Pre-diabetes may be reversible with daily magnesium levels are where they should be

Yes it’s true. Everyone with diabetes has a magnesium deficiency. There is more understood today about the relationship between magnesium and diabetes than ever before – and it is leading healthcare professionals to state: If you think there may be diabetes in your future, now’s the time to make sure you are getting the magnesium your body needs on a daily basis. Because the risk factors for diabetes, are also the risk factors for heart disease. The risk factors are so similar, clinicians and healthcare professionals refer to this group of risk factors as: Metabolic Syndrome. For a short time, it was known as Syndrome X, but it is simply this: The factors when found together, increase the risk of Coronary Artery Disease, Stroke and Type 2 Diabetes. Magnesium has a major role to play in each of these conditions, and all risk factors when present, suggest a deficiency in magnesium.

Metabolic, a word that refers to the biochemical processes that occur by the trillions every day in our cells – is also what magnesium does best: 325 metabolic, or enzymatic processes at the cellular level. It is not surprising that magnesium, when consumed in recommended allowances every day – will minimize the risk factors associated with Metabolic Syndromes like heart disease and diabetes. No mineral does more for less attention than magnesium. With widespread magnesium deficiency, it is entirely possible that magnesium is responsible for far more illness than originally thought, and its role in metabolic syndromes is better understood every year.

Metabolic syndrome risk factors include:

• Known as ‘central obesity’ or ‘apple-shaped’ – extra weight around the middle and upper parts of the body

• Insulin resistance. The body uses insulin less effectively than normal. Insulin is needed to help control the amount of sugar in the body. As a result, blood sugar and fat levels rise.

• High cholesterol

• High blood pressure, or hypertension

• Aging

• Genetic history of any of the factors

• Hormone changes

• Lack of exercise

People who have metabolic syndrome often have two other problems that can either cause the condition or make it worse:

• Excess blood clotting

• Increased levels of blood substances that are a sign of inflammation throughout the body

It is no coincidence that each of these factors represents a process in the body dependent upon magnesium. Multi-tasking magnesium, is the mineral that addresses each of these factors:

• Magnesium is responsible for the production, function and transport of insulin by the cells

• Activates cell membrane to help balance glucose levels

• Magnesium is a natural blood thinner

• Magnesium helps prevent and treat insulin resistance for Type 1 and 2 diabetes

• Magnesium in adequate levels in the body will reduce high cholesterol, or the “bad fat”

• Metformin, the first-line drug of choice for people with Type 2 diabetes reduces high cholesterol, especially in obese patients, to help prevent cardiovascular complications. Interestingly, Metformin has shown to elevate magnesium levels in the liver.

• Individuals with poorly-controlled diabetes may benefit from magnesium supplements because of increased magnesium loss in urine associated with hyperglycemia (high blood sugar)

• Individuals with chronically low blood levels of potassium and calcium may have an underlying problem with magnesium deficiency. Magnesium supplements may help correct the potassium and calcium deficiencies

Magnesium Levels in Patients with Diabetes
According to research, magnesium deficiencies have been seen both inside the cell and outside the cell in pre-diabetes, type 2 diabetes, stable diabetes and chronic diabetes (Type 1). Prolonged magnesium deficiency is also directly related to increased incidences of heart disease typically associated with poorly managed diabetes.

Insulin Resistance
Insulin is a hormone. It is produced by the pancreas in response to eating a meal to carry the blood sugar (glucose) produced from the meal to our cells for energy production. Insulin resistance or insulin sensitivity refers to the challenge the pancreas is having in producing enough insulin to process the glucose in the blood. The more difficulty the cells have metabolizing glucose, the more insulin the pancreas wants to produce. The metabolic process of people with diabetes is no different than the metabolisms of people without diabetes. The only difference is in the volume of insulin produced, or the body’s ability to utilize the insulin that is produced. When there is too much glucose in the blood, two problems result: 1) The pancreas will try to keep up by producing more and more insulin, and 2) excess glucose will be turned into saturated body fat.

It can become a vicious cycle of producing more and more insulin, hat is less and less able to be utilized by tired cells who can no longer keep pace. High sugar, high fat diets and a lack of exercise will make it even more difficult for the insulin to do it’s job. And in an ironic twist, high sugar levels in the blood will make you feel lethargic, and even hungry, as the insulin is still scrambling to get the glucose to your cells to produce energy. Eventually, the body becomes somewhat immune to the insulin, and it is no longer able to metabolize the glucose at all. But all the non-functioning insulin in the blood – known as hyperinsulinemia – is linked to damaged blood cells, high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity and even osteoporosis.

Stress and illness can also cause increased insulin production.

Magnesium and Diabetes
A characteristic of insulin resistance – where the body needs to produce higher volumes of insulin – is that little to no magnesium is found in the centre of the blood cells. This is referred to as intracellular magnesium. We know there is a direct correlation between magnesium and insulin. Magnesium is the one mineral that ‘twins’ with almost every other nutrient in one metabolic process or another, and the hormone insulin is no different.

Insulin has something to do with moving magnesium across the cell wall – inside and outside the cell. Magnesium when found in adequate supply inside the cell, contributes to improve “insulin-mediated glucose uptake” which is a fancy way of saying magnesium helps insulin do its’ job. Conversely the absence of intracellular magnesium is responsible for impairing insulin action – meaning it’s not working – and a worsening of insulin resistance in both Type 2 diabetes and in hypertensive patients, that is people with high blood pressure. Study scientists also noted that reduced magnesium in the middle of the cell also resulted in “exaggerated calcium concentrations.” The consequences of excess calcium are well-known in matters of the heart and calcification of organs and muscles – but this study would suggest that the imbalance of magnesium and calcium also has an impact on the management of diabetes.

The study is from the Institute of Internal Medicine and Geriatrics, University of Palermo, Italy entitled “The role of magnesium in insulin action, diabetes and cardio-metabolic syndrome X”

Clinical Implications of Low Magnesium Levels
Insulin resistance is known to be directly related to magnesium deficiency
Diabetes-related diseases such as atherosclerosis (narrowed heart vessels that inhibit blood flow, usually as a result of high blood pressure and/or high cholesterol) and retinopathy (damage to the blood vessels of the eye) have an increased likelihood of progression when there is low levels of intracellular magnesium.

• How Magnesium Supplementation Helps

• Loss of magnesium increases in periods of high levels of blood glucose

• Corrects the deficit in intracellular magnesium levels

• Decreases platelet reactivity

• Improves insulin sensitivity

• Has a role in the release and activity of insulin transport in the blood

• May protect against diabetes and its complications

• Plays a role in carbohydrate metabolism

Written by and published by TOP Nutritionals.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml“