Overload
Magnesium imbalance
Category: Illness or disabilities
Type
Involuntary
Introduction and description
Magnesium is an essential mineral in our diet. The entry on magnesium explains all its uses in more detail, however in brief, magnesium fulfills three main roles
- Basic building block - magnesium ions are essential to the basic nucleic acid chemistry of life, and thus are essential to all cells of all known living organisms.
- Key to energy transfer - Over 300 enzymes require the presence of magnesium ions for their catalytic action, including all enzymes utilizing or synthesizing ATP - the basic unit of energy transfer in cells.
- Balancing mineral - Magnesium is also an essential balancing mineral serving to regulate calcium, for example.
It is meaningless to talk about magnesium deficiency in any absolute way. If we overdose on calcium, then in theory we need more magnesium, but it makes better sense to cut down on calcium intake than rely on extra magnesium to restore balance. The logic of the 'extra magnesium solves everything' argument is somewhat like saying that if you burn your hand by putting it in scalding water, you can balance out the problem by plunging the other in ice cold water.
In whatever context magnesium overdose or deficiency is found, magnesium imbalance can result in hallucinations, out of body and near death experiences.
Symptoms
There are symptoms specific to whether you overdose or are deficient in the mineral, as well as more general problems that are just imbalance related. According to Wikipedia
"Severe magnesium imbalance can cause hypocalcemia, low serum potassium levels (hypokalemia), retention of sodium, low circulating levels of parathyroid hormone (PTH), neurological and muscular symptoms (tremor, fasciculations, muscle spasms, tetany), loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, personality changes and death from heart failure."
Deficiency
The physical nervous system uses charge-carrying ions - sodium (Na+), potassium (K+), chloride (Cl-), and calcium (Ca2+).
If the calcium or other minerals get out of balance – for example are in excess, the nervous system starts to malfunction and you get twitching, heart arrhythmias, and muscle spasms – for example eclampsia – and other 'abnormal nerve excitation'. [Eclampsia is an acute and life-threatening complication of pregnancy, characterized by the appearance of tonic–clonic seizures].
A whole host of other nervous system problems – headaches, menstrual pains, fibromyalgia, restless leg syndrome – in effect any illness where the nervous system has gone into overload can be caused by an excess of one of the above minerals.
Magnesium plays an important role in balancing the calcium in carbohydrates, thus a deficency may contribute to obesity, and heart problems from atherosclerosis, as well as diabetes.
In a sense therefore, if you have all these problems, it is probably not a magnesium deficiency you are suffering from, as such, but a calcium or sodium or potassium overload.
In effect magnesium deficiency, is a relative thing.
Overdose
It is difficult to overdose on magnesium from normal dietary sources, because excess dietary magnesium is excreted in faeces, urine, and sweat.
Causes
Causes of magnesium imbalance include
- Nutritional deprivation - If you overdose on protein or foods rich in phosphate [potassium], calcium, sodium, and fat, you may not be getting enough magnesium to be in balance. But if you are overdosing it is better to reduce the intake of the offending foodstuffs than up the intake of magnesium, although it will of course help. Other problems include
- Bran - Bran found naturally in seeds and wholegrains is rarely a problem, but if you in effect overdose on bran via for example, breakfast cereals or similar artificial bran based foodstuffs, you may be magnesium deficient. Phytate [found in bran] or oxalate in the diet binds magnesium causing it to be eliminated from rather than absorbed in the colon.
- Mineral supplements - Excess magnesium in the blood is freely filtered at the kidneys, and for this reason it is difficult to overdose on magnesium from dietary sources alone, but with supplements, overdose is possible, in particular in people with poor renal function; occasionally, use of high doses of magnesium salts has resulted in severe hypermagnesemia even without renal dysfunction.
It is thus a little unwise to take magnesium supplements given the number of foods – tasty foods – that contain magnesium. It may be worth adding that Magnesium oxide, one of the most common forms in magnesium dietary supplements because it has high magnesium content per weight, 'has been reported the least bioavailable'. - Alcoholism - can produce a magnesium deficiency, as can alcohol abuse
- Physical trauma or disease - including surgery, that in some way compromises the efficiency of the organs that manage and control magnesium supplies, for example
- Kidney disease or damage
- Intestine disease - which may limit the absorption of magnesium or inhibit its excretion
- Nausea - excessive or chronic vomiting
- Diarrhoea
- Bacterial infection – some bacteria compete with us for magnesium thus if any unwanted bacteria get into our bodies, they will be using our magnesium supplies.
