The onset of depression has greatly increased in incidence, and it is affecting people much earlier in their lives during the late 20th century and early 21st century than before the 20th century (Meyer and Quenzar, 2005). The reasons for these findings are not quite clear, but inadequate dietary Mg is prevalent in America and is the most likely cause. There is probably a real increase in depression, coupled with a change in diagnostic habits, which has to do with the element of stigma. Lower stigma leads to a higher rate of diagnosis.
Somatopsychic medical effects are very real. I've gotten very good results with addressing nutritional deficiencies as a first line of defense for issues that often present as mood or mental health issues.
But I don't think you can reasonably conclude that magnesium deficiency is The explanation for increased prevalence of depression in a world that has had so many profound changes.
Things are more crowded. Most people now live in cities instead of rural environments. Among other things, this means people are subjected to much noisier conditions.
We have far, far better information about the world than we used to. The 24/7 news cycle is incredibly stressful, if only because most "news" is bad news.
There are just so very many confounding factors, no, you can't reasonably conclude that this one singular factor is the sole explanation or primary explanation. That's ridiculous.
1. In general, the north american diet is disgraceful.
2. Consumerism and brainwashing people into believing that they can only be happy when they achieve X, Y or Z, does nothing for people's emotional emptiness.
3. The constant barrage of shit news, most of which is largely irrelevant to most of our lives, most of the time.
4. The constant threat of automation and off-shoring meaning that people never feel secure about their income stream unless they specifically work in an industry where their ability to generate their income stream is unrelated to these constant threats.
5. Inflation of living costs escalating at a rate beyond inflation of income.
6. The polarization making people feel isolated from one another instead of connected. Nobody can talk about anything any more without fear of offending someone, being politically incorrect, being ostracized or vilified.
7. The reported growing financial disparity where the 2% have 98% of the wealth while the 98% share the other 2% and the constant message that it's only going to get harder to be able to cross that chasm.
8. Corporations subverting politics for their own profits instead of the good of the people.
The list goes on ad nauseum.
I firmly believe if the world stops behaving like assholes, learns to eat properly and talks to one another to a level that find connection instead of a divide. The depression is just going to get worse and worse until suicide becomes an epidemic.
There have been a number of experiments where they gave patients more magnesium, and in response most patients reduce their depression by a statistically significant amount. The inverse was found when they gave them calcium (more calcium increases depression). It's all about the ratio of calcium to magnesium. We're a society that consistently gets way too much calcium and way too little magnesium. That's because our food source isn't diverse. Dairy is considered a food group here in the US, and almost everything in it comes from Milk, is primarily made up of milk. Milk is very unbalanced in terms of Calcium to magnesium, something like 10 to 1 ratio.
Also, there was another study where they found that treatments for depression actually increased serum magnesium levels in the brain.
EDIT:
Here is the study:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507265/#
"A dietary supplement of 500mg calcium immediately and severely worsened MD, which was extinguishable within one hour by orally treating with 400mg gel capsules of Mg as magnesium glycinate "
Read the entire article. It also talks about the increased Mg excretion effect of stress hormones.
It’s a combination of lower intake of what already is a micronutrient, increased excretion (consequence of the lifestyle changes), and hard to diagnose (because serum Mg levels stay stable, only cellular Mg reserves are depleted).
I had a couple neurological issues in the past and had a good endocrinologist suggest me Mg (quelated) and he explained all that is mentioned on the article.
I started taking magnesium supplements about 9 months ago, not for any depression issues, but more for muscle issues. I had a weird leg muscle injury a few years ago that I never really got a proper diagnosis for that happened when doing some light hiking. In doing my own research on that, a condition similar to my symptoms came up, and one of the causes was a magnesium deficiency. I had a few other minor ailments come up, and I have been biking to work for the last few years, and noticed that my recovery time is significantly longer. All of these things cited magnesium as a significant player, so I bought some supplements.
