Magnesium & other things

What is a good level of magnesium to take? I read about so many benefits to magnesium.
http://www.lef.org/abstracts/codex/magnesium_index.htm?source=search&key=too much magnesium

My friend had good results with Fredd-ish protocol including 572 mg. magnesium, 887 mg. potassium. His swallowing problems disappeared. Also I know because it happened 3x - brain fog was relieved by enough magnesium.

New naturopath only wants him on a max of 150 mg. magnesium. After we started this new protocol he got cramps in his arms, and swallowing problems returned. I have been upping Mag. to 266 mg. currently but thinking we should go higher. What is the Yaskoan thinking to low levels of magnesium? Is there a danger to too much? Rydra mentioned something about those with a NA___ processing defect should be careful with mag., but I can't find where she said that. He eats enormous amounts of food but is losing weight so I'm thinking he's not getting enough nutrients out of food so we should at least supplement to the RDA.

Or maybe it's not just lower magnesium causing return of muscle issues? Other things that have been reduced are below -
Fish oil
Vitamin C
Vitamin D (I think she thinks he has that defect where he can't absorb this, so maybe this one is OK although he seems depressed now)
C0Q10

Any insights appreciated. He's taking 5 mg. MB12 and 10 mg. Adb12 and 800 mcg methylfolate, with some Bs, GABA, lithium orotate, antioxidants, and digestive and probiotics.

Pea, after some experimentation, I've found that about 500-600 mg a day works best for me.

I'm not qualified to offer you a definite opinion. However, in my opinion, you should balance your view on magnesium with that of those doctors that have found magnesium may not be beneficial in the long-term. Dr Fry is one of them. My personal experience with it supports this view.
It may be worthwhile investigating the reasons for a magnesium deficiency (as for any other thing), look into causes and effects.
Other than that, I assume your friend has been checked for myasthenia gravis.

I take 400mg twice a day. Good for every organ of the body.

I take around 500mg per day. I started out with info from Dr. Myhill, who found magnesium injections really helpful to her ME patients and advocated fairly high doses. I also do a magnesium spray, for a different method of absorption, and occasional epsom salts baths. Dr. Myhill has a website that might have some information about Mg in ME patients that could be a useful read for his naturopath if you decide you'd like to increase it again.

I haven't heard anything about problems with it for us, but am curious now. On my part, I've been steadily improving on the regime I'm on so haven't noticed any drawback yet. It's been less than a year, though. Was there a particular rationale for the naturopath capping it at 150, or were they just going off of what would be reasonable for "standard" people?

With all of this stuff, my inclination would be that if it makes him feel better, it's probably a good thing for him. We're not one-size-fits all by any stretch. I am interested to hear what people have to say here about the drawbacks, though...

I do feel less pain on higher amounts of magnesium. It's hard to say the exact amounts because the compositions are different on many products. I haven't hit an amount where I feel worse from it that I know of, but it is interesting to know that some are not in favour of high amounts.

It seems odd to me that she stopped or lowered all of those supplements. Did she specifically say to stop or lower them? That doesn't go with the Yasko way of thinking unless he was on excessive doses. As for the Methyl groups (methyl B12, methylfolate, etc), that makes sense for the reasons I alluded to before. She's overly conservative when you start a bunch of stuff at once but it doesn't mean you can't have higher doses if he tolerates them. I would run that by her first, it sounds off to me but then, each case is probably so different.

I take magnesium three times daily when I'm upping my methyls so its around 450 a day.

Angela

thanks everybody - I'm going back to more magnesium.

I'm thinking dr. just started out with the lower doses in going with the Holistic Health protocol, maybe didn't notice how much magnesium & potassium he was actually taking at the time (I was impatient to get going...). She didn't specifically say to lower the magnesium, she just said start at 1/4 cap and go up to 1/2 cap 2x a day which would only be 150mg. Also in the HH basic protocol is Neurological Health multivitamin, which she didn't want him on for now because it included a lot of other things, so maybe the lack of magnesium by not taking that multi wasn't considered ? I just didn't want to imbalance other things she was trying to do either, like limit calcium, so I wanted to ask you all.

He was on a high dose of C because I liked the effect of the Perque C Potent Guard and it had potassium & magnesium. So I can see where the C didn't need to be so high. The fish oil - she had him to go this DHA Neuromins every other day (and an Omega 3-6-9 the other days), but I noticed this DHA is only 100 mg.; that doesn't seem like much but maybe it is more potent - is anybody on this? I'll ask these things at our follow-up, and the Vitamin D. Is there some kind of defect about processing Vitamin D?

