Magnesium and major depression (2011)
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Somatopsychic medical effects are very real. I've gotten very good results with addressing nutritional deficiencies as a first line of defense for issues that often present as mood or mental health issues.
But I don't think you can reasonably conclude that magnesium deficiency is The explanation for increased prevalence of depression in a world that has had so many profound changes.
Things are more crowded. Most people now live in cities instead of rural environments. Among other things, this means people are subjected to much noisier conditions.
We have far, far better information about the world than we used to. The 24/7 news cycle is incredibly stressful, if only because most "news" is bad news.
There are just so very many confounding factors, no, you can't reasonably conclude that this one singular factor is the sole explanation or primary explanation. That's ridiculous.
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.
a. Loss of a sense of community and the very real practical support that provides with moving from small town/rural to big city life for most people.
b. "Sick building syndrome" which I think is far, far more widespread than is generally recognized. Among other things, indoor air quality is crap more often than not.
We weren't meant to live out our lives in seas of isolated little poorly ventilated boxes.
When I comment on such things, it typically gets downvotes and/or snarky, dismissive replies and personal attacks.
In general, I think society is extremely blase about possible health hazards - if it doesn't kill you instantly, people basically don't wanna know. Alcohol is huge. Smoking is even now considered basically fine by huge swathes of the population. It wasn't until 1996 that leaded gasoline was banned in the US, two decades after lead paint was banned. We tolerate absurd levels of pollution in cities, with not much more than a shrug.
For almost any given product and interaction, you can ask yourself "is there a powerful incentive structure in place to prevent this from invisibly but seriously harming me"? Usually, the answer is "no". It's up to you to pay attention, and ignore what society thinks is okay.
Ancient Romans would consider you a sissy snowflake to avoid their lead pipes - modern society will consider you likewise, if you go out of your way to be healthy. If you don't feel like a sissy snowflake - you're probably being poisoned.
I find that fresh air helps too, but during the winter I can't convince myself to "waste" money heating the house while at the same time leaving a window wide open letting the cold back in...
BTW I don't think smoking is considered 'fine' by any stretch - at least where I live in the US. All restaurants/bars are non-smoking, and the only place my kids have encountered smokers has been when we travel in Europe.
Winter is trickier, but as I live in a relatively mild climate I usually deal by keeping the bedroom door shut, the room heating off, and snuggling under a thick duvet with pyjamas. You sleep better in cooler conditions anyway. If it's really cold out, I'll air the whole house while I'm not at home and the heating's off anyway - then I sleep with the bedroom door open, in the hope that I at least get the benefit of the larger volume.
In Europe, as you say, a very large number of people smoke, even though they're just as aware of the health problems as Americans. I think America's advantage there is less to do with health consciousness and more to do with a kind of low-key puritanism - smoking is stigmatized and is seen as a moral failing in a way that it isn't in Europe.
A flip side of this is that if you stopped and considered what is reported to be killing you slowly, you'd go crazy (and arguably a lot of people did, to some extent). Consider e.g. nutritional "advice" in popular press.
Having my attention constantly called to garbage information on what does cause cancer this week by random people, I developed a following rule of thumb: if the actual negative health effect is big enough to even worth spending time thinking about, the product is either already banned by the government or has huge warning labels on it. Otherwise, it's fine in moderate quantities.
EDIT:
> "is there a powerful incentive structure in place to prevent this from invisibly but seriously harming me"? Usually, the answer is "no"
There's another question worth considering: "is there a powerful incentive structure in place to blow up statistical noise out of proportion, in order to create fear around common products?", and the answer is clearly yes - this is one of the ways news portals, lifestyle magazines and small blogs drive their traffic.
I don't always keep the bedroom window open, but it's open enough, even in the middle of winter that it's not unusual. I feel way better sleeping with the window open than I do with it closed.
There is an efficient way to get fresh air without wasting energy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_recovery_ventilation
I'm looking into setting up a window-mounted HRV in my apartment. I'm looking at the VENTS-US MICRA 150 and a DIY window vent bracket. The MICRA 150 is available at Home Depot and on Amazon. It collects condensation in a tank, rather than draining it through the vent tube.
