If you’re not taking a daily magnesium supplement, you may be missing out on some amazing gut health benefits. That’s because magnesium is an essential mineral involved in more than 300 enzyme reactions in the human body, including those that involve digestion. (Enzymes help accelerate chemical reactions in the body.) Yet, an estimated 75% of Americans aren’t meeting the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of 310 to 420 mg of magnesium.1, 2
And that’s a problem not only for your gut, but for your overall health.
Functions of Magnesium
Magnesium is the fourth most abundant mineral in the body. An adult body contains an estimated 25% magnesium, more than half of which is found in your bones. The rest is contained in your fat, muscles, blood vessels, and other tissues.3 As your body cannot make magnesium, you must get it through your diet or by taking a daily magnesium supplement. Magnesium is essential for:- Strong bones: You probably learned in grade school that vitamin-D builds strong bones and teeth. That’s true...but it needs magnesium’s help. Magnesium activates the cellular activity needed to metabolize vitamin-D.
- Nerve and muscle function: Magnesium is essential for proper transmission of nerve impulses and neuromuscular conduction. It also calms neuronal cells, thereby preventing cell death. Magnesium also acts as a calcium blocker, helping muscles relax. (Calcium generates muscle contractions and magnesium relaxes them.)4, 5
- Heart Health: Magnesium also works with calcium to regulate heart beat.
These are just three of the many functions of magnesium. Now let’s talk about digestive health.
Magnesium and Digestive Health
If you read the ingredient label on most antacid products, you’ll see that magnesium is the main ingredient. That’s because magnesium helps neutralize stomach acid. It may even reduce the symptoms of acid reflux!6 And because magnesium is essential for proper muscle contraction, it also helps muscles move stool through the intestine. This helps prevent constipation.
But magnesium does more than that. It also appears to influence the microbial diversity of your gut microbiome.
There are more than 100 trillion bacterial cells in the human body, and most of them reside in your gut.7 (Bacteria and other microbes in the gut are collectively called the “gut microbiome.”) Research shows that a balance of “good” and “bad” bacteria in the gut microbiome is essential for gut health and that this balance is influenced by the intake of several nutrients, including magnesium. In fact, two linked studies on mice showed that their gut microbiomes differed significantly depending on whether they were given high-magnesium or low-magnesium diets.8, 9
Your gut microbiome is responsible for the breakdown and utilization of nutrients and micronutrients in the stomach and small intestine, which is essential for proper digestion. The indigestible portions of these foods then travel to the colon, where they are fermented by bacteria to produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFA), such as Butyrate.
Doctors at Harvard Medical School call Butyrate the “optimal” short-chain fatty acid because it has a more powerful effect on gut health than other SCFAs.10 Studies show butyrate may have an anti-inflammatory effect in the intestines and protect the intestinal barrier. It may even defend against obesity and colon cancer!11
Remember...magnesium could be a factor in promoting the “good” bacteria that your gut needs to create Butyrate. That is why SANE has added a powerful dose of magnesium to our breakthrough gut-health supplement and POSTbiotic formula Viscera-3. Learn how the power of TRIbutyrate and magnesium combined can have incredible beneficial benefits in your lower colon and see if we are still in-stock of this wildly popular “gut-healing” formula. Click here to learn more about SANE Viscera-3.
References
2- Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS). Magnesium Fact Sheet for Health Professionals. NIH. Sep 25, 2020. Accessed Nov 13, 2020.
3- DiNicolantonio JJ, Liu J, O’Keefe JH. Magnesium for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease. Open Heart 2018;5:e000775. doi:10.1136/openhrt-2018-000775.
4- Kirkland AE, Sarlo GL, Holton KF. The Role of Magnesium in Neurological Disorders. Nutrients. 2018;10(6):730. Published 2018 Jun 6. doi:10.3390/nu10060730
5- Potter JD, Robertson SP, Johnson JD. Magnesium and the regulation of muscle contraction. Fed Proc. 1981 Oct;40(12):2653-6. PMID: 7286246.
6- Hein J. Comparison of the efficacy and safety of pantoprazole magnesium and pantoprazole sodium in the treatment of gastro-oesophageal reflux disease: a randomized, double-blind, controlled, multicentre trial. Clin Drug Investig. 2011;31(9):655-64. doi: 10.2165/11590270-000000000-00000. PMID: 21819161.
7- Allday E. 100 trillion good bacteria call human body home. SF Gate. Jul 3, 2012.
8- Dietary magnesium deficiency alters gut microbiota and leads to depressive-like behaviour. Acta Neuropsychiatr. 2015 Jun;27(3):168-76. doi: 10.1017/neu.2015.7. Epub 2015 Feb 18.
9- Dietary magnesium deficiency affects gut microbiota and anxiety-like behaviour in C57BL/6N mice. Acta Neuropsychiatr. 2015 Mar 16:1-5.
10- Verma MS, Fink MJ, Salmon GL, Fornelos N, Ohara TE, Ryu SH, Vlamakis H, Xavier RJ, Stappenbeck TS, Whitesides GM. A Common Mechanism Links Activities of Butyrate in the Colon. ACS Chem Biol. 2018 May 18;13(5):1291-1298. doi: 10.1021/acschembio.8b00073. Epub 2018 Apr 10. PMID: 29584955.
11- Liu H, Wang J, He T, Becker S, Zhang G, Li D, Ma X. Butyrate: A Double-Edged Sword for Health? Advances in Nutrition, Volume 9, Issue 1, January 2018, Pages 21–29.
