[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Carolyn, thank you so much for joining us today.

[Carolyn Dean]: Oh, you’re welcome Damien. Good to be here. Always love to educate people about magnesium.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Yeah, and the first time I came across magnesium as being something important for our health was your books. So thank you very much for putting that out there, because it really was something that was a bit different. I’m not sure how you first came upon all of this, because you were the first person to start talking about magnesium.

It’d be interesting just to see, where did this all start? And when did you decide to start focusing on magnesium, and see it as something so important?

[Carolyn Dean]: How I became interested in magnesium is, it actually came to me. Random House, the publisher, wanted me to write a book on magnesium. At the time, I didn’t think that you could find 300 pages to write on one mineral, but I was completely amazed. This was in the late 1990’s.

And I realized that I had magnesium deficiency symptoms of heart palpitations and leg cramps. So for me, it was very serendipitous, and really helped my health. And, as it turns out, has helped hundreds of thousands of people who’ve read the book.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Yeah, that’s great, that’s very interesting. Why did Random House decide that magnesium was something worth talking about?

[Carolyn Dean]: Well one of their editors, I was told, had migraine headaches, and found when she took some magnesium, they helped her migraines. And she was so amazed she wanted more information. And as it turns out, it can help literally hundreds of symptoms, and many dozens of conditions. So, it’s quite an amazing mineral. As you said, not many people know about it.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Yeah, yeah. So, what is the role of magnesium in the body? Why is it important? Basically, if a deficiency in a mineral – or micro-nutrient, as we sometimes call them – is able to cause a lot of symptoms, it’s because it’s taking on some important roles in the body. And then when it’s lacking, it’s obviously us all these symptoms.

So what is the magnesium doing in our body? Why is it so important?

[Carolyn Dean]: Right, we’ll you’ve laid it out quite well. Magnesium is necessary for the activation and function of between 700 and 800 different enzyme systems in the body. So, it’s catalyzing most chemical reactions in the body.

It synthesized protein, transmits nerve signals, relaxes muscles. And I should throw in here that calcium contracts muscles. And so they have a push-pull relationship, magnesium and calcium. And magnesium also produces and transports energy called ATP.

And yet in medical school we’re just told that magnesium is a laxative. So, that’s why I write the book, and do a lot of interviews, and a lot of papers to describe the importance of magnesium, and to show people how they can improve their magnesium intake.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Excellent. Interestingly enough, I’ve had magnesium deficiency myself. I’ve had all the tests you recommend and everything. Also, some additional tests relating to mitochondrial functions. So you just mentioned ATP, and magnesium. And I had issues of my mitochondria and energy production, which caused all sorts of symptoms.

So my own personal story, I’ve come across this directly. And it was coming across in those tests as well, that I needed to build up my magnesium. So we can talk a little bit later about how you get people’s magnesium status to be raised under these things. But certainly for me, it was, and still is, very important to maintain my health.

So, why is it that they, there are many people… Because it’s counted as the second most common deficiency, in terms of micro-nutrients, in the Western world. Why is it today that we have this issue, where it is so deficient? Are there reasons that, either our intake of magnesium has changed, is it lower than historically, or, somehow is maybe the demands for magnesium higher?

[Carolyn Dean]: I think both contribute to the extreme magnesium deficiency to the point where 80% of the population is not getting even close to the recommended daily allowance of magnesium. Number 1, there’s very magnesium in the soil anymore. So, when a plant grows and it’s supposed to pull up minerals into it’s tiny, tiny plant rootlets, if the minerals aren’t there, the plant is not going to have minerals.

I’ve had cases of people on these crazy 140 ounces of green drink a day. And they come to me with heart palpitations and leg cramps – two of the major symptoms of magnesium deficiency – and they can’t believe it when I tell them they’re magnesium deficient, because they’re eating all these plants, all this greenery. And they go and get a blood test, and well and behold, they’re low in magnesium. And it’s because even if they’re eating organic plants, if the soil doesn’t have magnesium, the plants aren’t going to have magnesium.

And number 2, the demands from magnesium are much higher. I suppose there was always stress, of course, but now you see magnesium can be bumped away by medications that contain fluoride. The fluoride binds magnesium. Fluoridated and chlorinated water can bind up magnesium and make it unavailable. The diet, for example with sugars, it takes 26 molecules of magnesium to metabolize one molecule of table sugar.

The quarreling there with fructose, it takes twice as much. So it’s 52 molecules of magnesium required to metabolize one molecule of fructose. So people who turn to these high-fructose corn syrup sweeteners and say, well it’s fruit sugar; they’re actually in worse shape. They’re using up more magnesium.

So, we’re not getting it in our diets, and we continue to dissolve it with our behavior, and with the food. With alcohol you drain it, coffee drains it. Even in the athletics, the sweating where we lose sodium we think, we’re also losing magnesium. And when we just replace with certain electrolyte products that are high in sugar, and maybe high in sodium, we’re not replacing magnesium. And we’re causing people, actually, to have blood sugar imbalances.

You take an elite athlete and their intake of one of the major electrolyte products. They could be taking about 60 teaspoons of sugar a day, which they’re not able to metabolize, which ruins their magnesium balances, and they’re sweating out their magnesium and not replacing it.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Wow, that’s a whole host of conditions. I guess one of the most interesting ones is the soil, this input. Why is the soil so much lower in magnesium today? Is it because of overuse? We all hear about how we’ve been overusing the same amount of soil, and the top soil is disappearing steadily. Is that one of the main reasons?

