Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 412 posts

Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status

#381

Post by elric »

Sunspark wrote: post #235
wincy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I recently started using Magnesium Glycinate as a supplement and I feel it truly changed my life, not exaggerating. I’ve suffered from chronic general anxiety for most of my teens and adult life. Magnesium has completely cleared this up, things I thought were just part of my personality (being anxious and other associated things) were actually due to a chronic magnesium deficiency. I just have to make su…

Interesting, I am specifically taking magnesium to stop muscle twitches. In your case it is the opposite.

I too take magnesium in an attempt to stop muscle twitches (fasciculations). This was recommended to me by a neurologist after a couple of tests. My fasciculations started during a period of serious stress and anxiety (of the "I think I'm dying"-variety). They've never really fully gone away. Some nights I can't sleep because some muscle is randomly twitching all night. Magnesium helps, but so does staying away from caffeine and making sure to keep hydrated.

Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status

#382

Post by tgb »

pembrook wrote: post #305
tgb wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most green vegetables like broccoli are 90% water. That's super misleading. The nutrition facts for broccoli here [1] gives 89% water but actually over 1/3rd of broccoli by mass is carbs, fats, proteins or fibers. And comparing raw broccoli to cooked chicken is deceptive - cooking broccoli obviously gets rid of a lot of it's water depending on how you cook. Moreover, comparing gram-to-gram, I'm sure broccoli is les…

Raw chicken with skin on is 66% water, so I wouldn't call it super misleading. I simply mentioned "cooked" because almost nobody eats chicken raw. Lots of people eat raw broccoli. Boiling or steaming broccoli does basically nothing to its water content. Baking it may reduce by 10%. So still 20% more water than the protein. Anyways, the water point was brought up to give something intuitive to grasp on to. As said, th…

I was saying that "90% water" stat is super misleading because it makes it sound like But the point is, it doesn't matter how much water there is. No one is wondering whether they'll feel more full on 100g of chicken or 100g of broccoli. Anyone trying to control weight would ask about 100 calories of broccoli versus 100g of chicken. I don't know what the answer there is, but they're probably comparable. A head of broccoli is just 205 calories but still contains 17g protein and 16g of fiber. Equivalent calorie chicken breast would be like 40g protein and no fiber. Both are healthy food choices unless you deep fry them or something. You're making lots of fast-and-loose comparisons here that are simply misleading. (Why is the comparison broccoli + fast food versus just chicken? Why do you suddenly switch to talking about iceberg lettuce? Why pretend that broccoli isn't a healthy food that is substantially more satiating than fast food - as is chicken?)

Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status

#383

Post by cartoonworld »

jjeaff wrote: post #348
cartoonworld wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chiming in to second this. I've had anxiety problems most of my life, and when a death in the family shook everything it got really, really bad. I tried everything I could think of except prescription meds (maybe should have, but I didn't like the side effects or addictive potential) and one day while lurking I read a random comment on HN about magnesium. I decided, Why not, its cheap, and it has had a truly profound…

What type of muscle spasms were you having? My spouse has high anxiety, some depression, and a persistent issue of localized muscle spasms or twitches in her arm when their anxiety is extra high.

It was a twitching of muscles in my upper arm such as triceps usually, sometimes forearms, sometimes calf muscles and facial muscles around the eyes. It didn't cause pain but it was annoying and a little troubling. The light twitching would just go on an on for hours, every 5-15 seconds seemingly unending. I recall my cat batting at the back of my arm while sitting on my back balcony one morning. I think it was wiggling a loose thread on my shirt.

It didn't really seem to follow any logic, except I noticed alcohol made them worse. Alcohol also caused an increase in anxiety in the following days. I also experienced symptoms of depression. It was a very dark time.

There was definitely more going on than just magnesium but it wasn't until I tried the magnesium that I had any breakthrough.

Good luck. Another poster in these comments mentioned that you can get non-prescription testing for magnesium and other markers from Walk-In Labs ( https://www.walkinlab.com/ ) if you want to go that route. I also know there are doctors out there that will work with this kind of medicine, but I don't know too much about that. Magnesium is pretty safe, but I understand there is some possibility for problems with taking too much.

I genuinely wish you the greatest success, I'm confident that with careful, thoughtful effort along with your loving support, your spouse can start to feel better.

Maybe consider meditation too? Box breathing[0][1] is an often recommended technique for this sort of thing.

Dr. Andrew Huberman[3] recommends a breathing technique, I cant remember what he calls it, but is easily performed to counteract sympathetic nervous stress: Breath in sharply through the nose, quickly to about half capacity Once, brief pause, followed by a second sharp inhalation through the nose to mostly full capacity, brief pause, and then release the total breath through the mouth. He suggests doing this 2 or 3 times to engage the parasympathetic nervous response.