Anyway, I take about 200mg a day, for about the last 6 months or so, and I can not say I have felt any noticeable improvement. This is obviously just a single data point, but even with some specific symptoms that pointed to an Mg deficiency, I didn't see an improvement. If you feel this is some type of magic solution, you should temper your expectations.
I also began taking magnesium (a few years ago) for running, not depression.
I probably log 50-80 miles per week and low magnesium levels are notoriously low in endurance athletes. I also follow a ketosis diet for as many as 6 months at a time, low magensium is also common with Keto diet.
I take up to 10 vitamin/mineral supplements, but kind of cycle them at various times. It’s impossible to really pinpoint anything, but I tend to think I personally got great benefits to my running through the addition of fish oil, vitamin B, vitamin D and magnesium. Specifically I feel benefits to both energy and anti-inflammation, at one point I scaled up to a half marathon everyday and was never even sore, whereas previously I’d run maybe 5 times a week and sometimes be stiff the next day following 7 mile runs. It’s definately not magic, these supplements don’t run the miles for me, but I do feel better during the runs, recover better, and it just creates this feedback loop where it feels I am growing/improving.
Anecdotical but for years I had various anxiety and mild depression problems (edit: and various muscle “twitches”). As it was not severe I was always recommended Magnesium. Never had any improvement. Then 2 years ago I started taking vitamin D (thanks to HN discussions) and nearly all my symptoms disappeared (also changed job, started meditation, so the datapoint is not clear but magnesium alone didn't do much).
Also I recommend you get tested for Magnesium as contrary to popular belief (at least here in France) deficiency is not common (contrary to vitamin D).
200mg is a decent bump on average daily intake (360mg), and mag isn’t managed as well as other ions. If you don’t already, please have your doc check your mag levels every couple of months while you do this. Hypermagnesemia is no joke.
I have found that taking Magnesium is like turning a switch on in my head and I'm suddenly happy again. I don't get upset or angry in the same way, I'm more patient and my thoughts are not obsessive.
Magnesium is best taken with calcium and vitamin D as both are used in the uptake of magnesium.
I have found that processed foods, alcohol, caffeine and sugar all make me worse, but magnesium gives me the will power to change that lifestyle that caused the problem in the first place.
I don't know about quack studies but for the cheap price and quick turnaround (3 days for small effect, 2 week for a large scale shift) it's a simple thing to try.
I was certain that I was living with depression... until I read somewhere that lactose intolerance can lead to magnesium deficiency.
I started taking Magnesium and felt the effect immediately. All of my body is physically relaxed. I struggled with muscle cramps and spasms, they are gone thanks to increasing my magnesium intake. It's as if my muscles being under stress created anxiety and that anxiety reduced my ability to be happy.
I have also learned that I need to supplement with vitamin D during the winter to avoid having SAD. Vitamin D + Magnesium are also my solution to happiness.
As another data point, magnesium supplementation doesn't do squat for my depression. Reputable brand, used the glycinate form, proper dosing, etc. No perceptible effect.
I started taking magnesium on advice of a chiropractor, as I was getting a painful calcium deposit. I take a magnesium/calcium deposit, and later added vitamin D.
I don't know if it's the root cause, but my mental outlook has improved over the past few years.
> I have found that taking Magnesium is like turning a switch on in my head and I'm suddenly happy again. I don't get upset or angry in the same way, I'm more patient and my thoughts are not obsessive.
> Magnesium is best taken with calcium and vitamin D as both are used in the uptake of magnesium.
There are a bunch of studies which have found correlations between vitamin D and depression and (stronger) correlations between vitamin D and seasonal affective disorder.
If your supplementation is working for you, there's no reason to change it, but there's a fairly obvious alternate explanation for the phenomena in the fact that you're also supplementing Vitamin D.
Magnesium truly does wonders for my sleep but every single person I’ve recommended it to has not had similar results. Like many things I’m sure there’s a significant difference depending on your biochemistry.
