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If minerals were compared to a high school popularity contest, magnesium would be the prom queen of minerals. Many people know about magnesium, but do you really know why magnesium is THE mineral for optimal health? In this episode, I will discuss the many roles that magnesium plays on the body including helping to reduce inflammation and relax our muscles, and it’s role on the heart. I will also provide the main signs that indicate you may be deficient in magnesium (like pellet poops and being cranky AF) and WHY you might be deficient. Plus I will review my top 5 favourite magnesium rich foods…dark chocolate being one of them (in moderation of course) as well as ways to supplement magnesium. Think you might have a magnesium deficiency? I will let you in on a secret about blood testing for magnesium and why it’s not as effective as other tests. Find out in this episode why magnesium is the optimal mineral for your health and your body.Grab your FREE Endless Energy Checklist to get my top 5 non-negotiable strategies for eliminating fatigue: https://go.kendraperry.net/energy-checklist
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TRANSCRIPT
Hey everyone, how’s it going. Kendra here. So excited to be here as always. Welcome to a another episode of HIGH on Energy. Today we are going to talk about a very popular and trendy mineral. Magnesium has all the friends. Everyone loves magnesium. I think it’s probably the mineral that out of all the minerals does seem to have the most attention around it. People seem to know the most about it, right?
We’re going to be talking a little bit today about is magnesium really all it’s cracked up to be? Is it really the miracle mineral that everyone actually thinks it is? Guys, if you want to hang out with me on Facebook Live, I do this every single Tuesday at 4:00 PM on Tuesdays and the last Tuesday of the month, that’s going to be next week guys, we do a lot Q&A’s. You can tune in, you can ask me questions. You can submit any questions you might have to support at kendraperry.net. My assistant will gladly help you with that. I’ll make sure to answer all your questions on air.
Those Q&A’s are always super fun. We always have lots of great questions. I go through lots of topics, lots of good information. That is going to happen. At the 30th I believe, which is a day after my birthday, I actually turn 35 next week. If you guys are on the podcast, if you guys make sure to subscribe on iTunes and pretty much anywhere you can listen to your podcast, all your favorite podcast apps, that’s where you can catch up with me if you don’t like to listen to me or watch me on video.
So, guys, let’s jump into today’s topic. Let me know if you’re on with me live right now. I’m actually using a different streaming software right now. I would love to know is it actually working? I actually had trouble the last time that I used the software. So, just let me know guys, if you are on live right now, just let me know in the comments that you can see me and hear me. I’m going to otherwise keep on rolling.
So, guys, we were talking about magnesium today. Like I said, if it was a popularity contest for minerals, magnesium would be the prom queen or the prom king, whatever. Magnesium is definitely the mineral that people seem to have the most awareness around. Most people know magnesium is important, they are aware that maybe they should be taking magnesium. They want to know how do I actually take magnesium? That’s what we’re going to be going through today.
So, guys, let’s talk a little bit about what magnesium’s role is in the body. Magnesium is actually incredibly important. It’s popular for a reason. It’s homecoming queen for a reason. It’s because it’s needed for over 500 different enzyme reactions in the body. That’s a lot, right. Pretty much anytime there’s a reaction in the body, there’s a good chance that magnesium is involved, and especially with the production of energy.
Not just talking about the energy that you feel on a day to day basis, I’m talking about energy as fuel. Like putting gasoline into a vehicle, even just to blink your eyelids, to move your fingers, to write something down, to go to sleep at night, all these things pretty much anytime anything is happening in your body and something is always happening in your body, your body needs fuel. Magnesium is actually always involved in that fuel production. The fuel is called ATP.
Anytime energy or ATP is produced in the body, magnesium is involved in that. Magnesium is also really important in the regulation of sugar, of blood sugar. People who have diabetes, metabolic syndrome, maybe reactive hypoglycemia, or other blood sugar issues tend to have issues with magnesium. It’s really important for the permeability among the cells. Permeability just refers to movement of processed cells. If you’ve had low permeability, it’d be really hard to get things across the cell into the cell versus if you had leaky or excessive permeability, things would just be leaking all over. You’d just be dripping shit this way and that way.
We want to have good cellular permeability and magnesium is important for that. Magnesium is your main calming and relaxing muscle or muscle mineral. Basically, it helps relax the muscles, but it also helps keep you calm. If you’re feeling really anxious and panicky, and super fucking angry, there’s a good chance that there might be a magnesium issue going on there. Magnesium is also really important for reducing inflammation and it is the primary heart mineral. So, does regulate the heart.
Guys, if you’re on with the live right now and you want to ask me any questions, just let me know. I’m always happy to answer your questions. If you’re listening to me on the podcast right now, you actually want to engage with me in live time and ask me questions and have me respond to you and say, hey to you, definitely hop on Facebook Live Tuesdays at 4:00 PM to do that.
So, guys, the thing about magnesium and probably why its gotten so much attention these days is because many people are at risk or are deficient in magnesium. For example, I always bring this back to mineral balancing and hair mineral analysis testing because that’s my jam. But basically, we fall into two metabolic categories. Some of us are fast metabolizers and some of us are slow. We do tend to have a genetic tendency, one way or the other.
