A Verdade Sobre o Magnésio!

Magnesium supplementation is considered beneficial
for cardiovascular health, potentially reducing the chances of heart attacks, diabetes, and
even improving sleep quality. Those who use it say it’s even good for preventing
and reducing the incidence of kidney stones. But is this really proven? What studies exist on this? Hello, I am Dr. Thiago, and I am a urologist
here in São Paulo, and today I want to talk to you about an extensive review I did on
magnesium supplementation and the proven benefits for cardiovascular health. Can it really have all these benefits that
are talked about, such as reducing the chance of diabetes, improving sleep quality, preventing
the chance of heart attacks, strokes, and whether it can prevent and dissolve kidney
stones? So stay with me until the end because there
will be a lot of important information here in this video. To begin with, where did the idea come from
that magnesium is beneficial for all this? Magnesium is a mineral present in our body
that is the antagonist of calcium. When you have a muscle contraction, the stimulus
arrives at the muscle, allowing calcium to enter the cell, which causes muscle contraction. During the relaxation phase, magnesium enters
our body’s muscle cell and expels the calcium, thereby antagonizing the actions of calcium
in our body. In addition, magnesium is a cofactor in more
than 300 chemical reactions that occur in our body, and it also participates in some
brain neurotransmitters. From this, some observational studies emerged. What is an observational study? It’s when researchers take data that are already
in the population and analyze whether these data have a correlation with some other outcome,
in this case, magnesium with outcomes like heart attacks, diabetes, high blood pressure,
osteoporosis. Researchers analyzed these observational studies
and saw that people who consumed more magnesium—pay attention here, in the diet again, pay attention
here—the study participants consumed more magnesium in the diet, not in supplement form,
okay? And these studies showed that when comparing
those who consumed more magnesium with those who consumed less in the diet, there was a
32% reduction in the chance of developing diabetes in those who consumed more magnesium,
an 88% reduction in the development of high blood pressure, that is, hypertension, a 39%
reduction in the risk of heart attack, and a 23% reduction in the risk of osteoporosis. I know you may already want to turn off this
video and buy your magnesium supplement, but hold on, things are not quite as simple as
you might think, as you will see in this video. A very important detail is that, as I said,
the people who had these benefits consumed more magnesium from their diet, and what are
the foods richest in magnesium? Fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Remember this information because it is very
important, and I will come back to it. So let’s go. Then intervention studies began to emerge. What are these? These are randomized studies, meaning they
take people, randomly assign them to a group, and then to one group they give a placebo
and to the other group, they give magnesium, the magnesium supplement. Why is this study the best to prove whether
there is a benefit or not? Because then you can control what we call
variables, the selection biases, because then you remove the elements that can confuse and
that can alter the result of a study. So in the study where the researcher controls
the population, the variables are controlled, and then one group takes a placebo and the
other group takes the medication, which in this case is magnesium supplementation. And in these studies, these benefits did not
appear. Why is that? How can we justify this difference from observational
studies to intervention studies? If you stop to think, remember the information
I said that the main foods rich in magnesium were fruits, nuts, vegetables, and greens. Probably the benefit is not in the consumption
of magnesium itself but rather in a better diet. So when you compare patients who consume more
magnesium with those who consume less, probably those with higher magnesium intake have a
better diet, and this is very important because these foods, in addition to magnesium, are
rich in other minerals like potassium, fibers, and vitamins that will also be important in
preventing these types of problems. So probably this association with magnesium
was just an association with a better diet. The Western diet is a diet where industrialized
foods, in addition to little magnesium, have very few of these micronutrients that we call. They are foods that have high sources of carbohydrates,
some may even have protein, high sources of fat, and very few nutrients. This is what differentiates industrialized
food from natural food. Natural foods generally have lower calories
and have more quantity of micronutrients that are important for our metabolism and for our
general health, okay? And what is the dose of magnesium that we
should consume? Well, we should consume around 400 mg per
day of magnesium if you are a man and 300 mg per day if you are a woman. This amount is very easy for you to acquire
again if you have a natural diet, a balanced diet. If you have a diet that has a predominance
