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Magnesium and major depression (2011)

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

151–160 of 235 posts

Re: Magnesium and major depression (2011)

#151
post #148
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you test your magnesium level by blood tests? Less than 1% of magnesium (AFAIR) is stored in blood and its level can fluctuate a lot depending on your body state. Correlation is not causation but what HN readers should remember is that most researchers are aware of that fact. So yes, I'm pretty sure you've missed it among those 350 pages, especially given that results of treatment are mentioned in the abstract.

> Did you test your magnesium level by blood tests? No, hair tests. Which I dread talking about in forums like this as it can be a red cloth to motivated skeptics/cynics (of which I used to be one until I was blessed with the opportunity to endure this experience), but the results have been consistent with my experienced-symptoms over a long period of time (10 years so far), and the correlation with my emotional work…

I mean the fact that it works as a treatment. We don't have much more than doing a blind test and checking improvement to test causality. There are so many real world factors that elimination wouldn't work.

I see that you like Jung so I'm sure you're aware that there's more than neurochemistry that can influence it, but when talking about drugs, incentives seem to be aligned such that one should expect patented substances to have the most papers showing positive results vs something cheap and readily available.

Plus I thought you were only basing this N=1 on blood tests so I didn't like dismissal of paper based on that, thus the tone of my prev reply, I'm sorry about that.

Re: Magnesium and major depression (2011)

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of Magnesium are you taking? There’s a huge differential of bioavailability of different magnesium types.

People mentioning their experiences here should definitely mention what form they're taking. Magnesium oxide is pretty commonly sold but it doesn't get absorbed very well - to the point where I think it should not be sold at all. I've had good experience with chelated magnesium.

Exactly this. Magnesium oxide is terrible at being absorbed, people need to take chelated Mg.

Re: Magnesium and major depression (2011)

#153

The onset of depression has greatly increased in incidence, and it is affecting people much earlier in their lives during the late 20th century and early 21st century than before the 20th century (Meyer and Quenzar, 2005). The reasons for these findings are not quite clear, but inadequate dietary Mg is prevalent in America and is the most likely cause. There is probably a real increase in depression, coupled with a c…

I would wager it's a combination of factors:

1. In general, the north american diet is disgraceful.

2. Consumerism and brainwashing people into believing that they can only be happy when they achieve X, Y or Z, does nothing for people's emotional emptiness.

3. The constant barrage of shit news, most of which is largely irrelevant to most of our lives, most of the time.

4. The constant threat of automation and off-shoring meaning that people never feel secure about their income stream unless they specifically work in an industry where their ability to generate their income stream is unrelated to these constant threats.

5. Inflation of living costs escalating at a rate beyond inflation of income.

6. The polarization making people feel isolated from one another instead of connected. Nobody can talk about anything any more without fear of offending someone, being politically incorrect, being ostracized or vilified.

7. The reported growing financial disparity where the 2% have 98% of the wealth while the 98% share the other 2% and the constant message that it's only going to get harder to be able to cross that chasm.

8. Corporations subverting politics for their own profits instead of the good of the people.

The list goes on ad nauseum.

I firmly believe if the world stops behaving like assholes, learns to eat properly and talks to one another to a level that find connection instead of a divide. The depression is just going to get worse and worse until suicide becomes an epidemic.

Re: Magnesium and major depression (2011)

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of Magnesium are you taking? There’s a huge differential of bioavailability of different magnesium types.

People mentioning their experiences here should definitely mention what form they're taking. Magnesium oxide is pretty commonly sold but it doesn't get absorbed very well - to the point where I think it should not be sold at all. I've had good experience with chelated magnesium.

IIRC, Magnesium Oxide can be useful because it's poorly absorbed, making it a better osmotic laxative than chelated forms / free magnesium. I agree it shouldn't be advertised as benefiting anything other than that though.

Chelated magnesium is definitely better, I've also felt benefits from free magnesium (you can buy drink mixes w/ MgCO3 + Citric acid that fizz off CO2 when mixed).

Re: Magnesium and major depression (2011)

#155
I hope this issue gets more attention. We're so undernourished when it comes to Magnesium. Also, closely related is Calcium. Calcium and Magnesium work closely together in the body for huge number of functions related to brain health. Of particular importance is the ratio of calcium to magnesium. A Significant portion of the population has their calcium to magnesium ratio way too high, something like 10 to 1 or higher. This is not only due to too little magnesium but also due to way too much calcium. It's not commonly known in the US (because big food companies run the USDA recommendations), but you're only supposed to get 500mg of calcium a day, not 1000mg like the USDA recommends. There are so many studies that show that 1400mg+ is approaching a danger zone. this is exacerbated by unusually low magnesium levels.

If you're looking to get more magnesium into your body, I'd recommend whole foods rather than supplements. Supplements are often not absorbed by the body. Whole foods high in magnesium include: leafy greens, nuts (especially cashews), oatmeal, whole grains, beans. and if you want to find more high nutrient foods try my nutrient based food search: https://kale.world/c (put the selector on magnesium)

Re: Magnesium and major depression (2011)

#156
post #67
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I'm taking it. I have an absorption disease (Celiac) and I was having terrible cardiac issues at 38 (and with a minor family history of heart issues at older age, but nothing like what I was having). Magnesium is one of the things it has taken to straighten it out. If you have heart issues, you may have to try to balance magnesium and potassium. If the problem is a deficiency, this is a rather annoyingly d…

I have HOCM and afib and Mg and potassium helps wonder with the extrasystoles. I also take taurine against the extrasystoles in combination with Mg and K in the evening before going to bed and I can sleep much better.