It's a long read with a lot of data and can be hard to make sense of. Here is the TLDR:
Conclusion
The interpretation which seems to best resolve everything I know about magnesium with the data from my experiment is that magnesium supplementation does indeed help me a large amount, but I was taking way too much.
I love this: "The reasons for these findings are not quite clear, but inadequate dietary Mg is prevalent in America and is the most likely cause." Ah, to be publishing in a book, not a journal. And to know that your reviewers are like-minded magnesium lovers. Imagine submitting an article to something like Junior Forensics, the journal of high school debate. You could include something like, "All the factors that lead to success in life are hard to account for; participation in debate is the most influential."
> "Deficits of Mg may result from inadequate intake, malabsorption, or renal loss"
Unless I missed it, the paper didn't consider another possible cause of magnesium deficiency: depression.
I.e., the paper seems to conflate correlation with causation (i.e., magnesium deficiency may cause depression), and doesn't consider that the causality may go in the other direction: that magnesium deficiency is a physiological manifestation of depression and other types of chronic negative emotion.
My experience with this is that I've worked for a long time to address chronic illness that has included conditions like depression, anxiety and chronic fatigue syndrome.
One of the many things I've tried has been to substantially increase magnesium intake, both via food sources and supplements.
My measured magnesium levels didn't change simply by increasing intake.
What has made a difference was directly addressing the emotional and outer-life causes of my depression/anxiety.
Even then it took a while, and the work/improvement is still ongoing, but it's very clear that my magnesium readings stayed low even when supplementing, and only started rising after a solid stretch of deep emotional healing work and significant improvements to life circumstances.
The still-nascent and controversial topic of epigenetics may be relevant here.
Did you test your magnesium level by blood tests? Less than 1% of magnesium (AFAIR) is stored in blood and its level can fluctuate a lot depending on your body state.
Correlation is not causation but what HN readers should remember is that most researchers are aware of that fact.
So yes, I'm pretty sure you've missed it among those 350 pages, especially given that results of treatment are mentioned in the abstract.
I once tried supplementing magnesium while in the midst of moderate depression. Interestingly enough, the effect was not relief, but rather major, absolutely crushing depression (i.e. cannot get out of bed all day depression). I went back to moderate depression after stopping the supplementation and a subsequent second attempt brought back the major depression. By that point I gave up on the whole thing.
Anyone have a similar experience or maybe some insight that might explain this?
Also very skeptical, and I try to test carefully. So far, it seems that Passionflower extract does boost my sleep quality and helps with early-morning-waking style insomnia. In the evening, CBD helps me downshift to a relaxed "end-of-day" mode that makes falling asleep much easier. Magnesium's next on my list.
I’m also one where magnesium has almost magical positive effects on my sleep. When I started getting some anxiety several years ago, taking magnesium before bed was the only thing that kept me both asleep at night and sleeping deeply. I still take it often to get deeper sleep. I’ve always taken the citrate type.
I take magnesium in the form of trace mineral drops. These are de-salted sea water deposits. Besides magnesium they contain other rare trace minerals which would otherwise be difficult to obtain, particularly lithium which has quite strong evidence of mellowing mood.
The liquid form leads me to believe they absorb well but not sure if that's actually true.
Edit to say I believe these drops have reduced my anxiety and improved relaxation. If nothing else I sleep better due to the mg (no more Jimmy legs).
I found CBD to provide temporary relief - I think my depression was inflammation related. The world is still dark and compressed but also comfortable, like the dark corners fill with algae and the ground with grass.
What ended up working was improving my oral posture and articulation using ortothropics and self-developed speech exercises (the important part is having designed the exercises yourself). Suddenly it's vastly easier to maintain correct spinal alignment and breathing. Depression is just an emotion again.
I supplement fish oil, gradeschool-tier mathematics and meditation, from Vigyan Bhairava Tantra.
