Stress & magnesium tolerence

This summer I went on a 13 day paddle trip on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. Fecal waste must be packed out, so the outfitters provide an ammunition can (nicknamed the "groover" for obvious reasons from the days before they'd fit a toilet seat on the can) in camp for this purpose. If you have to go during the day, they gave you a setup that was equivalent to a newspaper to go on & then a doggie bag to put the waste into (day bag). Needless to say, diarrhea would be messy & unpleasant under any of these circumstances. Also the only place to wash up was in the the sedimented river water.

Sooo, before I left, I made sure I was "dialed in" to the "just right" level of magnesium. For me, it is the very large quantity of 2.6 grams of elemental mag a day. Immediately upon getting on the river, this was obviously too much. Over a couple of days I titrated down to 2g/day. Fortunately, I never had to use the "day bag." The trip was wonderful and my mag level stayed at 2g/day for the duration.

Upon returning to civilization and email, voicemail, the internet & etc., my bowel tolerance returned to 2.6g/day. This was immediate as we visited several other attractions over a few days on our way driving home. It basically happened the day I got off the river.

Many times it is said that physical activity will "burn" mag. In the canyon, I was either paddling or hiking 10-14 hours/day, so no lack of activity.

Just an observation I thought I'd pass on...

George

Whoa!, Glad I finished breakfast before that first paragraph LOL. One other interesting note, I've noticed my bowel tolerance for Mag has gone up while on a low carb diet. I'm up from about 800 mg/day to 1200mg /day and haven't reached bowel tolerance. Activity level may be up a little bet also, 25 miles of hiking in the past 5 days, but not to extremes from what I'm used to. Any evidence that low carb diets call for more Mag. 2.6 gr is quite a lot, could it be that being in ketosios calls for more Magnesium?

John

George - thanks for sharing your observation. As your experience proves, physical activity which is a form of stress, definitely does help use plenty of magnesium as required for muscle energy but we don't often have the opportunity to measure as precisely as you just did. Very telling.

Stress, other than physical, such as most people have in the daily grind of jobs, family, finances, and so on definitely is a huge contributor to magnesium depletion. Now add to these scenarios the fact that food sources of magnesium are not abundant so it's small wonder that so many come up with symptoms indicating low magneisum...not to mention arrhythmias which seem to be increasing regularly.

I remember when you began experimenting with incremental dosing to optimize your magnesium. Your intake is always a graphic reminder to me about the variables between individual needs. Often, the additional problem is that enough magnesium can't reach the cell's interior so is wasted rather than put to work.

The fact that you've been able to reverse your Afib consistently and for so long is encouraging to those who are currently on that path.

Congratulations!

Best to you,
Jackie

Hi Jackie,

Thanks for your comments.

Even though I was physically active all day, my mag requirements dropped significantly when all the daily stresses were out of the picture. If it is not obvious to everybody, I had absolutely no contact with anybody, except my paddle mates when I was on the river. Therefore the "normal" daily stress is obviously much higher than the physical activity stress. This is true, even though I consider my life fairly low stress at this point. My body sure seems to be telling me differently.

Perhaps more time in and a renewed commitment to meditation is in order, as that is the only way I know how to diffuse daily life stress...

George

John,

With regard to mag, the late Dr. Herbert C. Mansmann (who spent the later part of his life as a mag researcher) talks about it a bit here: <[barttersite.org] In my case, I started supplementing about 9 years ago and my tolerance has increased since. I started out at 800 mg/day, which was not bowel tolerance. I've been doing the low carb, high fat diet for about 5 years and really pushed the bowel tolerance after starting it. One reason was the one afib episode I got when getting keto adapted, and my heart rate was elevated after a PIP flecainide conversion (and reduced when I threw mag at it) and secondly, I'd have more of a tendency toward constipation with less fiber in the diet, so would mitigate that with mag. Mansmann said it was normal for tolerance to increase over time with supplementation.

I have several local friends with a high bowel tolerance. One is a lone afibber and he controls with higher doses of mag than I do (4-5g). He is not keto-adapted. Another is a WPW (Wolffe Parkinson White) ablatee. Her tolerance is ~2g/day. She is keto-adapted. Her keto-adapted husband with no heart rhythm issues has a much lower tolerance.

Dr. Mansmann was diabetic and ran his intake up to 20g/day for a year to mitigate diabetic neuropathy. Normally, his intake was around 5g/day and I think his tolerance was around 3g/day. There are data that suggest you absorb 7% of the excess intake above bowel tolerance. So not efficient, but there is benefit. I've posted more of his writing here, if you search on his name.

George

George - I totally agree. The difficult time is the discipline to make it happen. But, so worthwhile when you do it.

Peaceful mind; peaceful heart.

Bliss.


Jackie