There are a number of companies that make whole house ERV/HRV kits and a good method of setup is to constantly exhaust your bathrooms and possibly other contaminated spaces, while delivering fresh air to bedrooms or common areas.
Energy recovery is in the 50% range.
Some can be balanced to slightly positive pressure particularly if there is an attached garage or other sources of contamination.
ASHRAE publishes standard 62.2 which recommends that for modern houses the ventilation rate in CFM = 0.03*ft^2 + 7.5(Nbedrooms+1)
https://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/
I also frequently write about my health, but it has become my policy to not link to any of that directly on HN. It's too much drama.
But I don't think I've done much writing about the intersection of those two topics in specific, if that's what you are asking.
Done it for 4 years now and I can say it does make me feel more alive at the end & there have been minimal sleep incidents.
However, I don't think it's changed the way I share my opinion on housing (perhaps reinforced it?). People get ticked off when you diss their biggest investment even by proxy.
Add to that the fact that many people in the US work insanely long hours in unfulfilling or even demeaning work, little free time to spend with their families, on leisure, or to recover from burnout, possibly mounting medical and credit card bills, little hope for a secure retirement, their children at risk of violence in schools and few prospects when (or if) they graduate. Add in the media which worships wealth, fame, and appearances, and you have almost a sure fire recipe for depression.
It's really a wonder more people aren't depressed.
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 "
Can you link to those studies please?
> more calcium increases depression
now that really is curious. Again, do you have a link? TIA
But are you arguing that, yea, verily, this article's foundational assumption is true and correct: Magnesium deficiency is the sole or prime cause of all (or virtually all) modern depression?
If so, I think you need to back that up with a whole lot more than a paragraph or two about things you've read, like a long list of citations that not only show the role magnesium plays, but also another long list of citations that affirmatively excludes myriad other potential causes of Major Depression that are generally understood to be contributing factors.
And of course, not everyone who gets too little mag/too much calcium will react in the same way.
inadequate dietary Mg is prevalent in America and is the most likely cause.
It contains zero qualifiers suggesting it is one of many factors, a major factor among many, etc. It uses the word "the" and the singular form of "cause."
At best, I could say something like "Given the proven widespread lack of adequate dietary magnesium and the known side effects of magnesium insufficiency, it seems plausible to suggest that at least some portion of the increase in depression is due to widespread magnesium deficiency."
That may seem like quibbling to you, but scientists get paid to quibble about the details and to be as precise as humanly possible. They should be meeting at least as high a standard as my generally low paid freelance writing.
It’s a combination of lower intake of what already is a micronutrient, increased excretion (consequence of the lifestyle changes), and hard to diagnose (because serum Mg levels stay stable, only cellular Mg reserves are depleted).
I had a couple neurological issues in the past and had a good endocrinologist suggest me Mg (quelated) and he explained all that is mentioned on the article.
Anyway, I take about 200mg a day, for about the last 6 months or so, and I can not say I have felt any noticeable improvement. This is obviously just a single data point, but even with some specific symptoms that pointed to an Mg deficiency, I didn't see an improvement. If you feel this is some type of magic solution, you should temper your expectations.
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).
One form I haven't tried or researched yet is sucrosomial magnesium, which may have superior bio-availability to both biglycinate and l-threonate with relatively reasonable pricing characteristics.
I personally stopped taking magnesium a little while back, as it seems any bioavailable form pretty reliably causes insomnia for me. YMMV with magnesium, but you gotta make sure you buy it from a reliable source in a good form if you want to give it a proper chance.
Agreed though that bioavailability of any nutritional supplement is always a highly debated topic, I see that the article cites a powdered form, other comments have liquid drops.
I probably log 50-80 miles per week and low magnesium levels are notoriously low in endurance athletes. I also follow a ketosis diet for as many as 6 months at a time, low magensium is also common with Keto diet.
