Still, few doctors are aware of the many health problems that can cause a magnesium deficiency, as well as the role of magnesium in diseases, including heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, asthma, obesity, infertility, migraine, muscle pains, premenstrual syndrome and traumatic stress.
Experts who study this nutrient believe insufficient magnesium may be a primary factor in the relationship between heart disease and cardiac risk factors like high blood pressure, abdominal obesity, diabetes and stress. Magnesium deficiency may even have played a role in the increase in heart attacks and strokes reported among menopausal participants in the Women's Health Initiative studies, said Dr. Mildred S. Seelig of Decatur, Ga. Dr. Seelig explained that the women in the study were undergoing hormone replacement therapy, and that magnesium counters the possible blood clots caused by estrogen in such therapy.
Dr. Seelig is 83 and has spent 35 years studying the role of magnesium in health. She is retired but still an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina, and is an author of "The Magnesium Factor" (Avery Penguin Putnam, 2003), which she wrote with Dr. Andrea Rosanoff, a nutritionist in Hawaii who has spent 17 years studying magnesium.
Dr. Seelig said she believed that the relative lack of attention paid to the mineral reflects that it is "cheap as dirt, not well taught in medical schools, and few companies can make enough money on it to prompt them to fund research."
A long list of conditions can result in a magnesium deficiency. In addition to poor diet, the intake or absorption of magnesium can be affected by dieting for weight loss; consumption of "soft" water, which lacks minerals; intestinal diseases; alcoholism; and bypass surgery for obesity.
Large amounts of magnesium can be lost as a result of prolonged exercise, lactation, excessive sweating and chronic diarrhea; as a result of the use of drugs like diuretics, digitalis and the cancer drugs cisplatin and cyclosporine; and because of disorders like kidney disease, an overactive thyroid or parathyroid, low blood levels of potassium and high urine levels of calcium.
Chronic magnesium deficiencies can cause muscle twitching, cramps and weakness; seizures, dizziness, irritability, restlessness, delirium, personality change, apathy and depression; and abnormal heart rhythms, spasms of the coronary arteries, anemia, blood clots, abnormal blood pressure and even sudden death.
Magnesium therapy has proved beneficial in treating bronchial asthma and migraine headaches. Dr. Altura said intravenous treatment with the mineral was more effective at preventing migraines than costly prescription drugs. Italian studies showed that magnesium can "ameliorate tremendously" the symptoms of premenstrual syndrome, he said.
Stroke patients and victims of cardiac arrest who were resuscitated have recovered better if given magnesium immediately after the incident, Dr. Seelig said. And Dr. Altura found that people with diabetes needed less medication to control their blood sugar and blood fats when treated for six months with oral magnesium.
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