of ultra-processed products, of industrialized products, it is very likely that you do have
a deficiency of magnesium in your diet, but then it’s not just magnesium, it’s all the
other micronutrients. Doctor, I have a poor diet; should I supplement
magnesium? Look, you should first seek an improvement
in your diet because you will be deficient not only in magnesium, you will have to supplement
all the other micronutrients, not just magnesium, okay? So it’s like you’re sweeping the dust under
the rug; it doesn’t help at all, the dirt will still be there. So improve your diet. Besides, these supplements are not cheap,
and they have side effects. What are they? Remember I said that magnesium, at the beginning
of the video, acts as an antagonist to calcium. If you start taking too much magnesium through
supplementation, your body can produce conditions of hypermagnesemia, which is an excess of
magnesium in the blood, and then the side effects begin to appear. The first of them is diarrhea. You must have heard of milk of magnesia, which
is treated, which is used as a laxative. So the first side effect of excess magnesium
as a supplement is diarrhea. Second, you can have muscle weakness. Remember I said that magnesium participates
in muscle contraction and relaxation. If you have too much magnesium, calcium cannot
enter the cell, and then the muscle cell cannot contract, and this causes the person to lose
strength, okay? So an excess of magnesium begins to cause
muscle weakness. What is a very important muscle? The diaphragm, our muscle of respiration. So the more magnesium levels go up, you can
have respiratory difficulty and also another important organ that is a muscle is the heart,
causing cardiac arrhythmias. That’s why the supplementation of magnesium,
when indicated for patients who have hypomagnesemia, which is a low amount of magnesium, is for
short periods of time and monitored, okay? It should not be used routinely, agreed? Doctor, and for patients who have kidney stones? Well, the studies on magnesium supplementation
and kidney stones are quite scarce in the literature. There are two studies, one from 1997 and the
other from 1994, and one of them in rats, not in humans, and what do these studies say? The supplementation of magnesium and citrate
did indeed have a benefit in preventing the formation of kidney stones, but when you compared
citrate plus magnesium and magnesium alone, the magnesium alone did not have the effect
when you compare with the citrate. That is, using magnesium alone does not seem
to have a beneficial effect as expected when we do a controlled study. So again, using citrate seems to be better
than using magnesium in the prevention of the formation of kidney stones. At this point, many people come here below
and put in the comments, “Oh, because I’ve seen such a person use it and it improved,
I don’t know, I heard some health professional, even doctors, saying that you should supplement
magnesium because it is a super important salt, it is indeed a super important salt,
but it doesn’t help you to supplement magnesium if you don’t improve your diet in the same
way that I’m going to repeat here, you’re going to be sweeping dust under the rug, you’re
supplementing magnesium and forgetting about all the other micronutrients that you’re going
to acquire through diet. So if you have a poor diet, focus on improving
your diet and not on supplementing magnesium. In addition, magnesium supplementation can
interfere with various types of medications, including antibiotics, okay? So magnesium supplementation does not have
all these expected benefits as talked about, this is not proven in the literature, okay? What is proven is that yes, a healthy diet
where you will have these amounts of magnesium in your body supplied by the diet
is important for you to reduce the chance of certain types of diseases, as I commented,
but supplementation has not been able to prove this benefit, including in the treatments
of kidney stones. For kidney stones, we end up using it for
a specific condition, which is for patients who have primary hyperoxaluria, which is an
excess of oxalate in the urine. These patients have an alteration in the absorption
of oxalate by the intestine, and then it is beneficial for these patients to supplement
with magnesium, around 200 to 400 mg per day. And
what is the difference in the magnesium supplements that exist out there? There is magnesium citrate and magnesium chloride,
chelated magnesium. It seems that magnesium citrate and chelated
magnesium have better absorption because they are linked to a substance; the chelated is
linked to an amino acid, and magnesium citrate is a compound. So these two types of supplements have greater
absorption by our intestine, okay? Therefore, magnesium supplementation should
only be done for specific patients, for short periods of time,
so that there are no major side effects. It is better for your diet to ensure that you,
in addition to magnesium, have all the other micronutrients available to you through your
diet, okay? Don’t be wasting money unnecessarily on these
supplements that won’t have any proven benefit, okay? If you have any questions, you can leave them
in the comments. I am Dr. Thiago, and see you
in the next video.