Xrunner - what was your experience with magnesium? I am hoping he was tested for Myesthenia gravis - I asked the neuro about it, who ran paraneoplastic tests (all negative) and hexisamandise, but it's difficult to get info out of anybody re: what the results mean or rule out.

Hi Pea,

I can't say for sure but she's probably being careful with the fish oil/EFA because of certain defects. If he had that NOS defect in the urea cycle, they would slow it down even more and cause problems, so that would be my guess. But I also know that some of the doctors actually don't like DHA for reasons I don't quite understand. I think Dr. vank would know the answer to this one but we'd probably have to make another post directly to him.

I agree on the mag, she probably didn't look at the multi source but it might have also been just a reflex at starting "Low and slow" as many of us go by. Also, unless she said no on the Vit C, I don't see how that could harm him so you might just want to go back to that one if it was working for him. Yasko even says to push the C as much as they tolerate since it has such good properties all around with immunity, antioxidant, etc. That could have even been helping his mucus issues. Believe me, if she's against something, you'll know it cuz she'll be very plain about it. I was taking cyanocobalamin, folic acid, and NAC when I started seeing her and she was all over them right away! Needlesss to say, I'm not on them now but I certainly understand her caution using them.

Good luck with all of this, its sure not easy trying to balance all of it without scaring him off too. I did alotta stuff for my husband early on that I knew I'd have to be very careful about cuz whenever he felt the slightest bit bad he'd blame everything on the supplements! Not to be sexist here but men can sure be difficult about the alternative medicine sorta stuff!

Angela

No kidding! and now we're not seeing improvements in the voice & going backwards in places, so I'm also trying to balance out increasing some supplements though so he doesn't give up because he's not seeing the point in taking these things..
then when things do improve, it's never the supplements - they claim it's something else!

Hopefully back to more magnesium will help. I asked about the other supplements though so I wasn't being single-minded about the magnesium. He's at 2,564 mg. with the C now. The C powder has calcium in it so she didn't want him to have as much as he was taking in order to not have so much calcium.

Boy do I empathize with you in that. i'll never forget how my husband did a complete turnaround (and he wasn't even sick just really tired!) and his exact words were "This has nothing to do with the hocus pocus you're using on me, I just feel better finally, it was bound to happen sooner or later," although I got the last laugh when he decided to stop them all and he got even worse than he was before he started them! But it wasn't really a victory since he was miserable and grumpy all the time until he got back on them for a few weeks.

I understand now on the Vit C. I didn't know any of them had calcium in with them so that would be a definite no, no on this treatment plan. Maybe you could boost the others to the previous dose, but individually. And I meant what I said, if you truly feel something was better at a higher dose and he seems okay so far on whatever changes she did, I know she would feel it was fine to be on them. Unless of course, she specifically said not to like with my NAC, folic acid, and "cyanide" B 12. I'll bet she caught that calcium issue and that's what the main problem was, unless there was something else in with them too. I'm still curious about the DHA issue so I'll post a question about it.

Good luck, Pea!

Angela

Well now IS there a reason to reduce Vitamin D to start? I thought there was a defect about it, but D is in Dr. Amy's basic protocol. And he was previously on 4,000 IU with no detox/startup effects but now that we took it away [except for a teense in the A1298C cap], his mood has plummeted. I did send her an email about this.

Does anybody know is there a defect where you have to be careful about Vitamin D supplementing, or was I thinking about something else?

There is the Vit D receptor defect but from what I understand, you need it even more with this defect. Although it can cause some start up symptoms in many but if he did ok, I'd guess its fine. Just watch the type of Vit D supplement since so many have calcium included!

angela

I'm pretty sure it was the lack of D causing us to go backwards. He was on a D3 drop (no calcium) on Freddd's protocol. He took the Holistic Health spray a couple times, it is nasty, so I gave him back the drops.

So what IS the deal with calcium? What is the relationship with calcium/magnesium/potassium? Too much calcium can go to the brain and cause excitotoxicity - that's the theory?

Since all this, I thought maybe I personally was taking too much calcium so I cut back, and since then I've been all nervousy & anxiety, it's awful. I thought maybe I had Too Much serotonin, so I cut back my 5-HTP but maybe that was not it. Or maybe I'm methylating better [as I've been taking some extra B12] and my thyroid function is better & thus don't need so much levothyroxine any more. I guess it could be a lot of things. Anybody have insight into this?

The thing is, without objective data you will constantly be shooting in the dark. At the end of the day, you need to test. For example, Doctor's Data Methylation Profile could be useful in the determination of optimal nutrient supplementation.

