New Anti-Aging Weapon: Magnesium
If you don’t get enough magnesium, your cells age faster, says Bruce Ames, leading researcher at the University of California, Berkeley.
That’s alarming, because 68% of Americans lack magnesium, studies show.
Indeed, recent research identifies magnesium as a potent fountain of youth inside cells. Ames finds that a lack of magnesium damages cells’ DNA and accelerates “mitochondrial decay” that essentially causes cells to age prematurely, lose energy and become dysfunctional.
The result of too little magnesium: a shorter life and more chronic disease. Here’s the latest evidence:
* Men with the highest magnesium blood levels had 40% lower overall death rates and were 50% less apt to die of cancer, in a large new French study. (Leone N., Epidemiology, 2006 May; 17(3): 308-14)
*The offspring of several generations of animals on magnesium-deficient diets showed damage in the area of the brain (substantia nigra) that degenerates in humans with Parkinson’s. This suggests that low magnesium is involved in the pathology of Parkinson’s and ALS, say Japanese researchers. (Oyanagi K., Neuropathology 2006 Apr; 26(2): 115-28)
* Women getting the most magnesium had 27% less metabolic syndrome and blood inflammation, tied to diabetes and heart disease, in Harvard research.(Song Y. Diabetes Care, 2005 Jun:1438-44)
Tip: If you have muscle cramps, magnesium supplements are often a quick cure.(200-400mg a day)
Advice: Take a multi-vitamin with high magnesium (200-350 mg a day). Very few have that much. See below. And eat nuts, legumes, and bran cereals high in magnesium.