[Carolyn Dean]: Yes, exactly. In ancient times, or even just a hundred years ago, they tell us that we could get about 500 milligrams of magnesium in our daily diet. Now we’re lucky to get 200. And it’s because the soil has been completely depleted of certain minerals, like magnesium, and the farmers don’t replace minerals. Even organic farmers, they don’t necessarily put what we need, which is rock dust, on the soil.

Hundreds of years ago when the spring thaw would bring water down from the mountains, the water and the tumbling of the rocks would create a high mineral content water that would end up in the deltas before it landed in the ocean. And the plains around the mouth of the rivers would flood, and in those plains with high mineral content water, they would grow the crops.

Now, that’s where everybody lives. And the farms have been relegated to places where they have to irrigate. But they just haven’t put the minerals back in the soil.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Right. Of course, and we’re using recycled water, which hasn’t gone through that whole natural process of micro-nutrient accumulation. It’s very interesting. I think there’s a business out there for someone, agricultural organic crops with micro-nutrients added. I don’t know if it’s possible. Have you seen that today? Does that exist somewhere?

[Carolyn Dean]: Yes, there’s a great website called Remineralize.org. And they do a lot about reaching education, about amending the soil with minerals. Remineralize.org.

People definitely know there’s a problem. In my Magnesium Miracle book, right at the beginning I talk about a 1934 Congressional Committee that reported on the enormous deficiency of minerals in the soil that just lead people to eat more and more food to try to get the nutrients they needed, which just ended up making people fat and mineral deficient.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. And another interesting aspect that you mentioned was the fact that some molecules aren’t natural to our body. You brought up fluoride actually bind to magnesium. And of course, there’s a lot of fluoride around us in the water, the toothpaste, and so on today. Is that a very tight binding? Are they strongly attracted, those two molecules?

[Carolyn Dean]: Yes, very strongly. They form a complex called sellaite, and it’s brittle. And sellaite, this magnesium fluoride, it’s insoluble. It replaced magnesium in bone and cartilage. And it can make bones prone to fracture.

And what I found when I was doing the recent research for this third edition of Magnesium Miracle, 20% of our prescription drugs have added fluoride molecules, but those drugs are the majority of the commonly used drugs. They added the fluoride molecules to drugs because it increases the drugs ability to dissolve in fats, and therefore go across the fatty cell membranes. Which means it can be built up in stronger levels in the cells.

So anyway, what we’ve ended up doing is what 70% of Americans taking prescription drugs, we’re giving them all this extra fluoride. It’s binding up the magnesium. And when you look at the side effects of the commonly used drugs, a lot of them are cardiovascular side effects. The highest amount of magnesium in the whole body is in the heart. So, when you start to experience magnesium deficiency, you can start to get heart symptoms. Mine were the heart palpitations. That’s very common. I won an award actually in 2012 from the Heart Rhythms Society for my work with magnesium on heart arrhythmias.

But most doctors don’t understand the magnesium picture because we did not learn about it in medical school. You were mentioning – and I know I’m jumping around here, but there’s just so much to say – you were mentioning about the Krebs cycle, the energy cycle, in the mitochondria. Six out of eight of the steps in the Krebs cycle require magnesium. So, when anyone ever talks to me about mitochondrial problems, and they take about all these esoteric supplements they’re being told to take, and that, of it’s so dangerous. You need a lot of magnesium, mainly, to get your Krebs cycle going.

And so what happens with the vicious cycle of fatigue in terms of magnesium deficiency occurring. People go to doctors, and they’re fatigued, their heart may be palpitating, they’re under stress, their magnesium is deficient so they may get high blood pressure. So what happens is they start on this round of medications. They’re given a diuretic that drains out fluids, including magnesium.

They’re not even tested for magnesium – and we can get into that later – but there’s a cycle of blood pressure medications, and then they come back and all the sudden their blood sugar’s elevated. Well one of the signs of diabetes is low magnesium. And then their cholesterol is elevated. Well, the enzyme that helps balance cholesterol in the body requires magnesium. And if it’s deficient, then your cholesterol level will go up.

So, we’ve got people on things like Prozac because they’re fatigued, and they’re not sleeping, so they appear depressed. Well Prozac has three fluoride molecules. They’re put on cholesterol drugs; Lipitor has one fluoride molecule. They’re put on anti-arrhythmia drugs; one of them called Flecainide has six fluoride molecules.

And they irony of putting someone on an anti-arrhythmia drug that actually binds incredible amounts of magnesium is incredible. Because even when you look at the side effects of Flecainide, it’s fast, irregular pounding or racing heartbeat, shortness of breath, and tightness in the chest. The nerves, you have burning, crawling, itching, numbness, prickling pins and needles, or tingling feeling and chest pains. All of those are magnesium deficiency side effects.

Even the shortness of breath. When the smooth muscles in the bronchial tubes tighten up, because without magnesium your muscles get tight because you have relatively more calcium. Calcium tightens muscles, magnesium relaxes them. So that’s where you get all the tightening in the heart muscles, tightening in the calf muscles. And then people think you have a heart problem, whereas you have a magnesium problem.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Great, great review there. Just for some people at home, you mentioned palpitations and arrhythmias a couple of times. In kind of layman’s terms, how would you explain that to someone at home?

