought I dreamt: suddenly I could walk around WITHOUT ANY PAIN! I started again to have a walk…3 months later I felt completely flexible.”
Based on his experience with Magnesium, Fr. Schorr shared Maggie with others and witnessed how it worked to relieve many other symptoms, including an incidence of skin cancer. Of Maggie he wrote, “Of the 18 essential minerals, Magnesium is, by far, the most important– it is like the Teacher in the Classroom. If one pupil or the other is missing, no problem, but when the Teacher is missing, the disorder is perfect [meaning able to persist unchecked]!”
The moral of the story, of course, is to keep the Teacher in your body’s classroom! Have more Maggie!
To your health!
Morley
