Its very common for afibbers to test low even after what should be sufficient oral doses of magnesium for a good long while. Mag repletion can take a full 6 months to a year for some people with good absorption and assimilation of the mineral ( which is hard to absorb in the best scenario in any event, but many afibbers ... like myself ... also happen to be magnesium wasters, and also often potassium and sodium wasters as well, and tend to run though these critical electrolytes as fast as we can dump them down our throats, up to a point.
Often when you are still getting low to borderline low IC Mag on Exatest, even after robust oral mag dosing for a long while, you must go for a full blown IV magnesium infusion program using Myers Cocktail formula as the base which you can often find with an integrative or functional medicine MD or naturopath in your area who offers an IV nutrient service in their practice.
Then go for a solid Myers cocktail that includes healthy doses of all the B vitamins, large 10gram to 30gram IV doses of Vitamin C, a number of other nutrients like Biotin etc ( ask them to nix or go light on the IV calcium) and often with IV glutathione added and injected in at the very end of the IV fluid bag just as it is empty and they then inject 500mg to 1 gram of IV glutathione ( make sure they keep the large syringe used to inject the Glutathione into the IV port of the IV tube covered with an opaque cloth or towel the entire time from the moment they fill the syringe with glutathione until it is fully injected into your IV bag port and thus into your body as Glutathione degrades very quickly in light exposure .. also make sure they wait to the very end of the Myers cocktail infusion before injecting the Glutathione into the IV bag part as well as it will degrade and dilute it almost completely when mixed with all the other nutrients) for an instant boost of this critical detoxifying master anti-oxidant in the body that also is typically deficient after age 50. But also have them add in from a minimum of 2 grams to a max of 4 grams of IV magnesium sulfate to the Myers cocktail and drip the whole thing in over 30 to 45 minutes while you sit back in a lazy boy lounger and read or listen to your music.
Highly relaxing and doing this once a week for the first month then twice a month for the second and third month and often them you can get by with once a month going foward for the first year, will really restore you IC magnesium the fastest way.
You also wnat to keep up with your oral Mag protocol as well while you are building up your IC levels with the IV Mag so if you start to get any bowel intolerance just back off some on the oral mag until you have tapered down on your IV protocol and got a repeat EXATEST showing a much better IC Mag level.
Doing this exercise will forever change a persons mind, and I wish every cardio and EP on earth had to experience this themselves or see it in a host of patients, and see how much better the heart stability gets with the IC Mag levels approach an ideal level of 40 for an afibber, or as close to that as you can get.
Also, be sure to add in the potassium as spelled out in The Strategy in detail along with getting sufficient mag on board and that might help buy you even more time managing the beast conservatively and will surely help other aspects of your cardiovascular and overall health as well.
It is a real shame with otherwise smart people give up on magnesium or other nutrient repletion that has a good biochemical basis of action for hte issue at hand simply becuase after a few months or longer of taking 600 to 800 mg a day of oral pills its still a very mixed to poor results bag in spite of all teh effort.
The have to realize that there is some genetic or acquired biochemical/hormonal dysfunction that make us just run through these critical heart stabilizing ions and it takes a truly heroic effort in many cases just to get the IC levels up a little bit into the more optimal range which is from 36 to 40. An IC level of 34 on Exatest is definitely too low for Afibbers and the closer one can get to being able to maintain more or less 40 the better.
Then with a healthy dose of potassium being confirmed with a Cardymeter testing whenever you wish at home ( the way Horita who makes the Cardymeter also makes a sodium bio-sensor for their Sodium Cardymeter as well, but alas no Magnesium sensor as yet as they is not need so often in the horticultural field this device is mainly and initially intended for.
Also learn to stock up and apply effective topical magnesium 'oil' and then in the last months of the 4 to 6 months of gradually tapering IV magnesium replacement therapy, start to apply liberal doses of topical magnesium sprayed on and rubbed in vigorously on both sides of your torso, inner arms and inner legs and back of knees etc and also chest and stomach too, assuming you are not hairy like a wholly mammoth, and you will definitely be able to get your IC mag levels at least to a moderately decent range from 36 to 37 is about the best I get even with heroic efforts but without it Im down to 30 to 31 even with a gram of oral chelated glycinate a day ... which is no mans land.
The other problem with regular docs recognizing magnesiums impact, even though they fully under stand the theoretical role of Mag in the cardiac cellular cycle, is because they see so many people with AFIB with what they feel have perfectly normal serum Mag readings from 2.0 to 2.5. This can be very misleading, particularly in many Afibbers as there can be a many years, or even a decade, lag between a real functional IC magnesium deficiency and it showing up that way in serum Mag levels, as the body is very adept at scavenging large amounts of magnesium from the cells of muscles, skin, organs etc and redirecting it to the blood to sustain the all important and very narrow range of blood hemostasis of these vital life giving minerals.
By the time a person is testing frankly low on serum Mag in the <1.7 range then there is real trouble in the heart muscle cells and elsewhere in the body with extreme deficits in IC magnesium. Its a real shame no one yet seems to teach this fundamental biochemical and physiological process fact to doctors in med school. It seems that most of the teaching docs in med schools mainly focus on passing along the "normal' ranges in serum magnesium test and never really look at the issue any further going into this IC level issue discussion. That is a real shame.
Shannon
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/27/2014 10:46PM by Shannon.