[Carolyn Dean]: Well, it would be… You don’t even notice your heart beating, number one. That’s normal. But when you start feeling your heart pounding, or going fast, to me that’s magnesium deficiency, until proven otherwise. Unless you’re running down the track or something. But if your heart’s starting to pound out of the blue, it can make people feel anxious for that to happen. They can actually go into an anxiety attack.

Anxiety itself can be a magnesium deficiency. And then your heart can sort of pound along, and then stop for an instant. And then resume again.Well that’s a skipped beat, and when that happens more frequently then it’s called an arrhythmia, or a heart palpitation.

When I used to get my little run of abnormal beats, it would make me have a little cough. I’d just cough as my body tried to re-adjust the rhythm. And it’s mainly that the heart has several pacemakers. The natural pacemakers of the heart keeps the steady beat. If and when the heart muscle is in tension from magnesium deficiency, or it’s damaged by a heart attack, then the accessory pacemakers of the heart can be pulled on or tweaked, and they can start firing out beats inappropriately, and that is an irregular rhythm that’s created.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Great, thank you very much for that. That helps clarify it.

So, have we covered all of the symptoms? For people at home, if they were asking themselves a question right now, do I have a magnesium deficiency, and how serious is it, potentially.

[Carolyn Dean]: Right. I can quickly run through a list Damien, because even when I say, well anything that can tighten a muscle can be a symptom. And you see that can be: acid reflux; if your stomach is in a spasm you can push stomach contents up and give yourself some heart burn; the angina I talked about, that’s the heart muscle going into spasm; anxiety; high blood pressure; cholesterol elevation, we mentioned; constipation, where the muscles of the intestines are kind of tighten and spasm, and they won’t push along your intestinal contents; depression; diabetes; fibromyalgia, that’s a huge magnesium deficiency problem. There are other things involved, but that’s where we start.

Headaches and migraines, I’ve mentioned. Even irritable bowl syndrome, where you have these incredible abdominal pains and either constipation or diarrhea. Any sort of inflammation, insomnia. I tell people if you have insomnia then you should take magnesium. If you don’t think it’s working, take more magnesium. Kidney stones, any sort of nerve twitching, PMS, seizures. A lot of some birth problems like eclampsia in women, that ‘s a magnesium deficiency symptom.

I have in my blogs, and in my books, I’ve put down 100 factors where you can gauge your magnesium deficiency. And we’ve gone over a couple, like alcohol intake. If you’re angry, you could be magnesium deficient. If you have any brain trauma, the first thing a person needs to do is have a magnesium intravenous, but not a lot of doctors understand that, or realize it.

If you’re eating a junk food diet, you’re making yourself magnesium deficient. Even infertility. If the fallopian tubes are in spasm, then they won’t allow the sperm to go along the fallopian tubes up to the ovary.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Right. So a lot of, it comes across that really there’s a lot of bits of your body that can malfunction if they don’t get the magnesium. And that’s basically what’s going on, they’re not functioning optimally, and it’s causing spasms and different things like this.

Just out of interest, I know my friends and I growing up – because we grow up in the coffee-stimulated management consulting area – we used to get a lot of pains in our chest. I was just wondering, as you said earlier, could it have been coffee induced magnesium pain, or was that just something completely different?

[Carolyn Dean]: It’s quite possible, because if the chest muscle – it doesn’t have to be heart, but the lungs, even the muscles around the ribs can go into spasm, some magnesium deficiency. In my case it was leg cramps. I have big calf muscles from dancing when I was younger, so it would hit me in my calves.

And everybody’s different. Some people who are typing a lot, they’ll say they’re getting carpel tunnel. And often that can be a magnesium deficiency.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Right. So it can depend where you’re basically using your body the most, because then, obviously, the magnesium’s getting exhausted to a worse extent in that part of the body, in that area.

So, are there severities, like if you continue to be magnesium deficient you’ll get more and more symptoms. Is that something you’ve seen in your practice?

[Carolyn Dean]: Right, yes. When you were saying that, I thought, you see different people will experience it in different areas. Why would one person get migraine headaches, and another person get chest pain, another person asthma, another person leg cramps? So it can be your vulnerable area.

And then what happens, it just seems to escalate where you start having different body parts effected. By the time people get to me, they have insomnia, they have anxiety attacks, they have irregular heart beat, they’ll get migraine headaches. So when you go to a doctor and you have that whole list, and you’re off to see a half dozen different specialists, and nobody puts it together that it’s all one thing: magnesium deficiency.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Great. So, do you understand the mechanism behind the headaches? Is it because there’s too much calcium versus magnesium in the brain, and that’s causing damage? Or how does that work?

[Carolyn Dean]: When I go into that in the book I have a whole chapter on headaches, and it can be muscle tension and spasm in the neck and head muscles. That’s sort of a common one. But it can also be, with migraines, a serotonin imbalance, because serotonin, the feel good neurotransmitter, is magnesium dependent. So if you have a deficiency, it can result in migraines and depression.

So there’s lots of reasons for a person to get headaches. And it can be injury; I remember a patient of mine, she was hit with a baseball bat in the head when she was young, and she began to get headaches. Well, 20 years later the doctors wouldn’t believe that a baseball bat to the head could still be bothering her. But, what had happened is the muscles in the scalp will just clamp down, and create this chronic tension and pain.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Okay, so we’ve talked a little about negative health. Right, chronic health conditions. So, being normal, like less than normal. Now, in terms of performance, have you looked at all into the impact of, or have you come across people who their performance has been impacted with various cognitive performance, athletic performance?

