Electrolytes

Dear Healer George,

I am hoping that you might be able to offer me some useful advice. I have a medical condition that causes me to have difficulty in maintaining normal levels of electrolytes, especially calcium and magnesium (hypoparathyroidism). I have very little parathyroid tissue left, as most of it was mistakenly removed in surgery long ago.

Because of this my body requires medications and supplementation with calcium and magnesium. The problem is that I only get blood tests every three months to monitor my electrolyte levels, and in between tests they can fluctuate quite a bit. In addition, the blood test to monitor magnesium levels is not really indicative of magnesium levels in the body tissues, which can be much lower than the level in the blood.

It is very difficult to figure out from my symptoms if I am needing more calcium or magnesium, and this is frustrating when I get muscle spasms and cramps. I am not supposed to take too much of either the calcium or magnesium, as this is hard on my kidneys which lose a lot of both each day.

My body has a really hard time assimilating the magnesium, and sometimes it causes food to move through my GI tract too fast, and I am concerned about how this affects my bodies ability to assimilate nutrients. I suspect that the magnesium level in my muscle tissue is too low, and that this is causing muscle cramps when I excercize and stretch, but I do not know for sure if this is the case. I am also wondering if there is a way that I could take magnesium and get really good absorption without digestive disturbance.

Do you think it is the calcium or magnesium that are low when I am getting muscle cramps and spasms, or might it be something else?

Thanks, Hally