The FIRST Sign of a Magnesium Deficiency Is… (Dr. Berg Explains)

Sixty-eight percent of people in the US don’t get the required amounts of magnesium from their diet. Learn more about magnesium deficiency and why magnesium is so important.

I’d like to discuss the first sign of a magnesium deficiency did you realize that 68 of people in the United States don’t get the required amounts of magnesium from their diet now not to mention all the other foods and things and drugs and things that people are exposed to that deplete magnesium magnesium is a cofactor involved in 350 different enzymes what’s a cofactor cofactor is something that is required by an enzyme for that enzyme to work and I’m not just talking about digestive enzymes I’m talking about enzymes that make up all your biochemistry that do all the bodily functions the other thing about a magnesium deficiency is many times a potassium deficiency has very similar symptoms so it’s it is difficult to determine if you have a magnesium deficiency or a potassium deficiency but the good news is they both come from vegetables and salads so as long as you already knows you’re going to be totally fine but before I get into the number one most common symptom let me go through some other symptoms cramping twitching which could also come from other things as well like your pH being two alkaline arrhythmias okay of the heart the heart starts skipping because of a lack of magnesium mainly because magnesium works with calcium magnesium helps remove too much calcium from the cell helping this over contracted vasoconstricted artery lowering your blood pressure now as far as your bone health people think calcium to prevent osteoporosis but magnesium is just as important and osteomalacia which is a vitamin D deficiency which is softening of the bones in adults like a child’s version would be rickets because magnesium is essential for vitamin D activation you can’t activate vitamin D without magnesium insulin resistance and I’ve talked about this in many other videos has a related magnesium deficiency usually and this is why when you increase magnesium you start to make insulin more sensitive and it starts to work and of course insomnia if you don’t have enough you’ll have a tendency to not be able to sleep and also low magnesium can raise cortisol and of course your mood is dependent on magnesium too if you’re a deficient in magnesium you may find that you’re a bit on the depressed side so what is the number one symptom of a magnesium deficiency it is fatigue now so many people have fatigued and maybe you right now are sitting right there and you’re tired right A lot of people are tired it could be as simple as not getting enough magnesium and I do want to mention what foods to eat for magnesium because that’s ultimately the best way to get your magnesium but let me just dive into why people get tired because they don’t have enough magnesium remember I mentioned that magnesium is necessary for 350 different enzymes well a lot of those enzymes are in the mitochondria and specifically the creation of ATP ATP is the energy currency that the body uses to power all the different functions and magnesium Powers something else that I talked about in other videos the sodium potassium pumps these are the little pumps in every single cell that power your muscles to work and your nervous system to work that little pump creates the voltage because your cells are like batteries well guess what magnesium provides the energy to allow for that pump to pump so this is why you might have cramps there’s just not enough power to allow that sodium potassium pump to work in the muscles and things start shutting down and you cramp this is why the electricity cannot be traveled through the pacemaker of your heart correctly and if that can’t work you start getting arrhythmias or palpitations or your heart starts to skip because you don’t have the energy because there’s no magnesium to power that sodium potassium pump in the nervous system magnesium is also needed to make proteins protein synthesis also needed to make DNA and RNA the building blocks of everything now most people are deficient because it’s just not eating enough of the right food to prevent this problem and the food that will give you the most magnesium is leafy greens vegetables big salads the cool thing it will also give you the potassium so when you eat Foods whether at a restaurant or at home and you have this little side salad that’s just like one cup it’s just not going to be enough you need to beef up your salads no pun intended to the point where if you’re doing like two meals a day I would say you know have like five cups or just get it out of the way and eat like seven cups of salad just one time a day now ideally if you go a little bit more it’s a little bit better but I think you should work on a nice gradual increase in your salad but the point is that most people don’t consume enough salad even Associates friends family members around myself I see what they’re eating and they just don’t have enough salad so when I go to a social activity and they bring out the meals right they have a big salad bowl and you’ll put your salad on the plate with all the other food now you need an extra bowl in addition to your play to put that huge salad and of course I’m usually the only one that does that in my circles but the point is that I don’t have any arrhythmias I don’t get any cramps I had tons of energy because I have enough magnesium if you don’t do that or can’t do that we’ll definitely start using a supplement I would recommend magnesium glycinate that’s a good one but there’s three types of magnesium I would not recommend okay the magnesium oxide the magnesium hydroxide and the magnesium carbonate those might be okay maybe as a laxative but other than that I wouldn’t take them because they’re not very absorbable the other ways that people are deficient are they eat too many refined Foods especially fructose which is in table sugar it’s in honey it’s in high fructose corn syrup it’s in a lot of other things as well but fructose can deplete magnesium alcohol and what is alcohol made from sugar the more inflammation you have the less magnesium you’re going to have in your body if you want to know a good biomarker on a blood test for a magnesium deficiency look at something called C-reactive protein that’s an inflammatory biomarker and it usually means that you need more magnesium also certain medications like especially diuretics can create a magnesium deficiency as well as antibiotics when you have this alteration in your microbiome probably from a combination of several things what happens is there’s a certain thing that will start binding up and locking up a lot of the magnesium and a lot of people start developing musculoskeletal issues like fibromyalgia painful trigger points a lot of muscular problems because you need magnesium for that normal relaxation days of the contraction and relaxation cycle now if you wanted a better visualization of how much salad you need to eat to get your magnesium watch this video right here