The Importance of Magnesium to Weight Loss

I’ve already said a lot about weight and its asso­ci­a­tion with mag­ne­sium in my book, The Magnesium Miracle Here are some high points.

1. Magnesium helps the body digest, absorb, and uti­lize pro­teins, fats, and carbohydrates.
2. Magnesium is nec­es­sary for insulin to open cell mem­branes for glucose.
3. Magnesium helps pre­vent obe­sity genes from express­ing themselves.

The Weight Connection

Magnesium and the B-complex vit­a­mins are energy nutri­ents: they acti­vate enzymes that con­trol diges­tion, absorp­tion, and the uti­liza­tion of pro­teins, fats, and car­bo­hy­drates. Lack of these nec­es­sary energy nutri­ents causes improper uti­liza­tion of food, lead­ing to such far-ranging symp­toms as hypo­glycemia, anx­i­ety and obesity.

Food crav­ing and overeat­ing can be sim­ply a desire to con­tinue eat­ing past full­ness because the body is, in fact, crav­ing nutri­ents that are miss­ing from processed food. You con­tinue to eat empty calo­ries that pack on the pounds but get you no fur­ther ahead in your nutri­ent requirements.

Magnesium is also nec­es­sary in the chem­i­cal reac­tion that allows insulin to usher glu­cose into cells, where glu­cose is involved in mak­ing energy for the body. If there is not enough mag­ne­sium to do this job, both insulin and glu­cose become ele­vated. The excess glu­cose gets stored as fat and con­tributes to obe­sity. Having excess insulin puts you on the road toward diabetes.

The con­nec­tion between stress and obe­sity can­not be over­looked. The stress chem­i­cal cor­ti­sol sig­nals a meta­bolic shut­down that makes los­ing weight almost impos­si­ble. It’s as if the body feels it is under an attack such that it must hoard all its resources, includ­ing fat stores, and won’t let go of them under any induce­ment. Magnesium can effec­tively neu­tral­ize the effects of stress.

Obesity, More than Bad Genes

The pub­lic has been told that obe­sity is inher­ited, which makes peo­ple think they don’t have a hand in cre­at­ing this prob­lem and can con­tinue their bad habits and blame their genes. Animal exper­i­ments show, how­ever, that if a mouse with an obe­sity gene is deprived of B vit­a­mins, the obe­sity will be expressed. But if it is fed plenty of B vit­a­mins, it will remain thin. The process of metab­o­liz­ing B vit­a­mins is called methy­la­tion, and mag­ne­sium is nec­es­sary for one of the most impor­tant steps in this process.

Every meta­bolic func­tion in the body requires vit­a­mins and minerals—without them, symp­toms develop. Therefore, the first step in treat­ing non­spe­cific symp­toms is diet and dietary sup­ple­ments, not drugs. It is also impor­tant to note that many of the weight loss diets that peo­ple sub­ject them­selves to are often defi­cient in magnesium.

Abdominal Obesity

Gaining weight around your mid­dle is related to mag­ne­sium defi­ciency and an inabil­ity to prop­erly uti­lize insulin. It also sets the stage for Syndrome X. You only need a tape mea­sure to diag­nose a pre­dis­po­si­tion to Syndrome X—a waist size above 40 inches in men and above 35 in women puts you at risk. In their book The Magnesium Factor, authors Mildred Seelig, M.D., and Andrea Rosanoff, Ph.D., take note of research show­ing that over half the insulin in the blood­stream is directed at abdom­i­nal tis­sue. They the­o­rize that as more and more insulin is pro­duced to deal with a high-sugar diet, abdom­i­nal girth increases to process the extra insulin.

Syndrome X

The term “syn­drome X” describes a set of con­di­tions that many believe is just another fancy name for the con­se­quences of long-standing nutri­tional defi­ciency, espe­cially mag­ne­sium defi­ciency. The long list includes high cho­les­terol and hyper­ten­sion and obe­sity. It also encom­passes ele­vated triglyc­erides and ele­vated uric acid. High triglyc­erides are usu­ally found when cho­les­terol is ele­vated but most often when some­one has a high-sugar diet, such as from drink­ing sodas daily and eat­ing cakes and pastries.

High uric acid is due to incom­plete break­down of pro­tein from lack of B vit­a­mins and diges­tive enzymes. This com­plex col­lec­tively appears to be caused by dis­turbed insulin metab­o­lism (ini­ti­ated by mag­ne­sium defi­ciency), called insulin resis­tance, and even­tu­ally can lead to dia­betes, angina, and heart attack. We also know that lack of mag­ne­sium sets the stage for a defi­ciency of pan­cre­atic enzymes.

As pre­vi­ously noted, mag­ne­sium is required in the meta­bolic path­ways that allow insulin to usher glu­cose into cells, where glu­cose par­tic­i­pates in mak­ing energy for the body. If mag­ne­sium is defi­cient, the door­way into the cells does not open to glu­cose, result­ing in the fol­low­ing cas­cade of events:

1. Glucose lev­els become elevated.
2. Glucose is stored as fat and leads to obesity.
3. Elevated glu­cose leads to diabetes.
4. Obesity puts a strain on the heart.
5. Excess glu­cose becomes attached to cer­tain pro­teins (gly­cated), lead­ing to kid­ney dam­age, neu­ropa­thy, blind­ness, and other dia­betic complications.
6. Insulin-resistant cells don’t allow mag­ne­sium into the cells.
7. Further mag­ne­sium defi­ciency leads to hypertension.
8. Magnesium defi­ciency leads to cho­les­terol buildup, and both these con­di­tions are impli­cated in heart disease.