[Carolyn Dean]: Absolutely. I’ve had a couple of former NFL players who’ve had to quit the sport because of extremely severe muscle cramping, and then come to find out many years later that it was magnesium deficiency.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Wow. So their career’s finished because of magnesium deficiency. And it could have been fixed.

[Carolyn Dean]: You look at Kobe Bryant in the first game of the NBA finals. He was taken off with muscle spasms. So I wrote a big article about Kobe Bryant Has Magnesium Deficiency. And that’s where I was quoting earlier about when you take these electrolytes, you’re just getting sugar and sodium back. But anyway, yes players can be very much effected in any sort of team sport where you’re sweating a lot.

I’ve had a lot of teen athletes whose parents have come to me for guidance in how to get over their spasms. And it’s increasing their hydration, putting sea salt in the water, getting liquid magnesium, and liquid multiple minerals into water. And that is all that it takes to turn them around and keep them in the game.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: That’s great to hear that. That’s really bad news for the guys who quit the game just for magnesium deficiency. It’s unfortunate that things weren’t known back then.

So, we talked a lot about the symptoms now, so people can have an idea if it’s a possibility. But, if you really want to know, I guess the first thing people do is they go to a doctor and they get their magnesium tested. And what is the standard way of testing that if you go to your doctor he’s going to test you, in terms of labs?

[Carolyn Dean]: Right. Unfortunately, it’s a blood serum magnesium. And the serum, it only has about 1% of the total body magnesium. So it’s the wrong measurement. It’s the wrong dipstick to put your needle into, because you’re not getting any accuracy in that test.

I’ve been recommending people get the red blood cell magnesium test. You can even go online and get it yourself, if your doctor doesn’t know about it. And I tell people to go to their doctor and keep asking and asking for the red blood cell magnesium test. I would love to see the ionized magnesium test, because that is the gold standard. And it’s still in the research stages.

But one of my articles online about kidney disease and magnesium. A magnesium researcher worked with a kidney researcher, and they found that people with chronic kidney disease of all varieties have the highest levels of serum magnesium. But in that same sample, the lowest level of ionized magnesium. So, in the serum it’s looking high because you see the serum has to perfuse the heart. So the serum magnesium is always going to be in this very narrow range, and it’s always going to look pretty normal, unless you’re really far gone, because it has to keep the heart perfused.

So, it will take extra magnesium out of your bones and muscles as needed. So every time you measure the serum magnesium it’s going to look normal. And doctors have gotten to the point of saying, well we don’t bother testing magnesium because it always looks normal. And you will notice in any electrolyte panel you’ve ever gotten, there’s never a magnesium level. It’s calcium and sodium and fluoride, but never magnesium.

So, I’m pushing for the ionized magnesium. In the meantime, I do the magnesium RBC blood test. But, Damien, it’s so crazy out there. The range for the magnesium red blood cell test, it used to be 4.2 to 6.8. And one year later, it’s 3.8 to 6.0 because the population is getting more and more deficient in magnesium. And what a blood range is is just the average population that the lab serves. They don’t look at the optimums, they just look at what’s out there.

So, I have to educate people, “Okay, right. The range may say 3.8 to 6.0, but we want you to be 6.0 or even higher.” I used to tell people with the old range – it would go up to 6.8 – I said, I want you to be 6.0 to 6.5. But it’s a huge educational leap to say to people, well you want to be higher than the range; It’s all marked with red flags that it’s too high. So it’s a huge educational challenge to make doctors, and the public, understand that they really are very deficient in magnesium, and need to take it.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: This is a big problem with many labs. I mean, it’s the fault of the labs as well, but their normalizing based on the population instead of studies saying that optimum levels, healthy levels, are what they tend to do. Just a normal curve of what they receive in the door. And then they say you’re in the middle.

Even if – as we’re saying – 80% of the population is deficient, so clearly the average is going to be far, far from optimum, in this case. As many tests were in this case. So it’s just, even if you’re getting tests back from labs, you should check what is the reality of benchmarks. And that’s why I wanted you to talk about that a bit.

So what units of measurement are the RBC magnesium?

[Carolyn Dean]: The measurements of the RBC magnesium, how do you mean? The average range, I just mentioned it.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: But how are they measuring it? Just in case different labs use different units.

[Carolyn Dean]: Ah, yeah. Milligrams per deciliter.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Okay. Great. And so you’re saying six or above is what you should be aiming for.

[Carolyn Dean]: Is optimum. I use the word optimum.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Yeah. Is there any case where you could have too high magnesium?

[Carolyn Dean]: Well, when I’ve seen – I think it’s twice out of the hundreds I’ve seen – it’s been a bit over the range, and then when I asked the person, they’ve taken magnesium the morning of the test. And in terms of having too much magnesium, the body does have a fail safe for magnesium, where it will give you the laxative effect if it’s got too much – either at that point in time or just too much in general. But no other mineral has that fail safe in the same way, so I consider magnesium an extremely safe mineral.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Great, great. And you’ve just dropped another little gold tip there, which is don’t take magnesium before your magnesium test. If you want to get a realistic value there – which goes for most things we’re testing – make sure you’re not interfering with the test results.

