Why is magnesium so important during perimenopause and menopause?
For those of you who've been following my blogs for a while, you know how often I mention magnesium and how important it is for so many different things. It's needed in so many physical processes in the body that it's classed as an essential nutrient. This is especially so in perimenopause and menopause, where there are a huge number of physical, emotional, and mental changes going on.
The reason magnesium is so important is that, as I mentioned above, it can help in many different ways. Firstly, it's needed for fatigue reduction, and fatigue is one of the most common symptoms of perimenopause and menopause. It also contributes to normal psychological function, muscle function, bone health, normal energy-yielding metabolism, and electrolyte balance, which is especially important for those of you who do a lot of exercise in perimenopause and menopause, and it's also vital for nervous system health.
What can impact magnesium absorption and delete your stores?
Here are a few things that can impact your magnesium levels:
1. Stress and anxiety
Who isn't stressed today? Plus, we know that stress and anxiety, apart from hot flushes and sweats, is probably the second most common perimenopause and menopause symptom. Stress eats up your magnesium. Even the slightest bit of stress can have an impact on your magnesium levels. And if you have stress and anxiety, low mood, and mood swings on a daily basis for days and days, this is going to eat into your magnesium reserves.
Also, the more stressed and anxious you are, the more magnesium your nervous system needs to keep it stable. So, this then becomes a vicious cycle. You use more and more, you need more and more, and you can never get the balance back again without doing something.
The really important thing here to help break this cycle is to manage your stress levels in some way.
2. Dietary factors
Magnesium is really only available in healthy foods. And the problem is that when we are stressed, when we're anxious, or when we're under pressure, we tend to reach for foods that will give us a big hit. Unfortunately, these tend to be sweet foods, processed foods, and things like caffeine and fizzy drinks. They give us a big boost, but these also help to burn up our magnesium levels as well.
So, the really important thing here is to increase your magnesium-rich foods. Nature is wonderful because a lot of these natural and healthy foods that contain magnesium also contain things like calcium and zinc, which are needed too
3. Alcohol and caffeine and sugary foods
Unfortunately, the things that we tend to like, such as alcohol, caffeine, and sugary foods, all stress our nervous system and rev it up. And remember, I just talked about how stress in the nervous system eats up magnesium. So, these things, although they might give us a quick hit when we need something, are really detrimental in the long term because they're going to eat into our magnesium reserves
4. Excessive sweating
If you are getting lots of hot flushes, lots of excessive sweating, including night sweats, you're going to excrete magnesium through your sweat. So again, very often, hot flushes and sweats can be caused by your nervous system being under pressure, and this is another one of those vicious circles. You need magnesium to stabilise your nervous system. Your nervous system is triggering the sweats. You're losing magnesium through sweat. Anything that's going to break that circle is going to be of benefit. For hot flushes and night sweats, you can look at the herb Sage. Our Menopause Sage tablets contain extracts of fresh Sage and are a convenient one-a-day remedy, registered for the relief of excessive sweating associated with menopause.
5. Medication
Some medications will actually either block the absorption of magnesium or make it more difficult for your body to break it down in the first place.
One of the things that I noticed over the years is that digestive problems are becoming more and more common in perimenopause and menopause, especially things like acid reflux or gastric reflux. What happens here is that you get the symptoms and you go to the doctor. The doctor will give you something called a proton pump inhibitor, which relieves the burning of the acid so you feel more comfortable. However, the problem is that these types of medication decrease your stomach acid, and low stomach acid can inhibit the breakdown and absorption of things like calcium and magnesium.
So, if you are on medication like this, then taking a normal magnesium supplement isn't really going to help. You need to look at liquid magnesium or skin spray, something where you're going to absorb magnesium in different ways. If you're on a lot of medication, then just check the patient information leaflet on the medication that you're taking to see if it mentions magnesium. If you're not sure, just ask your pharmacist, and they'll be able to help you.
How to increase your intake of magnesium
As well as addressing and minimising the impact of the factors I mentioned above, here are a few ways to increase your intake of magnesium and also help its absorption.
Diet: Firstly, it’s important to highlight this again. The best way to get magnesium is through your diet, since you're getting it in its natural form. All you need to do is Google magnesium-rich foods, and you will get a huge, comprehensive list. And it's just about including some of these foods in every single meal on a daily basis, and that can help really, really quickly.
Magnesium supplements: The other thing you can look at is some of our perimenopause and menopause supplements, because we know how important magnesium is and we've included it in them. So, we've got the Balance Perimenopause Multi-nutrient drink, and we also have our Menopause Support tablets. And both of these have a nice little amount of magnesium in them.
A.Vogel Balance Perimenopause Supplement | Helps Support You in 10 Ways | One-a-Day | Strawberry Flavoured
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Magnesium baths and sprays: The other thing you can do is look at Epsom salts. This is one of those old-fashioned remedies. You put it in the bath, and you just soak for a little while, and the magnesium in the Epsom salts can be absorbed through the skin. You can also look at skin sprays if you can't take magnesium as a supplement.
Support your gut health: As I mentioned above, digestive issues can play a big factor in your magnesium absorption. So, if you're getting a lot of digestive problems, then maybe look at a general probiotic to take, just to help things a little bit.
So, I hope you found this one helpful. I know that if I miss my magnesium for more than a few days, then I tend to get very irritable. So, for the sake of everyone around me, I try and remember to take it every day.
If any of you have found magnesium helpful, please share as always. One of the things I have found certainly over the years is that the results from increasing or taking a magnesium supplement tend to be quite quick. We get people coming back, even after a few days, saying their sleep is better or they're feeling better. So, this is one of these remedies that I love the feedback it gets because it's always positive and makes people feel better just by adding magnesium in.
So, if you don't already take a magnesium supplement, just try it and see how you feel, and let me know how you get on.
Until next time, take care and have a lovely week.
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