Category: Supplements

Magnesium deficiency can be hard to recognise but it is important. Magnesium performs many important functions in the body. You need it for normal electrical activity in the nerves in the brain and the heart. It is involved in chemical reactions all over the body.

The recommended daily requirement for magnesium is up to 420 mg for men and 360 mg for women. Most people are getting much less than this. As a result, magnesium deficiency is quite common.

There are four different ways you can become magnesium deficient.

Magnesium deficiency from decreased intake

If you don’t eat enough magnesium in your diet, you may develop a deficiency. There are several ways this can happen:

• The soil has been depleted from years of over-farming and it contains fewer nutrients than it did before
• Eating a lot of processed food can also decrease your magnesium intake. Magnesium is one of the many nutrients stripped away when food is processed to make it more palatable and addictive.

Decreased absorption of magnesium

You may not absorb enough magnesium into the body even if you take enough in your diet. 

• The acid in the stomach is needed to absorb magnesium into the blood. Anything that decreases stomach acid affects magnesium absorption. This include drugs like omeprazole used to treat peptic ulcers.
• Drinking a lot of carbonated, fizzy drinks and sodas can decrease magnesium absorption from the gut.

Increased demand for magnesium

Increased demand for magnesium can create a relative deficiency. If you’re using up a lot of magnesium, the supply cannot keep up with demand. You will not have enough for your body’s needs.

Several conditions can cause this. These include:

• stress – You use a lot more magnesium when under stress. 
• sleep – When you don’t get enough sleep, your magnesium requirements increase.
• a high sugar diet – you need magnesium to convert sugar into energy. The more sugar you eat, the more magnesium you need.

Increased loss of magnesium

Another way to become deficient in magnesium is through increased loss of magnesium from the body. This loss takes place through the urine:

• drinking lots of coffee and tea increases the loss of magnesium in the urine.
• water pills, known as diuretics, stop the kidney from re-absorbing magnesium back into the blood. As a result, you lose more of it in the urine.

Common symptoms of magnesium deficiency

Symptoms of magnesium deficiency are a little bit vague and somewhat non-specific. These could be signs and symptoms of many different kinds of diseases that can occur in the body. They include:

• tiredness,
• being anxious and jumpy all the time,
• depression,
• difficulty falling asleep,
• difficulty staying asleep,
• leg cramps, particularly at night,
• palpitations and 
• raised blood pressure

What does magnesium do?

Imagine you accidentally slam your finger in a door. Several things will happen:

• you will almost immediately feel pain,
• after a while, your finger will turn red,
• it will also feel hotter than the surrounding skin,
• it will swell up and 
• you won’t be able to use it.

These are all signs of acute inflammation.

Now imagine this process is going on all around your body all the time but at very low levels. This is called low grade, chronic inflammation.

Many modern diseases are linked to chronic low-grade inflammation. Magnesium is anti-inflammatory – it calms down this inflammation.

Magnesium helps to relax blood vessels. This is very important in hypertension, where the blood vessels become narrowed.

Relaxation of blood vessels increases the blood flow to vital organs in the body. This helps them to function better because they get more nutrients and more oxygen.

Magnesium has a relaxing effect on the brain. It helps to relieve anxiety and helps with sleep.

Magnesium has a relaxing effect on the muscles. This can help with cramps, particularly leg cramps, which are common in magnesium deficiency.

Testing for magnesium deficiency

Most of the magnesium in the body is in the bones and inside the cells. Estimating the amount of magnesium in the body is not easy. Seeing as magnesium supplementation within the recommended daily allowance is relatively safe, one way to assess deficiency is to supplement with magnesium and see if existing signs and symptoms improve.

How do you increase magnesium levels in the body?

• Avoid processed, packaged food that has had all its nutrients stripped away. Eat more natural food rich in magnesium like sesame seeds, cashews, black beans, spinach, sunflower seeds, coconut milk and coconut water.
• Avoid drugs like omeprazole and avoid fizzy sodas and soft drinks.
• Manage your stress levels and make sure you get enough rest for sleep. This will help to reduce chronic inflammation and your magnesium requirements will go down.
• Limit the amount of tea and coffee that you drink each day. 

Magnesium supplements

Supplementing with magnesium within the recommended daily allowance is safe for most people. As usual, you have to consult your doctor, especially if you have kidney disease.

There are many different types of magnesium supplements on the market. The magnesium has to be in a form that can be absorbed and used by the body. 

A prime example is magnesium oxide. Magnesium oxide is one of the worst forms of magnesium to use for supplementation. It is one of the cheapest and most abundant forms of magnesium. Magnesium oxide passes right through the intestines, hardly any of it gets absorbed into the body. So if you’re trying to supplement with magnesium oxide, you are literally flushing your money down the toilet. 

You are better off spending a little bit more money and getting the kind of magnesium that can actually be absorbed and subsequently used by your body. There are lots of different options, some of which are better for certain things than others.

The different types of magnesium supplements include magnesium citrate, magnesium glycinate, and magnesium threonate.

You can use magnesium chloride to make “magnesium oil”, which you apply to the skin. 

A potential side effect of magnesium supplements is more frequent bowel movements which is worse with some forms than others.

My favourite forms of magnesium are magnesium glycinate and magnesium taurate. They are both very well absorbed. These forms of magnesium are great if you have problems with hypertension, abnormal heart rhythms and palpitations. They are easy on the bowels and don’t usually cause diarrhoea.

Have you used magnesium supplements before? Which is your favourite type? Let me know in the comments.

