Been taking Magnesium 300mg for 4 days now!

Didn't think I would have time to blog today but certain exciting things are happening.

Yesterday I downloaded these 2 books in Kindle version:

The first one is a medical report which is quite short and can be read over lunch.  It was VERY informative and I would recommend it, as its jam-packed full of fascinating facts.  The second books expands on those facts, with personal anecdote and case histories etc.    

I'm about 29% through the second one.

I suggest downloading both, as they'll fill you in very quickly on this topic.

What is Happening to Me

I've been taking magnesium 300mg for about 4 days now and noticed the effects quite quickly.  What was great about reading the Magnesium the Stress Mineral book is that it confirms what I was experiencing: 

"people notice the effects within 24 hours".  

I knew I wasn't imagining it, now I know why I feel a lot more relaxed generally.  My aches and pains are diminishing, which is a huge relief because they were everywhere, especially my leg and hip.  

What's more, is that any residue of migraine around my scalp region has completely disappeared.  

But probably best of all is that I've been sleeping very deeply these last few nights.  So much so, that 2 nights ago my leg literally fell out of the bed and hit the floor with an enormous bang!!  (We have futons so we're pretty low to the floor anyway!).

When this happened I thought my leg must have had pins and needles or something? but when I pulled it back into the bed, I noticed it was completely fine??  This was very strange indeed, but I put it out of my mind for the time being.  

Later, when I sat and analysed events, it showed me the level of relaxation I was getting at night.  I'm a person that can sleep very lightly and often find myself 'locked in tension' while asleep.  Its certainly very refreshing indeed to get such good quality sleep - for no apparent reason.  

The pain in my leg has improved no end.  But another thing that is quite remarkable, is the overriding tension in my neck and upper back is pretty well gone!  I usually live with a lot of tension, I'm a 'tense person' who kind of lives on their nerves.  If I were to try and define how I'm feeling these days, I would say the magnesium is making me feel, very relaxed all over, in a slightly drunk kind of way, if that makes any sense?? 

Thus, it would appear that taking a simple A-Z daily vitamin is clearly not the solution to the body's daily requirements for vitamins and minerals. 

I first became interested in vitamins a few years ago, when I noticed Zinc had improved my appetite after years of very poor appetite.  This is no surprise as I was borderline hypothyroidism for years (undiagnosed) and this endocrine disorder is linked to poor vitamin absorption.  Then I had to take copious amounts of iron, because the hypothyroidism mainly presented as chronic anaemia.  Then I needed to take big doses of B6 because of 'women's related problems'.  

So when we read stuff like "vitamin deficiency is due to living in industrialised societies" what they really mean is, that due to intensive farming methods, the soil from which we grow food is so completely depleted of essential minerals, that our primary route to obtaining these vital nutritional elements is barred. 

Agricultural fields are quite often planted twice in one year now! and in Spain, where a lot of our food comes from in the UK, they actually now have 4 growing seasons!  So it follows that vital chemical compounds like magnesium and selenium are in very short supply.  This lack of selenium has been linked to the growing incidence of Hypothyroidism and now I'm learning that magnesium deficiency is more than likely the cause of many vascular 'spasm' disorders, like migraine and high blood pressure.  

Don't get bewildered by what you read though, because the important thing to understand is that magnesium is nature's natural antagonist to calcium.  Calcium causes muscles to contract, magnesium causes them to relax!   

Here's a really great quote from Dr Cohen's book:

"Magnesium's beneficial effects on migraines may also rise from its direct effects on nerve tissue.  Some experts believe that migraine headaches result from excessive nerve excitability in the brain, which builds up and spreads, releasing inflammatory substances that cause pain.  Magnesium reduces nerve excitability and inhibits its spread.  Magnesium also calms pain receptors."

Dr Jay S Cohen

As a migraine sufferer, I can totally relate to this description of what must be going on in my head, as I feel my pain as a result of hundreds of completely agonising 'spasms' and the nauseating inflammation that follows each painful throb.  Taking anti-inflammatories is OK but pretty useless in the long term, as a deficiency is clearly only ever going to remain a 'deficiency'.  

