18 signs That You Are Magnesium Deficient | How To Increase Magnesium Naturally

If you’re having issues with going to the toilet regularly, that’s constipation. It often suggests that you should increase your magnesium intake, due to the mineral’s laxative effect. Magnesium can help draw water into stools, softening them and easing their passage through the tracts. So, if you’ve been having trouble sustaining regular bowel movement, make sure you have enough magnesium-rich foods in your diet.

Another important role of magnesium is to help with cortisol regulation, boosting the body’s ability to respond to danger and stress. It also allows for a more balanced production of hormones. Moreover, magnesium increases gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), improving your sleep quality and helping you relax. Without sufficient magnesium intake, you’re constantly at the risk of having low GABA levels, leading to higher stress.

Just like stress, magnesium also helps with other mental health problems like anxiety and depression. It plays a vital role in neurotransmitter regulation, a process responsible for communication between the body and brain. Experiencing feelings of depression and anxiety become more likely when neurotransmitters aren’t regulated. Many anxiety patients use magnesium supplements to solely help with their condition.

We all know the importance of calcium for maintaining strong and healthy bones. Magnesium is an essential mineral when it comes to the body’s calcium absorption. Making sure you’re getting enough magnesium through your everyday diet can help increase the mineral density of your bones, reducing the risk of bone health problems such as weakened bones, osteoporosis, and fractures.

As mentioned above, the neurotransmitter GABA plays an essential role in regulating your sleep. The brain’s GABA receptors need magnesium to properly function. Without sufficient magnesium supply, you may experience issues with getting enough deep sleep. Hence, simply upping your intake of magnesium can have a great natural impact on the quality of your sleep cycles.

Fun fact: the skin is the body’s largest organ. Many different factors determine how healthy your skin is, and one of them is your magnesium intake. If your body lacks the mineral, you may run into skin problems like acne, psoriasis, and so on.

As magnesium lowers your cortisol levels and helps correct hormonal imbalances, it improves the skin’s appearance by preventing various skin disorders. The mineral even improves the processes that your skin cells naturally carry out to ensure optimal skin health.

Magnesium is vital for the regulation of receptors in the brain that help us retain and learn memories. Thus, taking magnesium supplements has shown to help clear brain fog. It also allows the brain to heal and adapt throughout your lifespan. Getting sufficient quantities of magnesium is also thought to slow down, or even reverse the cognitive decline that comes with ageing. Speaking of which…

Magnesium deficiency can lead to reduced lifespans of fibroblasts and endothelial cells, which help with the production of collagen. Collagen is needed to keep the skin supple and wrinkle-free. Lower levels of magnesium in the body can give rise to skin diseases the relate to early ageing, such as dry skin or benign skin growths. Since the mineral acts as an antioxidant countering the damage caused to the mitochondria by free radicals, increasing your magnesium intake can help keep ageing signs away from your skin.

Normal muscle contraction requires magnesium, so a deficiency of the mineral makes muscle spasms and cramps much more likely and frequent. This is because magnesium helps in transporting potassium and calcium ions across the cells, both of which are required for normal muscle contraction and nerve impulses. According to several studies, magnesium has shown to be effective in the treatment of leg cramps, especially in pregnant ladies who tend to encounter them more often.

A magnesium deficiency may also lead to an enlarged thyroid gland, causing difficulty swallowing and a cough. Other symptoms may include difficulty breathing or a tight throat. While it shouldn’t be taken lightly, it’s more annoying than dangerous to live with an enlarged thyroid gland. Boosting your daily magnesium intake should normally resolve the issue and shrink your thyroid gland size back to normal.

Over half of the US population is estimated to be dealing with some sort of resistance to insulin, which is most commonly linked to type 2 diabetes or metabolic syndrome. According to one study, people with higher magnesium intake levels saw significantly lower metabolic syndrome risk, which suggests that increased magnesium intake may help improve your insulin sensitivity. Some experts think that a magnesium deficiency can also increase triglyceride levels — which are fats in the blood linked to diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

Magnesium oxide, usually taken in pill form, works wonders in preventing migraines, as it can help avoid a brain signalling wave that creates the sensory and visual changes responsible for migraines in many cases. Magnesium can also help prevent blood vessel narrowing that serotonin causes, while also improving the functioning of platelets. It can even prevent pain transmitting chemicals from releasing in the brain. Thanks to this, you may notice a significant reduction in the severity and frequency of your migraines just by upping your magnesium intake.

Chronic inflammation may also be a result of a lack of magnesium, potentially leading to obesity, early ageing, and diseases like arthritis and heart health problems. Securing the recommended levels of magnesium has shown to help counter inflammation. The mineral does this by lowering an inflammatory marker known as C-reactive protein (CRP). It’s produced by the liver and gets released as an inflammatory response. Sometimes, CRP can be produced in higher quantities than needed, and having sufficient magnesium levels can prevent and counteract this issue.

According to a recent study, magnesium deficiency is linked to a higher risk of developing coronary heart disease by about 50 to 80 per cent. This makes sense as the body requires magnesium to regulate heart muscle and coordinate nerves that get your heart to beat. With low levels of magnesium, you run a higher risk of heart palpitations and irregular heartbeats. Healthy levels of the mineral will help maintain normal blood pressure and regular heartbeat.

Magnesium helps expand your airways by relaxing the bronchial muscles, which allows more air to flow through the lungs, keeping them healthy. According to several studies, insufficient levels of magnesium can lead to compromised lung function in the long run and a higher risk of wheezing. Some research also links the mineral’s low intake with respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive airway disease and asthma.

If you frequently experience flu-like symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, appetite loss, weakness, or fatigue, this may indicate a developing magnesium deficiency. They can also simply be signs of flu, so it’s best to just reconsider your diet to see if you’re getting enough magnesium every day. If you’re not eating enough magnesium-rich foods, try taking supplements of the mineral for a few days and see if there’s an improvement.

Seizures that aren’t associated with a diagnosed disorder such as epilepsy can often point toward a severe lack of magnesium. Seizures are the body’s response to irregular electrical activity in the brain, which can often be due to magnesium deficiency. Moreover, some research suggests that magnesium supplements can even prevent seizures in epileptic patients. If you’ve had an unexplained seizure recently, visit your doctor as soon as possible.

If your muscles often feel fatigued—a condition causing exhaustion—it might indicate a magnesium deficiency. We all experience fatigue from time to time as the body’s natural response to unusually tiring work, but severe or frequent fatigue may point toward something serious. It can be linked to several different health issues, but muscle weakness is one of the common signs of magnesium deficiency.

Scientists believe that this weakness in the muscles could be caused by a loss of potassium in the cells, which as we touched on above, can be due to a lack of magnesium. You should see improvements in muscle strength and movement upon increasing your magnesium intake, as well as better energy distribution throughout the body.