Magnesium and Wheat Free

March 26, 2008

Written by: Katie

These two subjects are not closely related except that you should know a little about both of them and I have recently been asked about both of them. Magnesium is imperative in the function of muscles.

Body and Fitness says:

If you’re getting a nightly wake-up call from your leg muscles, you probably need to get more magnesium and calcium, says Mark Stengler, N.D., a naturopathic doctor in Beaverton, Oregon, and author of The Natural Physician: Your Health Guide for Common Ailments. Both of these minerals are involved in relaxing nerve impulses and regulating muscle activity. Calcium is needed to contract the muscle, and magnesium is needed to relax it. An imbalance in this dynamic duo can irritate and confuse the muscle.

Since the calcium in bone provides a nearly inexhaustible mineral supply to replenish the relatively tiny amount that you need in your blood, you’re more likely to be low on magnesium, says Dr. Jacques. If you’re like most people, you probably get only 75 percent of the Daily Value (DV) for magnesium, which is 400 milligrams from food and supplements.

Relieve Migraine Headache says:

a lot of the things that cause the body to run short of magnesium also either trigger migraines or lower your resistance. For example alcohol, stress, and menstruation. Today we know that about half of the people who get migraines are also short of a certain type of magnesium (serum ionized).

When faced with a migraine that won’t respond to treatment, many headache specialists will give an injection of magnesium. You should be able to get benefits from long term (2-3 months or more) regular magnesium supplements. The magnesium migraines link may make a big difference to many people.

We use magnesium for cramping and bone pain of all kinds. Growing pains? Yep. Over-exertion of muscles? Yep. Braxton-Hicks? Yep.

Mercola says:

up to 80 percent of the population is deficient.

So you can see that Magnesium is a pretty important mineral that you should consider keeping on hand. Some folks like to take some everyday in an effort to keep migraines at bay. We keep some on hand for when someone has over exerted themselves and they need a little boost so their muscles don’t cramp up. We get plenty of calcium in our diet from the bone broths and leafy greens we eat.

Now let’s talk about our new gluten free lifestyle. The whole idea was precipitated by Kristy’s realization that her son Malakye’s emotional sings and behavioral issues were caused in part by food allergies. The things she said he was doing reminded me of a couple of my kids. Malakye had problems with a wandering eye and a higher decibel level than other children. My twins also were very LOUD all the time (hence the hand on the mouth all the time) and Josiah’s eye wandered as well. It never even occurred to me that these might be caused by a food allergy.

Armed with this knowledge, and reading the book Unraveling the Mystery of Autism, I decided to take a trial run at going gluten free. What I found surprised me. Within 48 hours the decibel level in my home had dropped. I found my children playing quietly together and the bickering had just about disappeared. Things were good like this for several days.

Then one morning I woke the children and went back in my room to change. I receive a knock on my bedroom door “Mom, so-n-so is doing…” So I deal with that. Two seconds later knock knock again “Mom, so-n-so is saying….” and I deal with that. Three seconds later I hear Donut screaming from the living room. What is going on? By the time I am out in the living room 5 minutes it is clear that something was amiss. June, Jillian and Lina are bickering. Joshua continuously got up and moved around the room because he didn’t want anyone to be by him. When I told him he could be “alone” over at the table he bursts into tears. What? What is going on?

I began to wrack my brain. What had we eaten? What had we eaten? We had chili the night before. Due to my busy-ness I had not soaked our beans so the entire meal came out of cans. What do they use as additives in beans? I’m not sure. What about the corn? Nothing. Think. Think. There was also tomato sauce. Hey, what’s in that tomato sauce anyway? Upon inspection of the can what did I find? Citric Acid. That is what is making my kids crazy. Free Glutamates are a neurotoxin.

An article at the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation says:

Neuroscientists now generally agree that glutamic acid is neurotoxic, killing brain neurons by exciting them to death.

Isn’t that pleasant? Killing, they say. And it made my kids CRAZY!! So in my attempt to rid our diets of gluten I discovered an MSG allergy. And ugly it is. We are still working on determining which foods are allergens so we are keeping our diets especially clean and taking note of behavior that is out of character or seems excessive.

We eliminated red dye long ago because we found it gave Junie leg pain. Now we are just taking it one step further and we are seeing the benefits right away. My face is blemish free, the kids are happier, we will get sick less, school is easier, the ones that were klutzy aren’t, speech delays are improving and there is just more general thinking going on. I am wondering too how much of their problems I contributed to drug and alcohol was really just food poisoning. Their inability to focus and the emotional outbursts are fixable. I’m ashamed I didn’t pursue this avenue sooner. I knew but I didn’t KNOW. It took someone I know making the change first and seeing a difference before I thought it may work for my kids too. Maybe I can be that person for you.

All of the children you see in this post have benefited greatly from our dietary changes. The others I have seen small changes in and I’m not sure I can attribute them to diet. But I know that even if there are not outward changes these toxins always cause internal changes and sometimes we don’t realize them until they manifest themselves in a big way. I am glad to put a stop to the poisoning now.

I recently edited my bloglines and favorites lists. I culled all of the blogs that brought me down. Anything that did not encourage me in my quest, educate me or uplift me were removed. The numerous cancer blogs in which parents fed their very sick children kool-aid and twinkies, the blogs that mimic the world and aspire to nothing better for themselves or their children. Gone. I am now searching for blogs about healthy eating choices, great home schooling adventures and fun, uplifting subjects. Here are some I have found to share with you.

Food is Love

Whole Health Source

The Nourishing Gourmet

And my favorite Cheese Slave because not only does she cook the NT way but she has a baby named Kate and a nanny from Guatemala. Ok, and I like her writing style.

Now you know.

Posted in Healthy Eating