It’s a mineral that plays a role in over 300 reactions in your body. It aids in the production of energy and protein. It regulates blood sugar and keeps your heartbeat steady:) It plays a vital role in keeping your bones, nerves, and immune system healthy.

It’s so special that it relaxes your muscles and even improves your mood?.

In fact, we think it could “leap tall buildings in a single bound!” It’s a SUPER mineral called magnesium!! And yet it’s often overlooked as a supplement despite ALL of the benefits! In fact, as much as 80% of the population is deficient in magnesium☹ Why? Let’s take a look at how this little mineral works…

First of all, magnesium acts like a spark plug for hundreds of reactions in your body! It’s known as a co-factor; when your magnesium is low, many of these reactions struggle to proceed. Magnesium is a smooth muscle relaxer. Smooth muscle is found in your digestive tract, arteries, lungs, bladder, and uterus. Being deficient in magnesium shows up in many ways. Symptoms such as muscle cramps, constipation, irregular heartbeat, facial tics, poor sleep, anxiety, chronic pain (including migraines), ADHD, and even osteoporosis. And that’s just the short list! Consequently, you get new prescriptions for restless legs, arrhythmias, insomnia, constipation, and headaches…Anything sound familiar to you??

Magnesium is known as a “macro” mineral, that is, it is needed by the body in large amounts. Other macro minerals include potassium, sodium, and calcium, and they seem to get all the attention? But all of them are considered essential minerals—YOU MUST get them in your diet because your body is unable to produce them. And that’s where the deficiency starts…in our soil, where our vegetables grow, is just not as rich in minerals today; a result of over-planting, herbicides and pesticides. Thus, much of what we eat has less of the essential minerals (especially magnesium)! To make matters worse, other foods and many medications can deplete magnesium in our body…we may be doing damage without even knowing it!! We’ll start with the foods that rob your body of magnesium…

Having a soda with your salad? Carbonated beverages contain phosphates that bind with magnesium and prevent your body from absorbing it. An even bigger culprit? Refined sugars! All of those processed baked goods and sweets (sorry, but put down that Twinkie!) can cause your kidneys to excrete more magnesium. Other offenders? Coffee, tea, or other caffeinated drinks act as diuretics so they trigger your kidney to pull magnesium from your body. So limiting your caffeine is not only good for your soul, it’s good for your body! Drinking excess alcohol will also put your body at risk for magnesium depletion, again, through your kidneys. And sadly STRESS (which leads to elevated cortisol) can demand more magnesium as your body “revs it’s engine”all day long!

So our little mineral that could…probably couldn’t…simply because of our food choices! You can see that deficiency in magnesium is easy to develop. As a result, those signs and symptoms can lead to a plethora of new prescriptions for you…which (adding insult to injury) also “rob” you of this precious mineral and that’s where this post continues…

after all, we give Two Hoots about your Health!