So the other test you mentioned was ionized magnesium, and you say that’s better. What are the issues with RBC magnesium first?

[Carolyn Dean]: Well, the RBC magnesium tests what’s in the red blood cells, and that is a different entity than a tissue cell, or a muscle cell. So it may give – and I don’t know, I’m just making this assumption – that maybe it’s 40 or 50% accurate. Whereas the serum magnesium test, it’s only measuring 1% of your total body magnesium.

You see there has not even been enough research comparing them all. This anecdotal study I’m talking about, with the magnesium researcher and the kidney researcher, and finding that kidney patients have high levels of serum magnesium. You see, they’d be warned to not take magnesium. “Oh, it’s going to be too high.” Whereas that same sample had a low level of ionized magnesium. So they had magnesium in their blood, but not in their cells.

And then the study went on to give people liquid magnesium that was ionized. It went into their cells, and their health improved. These kidney patients actually got better. So, when the magnesium researcher asked if the kidney specialist would write about these amazing findings, he said he couldn’t because it was so well known that magnesium can’t be taken in kidney disease.

So we’ve got another instance where people aren’t being given information because it goes against the grain of what doctors have learned all these decades.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Right, right. So is this ionized magnesium test available with many labs?

[Carolyn Dean]: No, it’s only about, at the last count, 125 labs out of the 5,000 in the US. And they’re all in research institutions, as I understand it.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: So that’s like LabCorp, CorQuest, which are the typical ones people go to.

[Carolyn Dean]: No, they wouldn’t have it. I mean, you’re lucky to educate them about magnesium RBC test. I tell people to go to an online site called Requestatest.com. And without a doctor’s prescription you can order your own blood test, which I think is fabulous. And then people can follow their magnesium. The price of it is often less than the copay you’d have to pay your doctor to go in and get a prescription.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Right. Because when we order directly, we can’t get insurance to cover it?

[Carolyn Dean]: I don’t know about that. I just talk about the copay in the sense, well insurance doesn’t cover your copay. So, people make up their own minds. But I do ask people to talk to their doctors about it, just to educate the doctors, because doctors don’t even know about it.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: So it sounds like the ionized magnesium test is pretty hard to get at. Maybe if you are a typical citizen, we can’t actually get access to it right now? Or is there one lab that we can get it from, perhaps with a prescription? There isn’t right now?

[Carolyn Dean]: No.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Okay, great. Well, not great, but it’s good to have the clarity on that. Hope it’s coming soon.

The other test I heard you mention in the past, maybe you’ve kind of dropped it now, is exit test? Where you have the scraping of the inner cheek to see what is in the bio-sample. Is that something you don’t recommend though?

[Carolyn Dean]: Well, it is a very good test, you can measure more than the magnesium. It’s getting right into the tissue cells, so I think it is more accurate than the magnesium RBC, but it’s very expensive; it’s hundreds of dollars. However, insurance does cover it. And then there’s another however, you have to get a practitioner to do the scraping. So you have to pay for an office visit to get it.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Right. So it’s inconvenient.

[Carolyn Dean]: Inconvenient, that’s the word. Right.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Right. So you’re just saying people should get RBC magnesium. I got my RBC magnesium done, I haven’t done the exit test.

[Carolyn Dean]: Oh good!

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Probably for those reasons, because it was the easiest one to get set up, and the exit test is quite a lot of money considering. If you’ve already decided to supplement with magnesium, because, say you’ve got a few symptoms, then thinking about it, what’s the cost benefit of me doing the exit test versus the RBC.

Because the nice thing is, you can trend the RBC, and if it’s going upwards then you should be making improvements. Is that an assumption you could make?

[Carolyn Dean]: Oh yes. I see that all the time, people improving. And when they don’t, then I just have a conversation about, are you taking medications? Yes, usually. Are you under more stress? Yes. Are you taking your sea salt in water? No.

I have a blog called When Magnesium Makes Me Worse. And I go through this sort of thing where people will start taking magnesium and they’ll feel better, and then they say, well it’s not helping anymore. And it’s often because they’re not taking enough.

When you’re starting to wake up 700 to 800 different enzyme systems in the body, you’re body is crying out for more and more and more. And it doesn’t go on forever. You certainly come to a point where you have a daily requirement. And in fact, as you build up your stores you need less magnesium as time goes on.

So, in the beginning you really, in my opinion, you have to go slowly into magnesium, because it can actually help detoxify the cells, detoxify the liver. So I tell people to go slowly and steadily, and increase as they either watch their symptoms, or watch the magnesium RBC test.

I only started really pushing the magnesium RBC test because I put it in my book. I don’t know the people who are taking magnesium, they’re not my patients. So I’m just trying to be very cautious, and be scientific about it. Especially with people on a half a dozen medications, and then they’re saying, “Well, is magnesium going to be dangerous?” I’d like to say to them, well did you ask that question about your six medications?

Because if you’re on medication and you start taking magnesium for magnesium deficiency symptoms, you’re not going to need as much medication. The medication might start to appear toxic. And then you’re going to say, “Oh, the magnesium is making me sick.” Whereas it’s your body is trying to get rid of the drugs.

So, it’s an education. That’s why I’ve written so much about it. Because we’re in the situation now, as I mentioned, where you have a little bit of high blood pressure, and all the sudden you’re on six medications, and that’s going to start really depleting your magnesium.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: There’s some very good points on how you’ve taken a personal approach to this, to consider all the factors in your life. So it’s difficult for someone like you, who’s written a book trying to address the general population to just say, everyone do this. It’s not bad.

