How to Increase Magnesium in Your Child's Diet Naturally

May be Helpful for Tics, Muscle Twitches, Asthma, Attention Deficit Disorder, Insomnia, Hyperactivity, Headaches, Sensitive Hearing and More

Studies show that magnesium (Mg) deficiency may be a factor in many common childhood maladies. Mg is literally used for hundreds of different functions in the human body. If your growing child is short on this important mineral, anyone of those hundreds of functions may be effected, like his ability to sit still, relax his facial muscles, stop twitches and deal with loud noises.

Nutrition surveys show that most Americans on a typical modern diet high in convenience and processed foods do not get the recommended amounts of Mg each day. If your child has any of the health issues listed above and fills up on foods such as cereal, pop tarts, white bread, soda, cookies, hot dogs, pizza and potato chips, it would be logical to consider nutrient deficiencies, especially deficiencies of Mg, as a possible cause for his health issues. The tips below are some easy diet changes you can try to make to get more magnesium into your child.

Table 1 - Magnesium Rich Food Substitution Chart

1. Personally, I think the ideal diet for most people is probably a quasi-cave man type diet made up of mostly lean meats, some variety meats, soups with bone broth, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, tubers, beans and some yogurt or other cultured foods with helpful bacteria. If everyone ate a diet like that I suspect it would be almost impossible for most people to be low on magnesium. However, it is a tough diet to follow living in today's world, where many parents work full time and the kids are at day care or school most of the day.

So factoring in what most kids like and will really actually eat, it is possible to make some minor substitutions and still easily double or triple most kids' average magnesium intakes for a day. The table above has some food substitutions that can easily increase a child's Mg levels significantly over time. By making some simple substitutions, the magnesium rich foods in the second column provide, when totaled, almost 3 times as much Mg as the foods in the first column. (The Mg values from the table above were obtained from looking up food values from the web site www.nutritiondata.com.)

2. The first step in helping your child is to establish a baseline, i.e. figure out how much Mg are they actually consuming on an average day right now. You can accomplish this by writing down each food your child eats or drinks in a day and then add up the amount of magnesium (Mg) he is currently consuming. If your child is eating an average American diet, a variety of recent surveys show that he most likely won't even be getting the basic minimum daily Mg requirements, let alone enough to correct a deficiency.

The easiest, though most expensive way I've found to do add up food values is to use a software program called Nutribase (available from Amazon). To use it you enter all of the food a person eats in a day and it calculates a wide variety of nutrient totals such as calories, protein, magnesium, calcium, zinc, etc. I thought my kids were eating pretty healthy compared to most of their friends, but I was surprised at how lacking their diets were in some important nutrients after using this program for a few days. One thing to keep in mind is that magnesium and most other nutrients have many cofactors as well as antagonists, so it is important to get a wide spectrum of many nutrients each day, without getting massive quantities of any single nutrient.

A cheaper, though more labor intensive way, to track how much magnesium you child is getting is to simply write everything down in a notebook or enter into a spread sheet everything he eats for a few days and look up the magnesium values online or in a book with nutrition data. You can buy books with nutrition data from Amazon, or for a cheaper alternative, I often buy used nutrition text books with magnesium tables at local used book stores.

Online the best web site I've found to use is www.nutritiondata.com. You can use their online search tool to find foods highest in any given nutrient, by category. For example, if you are planning dinner and want to know if you should serve corn or peas, you can use their database to find out which one is higher in magnesium. (The nutritiondata web site also has a feature to track nutrients, but it requires registering and the registration form requests a lot of personal information so I have not tried it.)

3.Many children like to fill up on fruits, which most parents view as healthy compared to known junk food snacks like potato chips and soda. However, it is important to note that few fruits have appreciable amounts of magnesium compared to other food groups like vegetables, beans, nuts and seeds.

4. Be aware when looking up magnesium values that some foods may have high levels of Mg but may have other ingredients, such as phytates or oxalates, that prevent mineral absorption. I know whole grains are a popular health foods these days, but studies show that high levels of phytates in unleavened whole grains can actually lower mineral levels after consumption.

5. A diet low in alkaline fruits and vegetables may produce an acidic load on the body which can also lower magnesium levels.

6. For young children, you may want to have a chart on the fridge with pictures of magnesium rich foods they might like, such as baked beans, bananas, cashews, etc. Have them check off the food each time they eat it and when they have eaten a certain number of healthy foods each day or week, let them have a reward. This can be something like a small toy, a coupon to stay up late by 30 minutes or a "get out of picking up your toys one time" for free card. When my kids were little I used to go to garage sales and get used books, small toys, etc. and keep them in a special box to use as rewards.

7. Remember to be a good role model by eating a healthy diet with magnesium rich foods yourself!

8. If your child is into sports, explain to him how higher magnesium levels help to increase energy levels.

9. You can increase the levels of Mg and other nutrients by substituting vegetable broth instead of water when making condensed, canned soup. To make vegetable broth, just heat any vegetables ast their prime along with stems, peels, etc. in a crock pot on high for a half hour or so, then strain. You can freeze the broth in ice cube trays for later use, if needed.

10. For pasta, I try to buy the kind colored with dried vegetable powders for some additional nutrition.

As with many problems, just even being aware of the under publicized issue of how common magnesium deficiencies may be in many children is half the battle.

Related Pages in This Site:

Magnesium Status and Acid-Base Balance

Noise Sensitivity / Sensitive Hearing - Explores the links between a lack of magnesium in the diet and noise sensitivity.

Magnesium Deficiency - Part I - covers allergies, chemical sensitivities, anxiety and psychiatric disorders, aorta strength, asthma, attention deficit disorder and calcification of soft tissue. - Part II - covers fibromyalgia, hearing loss, hypercalciuria, keratoconus, migraines, mitral valve prolapse, muscle contractions and cramps, myopia, nystagmus, osteoporosis and osteopenia, premature birth, skeletal deformities, scar formation, seizures, and TMJ.

Food and Other Factors Associated With Migraines - loud noises, stress, certain foods can lead to migraines. These triggers are all very similar, if not identical, to the factors that can cause a magnesium deficiency.

Magnesium Deficits - more common in women?

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