Desert island mineral no. 1
If I could only take one mineral to a desert island, magnesium would be the one! (it’s a tough toss up between this + zinc, but we’ll come back to zinc) I’m sure you have played the desert island game before…if you could only take 1 thing to a desert island, what would it be? Well over in my nutritional geeky world, I like to play this with nutrients…I know, I deeply appreciate the level of coolness I am at here.
Ah magnesium, I come back to this mineral time + time again for both my own health and clients health. We don’t store magnesium in the body and it is used up in stress + exercise..so that will be a fair amount for most individuals! On top of that, our poor soils are rather depleted in magnesium stores now so we’re getting less from our diet than we used to.
Why do we need magnesium? Magnesium is basically nature’s tranquiliser – it relaxes our nervous system + promotes our rest + digest nervous system state. For that reason, it is multifunctional in its applications + can help to support insomnia, PMS, migraines, muscle recovery…the list goes on.
We can get magnesium from dietary sources, mainly dark green leafy vegetables, nuts + seeds, wholegrains…but as mentioned above, the levels found here aren’t enough for our modern life due to soil depletion. So with that mind, most people do need to supplement.
More on the different types of magnesium supplements in a future post, along with my tried + tested recommended brands.