I know it sounds very bad for those who had been treated until at least a decade ago in a psychiatric ward. For all of the others let me describe you the picture a little bit. You get in there during some acute episode like insomnia and constipation that lasts a week. You feel like your body is giving up yet they treat you like you would be crazy if you are not sleeping, not eating, drinking or generally not feeling anything anymore or maybe just fear, anxiety and some sort of psychotic high. Tired people simply can't stop themselves from crashing. Psychotic people are the opposite, can't go to sleep.
And in a sense they are right. It's a chemical imbalance. But it's not because of a lack of Prozac or Remeron or Zyprexa in your body that you get there. It's actually a lack of magnesium. Following a spell or command to an area of your subconscious that can actually control physiology, mostly through breathing, your body just got rid of the healthy necessary levels and you actually runs on fumes. Cause since you have over 1 kg of calcium in our bones and you can always pull some from there in case of severe general starvation, magnesium in your body is very limited. Both with essential roles in neurotransmitting and with so many other roles in your body.
One thing i can say about the anti-psychotic properties of magnesium i know from my own experience. Taking magnesium supplements, especially after a period of imbalance, that is confirmed by the strong effects in the first days, has very similar effects to taking anti-psychotics. It actually puts you down, make you less excitable, tired. Makes you wanna sleep. It relaxes your muscles though from what i read about today is supposed to do the opposite. Lack of it gives you a permanent high and abnormal levels of energy.
But let's take a look at the data first. (click to see a better image of the screenshots).
https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/241893-overview
https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/2038394-overviewWe can see in the first place that there is about the same or comparable amounts of magnesium and calcium in the inter and intracelular space and accordingly in blood. But there is also a lot more calcium than magnesium in the bones. They are both necessary in neurotransmitting but if we look at the blood tests done in the ER in hospitals we won't see magnesium on the list. The so called metabolic panel. The reason is very simple. It's not critical on short term. Or a severe lack of it is not nearly as bad as a severe lack of any of the other 4 so called electrolytes. Sodium, calcium, potassium are the critical electrolytes or cations they are looking for in the first tests at the ER and mostly the lack of those is life threatening on short term. I am not even aware of the existence of a test for magnesium levels or of "the forgotten cation". We can also see in the screenshot above the role of magnesium in "mitochondrial respiration".
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2486454/But what is the systematic cause of chronic magnesium deficiency. Actually so simple it is overlooked. Through our diet we have available vast amounts of calcium in dairy products. Milk, butter, cheese, yougurt. There is so much calcium in milk actually the milk is white because of it. Three servings of dairy products give you the necessary 1000 mg a day but it is also present in many other foods. Same goes for potassium. One medium potato or banana is 1000 mg. On the other hand magnesium is so much scarcer. Here is a list of top foods with high magnesium content. As you can see, the magnesium content in our food is much lower than calcium yet the blood serum level is only a bit lower (4-6 mg/dl vs 8 mg calcium). Also the recommended intake level is about half of that of calcium.
As you can see from the list it doesn't seem a problem getting the necessary magnesium of 500 mg from quite normal foods present almost inevitably in our diet. The problem is the high intake of calcium that needs to be eliminated by the kidneys. I suspect magnesium is eliminated unnecessarily following a ratio of a ratio interval. Not talking about the more chaotic minerals elimination from your body under stress, effort, or at a high blood pressure that can last for hours.
I have thought for a long time milk is a complete or well balanced food (only for the fact it is the only food in the first year of humans and many other primates, yet babies can thrive and grow on it). But i never realized until today. Babies or children or even adolescents use the disproportionate amount of calcium in milk to actually grow bones.
Let's hypothesise the anti-psychotic action of magnesium is real and magnesium acts very similarly to some anti-psychotics. Would anybody, including doctors who are actually paid by pharma to push their products prescribe it, especially since it's available over the counter as a supplement?
And last but not least. Long term magnesium deficiency that we can see from some of the first or most critical effects on the list on the screenshots above affects "mitochondrial respiration" or one of the essential mechanisms of aerobic metabolism. Also lack of magnesium promotes lack of motility of the intestine mostly through spasms and prolonged contractions. Building up of the stool in the colon and impossibility of eliminating gases that actually create a positive pressure inside abdominal cavity causing hiatal hernia and slowing of the emptying of the bile and pancreas causing steatosis (fatty liver disease) and self digesting of the pancreas, or the second cause of tipe II diabetes, first being lack of magnesium at celular level.