I hope this issue gets more attention. We're so undernourished when it comes to Magnesium. Also, closely related is Calcium. Calcium and Magnesium work closely together in the body for huge number of functions related to brain health. Of particular importance is the ratio of calcium to magnesium. A Significant portion of the population has their calcium to magnesium ratio way too high, something like 10 to 1 or higher. This is not only due to too little magnesium but also due to way too much calcium. It's not commonly known in the US (because big food companies run the USDA recommendations), but you're only supposed to get 500mg of calcium a day, not 1000mg like the USDA recommends. There are so many studies that show that 1400mg+ is approaching a danger zone. this is exacerbated by unusually low magnesium levels.
If you're looking to get more magnesium into your body, I'd recommend whole foods rather than supplements. Supplements are often not absorbed by the body. Whole foods high in magnesium include: leafy greens, nuts (especially cashews), oatmeal, whole grains, beans. and if you want to find more high nutrient foods try my nutrient based food search: https://kale.world/c (put the selector on magnesium)
The first author has a publication called "zinc lozenges as a cure for the common cold" here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19906491 and given that the author has his own "research institute" I'm highly skeptical of this guy's ability to do science. Seems like some kind of crackpot
I can't speak for depression, but I was suffering from muscle spasms and tremors last year (both external and internal). Magnesium was suggested, I now take two a day and they have almost entirely dissipated. It certainly wouldn't surprise me that the presence or lack of such substances could have significant effects upon the brain too though I have noticed no changes in that regard.
Same thing here. last year I had an almost constant spasm in my right eyelid, after a cure of magnesium it disappeared. I did not find that it altered my mood, I just happy to be relieved from the spasm.
Needs a [2011] and some scepticism: Many people have tried Magnesium because it is cheap and available without prescription. If it were as effective as "success in 220 out of 250 cases" claims, that would show up.
The 220 of 250 claim also doesn't fit with "as effective as the tricyclic antidepressant imipramine". No antidepressant is 90% effective.
An unusual but effective way of taking magnesium is taking epsom salt (magnesium sulfate) baths. This way, the magnesium is absorbed through the skin, so one does not have to worry about possibly not absorbing it through the stomach when taking supplements orally.
The cells in our body depend on two essential minerals for normal function: Calcium and magnesium. Cells go into ON state when calcium goes in, and OFF state when calcium goes out. Calcium doesn't go out on its own: magnesium has to go in and displace the calcium. When you are low on magnesium, cells can't go into OFF state. When that happens your muscles become stiff and you need massages, and your brain can't turn off and you can't sleep.
I have some personal experiences to share - anecdotal and not that scientific.
I found it slightly helpful in my own treatment of depression. Not a miracle cure - it was suggested essentially because Proton Pump Inhibitors I am already on were known to worsen/cause it. In my case it seems to make medication a bit more effective and helped thinking a little bit. A few times when I ran out for a week or so waiting for the next bulk order to arrive it eventually caused a mild worsening of mood that went away when resumed. I don't know if I ever actually had deficiencies because needle phobia has meant avoidance such that I can only list my blood type as a question mark.
People that rely on desalinated water can become magnesium deficient. There was a study in Israel about a rise in heart attacks based on magnesium deficiency from desalination. [1] I wonder if there might be a mental health angle to this as well.
I'm a cardio addict and do 250mg liquid Citrate and 200mg of Bisglycinate before sleep. Otherwise restless legs syndrome would kick in badly during the night. Sometimes adding 1.000mg of Gaba also helps with recovery and falling asleep.
Just make sure to stay away from cheap Mg Oxide since bio-availability is somewhere in the 4% range and usually comes in Multi-anything pills.
