Calcium, Magnesium and Vitamin D: How do we get the balance right?

Dr Carolyn Dean and I talked about magnesium. We have said before that healthy soils are important for healthy food and we know that many soils.

Most soils in Australia probably globally are deficient in magnesium, selenium, and zinc or magnesium is a very important component in the billions and trillions of chemical reactions that are going on every moment of every day in every cell in our body.

We hear a lot about calcium supplementation and always you hear about milk is important for healthy bones and calcium supplementation to avoid osteoporosis. Of course, it’s not as simple as that. There was this article that Dr Carolyn Dean referred to a researcher in New Zealand, Mark Boland. I thought I’d look up that article and this is it. 

Effect of calcium supplements on the risk of myocardial infarction and cardiovascular risks: meta-analysis

This article was written in 2010. They take a whole lot of studies. The objective of this study was to investigate whether calcium supplements increase the risk of cardiovascular events. If you’ve been taking calcium supplements for healthy bones. You may have forgotten that there’s more going on in your body than your bones and your hearts are important issues. 

They were exploring the cause of calcification of the carotid arteries is not a good thing. That is what that episode with Dr Ross Walker reinforced about coronary calcium CT score. Here’s an article that was written in 2010, maybe these calcium supplements are a problem for our heart and the conclusion was interesting. 

Calcium supplements without coadministered vitamin D are associated with an increased risk of myocardial infarction. As calcium supplements are widely used, these modest increases in the risk of cardiovascular disease might translate into a larger burden of disease in the population and you might argue about the drinking of milk for healthy bones. 

They may be a problem for our hearts but this is worth bearing in mind. I thought what was so interesting about this in 2010 was the recognition that vitamin D deficiency was a major problem. Unless you had vitamin D, then you wouldn’t be able to absorb the calcium anyway. This goes back to a whole story about the importance of fats, fat-soluble vitamins like A, D, E, and K in absorbing the water-soluble minerals vitamins. 

In 2010, there was more than Dr Carolyn Dean pointed out that not only was magnesium important in calcium metabolism and specifically the precipitation of calcium. What did she mean by that? Calcium floats around in our system as a natural. It naturally floats around in our body and it’s in the balance between free calcium and bound calcium in our blood but when it precipitates out, that’s where the problems arise because what happens is you will get calcium precipitation and that means calcium gets deposited where it shouldn’t be, and that is into your arteries, into your joints, and on your teeth. 

If you’re ever wondering how come I have a lot of calcium buildup on my teeth and the answer may be in this next thing that Dr Carolyn Deane alerted me to and reminded me of, and that was that magnesium is important not only in calcium metabolism but also in vitamin D metabolism. In addition to that, I looked up 2019, magnesium supplementation for vitamin D deficiency and vitamin D deficiency.

Go back and listen to my podcast and watch it on YouTube of the elephant in the room, I touch on the fact that vitamin D deficiency is at pandemic proportions. It is a major global problem and vitamin D is essential for every aspect of our health, but you need magnesium to make vitamin D. A lot of people who say I’m out in the sun all the time, I don’t understand why I’m deficient in vitamin D.

It may be that you’re deficient in magnesium, which you need to produce the vitamin D, whether it be from the sunshine or whether it be from supplementation. In this study, vitamin D and magnesium, magnesium are some of the most. This was 2019. So almost 10 years later, vitamin D magnesium is one of the most studied topics in medicine with enormous implications for human health and disease. The majority of adults are deficient in both vitamin D and magnesium but continued to go unrecognized by many health care professionals.

Conclusion

The conclusion of the study is because of the recent increase in global awareness, vitamin D supplementation has become a common practice. You may be taking vitamin D supplements yourself but magnesium deficiency remains unaddressed screening for chronic vitamin, magnesium deficiency is difficult because a normal serum level may still be associated with moderate to severe deficiencies. 

We talked about this in the podcast where testing magnesium levels in the blood is a waste of time because blood will always try and keep magnesium in balance but could still be deficient in this. The blood tests for magnesium aren’t much good to date. There is no simple or accurate laboratory test to determine total body magnesium status in humans.

Dr Carolyn Dean confirmed that magnesium is essential in the metabolism of vitamin D, and taking large doses of vitamin D can induce severe depletion of magnesium. If you’re taking high quantities of vitamin D, that may be a problem as well because you may be depleting the magnesium that is already depleted.

That’s the reason why taking supplements is not straightforward. You need to do this in a coordinated way. Adequate magnesium supplementation should be considered an important aspect of vitamin D therapy. I thought I’d touch on those important issues and re-emphasize that magnesium supplementation or deficiency is a big problem. 

It’s very difficult to determine how soils are deficient in it. In getting that magnesium supplementation, which unlike calcium, when you take a calcium supplement, it will precipitate if you take too much and it will precipitate in your coronary arteries, in your joints, and on your teeth. The beauty of magnesium supplementation is that you will just excrete what you don’t need. It does not precipitate into the body.

This podcast provides general information in a discussion about medicine, health, and related subjects. Content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences, and conclusions.