Another magnesium story

This is a dramatic headline for a supplement many of us afibbers use.

Please make sure you read the posts below from both George and David.

[www.yahoo.com]

Jenna Liphart Rhoads, PhD, a registered nurse and medical educator for Nurse Together, says that too much magnesium can have life-threatening health complications. "Ingesting too much magnesium can cause cardiac arrest by disrupting the electrical activity in the cardiac muscles," she explains. Sudden cardiac arrest is the abrupt loss of heart function, breathing, and consciousness, and "if not treated immediately," it can lead to death, experts at the Mayo Clinic warn.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/09/2021 06:08PM by NotLyingAboutMyAfib.

Great find NLAMA! EXA test wrote a recommendation for me to take 600mg a day which I split up 300mg and 300mg 2/day. I’m hoping that it’s not excessive.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2021 02:31PM by susan.d.

Too much of anything can kill you, including hyponatremia from too much water. All depends on the circumstances. An excess of magnesium can occur in people with reduced kidney function. Generally the first thing that happens when you ingest too much is loose stools (the range of intake where this happens is very individual - 100 mg on up). Excess in your serum will be excreted through healthy kidneys.

Anecdotally, I have a number of friends whose bowel tolerance is > 2g/day and they take those quantities. I've taken 6 grams/day without issue and routinely take 3.5-4 g/day. When I first was looking at this, I came across magnesium researcher Herbert C. Mansmann, Jr., M.D.. He was an obese, retired pediatrician with T2 diabetes. At one point he consumed over 20g/day for a year to reverse his diabetic neuropathy. He was large enough, he was unable to get into a bathtub with magnesium sulfate water (epsom salt bath). After that year, he continued taking 5g/day. His story is here: [www.afibbers.org] He passed in 2007 at age 83. He was director of the Magnesium Research Laboratory.

Turns out there are several syndromes where people "waste" magnesium. These include Bartter Syndrome and Gitelman Syndrome. Here is an archive link to the Bartter website [web.archive.org]

I know that I urinate a huge quantity of the magnesium I consume. "An adult body contains approximately 25 g magnesium, with 50% to 60% present in the bones and most of the rest in soft tissues [4]. Less than 1% of total magnesium is in blood serum, and these levels are kept under tight control. " Source: [ods.od.nih.gov]. For illustration purposes, If 50% of magnesium is in the bones - then 50% are in the soft tissues or 12.5 g. If I consume 4 grams/day, I would be quickly overloaded if I did not urinate it out (even more so with Dr. Mansmann). Hence this pathway must be operable in me. I also know if I don't consume enough magnesium, I get afib. Note, I'm not saying this is a good idea for everyone or anyone else, just my experience.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/09/2021 09:41PM by GeorgeN.

This type of article just pisses me off. It is 100% manipulative clickbait, completely absurd and designed solely to produce advertising impressions through impulse clicks.

As George said, too much or too little of oxygen, water, CO2, or anything else in the universe will kill you.

The manufacturer of this "article," one Kali Coleman, currently interning for Carolina Gateway/The Lancaster News and student at Winthrop University, seems to be supporting herself through college by cranking out information-free pieces of which she has produced 1336. That is not a typo, so far she has written more than 1300 such articles. In fact, she has posted four of these articles TODAY and fourteen in the last four days alone.

Her recent output includes numbers such as:

• If This Is Waking You Up at Night, Your Heart May Be in Danger
• This Common Mistake May Delay Your Tax Refund This Year, IRS Says
• This Is Why Fans Are Mad at “Wheel of Fortune”
• These "X Factor" Alums Just Slammed Simon Cowell on Twitter
• This Is How You Could Receive More Stimulus Money Right Now
• If You See This on Your Feet, You May Have Diabetes, Doctors Say

This highly-informed author knows about heart disease, taxes, game shows, reality shows, stimulus payments, diabetes and many more other sectors of life.

In her extremely misleading disinformation-level magnesium article, she has spun the by-far-most-unlikely outcome–that of cardiac arrest from too MUCH magnesium–into an irresponsible article and title that do more harm than good.

Yes, excessive magnesium CAN kill you, but this is super rare. If you’ve been on this forum for even a little while, you're aware that magnesium deficiency is far more common in modern people than is excessive magnesium!

In fact, “Individuals in the highest quartile of serum Mg were at significantly lower risk of sudden cardiac death in all models.” (emphasis added.) [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]. Ergo, most people have too little magnesium and higher magnesium is correlated with better, not worse cardiac outcomes. The evidence then, shows the opposite of the article's slant.

The same study reports that cardiac arrest is the fourth and final symptom of hypermagnesia, progressing from 1) ECG changes to 2) muscle weakness to 3) SA/AV node block and finally at the VERY high level of 20 mEq/L or more, 4) cardiac arrest:

“The toxic effects of magnesium are inherently linked to the levels (mEq/liters) found in the serum. As magnesium levels rise, different symptoms start to manifest, and the fatality of those symptoms is proportional to the levels of magnesium found. Starting at 5 to 10 mEq/L, patients will begin to develop ECG changes (prolonged PR interval, widened QRS). At 10 mEq/L, there will be a loss of deep tendon reflexes and muscle weakness. At 15 mEq/L, signs of abnormal conductivity surface as SA/AV node block. Additionally, patients begin to experience respiratory paralysis. At 20 mEq/L or higher, the patient is likely to experience cardiac arrest.” (emphasis added.) That's really high.

Slightly different stages and values are reflected in this paper: [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]: “The serum Mg values at which clinical symptoms may appear are approximately: ≥3.6 mg/dL for lowered blood pressure, nausea, vomiting, and bradycardia; ≥6.0 mg/dL for changes in an individual’s mental state and a disturbance of consciousness; ≥10.8 mg/dL for respiratory failure and coma; and ≥16.8 mg/dL for cardiac arrest.”

Notice that vomiting, mental disturbances and coma all occur before cardiac arrest from hyper magnesia happens. Was any of this reflected in the clickbait article? No, just a misleading "warning" that "too much" magnesium can cause cardiac arrest.

So according to experts, before cardiac arrest will happen, there are serious, red-flashing-light, sirens-blaring warning signs firing off in your body. And this only happens if your kidneys are not filtering out the magnesium, which they do unless you have untreated renal failure. If you don't have undiagnosed, untreated or totally end-stage renal failure, there is virtually no chance of cardiac arrest from having too much magnesium in your system.

I think we can confidently say that cardiac arrest will not occur from taking the right types of magnesium in the amounts we discuss on this forum to help attenuate afib.

To the extent that she has helped dissuade people who need magnesium from supplementing with it, the author has created harm through a piece of writing which doesn’t rise to the level of propaganda.

/s



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 04/09/2021 06:20PM by DavidK.

Absolutely appreciate the research and background. I thought it was a little suspect because many of us are taking larger amounts with no issue at all.

I'll amend the op to make sure people read David and George's posts.

Ok, so don’t grind up the magnesium tablets, dissolve them in water and inject them intravenously. Likewise, don’t insert the tablets rectally.

If you’re a normal human being then don’t worry. If you swallow too many you’ll get diarrhea. The body is really good at rejecting stuff it doesn’t want.

Sensationalist stuff like this is just click-baiting and money-grabbing on the internet.