There are two huge confounding issues here which make it impossible for me to conclude that Mg has an effect of depression based on the studies I've seen:
1. Magnesium may treat anxiety rather than depression. This is analogous to various SSRIs which arguably treat anxiety better than depression[1]. Anxiety and depression are highly comorbid, and both doctors and patients may be bad at differentiating between the symptoms, leading to "I feel better"-type reporting. This might mean that Mg supplementation is a good thing for depressed people because it treats their anxiety, not because it treats their depression. This alternative hypothesis is particularly compelling because magnesium deficiency has a variety of well-understood effects on muscle tension[2] which mimic physical symptoms of anxiety.
2. Magnesium is frequently supplemented concurrently with vitamin D, vitamin K, calcium, and zinc. All of these are known to be active in humans, and vitamin D in particular has been correlated with depression and seasonal affective disorder.
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|6 years ago|reply
Somatopsychic medical effects are very real. I've gotten very good results with addressing nutritional deficiencies as a first line of defense for issues that often present as mood or mental health issues.
But I don't think you can reasonably conclude that magnesium deficiency is The explanation for increased prevalence of depression in a world that has had so many profound changes.
Things are more crowded. Most people now live in cities instead of rural environments. Among other things, this means people are subjected to much noisier conditions.
We have far, far better information about the world than we used to. The 24/7 news cycle is incredibly stressful, if only because most "news" is bad news.
There are just so very many confounding factors, no, you can't reasonably conclude that this one singular factor is the sole explanation or primary explanation. That's ridiculous.
[+] [-] balabaster|6 years ago|reply
1. In general, the north american diet is disgraceful.
2. Consumerism and brainwashing people into believing that they can only be happy when they achieve X, Y or Z, does nothing for people's emotional emptiness.
3. The constant barrage of shit news, most of which is largely irrelevant to most of our lives, most of the time.
4. The constant threat of automation and off-shoring meaning that people never feel secure about their income stream unless they specifically work in an industry where their ability to generate their income stream is unrelated to these constant threats.
5. Inflation of living costs escalating at a rate beyond inflation of income.
6. The polarization making people feel isolated from one another instead of connected. Nobody can talk about anything any more without fear of offending someone, being politically incorrect, being ostracized or vilified.
7. The reported growing financial disparity where the 2% have 98% of the wealth while the 98% share the other 2% and the constant message that it's only going to get harder to be able to cross that chasm.
8. Corporations subverting politics for their own profits instead of the good of the people.
The list goes on ad nauseum.
I firmly believe if the world stops behaving like assholes, learns to eat properly and talks to one another to a level that find connection instead of a divide. The depression is just going to get worse and worse until suicide becomes an epidemic.
[+] [-] thorwasdfasdf|6 years ago|reply
Also, there was another study where they found that treatments for depression actually increased serum magnesium levels in the brain.
EDIT: Here is the study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507265/# "A dietary supplement of 500mg calcium immediately and severely worsened MD, which was extinguishable within one hour by orally treating with 400mg gel capsules of Mg as magnesium glycinate "
[+] [-] hcarvalhoalves|6 years ago|reply
It’s a combination of lower intake of what already is a micronutrient, increased excretion (consequence of the lifestyle changes), and hard to diagnose (because serum Mg levels stay stable, only cellular Mg reserves are depleted).
I had a couple neurological issues in the past and had a good endocrinologist suggest me Mg (quelated) and he explained all that is mentioned on the article.
[+] [-] kevstev|6 years ago|reply
Anyway, I take about 200mg a day, for about the last 6 months or so, and I can not say I have felt any noticeable improvement. This is obviously just a single data point, but even with some specific symptoms that pointed to an Mg deficiency, I didn't see an improvement. If you feel this is some type of magic solution, you should temper your expectations.
[+] [-] will_brown|6 years ago|reply
I probably log 50-80 miles per week and low magnesium levels are notoriously low in endurance athletes. I also follow a ketosis diet for as many as 6 months at a time, low magensium is also common with Keto diet.