I take up to 10 vitamin/mineral supplements, but kind of cycle them at various times. It’s impossible to really pinpoint anything, but I tend to think I personally got great benefits to my running through the addition of fish oil, vitamin B, vitamin D and magnesium. Specifically I feel benefits to both energy and anti-inflammation, at one point I scaled up to a half marathon everyday and was never even sore, whereas previously I’d run maybe 5 times a week and sometimes be stiff the next day following 7 mile runs. It’s definately not magic, these supplements don’t run the miles for me, but I do feel better during the runs, recover better, and it just creates this feedback loop where it feels I am growing/improving.
edit: Now I think on it, actually, depending on (variables), you might need a specialist visit more than a PCP visit for some antacids. Shame on me for assuming it's just unmanaged acid reflux.
There have been some very weak recent studies on PPIs and long-term dementia risk that look very flimsy. Other than that, I’m unaware of “long term damage.”
Kidney stones scare me, I've heard horror stories of the pain it causes. Is half a tums alright after acidic meals? How much more likely am I to develop kidney stones?
Speaking in broadest generalities:
1. The kidney stone risk a/w calcium carbonate intake has not been well-quantified. In a couple of studies of post-menopausal women the risk elevation was estimated to be in the range of a 20% bump. It has not been quantified any better in any other demographic segment, that I am aware of (nota bene: I'm not a nephrologist or urologist).
2. Timing-wise, the closer to the bulk of the meal the tums goes in, the better. You get calcium stones due to calcium oxalate crystal formation - when you take the calcium with food, the calcium is prone to crystallize with oxalate in the gut and get shat out, rather than both getting absorbed and crystallizing in the urinary tract.
3. The other risk of constant tums supplementation is an acid-base condition known as milk-alkali syndrome (a combination of hypercalcemia and metabolic alkalosis). Please, get your basic bloodwork done.
4. I can't speak more usefully without understanding what medications you're on and the timing of their administration. I'd strongly recommend having that discussion with a trusted physician, because this really shouldn't be your baseline condition, full stop. If you want to share more details so that I could suggest more specifically what sort of specialist you should see, if you don't currently have a trusted physician, let me know, and I'll arrange a way of sharing contact information.
Also I recommend you get tested for Magnesium as contrary to popular belief (at least here in France) deficiency is not common (contrary to vitamin D).
Serum levels of vit D and Magnesium are not reliable indicators. As stated in the study for Magnesium. For Vit D, efficiency of a supplementation of Vit D3 is also not on par with real sun exposure, the skin and subcutaneous fat don't seems to respond the same way.
I sadly did not had any improvement on my side from getting my Vit D level from 15 (which is barely above the deficiency level) to a whooping level of 60 in a few month with Bio-D-Mulsion drops (Vit D3). My mag must be high as I eat a very rich diet in this nutrient, without any dairy from more than a decade now
Didn't know that, thanks.
> I sadly did not had any improvement on my side from getting my Vit D level from 15 (which is barely above the deficiency level) to a whooping level of 60 in a few month with Bio-D-Mulsion drops (Vit D3)
Given how well my state (physical and mental) noticeably improved these last few months I'm think the main factors were psychological instead of a deficiency (notably getting more financially secure with personal business taking off and going abroad and working remotely). Before that I was already working out and eating well for years, and even if that helped the changes weren't as noticeable. Or maybe it was all of that combined and it just took time to cross a threshold.
Perhaps I could give it another go, with Vitamin D + Magnesium, thus far I just try to drink milk to swallow down the Mg pills and get a bit of Vitamin D in nutrient form.
I am personally very wary of taking supplements, it seems like a dicey business. I wasn't planning on buying another bottle of Magnesium after this one runs out either.
The RDA is 350-400mg.
The supplementary range is 300-800mg per day.
Magnesium oxide is useless, orotate, citrate, and diglycinate are far superior.
Refer Henry Osieki’s The Nutrient Bible.
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 change that lifestyle that caused the problem in the first place.
I don't know about quack studies but for the cheap price and quick turnaround (3 days for small effect, 2 week for a large scale shift) it's a simple thing to try.
There's also threonate which is in a weird state with effects,withdrawals,price etc. I have some and still haven't tried it.
The Threonate makes the magnesium available to the brain.
Other forms of magnesium are usually taken in the 400-800 mg range.
