Magnesium deficiency is the usual cause of depression and anxiety. I think that at least half of them can be cured by simple suplementation of magnesium in few weeks, maybe months. So why medicine do not suggest such a solution? Because it's... cheap?

Magnesium plays the role inside our cells, which means that every blood test counts for nothing. It detects only a few diseases that affect the magnesium level in the blood, while the main problem is the level of this minerale inside our cells.

First, let me explain why the deficiency of magnesium is so common nowadays. Of course it's the problem of diet, but how?

Main problem is the white flour. It's something nearly without any worth for our body, completely stripped of minerals and vitamins. 100 gram of the white bread has 6% of our daily magnesium requirement, while only 28 gram of bran (so called "trash", rest from the full grain flour) has 43%. 100 gram of the full grain bread got around 25% of our daily magnesium requirement, almost 5 times as normal,white bread.

Another reason of the common deficiences is desolation of the fields and general tendention to produce as much as possible with no cost.

Last but not least - coffe, tea and cola. They flush your magnesium resources down in no time.

How does the chronic magnesium deficiency look like? At the beginning everything seems to be OK. We are young, eat more or less healthy, no coffee, no cola (well, nowadays it changed tho). We have some resources of magnesium inside our body, the healthy mature man has around 30 gram. Then we are mature, time to drink coffee, one,another... slowly, our magnesium resources are going down. Not much, maybe 20-30 mg / day, but after some years we have - let's say - only 15 gram of magnesium. And then the problems start to arise.

Symptoms of magnesium deficiency:

- lack of energy, especially in morning, when we wake up
- neurosis and depression
- soon we might experience problems from our central nervous system, ticks of muscles, random feeling of warmth on skin, feeling like we have insects in hair (like something is crawling on our skin), ticks of eyelid
- sweating at night
- very low resistance to the diseases
- heart rate disfunctions - feeling like our heart stopped for one second
- soon our level of potassium will drop, then we can experience some problems with joints and memory

If we have the symptoms mentioned above, it means that our magnesium level is critically low. We have to refill it.

Chocolate or peanuts are not enough - not for such a strong deficiency. We worked hard many years to get so low level, it can't be cured in a week or two, and surely not with the peanuts. Sorry to say this, but you must visit a drugstore and buy the magnesium pills with vitamin B6.

Time for some maths. One pill contains around 50 mg of magnesium. We need at least 300 mg daily. If someone works really hard or is under the heavy stress, he might need even around 1000 mg / day. Ok, let's assume that we need only 300 mg. In food we have - let's say - 200 mg, so we need 100 mg to cover it. If we have daily dose of 6 pills, it will be around 300 mg. We will absorb no more than 200 mg. Simple maths - we have only 100 mg above our needs, that our body will store in cells. If we have 15 grams of deficiency, with such a suplementation it takes around 150 days to cure our body completely. Yes, almost half a year. And now imagine what would happen if you decide to use the "suggested dose" - one pill a day. Yeah, time to time you might hear that magnesium does not cure neurosis nor depression. Sure, with "suggested doses" it simply cannot work.

As we can see, if the deficiency is strong, we must use the big doses of suplements, and try to live few months without a coffee, tea or any drink with carbon dioxide. Overdosing is almost impossible, but the completely safe border is around 10 pills / day. On the beginning it should be a strong dose, at least 6-8 pills / day for 1-2 weeks, then 4-6 pills / daily for the few months. Additionally, change of the diet habits will help a lot. After the week or two we should experience a big improvement of our health. Remember that your body may "forget" how to absorb magnesium, so do not stop the suplementation rapidly. Try the slow reduction of the dose instead

Safety notes:

- take some calcium together with magnesium. These two minerals work together - if you take big doses of one, your body will reduce resources of another.
- potassium - just drink some tomato juice or eat bananas (they are also good source of magnesium)
- vitamin B complex - two pills a day, if we use magnesium suplement with vitamin B6 - use one with folic acid
- if you have kidney disease, contact doctor
- if you have any symptoms of overdosing, like problems with breathing, contact doctor immediately. It's more likely that you will die from the one pill of vitamin C than overdose magnesium with 6 pills / day, so I'm mentioning it just "in case".