I take up to 10 vitamin/mineral supplements, but kind of cycle them at various times. It’s impossible to really pinpoint anything, but I tend to think I personally got great benefits to my running through the addition of fish oil, vitamin B, vitamin D and magnesium. Specifically I feel benefits to both energy and anti-inflammation, at one point I scaled up to a half marathon everyday and was never even sore, whereas previously I’d run maybe 5 times a week and sometimes be stiff the next day following 7 mile runs. It’s definately not magic, these supplements don’t run the miles for me, but I do feel better during the runs, recover better, and it just creates this feedback loop where it feels I am growing/improving.
[+] [-] tarsinge|6 years ago|reply
Also I recommend you get tested for Magnesium as contrary to popular belief (at least here in France) deficiency is not common (contrary to vitamin D).
[+] [-] TheSpiceIsLife|6 years ago|reply
The RDA is 350-400mg.
The supplementary range is 300-800mg per day.
Magnesium oxide is useless, orotate, citrate, and diglycinate are far superior.
Refer Henry Osieki’s The Nutrient Bible.
[+] [-] SirensOfTitan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arkades|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] batter|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NPMaxwell|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mboto|6 years ago|reply
Magnesium is best taken with calcium and vitamin D as both are used in the uptake of magnesium.
I have found that processed foods, alcohol, caffeine and sugar all make me worse, but magnesium gives me the will power to change that lifestyle that caused the problem in the first place.
I don't know about quack studies but for the cheap price and quick turnaround (3 days for small effect, 2 week for a large scale shift) it's a simple thing to try.
[+] [-] Raphmedia|6 years ago|reply
Yes! Magnesium changed my life!
I was certain that I was living with depression... until I read somewhere that lactose intolerance can lead to magnesium deficiency.
I started taking Magnesium and felt the effect immediately. All of my body is physically relaxed. I struggled with muscle cramps and spasms, they are gone thanks to increasing my magnesium intake. It's as if my muscles being under stress created anxiety and that anxiety reduced my ability to be happy.
I have also learned that I need to supplement with vitamin D during the winter to avoid having SAD. Vitamin D + Magnesium are also my solution to happiness.
[+] [-] ThrowawayP|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beat|6 years ago|reply
I don't know if it's the root cause, but my mental outlook has improved over the past few years.
[+] [-] kerkeslager|6 years ago|reply
> Magnesium is best taken with calcium and vitamin D as both are used in the uptake of magnesium.
There are a bunch of studies which have found correlations between vitamin D and depression and (stronger) correlations between vitamin D and seasonal affective disorder.
If your supplementation is working for you, there's no reason to change it, but there's a fairly obvious alternate explanation for the phenomena in the fact that you're also supplementing Vitamin D.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Bakary|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ralphstodomingo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] digdugdirk|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] less_penguiny|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aik|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|6 years ago|reply
Conclusion
The interpretation which seems to best resolve everything I know about magnesium with the data from my experiment is that magnesium supplementation does indeed help me a large amount, but I was taking way too much.
[+] [-] NPMaxwell|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _ywdj|6 years ago|reply
Unless I missed it, the paper didn't consider another possible cause of magnesium deficiency: depression.
I.e., the paper seems to conflate correlation with causation (i.e., magnesium deficiency may cause depression), and doesn't consider that the causality may go in the other direction: that magnesium deficiency is a physiological manifestation of depression and other types of chronic negative emotion.
My experience with this is that I've worked for a long time to address chronic illness that has included conditions like depression, anxiety and chronic fatigue syndrome.
One of the many things I've tried has been to substantially increase magnesium intake, both via food sources and supplements.
My measured magnesium levels didn't change simply by increasing intake.
What has made a difference was directly addressing the emotional and outer-life causes of my depression/anxiety.
Even then it took a while, and the work/improvement is still ongoing, but it's very clear that my magnesium readings stayed low even when supplementing, and only started rising after a solid stretch of deep emotional healing work and significant improvements to life circumstances.
The still-nascent and controversial topic of epigenetics may be relevant here.
