Magnesium For Your Mind

Did you know that magnesium is one of the most vital micronutrients for your mind and body. Yet a whopping 75-90% of Australian’s are not meeting the recommended daily intake needed to thrive! (1,2) So, what makes magnesium so crash hot? And how can you ensure that you’re getting enough of it? Let’s delve in shall we?!

Magnesium is a metal, found in the earth’s crust aka our soils. This means that plants are the lifeforce sucking up this fundamental compound. Magnesium is a MAJOR mineral, meaning that higher amounts are needed for optimal bodily function compared to trace minerals, like zinc or iron. AND you need even more if you’re active, to account for losses in sweat and tightening those muscle.

However, we rarely fortify our grains with magnesium, so

Magnesium is most abundant in leafy green vegetables, as magnesium is at the centre heart of the chlorophyll molecule which give plants their wonderful green glow.

Magnesium allows plants to make energy from the sun, then plants provide us with the energy needed to thrive, it’s a beautiful life cycle don’t you think!? Being from soils, magnesium is also found in nuts and seeds, not to mention fish and seaweed too- oceanic waters and soil beds are super dense in magnesium. But hey, seaweed is just a totally under-rated leafy green of the aquatic world if you think about it!

So, what do I mean by greens huh? Well, if spinach is the only picture in your mind right now, let me expand your horizons.

Think green and tricoloured silver beet/Swisse chard, rocket/arugula, kale (try flat leaved dinosaur aka Tuscan aka lacinato kale for a less rugged texture), spinach beet, collard greens, beetroot  leaves, turnip greens, mustard leaves, amaranth or sweet potato leaves, Pak choi, Bok choy (Chinese Chard) choy sum, Chinese broccoli, rapini (broccoli raab), cabbage, parsley, basil, watercress, nori/wakame/arame seaweeds, broccoli (yep it’s a brassica too!), Brussel sprouts, sorrel, vine leaves, cos and romaine lettuce,  chicory, endive, fig leaves (blend them into desserts for a vanilla-coconut tinge), and edible weeds like dandelions.

What exactly is magnesium good for?

In our body, magnesium facilitates over 300 enzymatic reactions (2). These reactions help you unlock energy (including better focus), maintain a healthy weight and protect against diabetes, enhance muscle strength, and produce proteins needed for your immune system.

A meta-analysis of 7 separate studies involving 286,668 people showed those who consumed 100mg of magnesium a day had 15% lower risk of developing diabetes (3).

 Just think if magnesium helps with healthy metabolism in your body, then it likely also helps with healthy metabolism in in the blood supply of your brain too.

 ~

Magnesium is involved in the production of glutathione, one of your body’s major antioxidants, which helps to detoxify your body, protect your cells (including the cells in your brain called neurons) from inflammation or damage and remove toxic waste. Because of this, magnesium has been shown to help keep your body and mind stay youthful by reducing the shortening of your telomeres (more on this in another article) (4). As if this wasn’t enough already, magnesium is also critical for your heart and bones too! This is partly because magnesium is a team player. It helps with the conversion of inactive prohormone Vitamin D (otherwise known as D2 or ergocalciferol) into its active hormone form (called D3 or cholecalciferol). In this active form, Vitamin D3 is crucial for a healthy brain and balanced mood, not to mention balancing your hormones and metabolism (5).

Magnesium and your Brain:

Numerous studies have linked Vitamin D deficiency to depression and anxiety, chronic stress and fatigue, ADHD and even schizophrenia. This is in part due to the love affair between Vitamin D and magnesium. Though, to its credit magnesium is also essential for mood and stress management, as it turns your ability to cope with stress depends on your magnesium intake. Magnesium is key for making the neurotransmitters GABA, serotonin, and dopamine. (6-9). The first two are calming neurotransmitters -or hormones- which help keep you chilled as a cucumber. Meanwhile, dopamine gives us that happy, pleasure or reward hit. Most anti-depressants work by increasing the levels if serotonin swimming around in our brain. While anti-anxiolytics (anti-anxiety meds) focus on GABA. Then there’s dopamine that helps us feel hopeful and motivated. MAOI’s (monoamine oxidase inhibitors) are anti-depressants that aim to boost dopamine levels). On the flip side, if you’re deficient in magnesium, this has been linked to increased release of cortisol, your bodies primary stress hormone, which puts us in fight or flight mode. This is because magnesium can reduce the release of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), which in turn lowers the amount of cortisol pumping through your body. Cortisol is what makes us highly emotional or reactive and blurs our decision-making skills- overall not ideal. What’s worse, is that prolonged release of cortisol -aka chronic stress-wears down our bodies and immune systems and leads to burn out AND depletes you of magnesium too. So, it’s a vicious cycle!

The take-home is that magnesium can help keep your mind calm and adaptable if you’re living a fast paced or intense life

Magnesium and Sleep:

Stay tuned for my upcoming articles on sleep and memory and sleep and appetite. All I can say for now is that sleep is soooo critical for your brain and overall health. Well, it just so happens that magnesium has also been shown to be vital for sleep regulation as well. This is due to its interactions with two neurotransmitters in the brain called NMDA and GABA in, which quieten down nervous activity linked to our overactive monkey minds. Magnesium also helps regulate melatonin- which signals our circadian sleep cycle that it’s time to doze off (10).

