Is there a correlation between magnesium deficiency, inflammation, and certain diseases and ailments? Does magnesium play a crucial roll in immunity and anti-inflammatory?
Most allergy and asthma sufferers are familiar with rhinitis (inflammation of the nose), sinusitis (inflammation of the sinuses), and asthma (inflammation of the airways), but inflammation is also behind arthritis (inflammation of the joints), dermatitis (inflammation of the skin), and so on.
The primary objective of acute inflammation is to localize and eradicate the irritant and repair the surrounding tissue but this completely changes in chronic low-grade inflammatory states.
Magnesium Deficiency Causes Chronic Inflammation
Magnesium deficiency causes and underpins chronic inflammatory buildups. This concept is intriguing because it suggests a fundamentally simpler way of warding off disease.Instead of different treatments for heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and colon cancer, we apply a single inflammation-reducing remedy that would prevent or treat these and other deadly diseases.
The key words here are “prevent” or “treat,” but please notice the word is not cure. Though magnesium is a cure for many of our ailments, full treatment protocols are recommended with magnesium chloride as the top protocol item.
It is a protocol of basic items like magnesium, iodine, alpha lipoic acid, sodium bicarbonate, sodium thiosulfate, whole food vitamin C, natural vitamin D from the sun, spirulina, and some other important items like purified water that will make a difference in a host of chronic diseases.
Inflammation and systemic stress are central attributes of many pathological conditions. In magnesium we have found a potent medicinal that is effective across a wide range of pathologies. Pharmaceutical companies need look no further than the seashore, which contains millions of tons of magnesium chloride, the perfect anti-inflammatory agent.
It could very well be, but we most likely will not know it until we suddenly have cardiac arrest. Researchers recognize a silent kind of inflammation. This type of internal inflammation has an insidious nature and is the culprit behind diabetes and heart disease.
The chronic and continuous low-level stress that silent inflammation places on the body’s defense systems often results in an immune-system breakdown. Magnesium deficiency is a parallel silent insult happening at the core of our physiology. Magnesium deficiencies feed the fires of inflammation and pain.
Beyond all the common symptoms of inflammation we find the body tissues themselves may lose their ability to recognize cells that are “self ” from those that are not, and the body may mistakenly identify its own cells as foreign invaders. This internal programming error then continues to trigger and retrigger immune responses, setting the stage for autoimmune diseases, such as lupus, multiple sclerosis, and scleroderma. The result is cellular chaos, and what is even more disturbing is that this process may be happening year after year without our even being aware of it.
Doctors who specialize in rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, lupus, and other autoimmune disorders are very familiar with what happens when the body goes to war with itself. These diseases demonstrate a direct inflammatory attack against healthy cells in such places as the joints, nerves, and connective tissue.
Sufficient Magnesium Cools Inflammation
Magnesium literally puts the chill on inflammation. Heart disease begins with inflammatory chemicals that rage like a fever through your blood vessels. Cool the heat by getting the recommended daily minimum of magnesium, Medical University of South Carolina researchers suggest.They measured blood inflammation levels–using the C-reactive protein (CRP) test–in 3,800 men and women and found that those who got less than 50 percent of the recommended daily allowance (RDA) (310 to 420 milligrams) for magnesium were almost three times as likely to have dangerously high CRP levels as those who consumed enough. Being over age 40 and overweight and consuming less than 50 percent of the RDA more than doubled the risk of blood vessel-damaging inflammation.
Persistent asthma is an inflammatory disease that requires regular anti-inflammatory therapy with magnesium chloride.