[+] [-] comboy|6 years ago|reply
Correlation is not causation but what HN readers should remember is that most researchers are aware of that fact.
So yes, I'm pretty sure you've missed it among those 350 pages, especially given that results of treatment are mentioned in the abstract.
[+] [-] kmmlng|6 years ago|reply
Anyone have a similar experience or maybe some insight that might explain this?
[+] [-] benjaminwootton|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] n1000|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m_fayer|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aik|6 years ago|reply
Do you know why Mg helps you so much?
[+] [-] sfjailbird|6 years ago|reply
The liquid form leads me to believe they absorb well but not sure if that's actually true.
Edit to say I believe these drops have reduced my anxiety and improved relaxation. If nothing else I sleep better due to the mg (no more Jimmy legs).
[+] [-] ry_ry|6 years ago|reply
Edit. I'm not implying any homeopathy antics, am genuinely curious.
[+] [-] peteradio|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sapilla|6 years ago|reply
What ended up working was improving my oral posture and articulation using ortothropics and self-developed speech exercises (the important part is having designed the exercises yourself). Suddenly it's vastly easier to maintain correct spinal alignment and breathing. Depression is just an emotion again.
I supplement fish oil, gradeschool-tier mathematics and meditation, from Vigyan Bhairava Tantra.
[+] [-] thorwasdfasdf|6 years ago|reply
If you're looking to get more magnesium into your body, I'd recommend whole foods rather than supplements. Supplements are often not absorbed by the body. Whole foods high in magnesium include: leafy greens, nuts (especially cashews), oatmeal, whole grains, beans. and if you want to find more high nutrient foods try my nutrient based food search: https://kale.world/c (put the selector on magnesium)
[+] [-] opportune|6 years ago|reply
I mean seriously look at this website: https://m.george-eby-research.com/app/welcome/5310242/36/
[+] [-] petercooper|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wrnr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shaki-dora|6 years ago|reply
The 220 of 250 claim also doesn't fit with "as effective as the tricyclic antidepressant imipramine". No antidepressant is 90% effective.
[+] [-] pmoriarty|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aik|6 years ago|reply
It works wonders for my sleep but I’ve never met anyone that shares that view.
[+] [-] petilon|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Devmailo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nasrudith|6 years ago|reply
I found it slightly helpful in my own treatment of depression. Not a miracle cure - it was suggested essentially because Proton Pump Inhibitors I am already on were known to worsen/cause it. In my case it seems to make medication a bit more effective and helped thinking a little bit. A few times when I ran out for a week or so waiting for the next bulk order to arrive it eventually caused a mild worsening of mood that went away when resumed. I don't know if I ever actually had deficiencies because needle phobia has meant avoidance such that I can only list my blood type as a question mark.
[+] [-] lordgrenville|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/deficiencies-in-desalinated-wa...
[+] [-] taneq|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marban|6 years ago|reply
Just make sure to stay away from cheap Mg Oxide since bio-availability is somewhere in the 4% range and usually comes in Multi-anything pills.
[+] [-] kerkeslager|6 years ago|reply
1. Magnesium may treat anxiety rather than depression. This is analogous to various SSRIs which arguably treat anxiety better than depression[1]. Anxiety and depression are highly comorbid, and both doctors and patients may be bad at differentiating between the symptoms, leading to "I feel better"-type reporting. This might mean that Mg supplementation is a good thing for depressed people because it treats their anxiety, not because it treats their depression. This alternative hypothesis is particularly compelling because magnesium deficiency has a variety of well-understood effects on muscle tension[2] which mimic physical symptoms of anxiety.
2. Magnesium is frequently supplemented concurrently with vitamin D, vitamin K, calcium, and zinc. All of these are known to be active in humans, and vitamin D in particular has been correlated with depression and seasonal affective disorder.
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/11/07/ssris-an-update/ (see under the bolded "fourth" comment--SSC has a bunch of posts on this topic).
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium_deficiency#Diagnosis