IV Magnesium is better than other forms. Why doesn't my magnesium level increase?

[JBB]

@JBB
Yes, so much seems to come back to chronic infection...at least for many of us. And I do still use them as a band-aid until those deeper issues are dealt with .
@liverock:

My thoughts exactly aaron...when I first found out magnesium could have such a powerful effect on me I got very excited.

Interesting that you found a load of people for which it stopped working. I'm guessing that there will also be those for who it does just tip the balance but they will be rare and probably not too severely ill. I know at least one patient which my CFS Doc had was cured by IV magnesium and "flipped out of it" so to speak, probably due to the magnesium / calcium ion pumps.

For those of us with chronic infection like you say it seems like it's a band aid. Anything to improve quality of life is fantastic. So hard to find anything that works for us.

I wonder about lipo selenium with the magnesium. On the other hand this might be tinkering with our biological processes too much...

http://www.vitaminpros.com/lypospheric-selenium.html


Best wishes,

J

 

[*GG*]

Recently read in Life Extension magazine that you need to take 3mg/lb of weight to maintain "good" magnesium levels. 5mg/lb to increase.

GG

 

[aaron_c]

@JBB

Interesting, about the liposomal selenium... I had no idea someone was selling that. I actually added selenium to my liposomal magnesium mixture for a little bit, but I got worried about dosage. To be honest, my impression of the dangers of selenium have changed since I first posted about the possible relationship between selenium and magnesium. The short version of my current impression is this:

The distance between the physiological and pathological dose of selenium is one of the smallest of all nutrients. Having too little will predispose one to cancer, while having too much increases the risk of fatal prostate cancer (by over five times I think in the AARP study), but maybe other cancers as well--people in the AARP study took way too much selenium because they thought it was good for prostate cancer...not many other people would have reason to take more than 200 or so mcg. I wanted the whole thing to be easy, and unfortunately, it may not be. So there are risks both ways.

On one hand: Wikland and Hyde have reported (separately) that about 40% of people with chronic fatigue have Hashimoto's. Selenium appears to be helpful to some people with Hashimoto's. Rich Van K theorized that the high incidence of Hashimoto's was due to glutathione depletion, to which I would like to add selenium depletion, as the selenium levels in the thyroid are some of the highest in the body. I can find a site citing two studies: They found that in general, the lower the blood level of selenium, the higher the incidence of thyroid cancer, and also that patients with thyroid cancer have lower tissue concentrations of selenium than the norm. But selenium supplementation doesn't seem to help prevent thyroid cancer...at the very least because most people are also deficient in magnesium? But I mention this because people with chronic fatigue have perhaps 600 times higher risk of thyroid cancer than most people.

On the other hand: As I mentioned, taking too much is dangerous at least to men, but I would not be surprised if somewhat high levels of selenium (I'm talking high, but not high enough to cause more classic symptoms of selenium toxicity) were dangerous to women as well.

This is all to say that I think some caution might be warranted with liposomal selenium. If selenium transport into cells is limited by glutathione levels, then perhaps the body is only allowing as much selenium into the cells as it can use. I wonder if adding more selenium than can be used by glutathione is actually a good thing, or just a shortcut to toxicity. I also just worry, because although there is a fair amount of debate about selenium supplement dosage, the parameters are still established, whereas I do not know how much liposomal selenium would be equivalent to non-liposomal, so I see a further risk of overdose.

Liposomal vitamin c and magnesium make sense, because there are situations where we get diarrhea before we hit the dose that would help us most. Lipsomal glutathione makes sense because most glutathione is broken down in the stomach. But given the risks (and extra cost) I would agree with you that the risks of liposelenium probably outweigh the benefits.

Obviously, I am just theorizing here, and I am open to discovering that liposelenium has benefits. But I see reason to be cautious in that discovery.