Now, what tends to happen in a lot of people these days because of all the crazy shit going on in our world, like chemicals and metals and stress and all this shit that’s going on, what happens is people go excessively fast or they go excessively slow. Instead of maintaining balance and fast isn’t better than slow and slow is not better than fast, we want balance, they go excessive in one way or the other.
Now, when people get excessively fast, their sodium and potassium levels tend to go up. That actually greatly increases the burn rate of magnesium. So, tends to just burn the magnesium out. The excessively fast oxidizers, they tend to be really panicky, they are go, go, go, they’re wired all the time, they have a really hard time bringing it down. They’re just like up here, when really they wish they’re a little bit more down here. They’re like the zero to 100 types of people.
When you get excessively slow, magnesium tends to build up in a bioavailable manner. You tend to have lower sodium and potassium and slow oxidation, and that leads to the bioavailable buildup of magnesium. So, slow oxidizers do tend to have a lot of magnesium in the body, but it’s not necessarily usable or available. That’s obviously a really big issue. The big problem with magnesium deficiency and oxidation rates in the way that all the crap that’s happening in our society today, is if you go too fast in one way or too slow in the other, you’ll have magnesium deficiency just in a little bit of a different way.
How would you feel if you were magnesium deficient? Well, you’d probably have irregular heartbeat. Because remember, magnesium is the primary heart mineral. You might have heart palpitations or feel like your heart is skipping a beat. You may have want to pain and achiness because it relaxes the muscle, keeps the muscle and joints healthy. You may be very stiff, you may not move well, you may just have muscle cramps. You also may have a lot of muscle twitches. Maybe your eye lash or eye lid flutters and drives you crazy. Maybe you can watch something pulsating or twitching. Really, really good indication that there’s a magnesium issue.
You may also have high blood pressure. People who have high blood pressure tend to have issues with magnesium either being low or it being bio unavailable, meaning they can’t actually access it or utilize it. We’ve talked a little bit about anxiety and panic, but that can definitely be involved. They will tend to have sleep issues. I would say if you’re an insomniac, especially if you’re feeling really wired at night or you’re waking up frequently in the night, there’s a good chance that there’s a magnesium issue. We may also have bowel issues because magnesium helps relax and regulate the bowel. People with magnesium deficiency they may be really blocked up, really constipated, they have those super hard little pellet poops that they could shoot out of a gun and kill someone.
That might be what’s happening with poops. Those are the not fun poops. There may be some depression issue, you could also have memory loss or memory issues. A lot can definitely be going on when you have magnesium issues. This is why a lot of people look to taking magnesium when they have some of these issues because there is a lot of information out there that a lot of people do have magnesium issues.
The problem is, is a lot of people want to know well, how do I actually test my magnesium status? Most of the time people are getting tested through blood testing. If you’ve been following for a while, if you listen to this podcast, you know that blood testing isn’t always the best for certain things. The problem with blood testing for magnesium or running something like an RBC magnesium is that magnesium is actually an intracellular mineral. It exists in the cell above 99%.
When you’re looking at blood levels of magnesium, you’re really only looking at the 1%. I don’t actually think we can take a lot of insight from looking at blood magnesium levels because it’s only representing such a strong portion, or such a small portion of magnesium levels in the body. It’s not really representative of what could be actually going on in the body in terms of magnesium. Personally, you know I love hair mineral analysis testing. This is the flagship tests that we run in my HIGH on Energy membership. This gets run with every single client I work with.
I think that’s the most important way. But you actually can get some information from blood chemistry if your RBC magnesium or your blood magnesium is high. So, think about this. What would it mean if magnesium was high in the blood? Well, we have magnesium, it’s an intracellular mineral. We want it to be high in the cell, not in the blood. If it’s high in the blood, that’s actually a big issue. That really indicates some serious dysfunction and something that is very wrong.
What that can mean is that you’re starting to lose magnesium from yourself, or your body is having a really hard time getting magnesium into the cell so it’s floating around the blood and you’re getting what’s called cellular magnesium loss. Eventually, as your magnesium stores go down, as your magnesium levels go down, that may no longer show high in the blood because you just don’t get much, you’re bottomed out. You just don’t have it anymore.
That’s one of the information you can get from blood chemistry. If it’s low, it could indicate low cellular magnesium, but you’d always want to confirm with mineral testing. If it’s normal, it doesn’t mean it’s normal, but if it’s high, it actually could indicate a more severe magnesium loss and that is something to pay attention to.
Let’s talk a little bit about foods. Where can you actually get magnesium? There’s some foods that are high in magnesium. Typically, your dark leafy greens are quite high magnesium foods. Those are really good. Avocados, raspberries, green beans. You guys are all going to love me for this, but dark chocolate, yum, put that in my face, that can be really, really good for increasing magnesium. Obviously you don’t want to go too crazy remembering that dark chocolate has a bit of sugar in it and it has caffeine. So, don’t go overboard on the chocolate but you can get some magnesium from chocolate.