But I guess having an RBC magnesium test, and judging by your symptoms, you can make a start of understanding where you’re at, and what could be necessary. So what kind of things do you recommend to increase our magnesium? You’ve mentioned sea salt. Is that Himalayan salt, or is that just natural sea salt? (40:19)

[Carolyn Dean]: Himalayan is good, Celtic salt. Yes with the stress that people are under, the stress that makes them lose magnesium, you’re also losing sodium. And I tell people that sea salt, it has the sodium, it has some magnesium, a bit of calcium, but not that much. But it does have 72 minerals. So, there are tiny amounts of minerals that we may not even know we’re lacking.

I have people on sea salt, and overnight they’ll say they’re not getting up to go to the bathroom. They’re retaining their fluid in their cells more than it just running through them, and claim all kinds of benefits. So it’s a great start in terms of water intake. I tell people to take half their body weight measured in pounds, take half that weight in ounces of water a day.

With all the filtering and reverse osmosis, even distilled water out there, people are not getting minerals from their liquids anymore. So I add the sea salt, and of course people say, “Oh my doctor told me not to take salt because of my blood pressure.” Well, table salt is just sodium chloride, and that is almost like a drug. We’re not talking about sodium chloride, we’re talking about sea salt, which has 72 minerals. (41:40)

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Right, right. And then, the rock salts as well. They’re balanced, basically, instead of being concentrated, many-made synthetic. That’s why you’re saying it’s a drug, because it’s refined compound. Which I guess you could compare to refined food, which often doesn’t have positive impacts on the side because it’s unbalanced, at the end of the day.

So, in terms of athletes, you also mentioned that they have issues with electrolyte drinks. Are there any electrolyte drinks out there which have a more balanced profile?

[Carolyn Dean]: I have not found one yet. I’m more keen on an electrolyte liquid myself, but we don’t have to go there. Because I just couldn’t find anything out in the commercial world that wasn’t loaded with sugar and sodium.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Right. So, in terms, are there foods we should be eating? Personally, I use transdermal magnesium oil, magnesium chloride oil from some of the seas, so it’s supposedly pure. Could you talk a little bit about that? Is that one of the better methods to raise your levels?

[Carolyn Dean]: It is a good method. When you put magnesium on your skin, you’re actually stimulating the DHEA receptors in your body, so it helps your hormone balance. Myself, before I got into my liquid magnesium, I had to use so much magnesium oil on my skin it became irritating. So, some people have to dilute it with distilled water.

All of magnesium oil is super saturated magnesium chloride in distilled water. And, the transdermal approach, that was started centuries ago, probably, with Epsom salts baths, where the midwives would use it for all their pregnant patients. And what you do is put one or two cups in a medium hot bath, and soak for about 20 or 30 minutes. And you can begin to see the effects of magnesium immediately just by doing these baths.

It’s a way for people to sort of get introduced to magnesium, because I just said, they may be on half a dozen drugs and afraid to do anything that their doctor doesn’t recommend. So, you do the Epsom salts, you feel better, and then you may feel like going to a transdermal magnesium oil, or some of the oral magnesiums.

In terms of the most common and the cheapest magnesium, it’s actually the least well absorbed. And this is where magnesium will get the reputation for just being a laxative. Because the magnesium oxide is only 4% absorbed, and that means the other 96% will find its way into the intestine and cause diarrhea. Now, that’s okay for a certain percentage of the population that’s constipated, but you do have to be careful to not create too much of a laxative effect.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: That’s interesting. So if you are magnesium deficient, and you’re taking a supplement – I don’t know which ones you’d recommend – but, I don’t know, magnesium glycinate. There’s many different varieties, there might be a more available one you’d recommend.

But if it’s getting absorbed into your body then it won’t produce the laxative effect. So, is that really based on the economic ones right?

[Carolyn Dean]: Correct.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: That’s interesting, because I actually had that problem where I was trying to induce… And obviously I had the wrong type, because I had to buy an available type, and wasn’t aware of this connection. Because it never induced the laxative effect I was looking for.

[Carolyn Dean]: And the way around the laxative effect too, there are forums. People can check on my website under resources for the different forums written about them. But you can take, for example, a magnesium citrate powder and put it in a liter of water, and shake it up and just sip it through the day. If you take small amounts of magnesium through the day, then it will gradually get into the cells, and will build up.

But if you take two or three teaspoons of a magnesium citrate powder all at once, then you could overwhelm the cell’s ability to absorb, and then it runs out the other end. So. And that’s a waste of money, and also you could be pulling out other nutrients when you have diarrhea.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Yeah, that’s key. In terms of foods, are there higher magnesium foods which you recommend people start to incorporate into their diets?

[Carolyn Dean]: Right, there are, but I’ve already had the caveat about if they’re grown on mineral depleted soil it’s hard to say, but seaweeds are high in magnesium. In the ocean there’s three times the magnesium compared to calcium. So there’s a lot in seaweeds, in chocolate. 100% cacao is high in magnesium, that’s why some women, especially, have chocolate cravings before their period, because they’re craving magnesium.

