Magnesium dosages and necessity

I'm about 2.5 years out from my DS. I currently take about 200 mg mag glycinate per day. Lately I try and split this out from my calcium because I understand that at some level they compete for absorption. I don't always do that because I wonder if the competition is only important based on the dose of calcium and magnesium you are taking. After all, using the "door analogy" you may compete to get into a single door but if there are other open doors then the competition really doesn't matter. Also, I know that historically people haven't broken it out and not reported problems on their labs.

Which is a long winded way to bring me to my question. How does anyone determine the correct dosage for magnesium or if you need any dose at all? I've seen recently that there is broad disagreement on if any of the blood tests are reliable indicators.

Magnesium wasn't in my surgeons list of vitamins and not ( I don't think ) on the ASMBS recommended list of vitamins for bariatric patients. It's one of those things that I added because the reasoning sounded right about it working in the bosy in conjunction with calcium and vitamin D.

I had no issues on any of my blood work and I'm wondering if I just jumped on the bandwagon needlessly or conversely what would be the right dose.

Any thoughts, or just a list of what others take for magnesium (not counting magnesium oxide) would be helpful.

Thanks in advance,

Pete

I don't take it as a separate vitamin but you should already be getting a dose in your multi-vitamin regiment.

And I do get it in my mutlivitamin but like other vitamins there are people that don't think that is enough. Just like there isn't enough calcium in a multi to really cover your needs.

I'm not saying if more is right or wrong. Clearly for calcium we need more but for magnesium it seems a little up in the air.

It might be only an issue if you are having trouble with your calcium that you would look to make sure you were getting extra magnesium. My centrum has 100mg magnesium and I take an additional 200 mg separately. Possibly for no good reason but I'm not sure one way or the other.

I still go by Vitalady's recommendations and she lists magnesium citrate with your daily big doses. I take more calcium and mag due to osteo issues but try to take mag first, give my system a little time...maybe 15 minutes, and then take the calcium. My labs come back with mag near the top of the range, which my surgeon really likes for some reason. My other bone related labs are very good and I'm currently holding my own on bone density scans without the heavy duty drugs. ASBMS is a little behind on vitamin recommendations, as the medical community usually is, so I'm sticking with Vitalady.

--gina

Thanks Gina,

Nothing wrong with the Vitalady plan, not where I started but I know it works well for everyone that uses it. I'm not trying to get anyone to change what works for them. Just trying to see what other people are doing and how much magnesium they are taking when there are no issues like osteo.

It just bothers me, in a general way, that some of the vitamins I take I don't have a good handle on what a proper dose would be. I do get 200 mg magnesium from my 2 centrums but I haven't checked in what form that is yet. So is the extra 200mg of mag glycinate I take wasted? Not enough? Just something I thought worthwhile discussing since magnesium wasn't on my Doc's starter list and I haven't been able to find anything that looks like scientific evidence on dosages.

It should probably be enough that my labs are good unfortunately my mind doesn't always work that way. It gets me in trouble sometimes.

If your labs are good and your bone density isn't trending towards osteopenia, then you're likely taking enough.

I'm taking 500mg of mag citrate, which yields 150mg of elemental mag citrate with every calcium dose of 600mg, and I take 6 doses of calcium a day. So, 150mg x 6 = 900mg of elemental mag citrate a day. That's just me, not saying anyone else needs to do it unless they're seeing bad bone density scans and want to experiment.

--g

Interesting. Thanks for the info. I've seen other people ralte their mag intake to their calcium intake too.

I'm low risk at the moment for Osteo so No one has suggested a bone scan yet. As long as my PTH and calcium look good I'll probably not do that for a while yet.

Pete

Being male seems to make a big difference in the iron, mag, and calcium department. I don't think I have ever seen a man diagnosed with osteopenia. I'm sure there has been one but it's not common. I think everyone's bone mass decreases with age, DS or not.

I know people are way concerned with what goes with what and taking every supplement under the sun. No doubt they are important but some make this harder than it has to be. Most important, just take the pill. Less important is what goes with what. Maybe 5% of us need to worry about this. The rest of us don't. And most of those with consistent deficiencies are female.

Do we NEED to supplement Mg? Who knows? We get some in the multi's and a lot of the calcium comes WITH Mg added. I do supplement Mg, and K because it eliminates my leg cramps at night. So, I guess I need it. And I do take oxide. It works fine for me.

Lots of times I give in and try the new hot supplement. If it makes a difference, I keep it.

I'm not high on the what goes with what except for the interactions between iron, calcium, and zinc.While I don't challenge that it is better to take magnesium separate from calcium there isn't really any science that I can find to say at what dose levels that becomes an issue and history suggests that people shouldn't get too hung up about separating them, more an issue of something to do if possible but don't put yourself in a postition where you make taking vits too hard.

Of course I'm in a lower risk category, although with the DS I tend to think I'm in a higher risk category than your average 57 year old male. IT doesn't mean it isn't an area worth investigating. Inquiring minds want to know - as the saying used to go. :)

The "who knows" question really bugs me - mostly when I need to refill my vits every 2 months. Easier to see the need when you have some actual symptoms that subside with supplementation. When you don't have symptoms you can't really know if something is working for you or not. It seems risky to stop something and find out you needed it when something looks wacky on your blood tests but recent kidney issues started me thinking about if there are consequences of taking stuff you don't really need.

Thanks for the answer. Always more questions though....

Vitamins, minerals and supplementation in general are black holes in the medical community. Most people never find out if they are low on something unless they are tested and that's very rare for anything other than iron! It's only recently they learned that most people are D deficient and the MDR is inadequate. When I last checked, they were still fighting about the proper MDR. Things change too slowly.

You might want to start reading the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. I learned a lot from them over the years. Too much of this stuff is a best guess scenario. Needs to change but research is funded by big pharma and they are not going to put money into something that's not going to pay off. Stuff that's over the counter and already out there! They want prescription drugs with big price tags that everyone needs to take!