Why Bodies Need Magnesium
Magnesium is the fourth most abundant mineral in your body.
It’s involved in over 600 cellular reactions, from making DNA to helping your muscles contract
Despite its importance, up to 68% of American adults don’t meet the recommended daily intake
Low magnesium levels have been linked to many negative health outcomes, including weakness, depression, high blood pressure and heart disease.
This article explains what magnesium does for your body, its health benefits, how to increase your intake and the consequences of getting too little.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25540137
Maintains Healthy Brain Function
Magnesium plays an important role in relaying signals between your brain and body.
It acts as the gatekeeper for the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors, which are found on your nerve cells and aid brain development, memory and learning
In healthy adults, magnesium sits inside the NMDA receptors, preventing them from being triggered by weak signals that may stimulate your nerve cells unnecessarily.
When your magnesium levels are low, fewer NMDA receptors are blocked. This means they are prone to being stimulated more often than necessary.
This kind of overstimulation can kill nerve cells and may cause brain damage.
SUMMARY: Magnesium acts as the gatekeeper for NMDA receptors, which are involved in healthy brain development, memory and learning. It prevents nerve cells from being overstimulated, which can kill them and may cause brain damage.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22034391 Magnesium sits inside these receptors protecting them.
Maintains a Healthy Heartbeat
Magnesium is important for maintaining a healthy heartbeat.
It naturally competes with calcium, which is essential for generating heart contractions.
When calcium enters your heart muscle cells, it stimulates the muscle fibers to contract. Magnesium counters this effect, helping these cells relax.
This movement of calcium and magnesium across your heart cells maintains a healthy heartbeat.
When your magnesium levels are low, calcium may overstimulate your heart muscle cells. One common symptom of this is a rapid and/or irregular heartbeat, which may be life-threatening.
What’s more, the sodium-potassium pump, an enzyme that generates electrical impulses, requires magnesium for proper function. Certain electrical impulses can affect your heartbeat.
SUMMARY: Magnesium helps your heart muscle cells relax by countering calcium, which stimulates contractions. These minerals compete with each other to ensure heart cells contract and relax properly.
Helps Regulate Muscle Contractions
Magnesium also plays a role in regulating muscle contractions.
Just like in the heart, magnesium acts as a natural calcium blocker to help muscles relax.
In your muscles, calcium binds to proteins such as troponin C and myosin. This process changes the shape of these proteins, which generates a contraction.
Magnesium competes with calcium for these same binding spots to help relax your muscles.
If your body doesn’t have enough magnesium to compete with calcium, your muscles may contract too much, causing cramps or spasms.
For this reason, magnesium is commonly recommended to treat muscle cramps.
However, studies show mixed results regarding magnesium’s ability to relieve cramps — some even finding no benefit at all.
SUMMARY: Magnesium acts as a natural calcium blocker, helping your muscle cells relax after contracting. When magnesium levels are low, your muscles may contract too much and cause symptoms such as cramps or muscle spasms.
The Bottom Line
Magnesium is a mineral involved in hundreds of cellular reactions.
It’s important for making DNA and relaying signals between your brain and body.
It competes with calcium, ensuring your heart and muscles contract and relax properly, and can even improve migraines, depression, blood pressure, blood sugar levels and sleep quality.
Written by Ryan Raman, MS, RD on June 9, 2018
References:
www.healthline.com/nutrition/what-does-magnesium-do
US National Library of MedicineNational Institutes of Health with the following references:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25540137
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29093983
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22034391