> Magnesium is best taken with calcium and vitamin D as both are used in the uptake of magnesium.
There are a bunch of studies which have found correlations between vitamin D and depression and (stronger) correlations between vitamin D and seasonal affective disorder.
If your supplementation is working for you, there's no reason to change it, but there's a fairly obvious alternate explanation for the phenomena in the fact that you're also supplementing Vitamin D.
Depression is an array of conditions caused by multiple different root causes, so it's possible that Magnesium works only on some of them only and not on others.
Yes! Magnesium changed my life!
I was certain that I was living with depression... until I read somewhere that lactose intolerance can lead to magnesium deficiency.
I started taking Magnesium and felt the effect immediately. All of my body is physically relaxed. I struggled with muscle cramps and spasms, they are gone thanks to increasing my magnesium intake. It's as if my muscles being under stress created anxiety and that anxiety reduced my ability to be happy.
I have also learned that I need to supplement with vitamin D during the winter to avoid having SAD. Vitamin D + Magnesium are also my solution to happiness.
I don't know if it's the root cause, but my mental outlook has improved over the past few years.
...and placebo effect.
Conclusion
The interpretation which seems to best resolve everything I know about magnesium with the data from my experiment is that magnesium supplementation does indeed help me a large amount, but I was taking way too much.
I find this very troubling. The magnesium supplementation was harmful enough to do a lot of cumulative damage over the months involved, but not so blatantly harmful enough as to be noticeable without a randomized blind self-experiment or at least systematic data collection—neither of which are common among people who would be supplementing magnesium I would much prefer it if my magnesium overdose had come with visible harm (such as waking up in the middle of the night after a nightmare soaked in sweat), since then I’d know quickly and surely, as would anyone else taking magnesium. But the harm I observed in my data? For all I know, that could be affecting every user of magnesium supplements! How would we know otherwise?
Unless I missed it, the paper didn't consider another possible cause of magnesium deficiency: depression.
I.e., the paper seems to conflate correlation with causation (i.e., magnesium deficiency may cause depression), and doesn't consider that the causality may go in the other direction: that magnesium deficiency is a physiological manifestation of depression and other types of chronic negative emotion.
My experience with this is that I've worked for a long time to address chronic illness that has included conditions like depression, anxiety and chronic fatigue syndrome.
One of the many things I've tried has been to substantially increase magnesium intake, both via food sources and supplements.
My measured magnesium levels didn't change simply by increasing intake.
What has made a difference was directly addressing the emotional and outer-life causes of my depression/anxiety.
Even then it took a while, and the work/improvement is still ongoing, but it's very clear that my magnesium readings stayed low even when supplementing, and only started rising after a solid stretch of deep emotional healing work and significant improvements to life circumstances.
The still-nascent and controversial topic of epigenetics may be relevant here.
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.
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 and subjective mood/life experience has been clear.
> Less than 1% of magnesium (AFAIR) is stored in blood and its level can fluctuate a lot depending on your body state
Yes, that's hair tests are used for this type of healing work.
> So yes, I'm pretty sure you've missed it among those 350 pages
I wish you would take more of a good-faith approach to the discussion and point to where this is mentioned.
I read over the abstract as thoroughly as I could for evidence that they properly considered this.
I can see mention of the observation that magnesium levels seemed to respond to antidepressants, but it still seems to assume that the cause is physiological, and that any mood-change is an effect not a cause/influence.
Nothing I can find in the abstract suggests that depression-causing-magnesium-deficiency was considered, studied and disproven, yet such possibilities are often raised in other circles, and it aligns with my own experience (and available evidence).
Please understand that people like myself and a few others on HN, who have been trying to share perspectives like these for many years, get rather tired of reflexive dismissals, despite having done vast amounts research and experimentation/data-collection.
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.
I don't doubt that a simple dietary deficiency of Mg may be a causal factor for some, perhaps even most people. But studies like these often seem happy to report positive outcomes after finding, say, 70% short-term efficacy, but ignore the remainder, in which the causation may be very different.
> 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.
Yes, which has been a source of frustration, but I understand modern economics, so I get it.
> 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.
