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Depression & Anxiety Treatment with Diet

The Links to Magnesium Deficiency


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A recent study noted that people with optimistic outlooks were more likely to live longer, and that pessimists were more likely to die from heart disease. The results of the study are often interpreted as optimism helps people live longer. I think that the study results may not have necessarily been interpreted correctly. Association does not equal cause and effect. Just because optimism and better heart function statistically occur together does not prove that either one causes the other.

Magnesium deficiency is a known factor in heart disease as well as anxiety. Another possible reason people with more optimistic attitude live longer is that they may be happier and less worried because they have sufficient magnesium levels, which in turn may also have a protective effect on their hearts.

Man is what he eats.
Ludwig Feuerbach

Undoubtedly there are many factors involved in anxiety and depression, and a magnesium deficiency may be just one of many possible factors. However, studies do show that:

  • In the U.S. and many other industrialized countries, magnesium deficiencies are relatively common in the general population, especially in women.

  • Anxiety disorders are also highly prevalent among the general population, especially with women.

  • Multiple studies, readily available on PubMed, have confirmed that magnesium deficiencies can be a cause of anxiety and other nervous disorders.

  • Anxiety disorders are more common in people with conditions such as migraines, TMJ (temporomandibular joint disorder), hypermobility, irritable bowel syndrome and especially mitral valve prolapse (MVP). Perhaps it is not a coincidence that these conditions have also commonly been linked, either directly or indirectly, to magnesium deficiencies.

  • A recent report from Britain linked poor diet to rising cases of depression, " Increasing rates of anxiety, depression and irritability could be due to a poor diet that lacks the essential chemicals to keep the brain healthy, according to a leading mental health charity."

  • Many medical cites today link depression with heart disease. Researchers often interpret this to mean that either depression causes heart disease or heart disease causes depression. But that may not necessarily be true. Association of two variables does not in any way prove causation of one to the other. Many people with blue eyes often have blonde hair, but one trait doesn't necessarily cause the other. Both depression and heart disease have been linked in a number of research studies to magnesium deficiency, so it may well be they commonly appear together as a result of a modern, Western diets lacking in magnesium rich, whole foods.

If you put all of these known facts together, then it would seem highly logical to screen people suffering from nervous disorders, anxiety and depression for magnesium and other nutritional deficiencies before putting them on antidepressant drugs or treating them with counseling type therapy. This would be especially true for people manifesting other symptoms commonly associated with a magnesium (Mg) deficiency such as heart palpitations, mitral valve prolapse, migraines, fibromyalgia and TMJ.

My soul is dark with stormy riot,
Directly traceable to diet.
Samuel Hoffenstein

Unfortunately, medical treatments in the U.S. all too often do not seem to be based on inexpensive, research based nutritional treatments, but rather high profit margin drug therapy or long term, expensive psychiatric therapy.

Continued at Anxiety- Page 2


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