Human body loses magnesium from diarrhea, diet and stress. Diarrhea causes much of the magnesium in intestines to be excreted.
Gastric juice contains a fair amount of magnesium and excessive vomiting could result in substantial losses of the mineral in addition to the loss resulting from the failure to retain ingested food.
In 1900, the average American diet provided about 450 mgs of magnesium a day. In 2000, the average diet provided only 200 to 225 mgs per day.
A deficiency of magnesium is responsible for the majority of the ill-health and attendant pain and suffering in the US including heart disease, diabetes, obesity and related diseases.
Magnesium deficiency has been reported in children with protein-calorie malnutrition due to primarily to diarrhea which increases fecal loss of the mineral.
Hypomagnesaemia is associated with chronic alcoholism and with the neuromuscular symptoms of alcoholic withdrawal. It is important to know that magnesium excretion is promoted by drinking too much alcohol or caffeine and by eating high amounts of animal protein or sugar.
When pancreatitis is also present, magnesium replacement therapy becomes an important part of treatment because magnesium (and calcium) in blood may be decreased due to presumably to deposition in areas of adipose tissue.
Magnesium content of adipose tissue has been shown to be markedly increased in humans dying from acute pancreatitis and in animals in whom pancreatitis was induce experimentally.
The classical manifestations of magnesium deficiency are neuromuscular. They may occur at the level of the skeletal muscles, resulting in spasmophilia under all its form, at the level of the myocardium, resulting in various cardiac disturbances and also at the level of the smooth muscles.
Cellular loss of magnesium may be a primarily biochemical mechanism in the etiology of various types of myocardial lesions. Most modern heart disease is caused by magnesium deficiency. The diet of the industrial world is short on magnesium, and this causing an epidemic of heart disease in the modern world.
Heart is a muscle that pumps by constantly contracting and relaxing. Calcium helps heart and other muscle to contract. Magnesium helps them to relax. The researchers found that a magnesium deficiency cause of death from sudden heart attacks in 8 million people in US between 1940 and 1994.
Health problems due to magnesium deficiency