Vitamin B1 (thiamine) is an essential nutrient for all living things. The human body can’t make thiamine. You have to eat it in your diet.
Vitamin B1 is abundant in pork, fish, liver, nuts (macadamia, sesame seeds) and yeast.

Are you diabetic? You need this vitamin! Everyone with diabetes should consider taking vitamin B1. Deficiency of this vitamin is much more common if you have diabetes. These problems arise from persistent high blood sugar.

What causes vitamin B1 deficiency?

Once again, a diet high in processed food is one of the culprits. Processed food is taken from its natural form and transformed into something else, usually less healthy.
For example, take a potato that becomes a potato chip. Another example is wheat which is processed to make bread.
Often, these steps needed to transform this food remove many of the vitamins and minerals. A diet that is high in processed food can lead to many different deficiencies.

Another cause of thiamine deficiency is eating too much sugar. Yet another is drinking too much alcohol. Some medications like antibiotics and vaccines can cause vitamin B1 deficiency. Bariatric surgery which alters the stomach and intestine in various ways, can also cause vitamin B1 deficiency.

Only about 5% of the vitamin B1 you eat is absorbed, so you’re more likely to develop vitamin B1 deficiency if you’re not eating enough.

Why is vitamin B1 deficiency a problem if you have diabetes?

Like everyone else, if you have diabetes, you may develop vitamin B1 deficiency from not getting enough in your diet. But there are also additional risks:

• the kidneys don’t function well in diabetes which can lead to increased loss of vitamin B1 in the urine and
• there is decreased reabsorption of vitamin B1 back into the blood so more is lost in the urine.

Symptoms and signs of thiamine deficiency

In the early stages of thiamine deficiency, the signs and symptoms are very non-specific. These may include:

• tiredness,
• excessive sleeping,
• hair loss,
• health problems,
• nausea and vomiting and
• loss of appetite.

You may also have symptoms like:

• burning pain and
• a feeling of pins and needles in your hands and feet.

That is similar to what you would find in nerve damage due to diabetes. Eventually, these symptoms and signs progress to:

• uncontrolled body movements
• difficulty in walking
• loss of memory and other mental problems.

At this stage, you cannot reverse the damage that has occurred. In diabetes, vitamin B1 deficiency can manifest as elevated blood sugar and persistent mental problems.

What does Vitamin B1 do & why is it so important in diabetes?

Under normal conditions, when glucose levels are normal and all the required nutrients like vitamins and minerals are present, sugar in the diet is converted to energy in the mitochondria.

The byproducts of this process are called Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS). These ROS are very harmful to the cell. There are mechanisms in place to handle them and ensure that they don’t cause harm to the cell.

When you have high sugar levels for long periods, the mitochondria can’t handle the load. So much ROS are produced that the cell can’t cope. The mitochondria try to protect themselves by churning out large amounts of a powerful antioxidant. In small quantities, this is great, but too much for too long is a problem.

Eventually, this leads to damage to the cells lining the blood vessels. It also causes problems with your nerves which leads eventually to the burning and tingling sensation in the hands and feet.

The cells try to find other ways to process all the sugar. These alternative pathways are not as efficient as processes that take place in the mitochondria. They produce unwanted chemicals as they’re trying to use up all the sugar. These chemicals damage the cells, especially the ones that line your small blood vessels and your nerves.

How does thiamine help in the cells?

Your body needs vitamin B1 to break down sugar efficiently. It helps other enzymes to do their work. In its absence, they cannot work efficiently. So, even if you have high blood sugar and high sugar in the cells, having enough thiamine helps limit the damage it causes and offers some protection.

In diabetes, there is a lot of sugar circulating in the blood. There is also a lot of sugar inside the cells. Your nerve cells send signals to the brain carrying information about what’s happening in your body and in your environment. There is so much sugar in the cell that it can’t be turned into fuel.

And that is the purpose of sugar. It’s supposed to turn into energy. When the sugar is too much, it gets shunted into other pathways that eventually lead to complications like burning and tingling of the hands and feet.

What vitamin B1 does is that it prevents this excess sugar from being channelled into reactions that will give rise to complications. So vitamin B1 is required to process glucose efficiently inside the cell. Unfortunately, people with diabetes tend to be deficient in thiamine when they need it so badly.

Treating thiamine deficiency

You can treat thiamine deficiency in several different ways by:

• improving your diet and eating more natural food,
• limiting your intake of alcohol,
• limiting the amount of sugar in your diet,
• supplementation (if you have a severe vitamin B1 deficiency you may not be able to get enough vitamin B1 from your diet).

What is benfotiamine?

Thiamine is a water-soluble vitamin. Only about 5% of what you take in your diet passes into the blood. However, there is another form of vitamin B1 that is better absorbed. This form is called benfotiamine. Benfotiamine is fat-soluble and is absorbed much better than regular vitamin B1. So you will achieve higher levels in the blood.

It also gets stored in the nerves because they have a high-fat content. That means that it can work better than regular vitamin B1 to relieve nerve pain and abnormal sensations that you may get from vitamin B1 deficiency.

Taking thiamine can reduce some of the complications of diabetes by up to 50%.
If you already have complications, taking benfotiamine can help to slow the progression of these complications and stop them from getting worse.

Even if you’re using benfotiamine with all its benefits, you still need to change your lifestyle by treating your high blood sugar and insulin resistance. That would include changes to your diet and managing your sleep and stress.

As always, anything you do that affect your health should be run by your doctor or healthcare provider first.

Have you used benfotiamine before? Or maybe you have been using the more popular form of vitamin B1 form, thiamine? Let me know in the comments.