The startling thing for me at this stage of my research is the QUANTITY of magnesium that we need, DAILY.  Its pretty huge really, and totally not addressed in packets of wonderful A-Z vitamins that we all pay so gladly for....

Magnesium and Optimal Nerve Health
I said last time I was about to order a Kindle book about healing headaches (you can find the link on this page), because it had been personally recommended to me and there were so many rave reviews about it on amazon.  However, while in the process of ordering, I came across another book that started me thinking...

Its called The Magnesium Solution for Migraine by Jay S Cohen.

Usually I buy a book like this after reading a sample first, but I bought this one without doing that because somewhere in the back of my mind I had connected feeling better with taking this supplement?  Because I also suffer from Hypothyroidism, magnesium was recommended for better GI tract health and somehow, I noticed that I did 'feel better' while taking it, but have not yet been able to identify why?  

So I've decided even before reading it that I'm going to take magnesium regularly from now on, because even more coincidentally, it turns out this doctor had painful veins in his legs as well.  We're not talking about varicose veins as such, more like a general feeling of pain throughout (the blood supply to) the legs.  

For my part, I noticed that for the last couple of months, my right leg is incredibly painful at times and its not as if I have huge bulging varicose veins, its more like a rheumatic pain sensation?  I've often wondered if there's a connection between my leg pain and my migraines?  So with all of this in mind, I think this book is probably going to help me - hopefully a lot (?).    

So far I've been able to work out that my migraines are the result nerve hypersensitivity in my head and more than likely affecting the third cranial nerve, the Oculomotor Nerve (see last post).  

It turns out that being magnesium deficient is common to people living in industrialised societies and especially so of people with migraine!  

This vital chemical element, known as an alkaline earth metal, turns out to be essential to nerve health, as you can see from this extract of the book:

"I soon learned that magnesium was an essential element for the normal activity of nerves and blood vessels, the key players in normal vascular functioning.......it is the body's natural calcium antagonist, and the balance of magnesium and calcium is key to vascular health"

By Jay S Cohen

Well, so far I've learned that migraine sufferers are typically very low on this mineral, added to the fact that its very difficult to take proper readings of its presence in blood serum anyway (watery part), as most of the time its only found in cells, not blood.  

I know this probably sounds crazy but I've been taking it now for 3 days and I can already notice a difference.  You probably think I'm exaggerating, but let me tell you, I'm a person that's very tuned into their body, its like my body kind of speaks to me or something?  Seriously, for instance, I knew I was pregnant 3 days after fertilisation because of a 'tingly feeling' all over my body.  I will never forget it, it was quite extraordinary.  It follows that it was no surprise to me when it was confirmed, because I had felt it as a positive chemical change.  Do you know what I mean?  (That was several years ago, so please dont think this is now going to turn into a mum-to-be blog - lol!)

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Lifestyle Changes

I'm still avoiding cheese, drink only one coffee a day now and limit my chocolate intake to lunchtime only.  I try to breathe more deeply as often as I can (especially first thing in the morning) and have the window open in the car and when I'm cooking.  I use my neck massager when I'm stressed and want to get to sleep quickly.    

Interesting Little Story

We had visitors at the weekend and I noticed one of them got a bad headache the day after they had some alcohol.  Funny thing is I knew something was going to go amiss, because as I watched this person leave, it occurred to me that they were not sufficiently dressed for the colder weather.  Turns out they had 3 beers and the next day a vomiting headache.  I remarked to them that the same has happened to me on countless occasions and the link was being very cold then drinking alcohol.  I told him the veins in his head had constricted with the strong coffee he had before he went out, plus the freezing temperatures made the veins constrict even more, then they had dilated too quickly with the alcohol and dilated even more in the very warm room they were subsequently in.  The resulting blood rush to the brain had caused a cranial nerve disturbance of some sort?