There’s different herbs. I have it in my book, purslane, for example, is very high magnesium, again, if the soil is high. Cilantro is high in magnesium. Nuts and seeds, deep green leafy vegetables. Some grains. But again, I always have to hesitate and say, but if the soil is depleted, I can’t confirm.

But I do know food has a big impact. For example, I’m telling people not to take calcium supplements, but get your calcium in your diet, but get your magnesium in a supplement. And calcium, for example, we’re told that we need 1,200, 1,500 milligrams. Whereas in the UK and the World Health Organization, they’re only saying 500 to 700 milligrams of calcium.

Well if you look at a cup of yogurt, that’s about 300 milligrams of calcium right there. I’ve done experiments with myself, and I find if I have two or three cups of yogurt in a day, I actually start getting a bit of heart palpitations and leg cramps, because it’s really pushed on my magnesium. It’s kind of bound up my magnesium.

So I know that you can get your calcium from your diet, just by looking at some food list – I have a couple of free e-books that people can get on my website – and you can figure out if you’re getting enough calcium in your diet. Usually from dairy, or bone broth, or fish with bones. But with magnesium, you have to be very, very wary that you’re probably only going to get about 200, maximum 300 milligrams. And I’m recommending people get about 700 milligrams, equal amounts of calcium and magnesium.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Great. We’ll put links to all of these things you mentioned in the show notes so that people can find them; the free e-books, and you mentioned something else earlier, about some of the tests. Make it easy for people to find.

Thank you for all of those clarifications. It really sounds like we shouldn’t really trust the food, and go the supplementation route. And you brought up magnesium citrate. Is that you’re preferred supplement?

[Carolyn Dean]: It’s one of them. I have my own product, but again, this is not a commercial broadcast, so people can search sites.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: But do feel free to point out any… Is there something specific you’ve done with your product that you feel is better?

[Carolyn Dean]: Well what happened with me Damien is I couldn’t get enough magnesium therapeutically, without stimulating my intestines and getting the laxative effect. What I did was work with a chemist to create a magnesium that is absorbed 100% at cellular level, and does not cause the laxative effect.

So that people even, I’ve had people who’ve been forced to live on an IV magnesium drips, where three or four times a week they have to take an IV drip, or their levels become so low they develop heart symptoms and cramping. And they can switch from IV onto a good magnesium that’s absorbed fully. And that’s what we’ve been lacking; all the research in medicine is in drugs, and we haven’t had enough research in the supplementation that people absolutely require.

I mean, the other thing I’m working on is the balance of the other minerals. I’ve found that the thyroid requires nine minerals to make the hormones properly. And instead of using mineral supplementation of the type of mineral that can be absorbed fully into the cells, doctors wait until the thyroid is barely functioning, and then give thyroid hormone replacement, either a synthetic or natural. And the natural doesn’t make that much difference, if you consider that what the thyroid really needs is it’s nine minerals to create it’s own hormones.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Yeah. I mean, this is a really recurring theme on this podcast, is micro-nutrient deficiencies across the board are causing many symptoms. So I think it’s really something people need to think about, in terms of their diet and supplementation, trying to maximize how many of these micro-nutrients they’re getting into them. And testing, where possible.

So, if someone has a deficiency, how long does it take to resolve that? If they’re implementing the types of recommendations you’ve just announced? And how often do you think they should get tested? If they’re doing RBC magnesium testing, trying to figure out how close they’re getting to six.

[Carolyn Dean]: Right, I mean. There’s such a range that I get a lot of emails – I have a radio show too, so people call in – in people who have, what I would consider, minor symptoms. They can lose those symptoms overnight. They can be sleeping the first night. But then the people I get in my consulting practice – I do telephone consultations – they’ll be the ones on a half dozen medications, and sick for 40 years. And they’ll start feeling symptomatically better within a week, but then it’s going to be probably several months before they’re completely symptom free.

The way nutrients are approached in our society is as if they’re drugs. And some people will say, “Well I’ve been taking magnesium for two weeks, and I have another heart palpitation. Why is that?” And it’s because magnesium is not suppressing your palpitations, it’s actually trying to heal your muscles, and you’re building up your magnesium stores. And when I get the story of, “Well yes, I forgot to take a couple of doses.” And, “Yes, I had a lot of sugar,” or, “I had some alcohol.”

There’s a balance; when you’re taking nutrients you want your nutrients to be absorbed, so you want really high quality nutrients. And you want the basic nutrients. I have people come in to me who are on dozens and dozens of different supplements, where they read about, “Oh, this is important. If you don’t get it, you’ll surely die.” The advertising for supplements has gotten people so scared that they think they have to take everything. And they end up actually coming to me with stomach distress, because they’re swallowing all these pills.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Right. And as you mentioned, there’s ratios involved with many of these. Calcium to magnesium ratios, zinc to copper ratios, and in some cases it’s actually the ratio that’s really, really significant as well. One of the first episodes we had on here was talking about zinc and copper imbalances, and how they can actually create anxieties. and also some conditions in the brain.

So you’ve covered that from a different aspect, but the ratios can be very important too. So, supplementing just one single nutrient can be a problem also. Have you ever come across anyone supplementing magnesium who get problems with calcium balance?

[Carolyn Dean]: In the past number of years, I think I’ve had two people where they’ve just thought that the magnesium was all they needed, and took higher, and higher, and higher amounts. And I don’t know if we proved that there was a calcium problem, certainly, when they did their blood tests. Their calcium levels were not low on their blood test, but that’s where, in my writing, I make sure people are getting their 700 milligrams of calcium every day in their diet. And if not, to take a well absorbed calcium supplement.

