Health > Top 5 Health Benefits of Magnesium
3rd Jul 2021
benefits-of-magnesium
Health

Top 5 Health Benefits of Magnesium

It has been noticed that even after its importance in the human body, most people, especially the elderly; don’t meet the recommended daily intake. Having low magnesium levels can affect your health negatively like high blood pressure, cardiovascular problems, weakness, and so on. Adding to this, magnesium also benefits the body by acting as a communicator to transfer signals between the brain and the body. It is a gatekeeper for the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors that are found on the never cells, aiding brain development, memory, and learning.
If reports are to be considered, it is said magnesium in the NMDA receptors helps in preventing the human body from getting triggered by weak signals as well as stops the nerve cells from getting stimulated unnecessarily. If the magnesium levels are low in your body, it blocks the NMDA receptors, increasing the chances of nerve cells getting stimulated more often. Overstimulation can kill the nerve cells, leading to severe problems in the brain. Apart from this, magnesium’s health benefits also include maintaining a healthy heart. While calcium is responsible for generating heart contractions; magnesium helps in ensuring a healthy heartbeat.

Expert Covid Care at Home

When calcium enters the heart muscles, it stimulates contraction in the muscle fibres, which is then countered by Magnesium that helps the cells to relax. The movement between calcium and magnesium across the heart cells help in maintaining a healthy heartbeat. If the magnesium levels are low, calcium may over generate the stimulation of the heart muscle cells, leading to a rapid or irregular heartbeat. A constantly rapid or irregular heartbeat can be life-threatening. Having the right amount of magnesium in the body is extremely important and here are the top 5 health benefits of magnesium that you should know of –

1.    Helps in Boosting Workout Performance

Working-out and exercising are the two most important aspects of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. And to have a better exercise time, a proper magnesium level in your body is important. It is said that during exercise, 10-20% extra amount of magnesium may be required depending on the activity. Magnesium helps in moving the blood sugar to your muscles and then disposes of the lactate, which builds up during the exercise, causing fatigue. Magnesium supplements benefit a lot for boosting workout performance; however, consult your physician for the same.

2.    Magnesium Helps in Fighting Depression

One of the common conditions that many people, irrespective of their age, go through is depression. At times, you will not even get to know that you have slipped into depression and mistake it just for laziness. As mentioned before that magnesium benefits in the body are in abundance, starting from brain functioning to enhancing mood. Studies have shown that low levels of magnesium in the body increases the risk of depression. In elderly people, it is found that social isolation and loneliness leads to greater risk of depression and if they have low magnesium level, it just adds on to their depression level.

3.    Helpful against Type-2 Diabetes

Another health benefit of magnesium is that it is helpful against type-2 diabetes. It is said low magnesium levels in the blood can impair the ability of the body’s insulin to keep the sugar level under control. This indicates that people with low levels of magnesium are prone to developing diabetes, irrespective of their age. A study shows that increase magnesium intake each day has significantly improved blood sugar and insulin levels. Eating magnesium-rich foods benefits a lot in increasing the levels while keeping diabetes in check.

4.    Regulates Muscle Contraction

Just how the benefits of magnesium for the elderly and seniors include keeping the heartbeat healthy by blocking heart muscle contraction; it also helps in ensuring that your muscles are relaxed throughout the body by acting as a natural calcium blocker. Calcium binds to proteins like troponin C and myosin that leads to change in their shape, resulting in muscle contraction. Magnesium competes with this and helps the muscle relax. If your body has low levels of magnesium, competing with calcium for these spots becomes difficult, leading to muscle contraction that causes cramps, spasms, and so on. Here again, magnesium supplement benefits you in enhancing the levels.

5.    Helps in Reducing Insulin Resistance

One of the major causes of metabolic syndrome and type-2 diabetes is insulin resistance. It is categorised as an impaired ability where the muscles and liver cells absorb sugar from the bloodstream properly. Magnesium plays a vital role in this process and people with lower levels face issues in the same, leading to high sugar levels or metabolic syndrome. Adding to this, insulin resistance also leads to the loss of magnesium through urine, which further reduces the body’s magnesium level. To avoid this and reduce insulin resistance in your body, proper magnesium intake is very essential.

Apart from these, there are excellent benefits of magnesium for the skin that helps in keeping the skin glowing and rejuvenated. Improvements in sleep patterns, lower blood pressure levels, prevention of migraines, and so on are some of the other benefits of magnesium.

Emoha Elder Care is the leading home-based care for elderly in India that assist elderly people with their activities and issues. Whether it is a health emergency or just a lifestyle activity – Emoha is here for them as we go by our motto #EldersFirst.