[0] - https://quietkit.com/box-breathing/

[1] - https://www.webmd.com/balance/what-is-box-breathing

[2] - Huberman Labs podcast available on RSS feeds - "Overcoming Anxiety" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z25f6qy361Y

Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status

#384

Post by nerdponx »

raducu wrote: post #354
nerdponx wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did clearly state that it was an anecdote, with a sample size of one, myself. Also I think you're being extremely reductionist here. I'm not claiming that I never felt the sensation of fullness in my stomach. Of course I did. Maybe I should rephrase, that I constantly felt like I was craving food even though my stomach was full. Moreover, to suggest that our brains somehow only understand macronutrients when it com…

There's more to it -- there's a considerable delay between your stomach being full to your brain telling you you're full. I can eat one pound of icecream in one go before I feel that I'm done, or 1/3 of that, tell myself I can eat the rest in 15 minutes IF I still feel the need to at that future time, and I usually don't -- sort of like the reverse of telling myself I'll only work 5 minutes on that boring task I don'…

> there's no way the brain can tell I've eaten 1/3 meat and 2/3 salad vs 3/3 meat in the span of 15 minutes

Again, I think this is trusting too much in "today's science". Who's to say that your body/brain can't detect whether a food is nutritious? For all we know, some trace nutrients are subconsciously detectable in taste and smell, even if heuristically.

I'm not saying that is what happens, but I don't think we know nearly enough to dismiss such a possibility.

Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status

#385

Post by nerdponx »

tekknik wrote: post #372
pembrook wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that were true, you could solve your cravings by taking a simple multivitamin. Which just isn’t the case unless you’re critically deficient in something (which, most 1st world people aren’t). Eating fast food 3 meals a day but taking a multivitamin will change nothing about your feelings of hunger. What’s more likely, is fast food doesn’t make you feel full because its low in protein (the most expensive ingredient…

But since when are multivitamins the same as the real thing? Study after study show that multivitamins don’t do much if anything so your idea here is flawed.

Isn't that (at least partly) a problem of bioavailability?

Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status

#386

Post by toomim »

justinator wrote: post #85
alisonkisk wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why pour it in your diet when you can put it in a pill to eat directly along with 30 other vitamins?

Vitamin absorption via pills doesn't seem to work very well.

This. It's actually very hard to get enough Mg from pills. Your body needs a lot.

Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status

#387

Post by kickout »

Mertax wrote: post #248
version_five wrote: post #27

I understand this seems mostly to be about soil depletion. I'm curious more generally if vegetables are also less nutritious because they are selectively bread for high water content and size. For example, its appeared to me for years that you vegetables you get on a Subway sandwich must have almost no nutritional content. They are all way paler than you'd normally see, and super watery. Thinking about it, I suppose…

Some of the products the company I work for develops are specifically for the Ag seed research industry. We develop instruments like on combine weigh systems used to measure weight, moisture and yield of various grain hybrids as they are harvested. From my limited perspective, it appears that for decades this industry has cared most (almost entirely) about breeding hybrids that increase yield in various climates. The…

Yes, those seed companies are breeding for what the _market_ is demanding. As the market is currently constructed, for better or worse, farmers are more successful when they can sell more gain (e.g. higher yield). There is _no_ reward for quality traits on most agricultural crops except for wheat.

Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status

#388

Post by akiselev »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #274
akiselev wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The varieties you see in a supermarket are optimized for industrial farming and yes, transportation is one of the things they optimize for. The tomato specifically, though, lost most of it's flavor purely for aesthetic reasons [1]. Consumers have an image of the perfectly round red tomato so all the farmers optimized for it, losing at least one critical gene that contributed significantly to flavor and sugar producti…

Depends where you live, but heirloom tomatoes and such are very popular at farmers markets up here, and available at the better stores. (example image from a quick google: https://i1.wp.com/www.seedtopantry.com/wp-content/uploads/20... ) Berry season up here is awesome too even in the major markets, because there's such a glut of berries that won't transport out of the region. I suspect this will be more of a trend a…

As long as you're grocery shopping in the United States, it doesn't really matter. I've spent most of my life in suburban and exurban California with several years each in New York, Miami, and Seattle so I'm no stranger to farmers markets and co-ops. The difference between homegrown and farmers market is much greater than the difference between farmers market and supermarket.

If I had to quantify it, I'd wager that fruits and vegetables from farmers markets are from 10% to 20% better than what you'd find in a supermarket. Co-ops can be as much as 10-50% better but growing it yourself with proper varieties is easily 200-300% better, especially here in California. Tomatoes with so much flavor that you can taste them through a tablespoon of ranch dressing (not that you'd ever need anything more than a splash of olive oil and a dash of salt with home grown vegetables).

Re: Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status

#390

Post by rpmisms »

mpfundstein wrote: post #345
nate_meurer wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've imposed some dietary restrictions on my kids, but they're mostly glycemic in nature. - No sugary drinks; absolutely no soda pop, ever, and very little fruit juice, which is really no better than pop. - No sugary breakfasts. Breakfast cereal is fucking poison, especially the sweetened varieties. - No kids-menu food. When we eat out, they've always ordered off the adult menu. No pizza, chicken nuggets, mac-n-chees…

sometimes a pizza or a coke is not a bad thing you know. if you put all the bad stuff away, there might just come the time when your kids have enough of your rules and rebel and then begin to compensate and overuse those stuff. been there, done that

Just don't normalize shitty food as something you eat casually, teach your kids to enjoy it like alcohol. A little every so often is fine, too much too often is bad.
Post reply on HN