"Magnesium is the most abundant divalent metal in cells, and is required for many structural and enzymatic functions. For bacteria, at least three families of proteins function as magnesium transporters. In recent years, it has been shown that a subset of these transport proteins is regulated by magnesium-responsive genetic control elements. In this study, we investigated the cellular requirements for magnesium homeostasis in the model microorganism, Bacillus subtilis. PMID: 24415722 - Parasites – certain parasites compete with us and other mammals for magnesium. We can see this because magnesium deficiency in the host knocks out the parasite “Severe magnesium deficiency protects mice against infections by Plasmodium Spp. and Babesia hylomysci .... By contrast severe magnesium deficiency does not protect against parasite infections by P. berghei, Toxoplasma gondii and Trypanosoma brucei. PMID: 7547177
- Heavy metals – heavy metals appear to have an effect on whether the body can process magnesium. For example “... In this study, we examine scalp hair concentrations of 26 trace elements for 1,967 children with autistic disorders. Five-hundred and eighty-four ... subjects was found deficient in zinc, magnesium and calcium, respectively, …. In contrast, 339 ... individuals was found suffering from high burden of aluminium, cadmium and lead, and 2.8% or less from mercury and arsenic burden. PMID: 23383369
- Toxins – the following example is by way of a change. The algal blooms were caused by toxins, the toxins caused diarhoea and poisoning, they also caused magnesium deficiency
“Between January and March 2002, 55 cows in a 1,200-cow commercial dairy herd in south Florida died. Most of the cows that were found dead did not have any clinical signs of disease prior to death. Because of a history of ...a bloom of blue-green algae in cow cooling ponds, and ... enteritis, the preliminary differential diagnosis [was] enteritis, blue-green algae toxicosis, and mycotoxicosis. …. On the basis of physical examination and gross necropsy findings,... a diagnosis of hypomagnesemia was [also] made. .PMID: 14710884 - Pharmaceuticals – are an important cause of magnesium imbalance. To quote but one example of many “The newborn children of mothers having received parenteral magnesium sulfate during labour may exhibit toxicity at serum magnesium levels that were considered appropriate for the mothers”. A number of drugs can deplete magnesium levels such as
- diuretics,
- chemotherapy drugs like cisplatin,
- immunosuppression drugs like ciclosporin,
- amphetamines,
- and proton pump inhibitors.
- antibiotics that interfere with the endogenous digestive microflora may play a role in the bioavailability of magnesium as they may effect the breakdown of antagonists such as phytate and oxalate in the diet
It is not unknown for one set of drugs to cause problems with mineral imbalance of calcium, for example, for which magnesium then has to be used in very high doses to counteract the problems, for example
“Magnesium therapy is recommended by the ACC/AHA/ESC 2006 Guidelines for Management of Patients With Ventricular Arrhythmias and the Prevention of Sudden Cardiac Death for patients with ventricular arrhythmia associated with torsade de pointes who present with long QT syndrome as well as for the treatment of patients with digoxin intoxication-induced arrhythmias.”
Treatments
The most obvious treatment is to address the cause. The approach suggested is described in the activity Healing yourself as well as the activity Eating for health.
The magnesium entry contains a list of foodstuffs - such as nuts, beans etc that can be eaten to ensure you get an adequate supply of magnesium.
How it works
Physically - this activity works via the diseases it results in.
Logically - this activity works because mineral deprivation or overload is a threat. You need to have the Model of the Mind open and have read How spiritual experence works.
If we look at this from a logical point of view, what we see is that the Will is being assaulted by a Threat.
The 5 senses along possibly with the nervous system are telling it that it is in danger, that the threat is both real and serious. Thus the Will is being told DO SOMETHING.
But what if it can do nothing? It has searched the Memory for a learnt function to deal with it and finds nothing and the Threat is there now, it has no time to learn. If you do nothing about the imbalance and it gets worse, the messages get louder and louder – THREAT ,THREAT ,THREAT – we are sick captain we don’t want to die, your little cells and organs want to live.
There is little input from the Reasoning function – after all what can it do? And the intensity of the messages being sent it from Perceptions tends to overwhelm the reasoning function anyway – DO SOMETHING, DO SOMETHING!!! The Will may first tell the Autonomic system [via Endorphins] that it can do nothing and to cease complaining, but there comes a point where the Will gives up, exhausted, and lets the Composer take over. The ego has been squashed.
And we get our spiritual experience.
It is unlikely to be a pleasant one, the composer is most likely to try to send us a message that we should act to do something.
Observations
There are both healing experiences as well as hallucinations etc in the following observations.
Related observations
Healing observations
- Almonds, cholesterol and obesity 005653
- Avocado benefits 005905
- Biochemical and physiologic consequences of boron deprivation in humans. 017972
- Black women and whole grains 005656
- Calcium and Magnesium Metabolism in Pre-Eclampsia 026078
- Calcium carbonate [chalk] 005553
- Chocolate magnesium and hormones 005635
- Chocolate, Gingko biloba, bilberries and glaucoma 005654
- Dairy products vitamins and mineral 005906
- Effect of dietary boron on mineral, estrogen, and testosterone metabolism in postmenopausal women 017971
- Ehlers Danlos syndrome 007000
- Heavy metal poisoning and brain damage 006198
- Lentils, peas, beans and health 005533
- Peanuts, peanut butter and obesity 005655
- Report on Absorption of magnesium sulfate (Epsom salts) across the skin 027618
Hallucination
- Amphotericin 006894
- Calcium carbonate [chalk] 005553
- Calcium deficiency and hallucinations 005696
- Delirium tremens 005571
- Depression, magnesium and calcium 005695
- Epsom salts 005552
- Hypermagnesemia following an acute ingestion of Epsom salt in a patient with normal renal function 027619
- Magnesium supplements 020736
- Milk of magnesia 000542
- Mineral imbalance and its repercussions 006922
- Mineral imbalance, anorexia and hallucinations 012801
- The knock on effects of mineral imbalance 005755