When Magnesium Makes me Worse

When Magnesium Makes Me Worse Carolyn Dean MD ND | Thursday, October 11, 2012

When people take a drug or a supplement they take it with the expectation that it will make them feel better. We know that’s not always the case with drugs but what about supplements?

Because so many people are reading my book and hearing about magnesium more people are taking magnesium than ever before and a few people are wondering why it makes them feel worse.

Here’s how one reader put it. “My obvious magnesium deficiency symptoms, cramping, muscle aches, headaches, etc., are worsening slightly rather than getting better. Anxiety is the only thing that has gotten better. Is this normal? I’m using magnesium oil and magnesium citrate but not yet able to tolerate more than 200-300mg without getting diarrhea.”

There are ten main reasons why you might feel worse after taking magnesium. (I’ve added to this list since first published.)

Actually it’s usually not magnesium that’s making you worse but just the way you are taking it or other things you are or aren’t taking along with it.

1. You’re not taking enough: When people feel worse with magnesium, I believe that the 700-800 enzyme systems that require magnesium just get jump-started and They Want More! (I used to write that magnesium was necessary in 325 enzyme systems but now, according to many and documented by Dr. Andrea Rosenoff, that number is more than twice what we previously thought.

In the above statement, my blog reader said she couldn’t take more that 200-300 mg. But all 800 enzyme systems want a piece of the action once they’re been woken up! And with each enzyme system pumping away they are using up the little magnesium you gave them and, like I said, They Want More!

This doesn’t mean that you’ll increase your magnesium ad infinitum! You will reach a saturation point of your magnesium stores and actually be able to decrease your magnesium intake. However, my blog reader isn’t going to get anywhere near the amount she needs if she keeps getting the laxative effect on 200-300mg. That’s one of the main reason I decided to create and promote Pico-Ionic Magnesium, ReMag. It’s absorbed 100% at the cellular level and has no laxative effect. So you can take as much as you require to eliminate all your magnesium deficiency symptoms. To determine your magnesium saturation point, get a Magnesium RBC test through Request A Test. The range is usually given as 4.2-6.9 mg/dL; the optimum level is between 6.0-6.5mg/dL.

2. You’re taking too much: You can also feel worse on magnesium if you take too much, too soon. This usually happens if you have fatigue and weakness from magnesium deficiency. Anyone in this category should start very slowly on any new supplement or drug. If you take a high dose of magnesium right from the start it’s like taking muscles that powered a bicycle and expect them to power a jet. Your body might just be so weak that revving up 800 enzyme systems all at once makes you feel jangled and even anxious because you don’t know what’s going on. Start with one quarter of the recommended dose of magnesium and work up as your body adapts.

3. You have low blood pressure from long standing magnesium deficiency and adrenal fatigue. You may have heard that magnesium can lower your BP so you worry about that happening when your BP is already low. This is another instance where you must begin by supplementing at about one quarter the recommended dose of magnesium and slowly build up. The other minerals offered in ReLyte are important in this case as well to support adrenals and thyroid and improve potassium levels.

4. You’re on heart medications and as your health conditions improve, your meds are becoming “toxic.” That’s because you may not require them anymore! Check with your doctor when you are using magnesium to treat health conditions and want to wean off your meds. For example, magnesium helps lower blood pressure. If you continue to take the same amounts of BP meds, your BP might get too low. This is not a “side effect” of magnesium. It’s a side effect of taking drugs when you don’t need them. Magnesium balances blood pressure. If you have low BP to begin with and are not on meds, start magnesium very slowly because, as I describe in #2, you want your body to slowly adapt to a mineral you may have been deficient in for a long time.

5. You’re on fluoridated medications that bind up your magnesium and make you deficient even when you’re taking magnesium. See a list of fluoridated medications at the Fluoride Toxicity Research Collaborative.

6. You’ve started taking iodine (in doses above the RDA) that speeds up your metabolism giving you heart palpitations that has nothing to do with magnesium deficiency.

7. You’re taking too much Vitamin D: Here’s what happens. You feel great on your magnesium and then you begin to magnesium deficiency symptoms after adding a high dose Vitamin D supplement. Magnesium is required to transform Vitamin D from its storage form to its active form and for many other aspects of Vitamin D metabolism. That means if you take the extremely high doses that allopathic doctors are now recommending you can plummet into magnesium deficiency and not know what the heck is happening. In general, I don’t recommend more than1,000-2,000 IU of Vitamin D daily for this reason. And never take Vitamin D without magnesium.

8. You are taking too much calcium and it’s pushing out your magnesium: Read Why I Hate Calcium to understand why the most prescribed mineral is actually dangerous because it’s causing heart disease in women.

9. You’re just taking magnesium and becoming dehydrated because you don’t take any other trace minerals. Read The Solution for Dehydration and take 1/8-1/4 tsp of sea salt in every pint of water you drink. How much water per day? Half your body weight in ounces of water. My new ReLyte, mineral and electrolyte formula is the next step in proper mineral balance and an improvement on just using sea salt for mineral balance.

10. Magnesium is getting into your cells and detoxifying chemicals and heavy metals. Sometimes this can feel like a healing reaction. That’s why with my pico-ionic magnesium, ReMag, which is 100% absorbed at the cellular level, I recommend that you build up your dosage slowly as the cells detoxify and are finally able to work efficiently.

NOTE: As I say below, if you have any reason to believe a magnesium product is not working for you or stirring things up, stop it and try another brand taking it very, very slowly. Another good thing about ReMag is that it comes in dropper form so you can start with 5 drops a day, which I have done with several people to get their hypervigilant bodies able to tolerate something as safe as magnesium.

Thanks for all the kudos about my Magnesium Award. I’ve gotten some great testimonials on arrhythmias being “cured” with magnesium since mentioning my award. You can read the notice of the award and also read my blog Making Miserable People Happy and help promote the movement to get labs to perform ionized magnesium testing.

MY HEALTH LIBRARY: Be sure and go to my Organized Wisdom Library which is growing by leaps and bounds and where you will be able to find written, audio and video information for your health.

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