Yeah, I didn't go into the whole spiel as off-topic (and this comment isn't the whole spiel, either...), but taurine for heart issues seems like something that should just be tried by almost anyone experiencing them. It has basically no overdose risk, as it's an amino acid everybody consumes anyhow, and there are many papers showing it can help. So, very cheap, basically no downside, possible significant upside, abundant scientific support. It was one of the first things I tried that had an immediate, positive effect.

Digging into this sort of thing did convince me there's a lot of truth in the idea that you can't get the medical world very interested in solutions that don't come with a patentable treatment. There's a lot of papers I've found about how much heart stuff can be treated by correcting various deficiencies, such as taurine, or magnesium & potassium, but it all seems very under-utilized by the medical community themselves.

Example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16797868

(Incidentally, just as that abstract says, the literature suggest adding L-Arginine to your taurine may also be beneficial as they work together. If you're fine now, I wouldn't suggest rocking the boat, but if it's only 80-90% effective or something, you may want to consider adding that as there's a decent chance it could take you to 100%.)

Re: Magnesium and major depression (2011)

#157
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you think about it less than 100 years ago hemp and CBD oil was in our diet. If I think about it, I do not come to that conclusion at all. Do you have any evidence for this claim?

Sure. Hemp is a weed and was growing prolifically all over the US until the 1920's and 1930's, when it was outlawed. Free range cattle still is a big thing but was even larger then. Most of the beef in the nation consumed hemp, and the people consumed hemp 2nd hand by eating the domestic and wild animals that grazed on this wild growing weed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp Then you take a look at the "newly" (1990…

> Hemp is a weed and was growing prolifically all over the US until the 1920's and 1930's, when it was outlawed. Free range cattle still is a big thing but was even larger then. Most of the beef in the nation consumed hemp 2nd hand by eating the domestic and wild animals that grazed on this wild growing weed

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp

1. The link you provided states that hemp contains varying amounts of CBD, and does not claim that cattle have ever consumed any CBD.

2. Even if cattle do/did consume CBD, the link does not claim that any of that CBD is passed down to humans consuming beef--there's no evidence in that link that beef from cattle who consume CBD contains any CBD.

> It isn't hard to extrapolate that humans have been digesting the weed and cannabinoids for a long time and it is an integral part of the human system

> Of course you can say humans and the plants evolved parallel and they arent related. I have no evidence to prove otherwise but typically when you see similar systems in the same ecosystem they are related.

1. I don't buy the claim that "typically when you see similar systems in the same ecosystem they are related". Proving such a claim would require a wide survey of a bunch of ecosystems to prove a hypothesis that doesn't really build toward any theory: in short, this isn't even a good hypothesis, let alone a hypothesis which is likely to have been tested.

2. Even if we accept hypothesis 1 is true, that doesn't show what the relation is--it doesn't show that humans have been digesting cannabinoids. There's lots of evidence that cannabinoid receptors are involved in hunger and metabolism, and while I won't claim to fully understand that, I think we can agree that humans need to eat to survive, so there are some pretty clear reasons for the cannabinoid receptor system existing in humans that have nothing to do with cannabinoids originating in plants. Also, humans aren't the only species with cannabinoid systems. It's just as possible that humans or another mammal are integral parts of cannabinoid survival than the inverse.

I can certainly appreciate the romantic aesthetic of a plant coevolving with humans to expand our minds or some such, but the fact that it's such an aesthetically pleasing hypothesis should be recognized as bias, making me doubly skeptical.

Re: Magnesium and major depression (2011)

#158

The onset of depression has greatly increased in incidence, and it is affecting people much earlier in their lives during the late 20th century and early 21st century than before the 20th century (Meyer and Quenzar, 2005). The reasons for these findings are not quite clear, but inadequate dietary Mg is prevalent in America and is the most likely cause. There is probably a real increase in depression, coupled with a c…

There have been a number of experiments where they gave patients more magnesium, and in response most patients reduce their depression by a statistically significant amount. The inverse was found when they gave them calcium (more calcium increases depression). It's all about the ratio of calcium to magnesium. We're a society that consistently gets way too much calcium and way too little magnesium. That's because our food source isn't diverse. Dairy is considered a food group here in the US, and almost everything in it comes from Milk, is primarily made up of milk. Milk is very unbalanced in terms of Calcium to magnesium, something like 10 to 1 ratio.

Also, there was another study where they found that treatments for depression actually increased serum magnesium levels in the brain.

EDIT: Here is the study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507265/# "A dietary supplement of 500mg calcium immediately and severely worsened MD, which was extinguishable within one hour by orally treating with 400mg gel capsules of Mg as magnesium glycinate "

Re: Magnesium and major depression (2011)

#159

I hope this issue gets more attention. We're so undernourished when it comes to Magnesium. Also, closely related is Calcium. Calcium and Magnesium work closely together in the body for huge number of functions related to brain health. Of particular importance is the ratio of calcium to magnesium. A Significant portion of the population has their calcium to magnesium ratio way too high, something like 10 to 1 or highe…

How significant is that portion? Have there been any large scale clinical studies recently on calcium and magnesium levels in the population?

Please cite your sources regarding the recommended calcium intake.

Re: Magnesium and major depression (2011)

#160
post #69
post #11

I have found that taking Magnesium is like turning a switch on in my head and I'm suddenly happy again. I don't get upset or angry in the same way, I'm more patient and my thoughts are not obsessive. Magnesium is best taken with calcium and vitamin D as both are used in the uptake of magnesium. I have found that processed foods, alcohol, caffeine and sugar all make me worse, but magnesium gives me the will power to c…

Doesn't the article mention that calcium and vitamin D produce harmful effects?

Calcium does produce harmful effects, but only if you get too much of it. If his diet has very little calcium in it he might be okay. And even if it doesn't, as long as the supplement has a 1:1 ratio, he should still be okay as it will even out the supply of calcium and magnesium in the body.
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