Recommendations on magnesium supplements and dosage | Masterjohn Q&A Files #22

12/09/19 • 2 min

Question: "What are your recommendations on magnesium supplements and dosage?”

My opinion is that most people shouldn't be supplementing with high doses of magnesium. I think if you're going to supplement with more than 400 milligrams a day, you should be testing your magnesium status, and you should be making decisions on that. I think there's way too many people throwing really high doses of magnesium into their system.

The topical stuff makes sense if you're absorbing poorly, but hey, maybe you're absorbing poorly because you don't need it, and so I think you really have to judge it against real metrics of results.

So, in terms of types, I would not recommend magnesium oxide for anything. It's poorly absorbed, so maybe you could argue that magnesium oxide is going to help act as a laxative better, but that's not bowel function, that's pharmacologically modulating your bowel transit time. So, I don't think it makes sense to deliberately take a poorly absorbed magnesium to have that effect.

The good sources of magnesium are: magnesium citrate is okay, glycinate is okay, malate is okay, across the board, I genuinely don't believe that the form is that important. It's just that oxides of minerals including magnesium are generally poorly absorbed. There isn’t much difference in the other forms. As always tailor it to the individual. I wouldn't give blanket recommendations there.

This Q&A can also be found as part of a much longer episode, here:https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/podcast/2019/02/09/ask-anything-nutrition-feb-1-2019/

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Access the show notes, transcript, and comments here.

Question: "What are your recommendations on magnesium supplements and dosage?”

The topical stuff makes sense if you're absorbing poorly, but hey, maybe you're absorbing poorly because you don't need it, and so I think you really have to judge it against real metrics of results.

This Q&A can also be found as part of a much longer episode, here:https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/podcast/2019/02/09/ask-anything-nutrition-feb-1-2019/

Access the show notes, transcript, and comments here.

Previous Episode

How to lower your calcium score | Masterjohn Q&A Files #21

Question: "Calcium score, is there a way to treat one's calcium score and get it to zero?"

⇒ No, you don't treat the calcium score. You take the calcium score as indicative of what's going on in atherosclerosis, and you treat that.

The goal, I think, is calcium score equals zero. No, that's a bad goal because that's like saying my goal this year is to be a billionaire. Is that going to make me harder and get closer to it? I don't know. You set somewhere what the ideal is, but then you don't think about that, you think about — okay — what's the next step right now in front of me. What you focus on is the thing that's right in front of you. So, maybe you want to be a billionaire -- but your goal is, how do I increase my revenue this month? Not how do I be a billionaire this year.

If you want a calcium score of zero, fine, but you don't think about that; you think about how do I lower my calcium score, because then when you lower your calcium score, you do more of that. When you do something that raises your calcium score, you do less of that.

In atherosclerosis, calcium is super driven by the atherosclerotic progress. So, ideally it would be nice if you had ultrasound imaging of your carotid IMT. If you have advanced plaque formation, you probably will be able to see that on the IMT, like you can see how the plaque is developing and whether the actual atherosclerotic plaque is.

K2 is relevant there, but a general deficiency of K2 is more likely to manifest as diffuse calcium deposits everywhere in the artery. So, it might be that your LDL is high, and then that's what you should be focusing on.

You really have to start from point A through B through C, and K2 is one of those things, but you need to look at all the factors that can be contributing to atherosclerosis.

This Q&A can also be found as part of a much longer episode, here:https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/podcast/2019/02/09/ask-anything-nutrition-feb-1-2019/

Access the show notes, transcript, and comments here.

Next Episode

How to improve LDL receptor activity. | Masterjohn Q&A Files #23

Question: "If cholesterol, LDL-P, and oxidized LDL are high, the sterol panel is normal, and TGs are great, would you suspect clearance of the particles driven by LDL receptor in the liver is the issue, and what would you recommend to boost LDL-R?"

Yes, it sounds like you should target LDL-R.

The big regulators of LDL-R function are thyroid hormone, and the amount of cholesterol in the liver cell, and anything that brings bile acids into the feces, and that's generally a high-fiber diet; psyllium husk would be a fiber you could add.

Thyroid hormone is the other piece of that, and that you target with higher carbohydrate intake. Higher carbohydrate intake also acts on PCSK9 to boost LDL receptor activity.

This Q&A can also be found as part of a much longer episode, here:https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/podcast/2019/02/09/ask-anything-nutrition-feb-1-2019/

Access the show notes, transcript, and comments here.