Studies suggest that supplementing with 200-500mg of magnesium for one to two months has been shown to improve sleep quality if taken around 30-60 minutes before bed.

So it turns out that supplementing with magnesium helps you to fall asleep faster, stay asleep and feel more energised when you wake up (11, 12). However, added benefits may be found when combined with zinc too. One study in 2012 of mature aged folk with insomnia found that 259mg of magnesium supplementation twice daily for 2 months improved melatonin production and reduced their cortisol levels. The result showed that the participants had better sleep and reduced overall insomnia (11). However, I should highlight that better designed and longer (more than 3 month) randomised control style studies are needed.

Eating Your Magnesium Needs

Here in Australia:

·   Men and teenage boys need around 400-420mg daily

·   Women and teenage girls need around 310-320mg daily; boosting to 360-400mg during pregnancy and breastfeeding

·    Children need around 80-240mg daily.

·    You also need around 100-200mg more daily if exercising heavily.

However, this is just a generalisation, and dosage will vary depending on your age, gender, activity level and any health conditions you may have. It is recommended to speak to a health professional such as myself for personalised and accurate advice.

But in the meantime, to help meet these requirements, I like to get into the habit of making greens at least ¼ of two of my daily meals (which equates to about 1 cup per meal or minimum 2 cups daily). But by all means there is no harm having more if you want!

Check out my blog How to Eat Your Greens for Magnificent Magnesium Rich Meals and Super Green Snacks beyond your average garden salad.

Now just to be clear, magnesium won’t optimise your mind if you already have sufficient levels. But it will improve health back to a baseline of thriving if you’re not already meeting the RDI.

Beyond Food:

If you’re really struggling to meet your daily greens intake, then there’s always the option to supplement.

However, BEWARE! Most of the magnesium available in chemists comes in a very poorly absorbable form and will likely cause you gut upset, most commonly explosive diarrhoea!

So, if you do choose to supplement, I recommend a powder-based form. Based on the literature and what I’ve seen with my patients (as well as myself too), magnesium is best absorbed by the brain as Magensium L Threonine or Magnesium L Threonate, or otherwise chelated (bound) with an amino acid called glycine, as magnesium bis-glycinate to avoid nasty gastrointestinal upset.

So that’s the scoop on magnesium and how to meet your daily needs for a thriving mind.

Hope you got something useful from this.

x Amber S Green

References

1. Jacka FN,et al Association between magnesium intake and depression and anxiety in community-dwelling adults: the Hordaland Health Study . Aust N Z J Psychiatry. (2009)

2. De Baaij JH, et al Magnesium in man: implications for health and disease. Physiol Rev.2015 Jan;95(1):1-46. doi: 10.1152/physrev.00012.2014.

3. Larsson, S. C., & Wolk, A. (2007). Magnesium intake and risk of type 2 diabetes: a meta-analysis. Journal of internal medicine, 262(2), 208–214. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2796.2007.01840.x

4. Maguire, D., Neytchev, O., Talwar, D., McMillan, D., & Shiels, P. G. (2018). Telomere Homeostasis: Interplay with Magnesium. International journal of molecular sciences, 19(1), 157. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms19010157

5. Qi Dai, Xiangzhu Zhu, JoAnn E Manson, Yiqing Song, Xingnan Li, Adrian A Franke, Rebecca B Costello, Andrea Rosanoff, Hui Nian, Lei Fan, Harvey Murff, Reid M Ness, Douglas L Seidner, Chang Yu, Martha J Shrubsole, Magnesium status and supplementation influence vitamin D status and metabolism: results from a randomized trial, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 108, Issue 6, December 2018, Pages 1249–1258, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqy274

 6. Derom, M., Sayón-Orea, C., Martínez-Ortega, J. and Martínez-González, M., 2013. Magnesium and depression: a systematic review. Nutritional Neuroscience, 16(5), pp.191-206.

7. Poleszak E. (2008). Benzodiazepine/GABA(A) receptors are involved in magnesium-induced anxiolytic-like behavior in mice. Pharmacological reports : PR, 60 (4), 483–489.

8. Pickering, G., Mazur, A., Trousselard, M., Bienkowski, P., Yaltsewa, N., Amessou, M., Noah, L., & Pouteau, E. (2020). Magnesium Status and Stress: The Vicious Circle Concept Revisited. Nutrients, 12(12), 3672. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12123672

9. B. Sartori et al, Magnesium deficiency induces anxiety and HPA axis dysregulation: Modulation by therapeutic drug treatment Neuropharmacology. 2012 Jan; 62(1): 304–312. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropharm.2011.07.027

10. Durlach, J., Pagès, N., Bac, P., Bara, M., & Guiet-Bara, A. (2002). Biorhythms and possible central regulation of magnesium status, phototherapy, darkness therapy and chronopathological forms of magnesium depletion. Magnesium research, 15(12), 49–66.

 11. Abbasi B et al, The effect of magnesium supplementation on primary insomnia in elderly: A double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial J Res Med Sci.2012 Dec;17(12):1161-9. https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Magnesium-HealthProfessional/

12.  Rondanelli, M., Opizzi, A., Monteferrario, F., Antoniello, N., Manni, R., & Klersy, C. (2011). The effect of melatonin, magnesium, and zinc on primary insomnia in long-term care facility residents in Italy: a double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 59(1), 82–90. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-5415.2010.03232.x