Are you feeling anxious for no reason? Stressed? Have trouble sleeping?
It’s likely that you are not getting enough youth preserving magnesium in your diet and possibly depleting its store in the body under stress. Even small deficiency of magnesium in your body can speed up aging, impacting specially your heart. Research has proven that depriving test subjects of this magic mineral directly affects vascular and neuromuscular abnormalities. Huge number of biochemical processes in our body such as rhythm regulation of the heart, clotting of blood, detoxification of free radicals, control of blood pressure, bone strength and even insulin resistance, depend on availability of this. If you are one of the people who lie in bed staring at the ceiling for a long time, lifting the amount of magnesium in your diet might be something you can try because it is known to calm your nerves and activate receptors that “switch off” your brain in the night.
Magnesium is also known to control efficacy of other minerals such as Calcium. In fact the ratio of calcium and magnesium is also very important. Too much calcium without magnesium can lead into unwanted blood clots possibly leading to a stroke or heart attack.
The good news is that by being aware of our diet, we can get all of the magnesium needs from food. Pumpkin seeds, almonds, cashews, peanuts, walnuts are all good sources of the mineral that you can snack on any time. Green vegetables such as spinach, chard, broccoli pack a lot of other great minerals along with magnesium.
For chocolate lovers such as myself, the best news of all is that chocolate contains pretty hefty amount of magnesium. Darker the chocolate, higher the amount. So, indulge yourself regularly with dark chocolate.
What about supplements? Unless, you are definitely not getting enough from your diets, you can possibly supplement with 200 mg dose but keep in mind that too much magnesium (more than 700 mg) might cause diarrhea. Always consult your doctor if you have any kind of kidney problems.