Do You Really Need Magnesium?
Vitamins and minerals can act as magical elixirs when it comes to improving your health. Want thicker, shinier strands? Vitamin D, which accelerates follicle growth and strength, might be able to help. Need to power through that final set of deadlifts? Muscle-boosting calcium can assist with that. Looking to score better sleep or improve your mood? Turns out magnesium is good for helping you achieve all that — and potentially more. Here, your primer on magnesium, what it’s good for, and how to get enough.
The Basics of Magnesium: Simply put, magnesium is a mineral — and it’s super important for your bodily functions. But what is magnesium good for, exactly? “Magnesium is absolutely essential in energy production. It also plays a crucial role in the enzymatic reactions that drive your heart and brain,” says Erica Locke, M.D., founder of The Doc’s Dish, a website that featuresdoctor-approved healthy recipes and cooking tips. In other words, magnesium supports hundreds of chemical reactions or processes in your body, including regulating muscle and nerve function, blood sugar levels, and blood pressure as well as making protein, bone, and DNA, according to the National Institutes of Health.
And for covering so much territory health-wise, it should come as no surprise that magnesium is also associated with disease and illness prevention. A 2018 study in the International Journal of Endocrinology found that magnesium might play a role in preventing type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, hypertension, chronic kidney disease, and strokes.
Excerpted from Shape