Cheers for that.
Anyone have a similar experience or maybe some insight that might explain this?
The only way we know to tell one from another is by what med helps, if any. If none do, it's "non-responsive depression" or some other catch-all. Depression, like schizophrenia and a host of other DSM diagnoses are the DSM's equivalents to "wastebasket taxa" in taxonomy.
People insisting that randomized controlled trials ("RCTs") prove that depression meds, and other psychiatric meds, don't work demonstrate their ignorance of the major failure mode of RCTs: unreliable diagnosis. Given that last, the RCT tells you nothing, positive or negative, absent very careful, detailed deconstruction of individual outcomes.
GI changes / issues
You don't have enough vit-d to bind with
Some thoughts:
1. You may have taken a form of supplement you don't tolerate well. I have trouble with sulfur. A lot of iron supplements are sulfur based. They cause negative side effects for me.
2. In order to be properly absorbed, magnesium needs to be taken with some other things, like calcium, vitamin D and vitamin K. Maybe you weren't absorbing it well because you weren't taking it with these other things.
3. Maybe you have some unidentified genetic quirk that impacts the processing of magnesium.
4. A nutritional approach to addressing health issues is a case of "Things get worse before they get better." A lot of people use the term "healing crisis" to describe this process. If you think you have never heard of such, think again. The best known form of this phenomenon is drug withdrawal.
5. You aren't magnesium deficient, so you were actually causing yourself an overdose of magnesium. There is some other explanation for your depression. Magnesium deficiency is not it.
Most people get too much calcium in the first place. So, you'll want to stick to a supplement that only has magnesium in it. But supplement companies aren't regulated by anyone so, you really need to trust the brand that what they're putting in there is what they say they're putting in there. Because they're so unregulated I wouldn't trust them at all.
Better yet, try some whole foods. The very highest densities of Magnesium are (per calorie): Wheat Bran, Zuchini, Pumpkin Seeds, Hemp Seeds, most beans. Green veggies are also super high but I know most people won't eat a ton of those. So, Cashews are also fairly high in magnesium and delicious. Put Wheat bran in your oatmeal to increase the magnesium content. if you want more ideas, check out: https://kale.world/c (sorry to link to it twice, but that's where i've done all my nutrient density analysis)
But yes, glycine also has many of its own benefits. Including a very interesting theory regarding life extension due to its interaction with methionine. [2]
[1] https://examine.com/supplements/glycine/#nutrient-nutrient-i...
[2] https://www.fasebj.org/doi/abs/10.1096/fasebj.25.1_supplemen...
Do you know why Mg helps you so much?
The liquid form leads me to believe they absorb well but not sure if that's actually true.
Edit to say I believe these drops have reduced my anxiety and improved relaxation. If nothing else I sleep better due to the mg (no more Jimmy legs).
Edit. I'm not implying any homeopathy antics, am genuinely curious.
What ended up working was improving my oral posture and articulation using ortothropics and self-developed speech exercises (the important part is having designed the exercises yourself). Suddenly it's vastly easier to maintain correct spinal alignment and breathing. Depression is just an emotion again.
I supplement fish oil, gradeschool-tier mathematics and meditation, from Vigyan Bhairava Tantra.
A "drill" I can recommend is writing out words a defined number of times (pick a number you like between 10 and 100), as you write also pronounce them without letting your tongue lose contact with the roof of your mouth. This may feel very unnatural at first. If you don't like the result just recycle the paper.
There's also the habit of sucking or pulling in your tongue - don't do that. I think it causes jaw clenching. If you want a fast way to get rid of that, invent metaphors for it and then watch yourself do it automatically in social interactions.
Also check out ortothropics, it's the emerging science of facial development through oral posture. They have a large collection of instructional material on YouTube.
Haven’t tried either thing but I hope to soon. In my experience dentists and orthodontists are little help with these kinds of problems.
1) The establishment/western orthodontics school where teeth are the root of the problem so are moved around or removed in order to achieve flatness in the face profile. Maintaining results might require wearing a retainer for life.
2) The holistic orthotropic approach where misaligned teeth are a symptom of other issues. It emphasizes myofunctional exercises (for tongue and cheek posture), osteopathic adjustment to realign skull sutures, neck posture and breathing exercises to train the body to regulate its CO2 during sleep. The results are permanent since the patient's efforts help drive bone growth in the palate and changes in the jaw joint.
I sucked my thumb until I was 9 which left me with a severe overbite, then had braces and headgear for 8 years as a child (luckily had no teeth removed) but it left my mouth too small. I am a late bloomer, probably 10 years behind my peers. I began weightlifting in my early 20s and basically have a different body type now than I did in adolescence, so my jaw grew and constricted my throat, which caused sleep apnea for at least 10 years. I've been chronically exhausted most of my adult life and didn't know why. That led to poor self image/self esteem and chronic melancholy/depression although I have never been diagnosed or taken medication for it.
I got fitted with an A.L.F. appliance about 9 months ago and the results have been nothing short of miraculous. I'd say my throat has opened by 1/4 inch or more, my skin has cleared up, my eyebrows have grown back, even my digestive issues have improved dramatically. And to top it off, I just look healthier/happier and feel more attractive in public because I used to have a gummy smile with no teeth visible at the sides and a recessed chin (which are the main causes of babyface).
For anyone reading this, I'd be very wary of orthodontic treatment that requires extractions or headgear. Get a second opinion, and opt for a Herbst device, A.L.F. or D.N.A. appliance instead. Invisiline is fine. Also look on youtube for exercises to improve your jawline, such as chin and tongue frenulum stretches. The most important exercise I've found is to keep your tongue suctioned to the roof of your mouth and learn to swallow with it up like that. The constant pressure of the tip of your tongue above your front teeth causes the nerves to stimulate bone growth to provide room for your top teeth. Then the bottom jaw conforms to the top, which can cause the bottom teeth to spread and straighten as well. But really, find a myofunctional therapist because this is only the tip of the iceberg. You can usually train with them remotely.
My theory for why this is not mainstream knowledge is that there is not as much money in a simple wire and holistic treatment/exercises as there is in orthodontics.
If I think about it, I do not come to that conclusion at all. Do you have any evidence for this claim?
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" (1990s) discovered endocannabanoid system in humans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocannabinoid_system
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.
> 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.
> https://extension.psu.edu/industrial-hemp-production
1. You should read the links that you post.
2. You should post links that contain evidence for your claims, instead of links that don't.
I'm sorry to be glib here, but surely you can see the problem with telling ME to go find evidence for YOUR claims, when you can't even be bothered to find evidence for your own claims. Given that you aren't presenting any evidence for your claims, I think it's highly likely that no such evidence exists, and I'm not going to waste my time searching for evidence that likely doesn't exist.
Beating a dead horse a bit: the link you've posted still does not say that cannabinoids have ever been part of the human diet.
I strongly suspect that I've actually read more on this subject than you have, as you've failed to mention Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire, which actually explores the coevolutionary history of humans and marijuana. Although Pollan still doesn't make the claims you're making about CBD oil, he does at least survey some evidence for coevolution between humans and marijuana.
So you have read enough to see but you need some sort of proof aside from the fact humans have been using it as feed for as long as history has been recorded ?
https://www.feedipedia.org/node/50
Given the fact humans didnt even know they had the endocannabanoid system until the 90's I am not surprised there isnt technical evidence showing the correlation.
Common sense should prevail here, but you are correct... even though the cannabanoid receptors are one of the most populous receptors in the brain and folks using CBD oil have been reporting all sorts of interesting reactions to it ( I personally can tell you it relieves pain from nerve damage ). Nothing in the links I posted directly correlates anything.
Odd how the money in the cotton industry lobbied and killed the hemp industry isnt it?
Trivia ... US Constitution is written on Hemp Paper
There was quite a lot of resistance to paper made of wood. It was acidic, so turned brown and crumbled in a short time, and was generally of lower quality than hemp paper. The quality problems have been addressed, since, but wood still takes quite a lot more processing to make into useful fiber.
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)
Please cite your sources regarding the recommended calcium intake.
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/42716/92415...