I think I’m going to have to work on… They’re called picometer minerals. Picometer is like a trillionth of a meter, so that’s the size of the minerals I work with. And that is actually the mineral ion channels size in the cells. And it’s actually the diameter of the plant rootlets, picometer.

So, what’s supposed to happen is the soil is supposed to be flush with worms and organisms that break down the minerals to a picometer size so that plan rootlets absorbs them into the plants. And then we eat the plants, and we get our minerals. And it’s all supposed to go brilliantly like that. And, we’ve stopped that from happening. Its not occurring anymore, because the soils are so dead.

I mean, we didn’t even talk of the different herbicides and pesticides that actually bind up minerals. The Roundup Ready by Monsanto, it binds up 50% of magnesium, even in the soil, and it has a half life of 23 years.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Yeah. What we are doing these days is pretty crazy, to look back on it.

Thank you very much for your time today, and I’d really like to wind down the interview with a few slightly different questions about you, and your ideas about the world of health.

First of all, are there other people, besides yourself, that you recommend to go to for advise and insights on areas around health, or testing, or any of these types of areas we’ve discussed today?

[Carolyn Dean]: Well, when people come to me, for example, with cancer, I don’t treat cancer. I’ve studied something called Total Biology. Have you heard of German New Medicine, or Total Biology Damien?

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: No, I haven’t.

[Carolyn Dean]: It’s the conflict that basis of disease, where a conflict in somebody’s brain, a worry, an unsolvable problem, can actually be downloaded in the body as a physical symptom. Like, if you’ve got a boss who makes you sick to your stomach, then you can develop a stomach ulcer. Or, if somebody’s a pain in the neck, then you can get neck pain. So, there’s simple comparisons like that. And then solvable conflict can also put itself into the body, and unless we deal with the conflict, then physical medicine really won’t be able to completely solve the problem.

So, beyond what I do in my books and my products and my website, I have a two year online wellness program. I really don’t know that anybody is covering the water front in the way I do, but, you know, I’ll refer out to people for the Total Biology, and that aspect of the psychology and physiology of the body that was never addressed in either allopathic or even my naturopathic training so far.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Great, great. Thank you very much. Are there biomarkers or labs that you track on a routine basis to monitor, or improve, your health, longevity, or these kinds of concerns?

[Carolyn Dean]: No.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Nope? Nothing you look at. Okay. Great.

What would be your one biggest recommendation to people for health, longevity, and performance?

[Carolyn Dean]: It would have to be magnesium, really, seriously. When you look at the products that some of the doctors have these days – and I’m not saying… I’ve been active for over 40 years, and it’s only in the past year or so, I’ve decided that I had to get into products because the ones I needed for myself weren’t available. And people were getting so desperate.

I spent two years creating a two year online wellness program for people, because I wanted to educate, and give them all the information I knew. People don’t have time to do a two year course. They’re desperate, they want something now. And so what I realized when I look at a lot of the supplements that, even the medical doctors are selling, you can’t even find magnesium in their products.

And so that’s where I really come back to start with magnesium. It works on nearly 700 to 800 enzyme systems, it supports the energy of your body, it helps you sleep, it gives you energy during the day, it relaxes you enough to help you sleep at night. So it really is the one supplement that everybody should take.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Thank you very much for that. So, in terms of people connecting with you, you just mentioned that you have a radio show. I think it’s also a podcast, correct?

[Carolyn Dean]: Yes! You’re right, we did podcast it. People can just go to drcarolyndean.com, and I have a little radio on the side where people can click on to get my radio show. I do blogs periodically. I used to do them more frequently, but everything really slows down in December when we’re of course doing this taping. So, drcarolyndean.com, you’ll see my wellness program, I have a free online news letter, a couple of my products are listed there that takes you to a website.

And actually, under the wellness program, people can pick up two free e-books on minerals with their pdf format. Under my wellness program.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Great. And of course, your book is called the Magnesium Miracle, and it’s in its third edition, I believe?

[Carolyn Dean]: That’s right. The 2014 edition, and it’s on Amazon. And actually, Amazon is doing a great job now, I heard they’re doing same day delivery in some major centers. It’s amazing.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Yeah, they are. I mean, I use Amazon every single day, it’s crazy. If you’ve got the iPhone app for Amazon, it’s dangerous.

And if you use the Amazon lockers, you can get stuff literally shipped next to a 7/11 next to you.

[Carolyn Dean]: But then even worse is having a Kindle, where you can order the next book in the series while you’re lying in the bathtub. They’re making a mint on Kindle, because you can’t lend them. So everybody has to buy a new Kindle, where as with books you can lend them all over the place.

[Damien Blenkinsopp]: Yeah, that’s true. I’m not complaining, I love Amazon. It makes everything very convenient.

So Carolyn, thank you so much. Of course we’ll put those references you just spoke about in the show notes, so people will be able to find you easily. But thank you so much for your time today. It’s been a pleasure talking with you, especially after having read your books so long ago. And using magnesium as a result for these many years. So thank you very much for your time, and great to connect with you.

[Carolyn Dean]: Thank you Damien, good interview. Great questions. I enjoyed it. There’s a lot of information out there, and I appreciate being able to do that, so thank you.