Very best wishes to you too,

Aaron C

 

[JBB]

@JBB
This is all to say that I think some caution might be warranted with liposomal selenium.
Aaron C

Absolutely agree. In fact I think that caution could be further extended to any mineral taken in excess including magnesium as you pointed out. We simply don't know enough about all the hundreds of bodily processes. I just linked the lipo selenium out of interest really, and thought that if you were using it that you might be interested. Completely agree though, extreme caution warranted doing high dose of anything like this.

 

[aaron_c]

I think that caution could be further extended to any mineral taken in excess

As I noted, selenium is unique in that the physiological range is one of the smallest targets to hit, and our bodies don't seem to have a robust mechanism for regulating how much we keep. So I would be cautious in extending the lessons of selenium to all other minerals. But I take your point, that any other mineral taken in excess could potentially influence something like selenium--it is so important to remember how much we don't know.

As I said before the problem for those of us with ME is that we are already living limited lives that will end on average two decades earlier than the average person. In addition, I personally proscribe to the idea that fundamentally, our problem is that we are deep in the inflammation pit--and whatever else we must do to get well, we will need to climb far enough out of the inflammation pit that the immune system and detoxification systems can begin to function something close to normally. So although I see the magnesium/selenium supplementation as a band-aid, I also think it could be another part of the foundation of a cure. This is why I generally think that we both have more to gain and less to lose from something like high doses of magnesium and selenium.

I do acknowledge that I have a tendency to embrace the theoretical-but-not-entirely-proven more quickly than others, and that there are dangers in this approach as well. In the aforementioned AARP prostate cancer study, for example, it is clear that pretty soon, selenium toxicity from supplements becomes more dangerous than mild selenium deficiency.

The very best luck in finding your way through this,
Warmly,

Aaron C

 

[Aileen]

@JBBThis is all to say that I think some caution might be warranted with liposomal selenium.

What form of selenium seems to be best? I am looking at getting some. The local health food store has a 100mcg tablet selenium (yeast). Not sure what to make of this.

Liposomal vitamin c and magnesium make sense, because there are situations where we get diarrhea before we hit the dose that would help us most.

Getting back to the topic of magnesium, what about topical magnesium lotion? That skips the GI tract. I have a sample of a product called "Ancient Minerals magnesium lotion". 1g elemental mg per 30ml. Surprisingly, it is actually odour free so I am able to use it (severe MCS). How would this compare to oral supplements?

 

[aaron_c]

Hi @Aileen

I use selenomethionine--it is also the form you would get from a selenium yeast. I have seen some people suggest methylselenocysteine. Selenocysteine is the active and transport form of selenium, but the only way you can buy it is as methylselenocysteine, as far as I know. I think it is mainly used for cancer treatment. I didn't take it because it made me feel "overmethylated," but if you don't have that problem, it might be a good form.

I have read that selenium yeast can have variable amounts of selenium, but some people do not mind.
Come to that, I suppose we have to trust any supplement we take that it contains what it says it does.

I have used a magnesium chloride spray, and it seemed to work quite well in delivering magnesium to my body, but I'm afraid I'm in the dark in regards to the "exchange rate" between liposomal magnesium and magnesium lotion.

I would be quite curious to hear about your results. It would be helpful to know what dose of selenium you settle at and how much magnesium you take with the cream. Or if the magnesium cream even helps at all.

The best of luck with all this,

Aaron C

 

[Mor]

.My hypothesis is that this does not last because after however much time, glutathione peroxidase has used up the selenium stored as selenomethionine. Basically, we have burned through our selenium savings, so our body brings less magnesium into our cells, and we are back experiencing magnesium deficiency: We produce less glutathione, we feel tired again, and we sleep worse. This would explain why medium-high doses of magnesium stop working after some number of months, and also, I think, why daily magnesium IV's would stop working much more quickly--you probably haven't used up your selenomethionine stores, but you have used up everything else.

So selenomethionine should be used with magnesium, or selenocysteine? Which is better?

Edit: oops, he later answered the same question from someone else.