Here's another article link: https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/dangers-of-too-muc... https://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f228
I mean seriously look at this website: https://m.george-eby-research.com/app/welcome/5310242/36/
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/29/business/patents-751395.h...
" Zinc lozenges slowly dissolving in the mouth over a 20-30 min period releasing adequate iZn (18 mg) used each 2h are hypothesized to shorten common colds by 6-7 days, which is a cure for the common cold."
They used to sell a gel that, it turned out, caused permanent loss to sense of smell if snorted (against pkg instructions, but who read those?). Now you find lozenges, which seem to work about as well.
Very few otherwise healthy people have low magnesium levels. The reasons are usually related to severe kidney dysfunction, severe malnutrition, certain blood cancers/blood disorders, alcohol abuse (also because of malnutrition), and being on diuretics.
Magnesium is a cofactor for the enzymes that convert tryptophan into serotonin. Most of the body's serotonin is synthesized in the gut, where it helps control the muscles that move the bowels. (I assume this is why magnesium salts act as laxatives).
Magnesium is also implicated in other serotonin related disorders (e.g. Migraine).
Even broken clocks are right twice a day.
This is a side issue, but apparently it's a different reason.
From https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Magnesium-HealthProfession... : "The diarrhea and laxative effects of magnesium salts are due to the osmotic activity of unabsorbed salts in the intestine and colon and the stimulation of gastric motility."
The 220 of 250 claim also doesn't fit with "as effective as the tricyclic antidepressant imipramine". No antidepressant is 90% effective.
It works wonders for my sleep but I’ve never met anyone that shares that view.
I found it slightly helpful in my own treatment of depression. Not a miracle cure - it was suggested essentially because Proton Pump Inhibitors I am already on were known to worsen/cause it. In my case it seems to make medication a bit more effective and helped thinking a little bit. A few times when I ran out for a week or so waiting for the next bulk order to arrive it eventually caused a mild worsening of mood that went away when resumed. I don't know if I ever actually had deficiencies because needle phobia has meant avoidance such that I can only list my blood type as a question mark.
[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/deficiencies-in-desalinated-wa...
Just make sure to stay away from cheap Mg Oxide since bio-availability is somewhere in the 4% range and usually comes in Multi-anything pills.
When I take iron in the morning and B3 whenever (morning/day), I don't get RLS.
And important: if you do experiment, I found that only "real" flush-causing B3 works; Not niacinamide/nicotineamide, which apparently has some of the (many) benefits of niacin, though no RLS relief (or flushing). And especially not inositol-hexanicotinate, which I have not found a single reference describing any useful property of (but still gets sold as B3).
1. Magnesium may treat anxiety rather than depression. This is analogous to various SSRIs which arguably treat anxiety better than depression[1]. Anxiety and depression are highly comorbid, and both doctors and patients may be bad at differentiating between the symptoms, leading to "I feel better"-type reporting. This might mean that Mg supplementation is a good thing for depressed people because it treats their anxiety, not because it treats their depression. This alternative hypothesis is particularly compelling because magnesium deficiency has a variety of well-understood effects on muscle tension[2] which mimic physical symptoms of anxiety.
2. Magnesium is frequently supplemented concurrently with vitamin D, vitamin K, calcium, and zinc. All of these are known to be active in humans, and vitamin D in particular has been correlated with depression and seasonal affective disorder.
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/11/07/ssris-an-update/ (see under the bolded "fourth" comment--SSC has a bunch of posts on this topic).
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium_deficiency#Diagnosis
For some people it can be more easily absorbed than other forms, and the malic acid (which occurs naturally in apples and other fruits) can support the Kreb's cycle that produces mitochondrial energy (which is also linked to mood and general healthy functioning of the body).
The supplementation is simple and rudimentary. I add epsom salt to the tea that we drink as a family each morning. The dosage ends up at about 90 mg of elemental magnesium per day for her. From what I've read this is below the accepted therapeutic dose, but the I believe the cessation of her constipation is unlikely to be a coincidence.
What I originally got it for was percieved joint pains in the morning jogging routine I had just started. I seemed to get some results but wanted to do an A/B, and while I don't have lab results to correlate, I did start noticing some joint issues again by the end. So we'll see where I stand after a week.
