Magnesium—Calcium Balance and Stress, The Secret
Inside the Cell

Dr. Rosanoff is a pioneer in discovering the importance of magnesium as a nutrient and a continuing researcher into its impact on stress and general health. She holds MS and PhD degrees in nutritional science from the University of California at Berkeley and is co-author of the book The Magnesium Factor with Mildred S. Seelig, MD, MPH. She is currently the Directing Scholar of the Center for Magnesium Education and Research.

Under the Microscope

Many years ago Dr. Rosanoff came across a fascinating scientific paper published back in 1926 by the British Journal of Experimental Biology. Entitled “On the Physiology of Amoeboid Movement,” part IV of the paper specifically focused on the action of magnesium. “This scientist, C. F. A. Pantin, was looking at amoeba cells,” Dr. Rosanoff told Organic Connections. “When he placed some of the amoebas in a no-magnesium environment, they died. When he put them in a magnesium solution without calcium, they lived just fine but were unable to move. It was only when the amoebas were placed in both calcium and magnesium that they could actually move.”

This experiment highlights the action of magnesium and calcium on a cellular level. In a healthy cell, magnesium resides within the cell while calcium remains outside. When calcium is needed for the cell to perform its function—such as firing a nerve, contracting a muscle or secreting a hormone—the channels in the cell membrane are induced to open and to allow the calcium to rush into the cell. “It’s the calcium inside the cell at a certain critical level that sets off activity, sets off whatever the cell needs to do,” explained Dr. Rosanoff. “But then the calcium has to be removed from the cell so the cell can stop contracting if it’s a muscle, firing if it’s a nerve, or secreting a hormone if it’s a gland cell. The cell has to relax and be ready to function again when it needs to.” Calcium is literally pumped out from the cell—a process that requires energy. Magnesium is essential for the proper functioning of both the channels that let calcium into the cell and the pumps that transport calcium out. Magnesium protects the cell from being overloaded with calcium.

Cells under Stress

Stress causes a rapid change within the body for the purpose of reacting to the source of anxiety. “A stress can be boiled down to something that makes a living thing react,” Dr. Rosanoff continued. “When life is stressed, it needs to move, act, think, worry, tense. At the cellular level, the channels open and the calcium comes in, which fires off a series of reactions that allows the cell to respond to stress. We often call it the fightor- flight reaction.”

Dr. Rosanoff points out that stress comes in many different forms. “There are emotional stresses, physical stresses and chemical stresses,” she explained. “Gravity is a stress. Any impact from the environment can be seen as a stress. There are internal stresses; for example, one cell inside your kidney could have a trigger coming from either a hormone or a nerve and that could be called, for that cell, a stress.”

Stress affects not only the nerve cells but other types of cells throughout the body as well. Adrenaline is being produced and released into the bloodstream, increasing the heartbeat and contracting muscles. Blood vessels contract, raising blood pressure.

Whatever the stressful episode may be, when it is over the body needs to return to its more restful state. Remaining in the “keyed-up” condition is unhealthy. Under ideal circumstances, once the stress has ceased, magnesium helps to push the calcium back outside the cell, allowing the cell to “calm down.” As a result the nerves stop firing, muscles cease contracting and adrenaline is no longer secreted. “If you have plenty of magnesium, you can go through these stressful events and go back down to your calm state and you’ll be in perfect health,” Dr. Rosanoff said.

What happens if the cell is deficient in magnesium? The cell is unable to keep calcium outside, as that operation takes considerable energy. Calcium “leaks” into the cell and causes action as it is designed to do, and the result is one commonly found in stressed individuals. “If it’s a nerve cell, it will start firing even though nothing is saying ‘We need you to fire now,’” said Dr. Rosanoff. “It’s just coming from an internal deficiency rather than from life’s environmental stimuli.”

What symptoms can manifest under these conditions? “Lack of magnesium can cause acute symptoms and it also can cause chronic long-term symptoms,” explained Dr. Rosanoff. “Sometimes it will come out as tinnitus [ringing] in your ears; sometimes it will come out as kidney stones, or as hypertension, or high cholesterol, or as a backache or a muscle spasm, or anxiety. In some people it manifests as depression. I’ve seen it happen that all of a sudden someone is worrying about something when there’s nothing to worry about. That’s why, when someone is living a stressful lifestyle, magnesium is such an extremely important component. Every time they go through stress, the magnesium in the body is depleted more and more.”