Hi, I used to be a regular taker of mag, in form of calm powder, but stopped last year when started having gut issues etc but used to swear by it,felt it helped me sleep a bit better and helped with nerves and regularity etc

after a year plus break tried it again, been taking that Ionic Fizz powder in a drink, it has other things in there a little a, b12, d3, zinc etc in very minute forms and its only 300mg mag, I didnt realize all that other stuff in there so will switch back to Calm brand and see how that goes....because I am having side effect of blurry vision and low back pain a bit and look rough, my face looks stressed which probly means detox of soem sort happening. I tend to respond to mini doses and have mcs. I did think it was helping me fall asleep better though so will be sad if doesnt work out.

has anyone else gotten the blurry vision? I recall that happened some before when I took it too, Mayo clinic lists that as a side effect. not a good one obviously.

this must be what xrunner cautioned about:
http://www.publichealthalert.org/Articles/tinagarcia/new treatment dramatic results.htm

"Dr. Fry explains that the reason magnesium needs to be withheld from the mineral supplement is due to the fact that magnesium aids the bacteria in the development of the biofilm. Therefore, after destroying the biofilm and the bacteria, it is not logical to provide magnesium, which will only help create more biofilm. Dr. Fry has also found that Lyme disease patients more often than not have an overabundance of magnesium. However, he recommends monitoring the patient's magnesium level during treatment."

Thats funny cuz I like the Vit D spray, its minty & not at all like some of the others. But everyone has their own taste so its probably just better to give him what he likes. I diluted the Vit D with distilled water when I used it for my kids, its too potent but maybe doing so got us all used to the mint, who knows?

calcium keeps the glutamate channels open so that any excitotoxicity could just keep going and going. The lower the dose, the better, at least, for most people these days. I would guess that'd be 300 or less a day added in on top of food. Its hard to know if the jittery feeling you had was from the start up symptoms of the B12 (I get this all the time) or from losing another mineral with the Calcium. Most of them include something else like Vit D or mag or whatever and maybe you're missing that as well? But don't underestimate the power of start up, it can be very strange!

Angela

Well, I think for me I was situational-nervousy about my friend to begin with. But then I cut my 5-HTP in half, which I should not have done. Then I didn't take it at all. That was the main culprit. Low serotonin - brain foggy & anxiety!!

Also I would take that calcium before bed and it did have a little magnesium. So because I stopped that, instead I took a magnesium/potassium with taurine before bed-maybe I have that taurine issue some people have. Also I started taking the GABA myself - and from the other thread, maybe for me it was excito. So now I see why it's best to remove or add supplements one at a time...

Xray, I don't know about the blurry vision, but I will say I missed the magnesium at night because I started again getting like nerve twiches, where my whole body gets one big twitch. My friend got that stressed look on his face but he's better now that we brought back the D3.

Dr. April did limit that Perque C Potent Guard because it had a bit of calcium in it. I liked it because it had C, Magnesium, Potassium, and a bit of Zinc. It doesn't have that much calcium (30mg?), but he was taking 4 teaspoons (now 1) so I may bump that back up next week. I read Vitamin K makes sure the calcium goes to the bones, not the brain too.

It's difficult to find a multi without calcium.

I couldn't agree with you more on this Nanonug, but based on all the posts and reaching out so desperately, my guess is that Pea doean't want to wait for that sorta stuff. I can understand that, when you care about someone and they're sick, you want healing like yesterday. No one's worse about finding that quick fix and jumping ship from doctor to doctor to doctor than most autism moms so I completely get it!

But the trouble is, when you go changing everything from day to day or week to week (unless its harming you) because you didn't get the immediate response you wanted, you never see how the body adjusts to the new sups. By the time you've increased or added so many things, you have no idea what's working, what's not working, what had helped and is gone, what's hurt things and been added, etc. Its tough to wait for tests and gradually layering treatments in like an onion to get their full benefit but if you don't slow down just a bit and take the time, there may be serious trouble ahead and then he may not stick with it or do anything else.

Unless its absolutely life threatening and he's at risk for dying, I don't think its going to do you much good to speed through things and jump around so much. You're in good hands right now, she's fixed people with ALS and MS so you need to learn to slow down and trust a little bit more. I was in your shoes 3 years ago when I was desperate to fix my son but honestly, she got us through that and I learned to have more trust, even after being burned so much by the medical establishment.

And I really agree with the above suggestion for testing so if she recommended any, I'd really think about doing them even if it does take a few weeks to get the report. I'm no fan of testing like Dr. Yasko likes, every week, but getting them here and there sure makes the guessing goes away.

Were all with you here, Pea and were all in this together!
Angela



QUOTE=nanonug;249902]The thing is, without objective data you will constantly be shooting in the dark. At the end of the day, you need to test. For example, Doctor's Data Methylation Profile could be useful in the determination of optimal nutrient supplementation.[/QUOTE]