Syndrome X, accord­ing to Dr. Gerald Reaven, who coined the term, may be respon­si­ble for a large per­cent­age of the heart and artery dis­ease that occurs today. Unquestionably, mag­ne­sium defi­ciency is a major fac­tor in the ori­gins of each of its signs and symp­toms, from ele­vated triglyc­erides and obe­sity to dis­turbed insulin metab­o­lism.^(1,2)

Insulin Resistance

Insulin’s job is to open up sites on cell mem­branes to allow the influx of glu­cose, a cell’s source of fuel. Cells that no longer respond to the advances of insulin and refuse the entry of glu­cose are called insulin-resistant. As a result, blood glu­cose lev­els rise and the body pro­duces more and more insulin, to no avail. Glucose and insulin ram­page through­out the body, caus­ing tis­sue dam­age that results in overuse and wast­ing of mag­ne­sium, an increased risk of heart dis­ease, and adult onset diabetes.

One of the major rea­sons the cells don’t respond to insulin is lack of mag­ne­sium⁽³⁾ Some stud­ies show that chronic insulin resis­tance in patients with type II dia­betes is asso­ci­ated with a reduc­tion of mag­ne­sium; mag­ne­sium is nec­es­sary to allow glu­cose to enter cells.⁽⁴⁾ Additional stud­ies con­firm that when insulin is released from the pan­creas, mag­ne­sium in the cell nor­mally responds and opens the cell to allow entry of glu­cose, but in the case of mag­ne­sium defi­ciency com­bined with insulin resis­tance the nor­mal mech­a­nisms just don’t work.⁽⁵⁾ However, the higher the lev­els of mag­ne­sium in the body, the greater the sen­si­tiv­ity of the cells to insulin and the pos­si­bil­ity of revers­ing the prob­lem.⁽⁶⁾

So, get your weight loss cure today. Start drink­ing sup­ple­men­tal mag­ne­sium, bathe in it or spray it on your body and watch the weight drop off.

While you’re doing that don’t be sur­prised if you lose lots of other symp­toms like: hyper­ten­sion (car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, kid­ney and liver dam­age), per­ox­yni­trite dam­age (migraine, mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis, glau­coma, Alzheimer’s dis­ease, etc.), recur­rent bac­te­r­ial infec­tion due to low lev­els of nitric oxide (NO) in the cav­i­ties (sinuses, vagina, mid­dle ear, lungs, throat, etc.), fun­gal infec­tions due to a depressed immune sys­tem, thi­amine deac­ti­va­tion (low gas­tric acid, behav­ioral dis­or­ders, etc.), pre­men­strual syn­drome, cal­cium imbal­ance (osteo­poro­sis, hyper­ten­sion, mood swings, etc.), tooth cav­i­ties, hear­ing loss, dia­betes type II, cramps, mus­cle weak­ness, impo­tence (lack of NO), aggres­sion (lack of NO), fibro­mas, potas­sium defi­ciency (arrhyth­mia, hyper­ten­sion, some forms of can­cer), iron accu­mu­la­tion, etc.⁽⁷⁾

References
1. Singh RB, “Association of low plasma con­cen­tra­tions of antiox­i­dant vit­a­mins, mag­ne­sium and zinc with high body fat per cent in Indian men.” Magnes Res, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 3-10, 1998.
2. Ma J et al., “Associations of serum and dietary mag­ne­sium with car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, hyper­ten­sion, dia­betes, insulin, and carotid arte­r­ial wall thick­ness; the ARIC study, Artherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study.” J Clin Epidemiol, vol. 48, pp. 927-940, 1995.
3. Humphries S et al., “Low dietary mag­ne­sium is asso­ci­ated with insulin resis­tance in a sam­ple of young, non-diabetic Black Americans.” Am J Hypertens, vol. 12, no. 8, pt. 1, pp. 747-756, 1999.
4. Alzaid AA et al., “Effects of insulin on plasma mag­ne­sium in non­in­sulin­de­pen­dent dia­betes mel­li­tus: evi­dence for insulin resis­tance.” J Clin Endocrinol Metab, vol. 80, no. 4, pp. 1376-1381, 1995.
5. Barbagallo M et al., “Altered cel­lu­lar mag­ne­sium respon­sive­ness to hyper­glycemia in hyper­ten­sive sub­jects.” Hypertension, vol. 38, no. 3, pt. 2, pp. 612-615, 2001.
6. Dominguez LJ et al., “Magnesium respon­sive­ness to insulin and insulin-like growth fac­tor I in ery­thro­cytes from nor­moten­sive and hyper­ten­sive sub­jects.” J Clin Endocrinol Metab, vol. 83, no. 12, pp. 4402-4407, 1998.
7. Johnson S. The mul­ti­fac­eted and wide­spread pathol­ogy of mag­ne­sium defi­ciency. Med Hypothesis. 2001 Feb;56(2):163-70.

Dr. Carolyn Dean is a med­ical doc­tor and natur­o­pathic doc­tor. She has been in the fore­front of the nat­ural med­i­cine rev­o­lu­tion for over 30 years. You can find her at www.drcarolyndean.com.