Magnesium Sources

Magnesium can be obtained from a diet— but only if that diet is unusually perfect. “If you have your great, fabulous nine fruits or vegetables every single day, and you have plenty of nuts and brown rice, then you might be fine,” Dr. Rosanoff said. “But we’re mostly eating foods that are regularly available to us, and unfortunately those are not as high in magnesium.”

Hence, supplemental magnesium may be needed for any diet.

Bringing the Vision to Video

Although she is a scientist by profession, Dr. Rosanoff also grasps the importance of being able to communicate about a subject in terms everyone can understand. Along that line, she is now realizing a longtime dream: to produce an animated video that clearly illustrates the important balance of calcium and magnesium and how they function within the body.

“I had been thinking about this video for a very long time,” Dr. Rosanoff told OC. “I first started learning about magnesium in the context of my larger nutrition education back in 1985 and since then have continued to research it very thoroughly. As I used to be a science teacher, I’m always thinking of how to communicate this to somebody who is not so interested in studying all that science—a time-consuming thing—and how to get the basic concept across to not only seventh graders and high school students but also doctors, professionals, researchers, pharmacists, nurses and the general public. This is so they could have a better understanding of life and these two hugely important nutrients, magnesium and calcium. They drive basic processes in all of life. The whole subject thrills me and I’ve always had a beautiful vision in my mind. As I continued to study, that vision continued to develop and I wanted to communicate it to everybody. That was the birth of wanting to do this video.”

Entitled Balancing Calcium with Magnesium, the video demonstrates with animation the effects of calcium and magnesium. Running at about two minutes, the video begins by showing a human body and then “zooming in” right down to the cell. Magnesium is shown as a green cloud within the cell, while calcium is portrayed as a white cloud outside, and the voice-over describes calcium-magnesium interaction as it is demonstrated on the screen. “We’re showing how the magnesium allows the calcium to rush into the cell, when required,” Dr. Rosanoff explained, “and that it’s the calcium inside the cell at critical levels that sets off activity. We then portray magnesium pushing the calcium back outside until it’s needed again.”

Next a demonstration is made of magnesium deficiency. “We are showing that without enough magnesium in the diet, eventually the cell cannot relax because it cannot keep the calcium outside,” said Dr. Rosanoff.

The action then zooms out once again to show the entire body while a list of magnesium deficiency symptoms scrolls across the screen. At this point the narration re-emphasizes the importance of balancing calcium and magnesium. The video ends on a positive note with a portrayal of a “healthy body.”

The video has received input from two other leading scientific minds. “I am so glad to have the input of Professor Robert Vink on the substance of this video,” stated Dr. Rosanoff. “He is an international magnesium expert and the Neurosurgical Research Foundation’s Chair of Neurosurgical Research and head of the School of Medical Sciences at The University of Adelaide, Australia.” Dr. Rosanoff has also received input and advice from another internationally recognized magnesium expert, Zenon Grabarek, PhD, principal scientist with Boston Biomedical Research Institute.

Dr. Rosanoff is so excited about this type of visual portrayal of nutrients and health that she is planning to produce several more in the near future.

Continuing to Raise Awareness

In addition to her ongoing research, Dr. Rosanoff puts considerable work into raising magnesium awareness, as she is doing with this video. Because there is a lack of broad education on the subject, it is a continuing process.

“Even though the information on magnesium has been known for years, it just hasn’t coalesced into the collective mind and collective consciousness of the scientific community,” she explained. “When findings are published on magnesium, everybody has a tendency to say, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s a surprise!’

“This is because they haven’t been taught it in their undergraduate classes, they weren’t taught it in their high school science classes, and they didn’t learn about it in their medical school classes or nutritional science classes, or their nursing classes, or their physical therapy or pharmacy classes,” concluded Dr. Rosanoff.