Another great place to get magnesium from and what I think is probably one of the better places is through pink salt. So, pink Himalayan salt does contain all the minerals, but it does tend to be a little bit heavier on the magnesium. You can do pink salt. That can be a really good way to get salt or magnesium into your life.
Let’s talk about magnesium supplementation. I would say, the issue with most high quality magnesium supplements is even the best quality ones, even the ones from the best brands, the most expensive ones, you’re still going to lose quite a bit through the gut. A lot of magnesium just leaks out into the gut and doesn’t actually get to the cell.
You really have to be careful with the form of magnesium you’re taking. Do not go out and take magnesium sulfate. Don’t take magnesium citrate. If you’re constipated, and you want to poop. Sure, go take those, they’ll make you poop, but they’re not actually going to get magnesium into yourself because they’re poorly absorbed. They just get dumped into the gut. It relaxes your colon and gives you diarrhea. If you’re going to take supplemental magnesium, there’s three kinds, well there’s four kinds actually that I recommend. There is Malate, glycinate, bi-glycinate, and threonate.
The first three; malate, glycinate, and bi-glycinate, you’d want to take one of those. Now, personally, there is one magnesium out there that I really really love. It’s from a company called Jigsaw Health. This is the one I’m pretty much recommending to all my members. I really like, it’s called [withSRT 00:13:27] I like to B-Free version. It’s basically a time released magnesium Malate.
Now, I really like this and I find people tend to tolerate it better because it time releases over eight hours rather than just getting old dumped at once into the bowel and getting lost. I find it helps people support their magnesium levels better and people don’t tend to get the diarrhea and loose poops from it because some people in general just have poor bowel tolerance to magnesium. They just tend to take magnesium and get the shits.
With the time release Jigsaw, SRT magnesium, it just tends to be better tolerated so people tend to have less of that reaction. I really do like that one. But any [inaudible 00:14:14] I like designs for health, malate, glycinate, bi-glycinate. Those are all good options if your bowel tolerance isn’t affected by those.
Now, threonate is a bit of a different type of magnesium. Threonate is the only type of magnesium that actually crosses the blood brain barrier. This is actually a really good magnesium to take if you have brain issues. Maybe you have memory issues and you have sleep issues, you have really severe insomnia. Maybe you have a brain condition like multiple sclerosis, MS. These are all things that might benefit from that type of magnesium. If you have depression, anxiety, I would experiment with taking some magnesium threonate.
I love Designs for Health. It’s called NeuroMag, and you can do two of those in the morning and one at night or vice versa. That can be really helpful for those things because it gets into the brain whereas the other menus it doesn’t really get in there. But overall, if you’re on a budget and you want to really well absorb from a magnesium, topical magnesium is actually amazing. You can do Epsom salts bath, or you can get a spray.
I love rubbing the magnesium spray on my feet at night. When you rub it on your feet, it actually gets directly into the bloodstream, and that’s really awesome. In terms of magnesium spray, something to keep in mind is, if it’s low quality, it’s going to make you itchy as fuck. It’s just going to irritate your skin, it’s going to hurt. You put it on a cut, you’re going to hate yourself and it’s going to be really uncomfortable. You do want to get a good one. I like Ease, E-A-S-E from Activation Products, that’s probably my favorite. And then if you’re in Canada, Now Foods makes a magnesium spray that is also very good. You just have to be careful.
You have a magnesium spray and you’ve tried it and it really aggravated your skin, well, you probably want to try something different. How much did you actually take? Now, this really depends. But the sort of generic recommendation is five times your body weight in pounds in milligrams. Let’s say you weigh 200 pounds, then you’re going to do 200 times five, which is 1000 in milligrams. You take 1000 milligrams of magnesium a day. You probably want to do it in divided doses or you’re going to make yourself shit.
If you’re taking 1000, you probably want to divide it into three doses. You can divide it to two, but you might want to experiment with that a little bit. If it gives you lose poops, then you’re going to want to divide it out or you may actually have to reduce your dose and top it up with some of the topical magnesium.
But as you know, I think mineral testing is always really important. You really want to know where we’re at. Typically, I’ll give a lower dose of magnesium to slow oxidizers and a higher dose to fast oxidizers. I like to know where people are at. I always do recommend hair mineral analysis testing.
So guys, thank you so much for joining me for this quick episode on magnesium, I hope it was helpful. Guys, if you’re listening to me on the podcast and you like what I do and you want to support me, the best way you can actually do that is to take five minutes and leave me a review on iTunes. Give me a five star review. Tell me how much you love the podcast, and that actually helps me get in front of more people. If you think this information is important, that is how you can help me spread the word. I would appreciate it so much, guys.
If you’re following me on YouTube, if you’re watching this on YouTube, make sure to subscribe to my channel so you get notified when I post my video every single Thursday. All right guys, thank you so much for hanging out with me. I will see you next Tuesday for the live Q&A. If you have questions, submit them to support@kendraperry.net and I will definitely answer them on air next week.