This new view of inflammation is changing the way some doctors practice, but most cardiologists are still not ready to recommend that the general population be screened for inflammation levels. Cardiologists don’t know it, but when in rare instances they test for serum magnesium levels, they are not measuring anything but strictly controlled magnesium levels in the blood. There continues to be a blind spot the size of the Gulf of Mexico in cardiologists’ perceptions. They just are not able to get to the bottom of the inflammation story—which is magnesium deficiency.Modern medicine is just starting to admit that chronic inflammation is the main contributing factor to heart disease, and it is just about to discover magnesium chloride as a supremely safe and effective anti-inflammatory. Magnesium chloride safely reduces inflammation and systemic stress because magnesium deficiencies are in great part the cause of both conditions.
There are literally hundreds of physiological reasons to proclaim magnesium the ultimate heart medicine; its involvement in hundreds of enzyme reactions is just a start. Its use as an anti-inflammatory makes magnesium absolutely indispensable to not only heart patients but also to diabetics, and neurological and cancer patients as well. The treatment of chronic inflammation has been problematic for medical science because most of their treatments create more inflammation. Magnesium chloride does not do this.
Lynne Suo is one of Dr. Rapson’s patients. She had been using painkillers and steroids for years to try to ease the pain of her arthritis and fibromyalgia. Dr. Rapson started her on 675 units of magnesium a day. Within days, Suo called Dr. Rapson to report a surprising change. “I went from being in constant pain almost throughout the day and night to having moments of pain. And for me that was a huge improvement,” says Suo, a former college English teacher. She dismisses suggestions that the change is a placebo effect. “I was not one day without pain and now I don’t have to take heavy pain medication,” she reports.
The granddaddy of all anti-inflammatory drugs is aspirin, which can cause more serious problems than it often alleviates. Most pain and anti-inflammatory medications are not safe; even the over-the-counter pain medications hold unforeseen dangers. Despite more than a decade’s worth of research showing that taking too much acetaminophen can ruin the liver, the number of severe, unintentional poisonings from the drug is on the rise, a new study reports. The drug, acetaminophen, is best known under the brand name Tylenol. Compounds containing Tylenol include Excedrin, Midol Teen Formula, Theraflu, Alka-Seltzer Plus Cold Medicine, and NyQuil Cold and Flu, as well as other over-the-counter drugs and many prescription narcotics like Vicodin and Percocet.People with poor quality sleep or sleep deprivation exhibit increased levels of interleukin-6 (IL6), the chemical that causes inflammation throughout the body. According to Dr. J. Durlach, the biological clock and magnesium status are linked, and a balanced magnesium status is important for the function of the mysterious pineal gland. Dr. Durlach sees the psycholeptic sedative effects of darkness amplified by magnesium. There probably is a strong relationship between melatonin and magnesium; certainly relative amounts of light and darkness affect the pineal gland and its production of melatonin. Magnesium provides a calming effect that allows for deeper relaxation and better sleep. Magnesium is considered the “anti-stress” mineral. It is a natural tranquilizer, which functions to relax skeletal muscles as well as the smooth muscles of blood vessels and the gastrointestinal tract.
According to the National Sleep Foundation, approximately 70 million people in the United States are affected with sleeping disorders. Approximately 12 million Americans have restless leg syndrome (RLS), a sleep and movement disorder characterized by unpleasant (tingling, crawling, creeping, and/or pulling) feelings in the legs, which cause an urge to move in order to relieve the symptoms. Magnesium supplements may be helpful for relieving RLS and for treating insomnia.
Depression also is correlated with inflammation. A study conducted by researchers at the Emory University School of Medicine found that psychological stress leads to an excessive inflammatory response in people. Their findings published in the American Journal of Psychiatry showed that individuals who suffer from depression are more likely to develop an inflammatory response due to the emotional disorder than people who are not depressed. It should come as no surprise that magnesium supplementation has a great effect on depression.
In the final analysis, there is no single medicine or nutritional agent that has the power to both treat and prevent chronic inflammatory conditions. Magnesium acts as a general cell tonic while it reduces inflammation and systemic stress. Equally it is important in overall energy (ATP) production as well as hormonal and enzyme production and function, which all reflect powerfully on the process of inflammation.