Elsewhere in the article they reference testing being of "negative utility"
This seems to be the case with many such nutrients.
I almost wonder if the most effective solution isn't a medical approach but a medically-informed, government-led incentive program to convince food manufacturers to reintroduce the essential nutrients they strip out of food.
As you might expect, it is the billboard owners and poster printers who benefit most from the expenditures. The American Cancer Society, similarly, is mainly a printer of junk mail.
If you would have told me 10 years ago that organic produce, meats, and dairy would be commonplace in a Walmart grocery store, I would have laughed, but here we are.
Conversely it is only through large government subsidies of corn and soy that we have all these cheap, non-nutritious soy and corn byproduct snacks that fill 80-90% of grocery store isles, of which the free market, driven by consumer demand for something different, has now started to penetrate even the snack isles. For example, pea snacks are all the rage now, and I see way more pea snacks, pea crisps, etc than ever before at my local chain store.
> large government subsidies of corn and soy
That's not exactly what leftists fight for when they fight for government money. Gut those, gut those hard I don't care.
Is the government behind the sugar lobby too? https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-in...
Is the government now bringing all the unhealthy things from the West to developing countries? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/16/health/brazil...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4092629 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8161771 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1363897/
Or is it the free market looking for a new source of dollar at the expense of people's health ?
Just a heads up.
[1]http://www.kumc.edu/school-of-medicine/family-medicine/integ...
[2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/2407766/
[3] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolutionary-psychia...
Personally I've felt a more potent reaction from oxide than glycinate, possibly for that reason.
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 difficult balancing act to pull off, because as per the comments in the beginning of Gwern's article about magnesium, magnesium has a very slow-moving component to it, where it depletes slowly but also only fills slowly, and a fast moving component that responds relatively quickly, and based on my experience, the heart's use of magnesium seems to be related to both. Potassium, by contrast, appears to take nearly instant effect. So you're balancing something you can't see that changes over the course of months or years against a nutritional input that is instant. This is not easy.
Several times I've settled on a dosing schedule that seemed to work for me, but had to be changed after a couple of months as the slow-pool magnesium (I hope) continued to improve. I've actually learned the difference in my body's reactions to a potassium deficiency (a tightness in the chest) vs. a magnesium deficiency (restless legs, heart that may not be "racing" but is not slowing down for sleep properly). YMMV; n=1, etc.
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%.)
No it was not. Development of treatment with lithium was very much a part of psychiatric normal science.
Neverless: lithium is now the way to go with clinical treatment of a wide range of disorders and reducing self-harm and suicide rates.
The problem so far: nobody is sure why it works.
The dose is worth mentioning. Clients receive a dose of 200-500mg per day. The lithium you can buy without prescription contains around 1mg. Effects are still there, but the dose on the subjects of matter are quite high and can be toxic if done wrong.
Do you have a good example? Most of the examples I think of are just results got by badly run clinical trials or unreproducible physics experiments.
That looks to me like a surprise discovery.
see:
> Magnesium has been largely removed from processed foods, especially refined grains, in the Western world,
If the root cause is insufficient dietary magnesium -- due to poor dietary choices -- eating foods that are rich in magnesium, and cutting out refined foods, might be a good start. It would have other benefits, too.
I don't like to see people taking tons of supplements whilst eating poorly.
If you establish that, yea, verily, magnesium helps, dietary changes to make sure you get enough magnesium can make sense.
I used to take about $300/month worth of supplements of various sorts. I no longer do so and haven't for years. I just note that "Based on x, I need more of thus and such." and tailor my diet to get what I need.
Overwhelmingly, normal-ass anti-anxiety, SSRs, and therapy is to be the best form of treatment. Pumping your body full of magnesium is a hack that falls in to the bucket of exercise or sleeping more.
If you're scared about going to the doctor and getting prescribed, that's one thing. But mainlining crushed up magnesium vitamins to fix your depression is a complete lack of understanding of depression.
Magnesium is not treatment. Mushrooms and Ketamine is not treatment. Get actual treatment.