Magnesium is the fourth most abundant mineral found in the body and is very essential for good health. It is mostly found in the bones (around 50%), teeth, and red blood cells. The other half is largely found inside cells of body tissues and organs. Only 1% of magnesium is found in blood. The body takes magnesium from the diet and excretes the excess through urine and stool. A balanced diet contains enough magnesium for the body’s functional requirements.

Magnesium is organically connected with the calcium level in the body. Thus, a critical balance has to be achieved between calcium and magnesium to assure proper use of both minerals.

Benefits of magnesium –

Magnesium is important to nearly every function and tissue of the body, from the heart to the bones - nearly everything. It is needed for more than 300 biochemical reactions in the body.

- Magnesium is an essential element, which influences many enzymes needed for protein digestion, energy production and nerve/muscle message transmission.

- Magnesium helps with the formation of bones and teeth and assists in the absorption of calcium and potassium.

- Magnesium is also used to relax the muscles. It assists in cellular metabolism and the production of energy, in collaboration with enzyme activity.

- It is used for muscle tone of the heart and assists in controlling blood pressure.

- Together with vitamin B12, it may help prevent calcium oxalate kidney stones.

- It helps prevent depression, dizziness, reduces cholesterol levels, muscle twitching, and pre-menstrual syndrome.

- It can help prevent the calcification of soft tissue and also prevent cardiovascular diseases, osteoporosis, and certain forms of cancer.

- Magnesium assists the parathyroid gland to process vitamin D.

- Magnesium therapy has proved beneficial in treating bronchial asthma and migraine headaches.

- It helps support a healthy immune system, and keeps bones strong.

- Magnesium helps regulate blood sugar levels, promotes normal blood pressure, and is actively involved in protein synthesis. It helps in the bio-synthesis of collagen.

- It assists in the absorption and metabolism of calcium, sodium, phosphorus and potassium.

- Magnesium is particularly important for maintaining a normal heart rhythm and is used by physicians to treat irregular heartbeat (arrythmia).

- Magnesium may also be beneficial for bladder problems in women.

Dietary sources of magnesium –

Green leafy vegetables such as spinach, are good sources of magnesium because of their chlorophyll content. Magnesium is readily available in mostly all foods that form the basis of a healthful diet -whole grains, fruits, dark-green leafy vegetables, fruits and nuts.
Rich vegan sources include legumes such as beans and peas, nuts and seeds, tofu, soybean flour, almonds, cashew nuts, pumpkin, walnuts, and whole unrefined grains are also good sources of magnesium. Refined grains are generally poor in magnesium. This is because, when white flour is refined and processed, the magnesium-rich germ and bran gets removed. Bread and flour made from whole grain wheat provides more magnesium than bread made from white refined flour.

Other good dietary sources of this mineral include peanuts, pistachio nuts, shredded wheat (dalia), bran, bananas, and baked potatoes (with skin), chocolate, and cocoa powder. Many herbs, spices also provide magnesium, such as coriander, dill seed, celery seed, sage, dried mustard, basil, fennel seed (saunf), cumin seed and poppy seed.

Tap water can also be a source of magnesium, but the amount varies depending on the water supply. Hard water contains more magnesium than soft water.

Magnesium deficiency -

Severe magnesium deficiency can result in low levels of calcium in the blood, termed as hypocalcemia.
Type 2 diabetes is associated with low levels of magnesium in the blood. People suffering from ulcerative colitis may also have low magnesium levels.

Magnesium levels tend to be low in people with chronic fatigue syndrome, ands reduced levels of potassium in the blood (hypokalemia).

Individuals with chronic mal-absorption problems such as Crohn’s disease, gluten sensitive enteropathy and intestinal surgery may lose magnesium through diarrohea and fat malabsorption, and thus need supplemental magnesium.

Causes of magnesium deficiency -

Along with a poor diet lacking in magnesium, absorption of magnesium by the body can be affected by causes such as dieting for weight loss; consumption of ‘’soft” water, which lacks minerals; various intestinal diseases; chronic alcoholism.

Large amounts of magnesium can be lost from the body due to prolonged and strenuous exercise, lactation, excessive sweating and chronic diarrohea.

People who are using drugs like diuretics and cancer drugs are also prone to deficiency. Disorders of the kidney, an overactive thyroid or parathyroid gland, low blood levels of potassium and high urine levels of calcium are some other causes leading to magnesium deficiency in the body.

Consumption of alcohol, diuretics, high levels of zinc in the body, consumption of high levels of Vitamin C and vitamin D also increase the body’s magnesium requirement.

Symptoms of magnesium deficiency:

Common symptoms of deficiency include –

- Anxiety, irritability

- Nausea and vomiting

- Numbness and tingling sensation in hands and feet

- Coronary artery spasms

- Gastro-intestinal problems including diarrohea

- Muscle spasticity

- Abnormal rhythmic palpitations of the heart

- Muscle contractions, even seizures

- Anaemia

- Weakness

- Insomnia

- Poor hair and nail growth

- Sudden death.

Recommended daily dosage of magnesium -

The recommended daily allowance is around :

- Males (below 30 years) - 400 mg per day

- Males (over 30 years) - 420 mg per day

- Females (below 30 years) - 310 mg/day

- Females (over 30 years) - 320 mg per day.

Magnesium supplements are normally taken in dosages of 750 - 1,000 mg per day.

Read more on magnesium, healthvitaminsguide.com/minerals/magnesium.htm benefit of magnesium and healthvitaminsguide.com/minerals/magnesium.htm benefit of magnesium.
Also Visit healthvitaminsguide.com healthvitaminsguide.com for Information on Vitamins, Minerals, Amino Acids.

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Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to not feel so hungry all the time when you are trying to lose weight? Well there is a way and it’s not some new fad either, it’s something that’s natural, has no adverse side effects and might be sitting right in your fridge - fiber.

One type of fiber that you probably already have been eating is called pectin. Pectin is found in fruits, such as apples, strawberries, and peaches, along with vegetables including carrots, sweet potatoes and beans. Pectin is a carbohydrate that has no calories.

Pectin is a great source of fiber, which we all know is important for a healthy diet. Aside from helping you feel full longer, pectin can help to cut cholesterol and blood sugar levels. It may even aid in the prevention of colon cancer.

Pectin can help you lose and maintain your weight because it causes the stomach to empty more slowly. As a result, after eating pectin, you feel satisfied longer. This means that you will eat less, which will lead to weight loss. And if you think you’ll have to be gobbling down hundreds of apples or guzzling pectin drinks, think again - research has shown that as little as a single teaspoon can help you to feel satisfied.

Where Can You Get Pectin?

Thankfully, you won’t have to drive miles out of your way to get your supply of pectin because it is sold right in your local grocery store. It comes in a powder, which may be known as Sure-Jel, or a liquid, known as Certo. Derived from grapefruit and apples, pectin is usually found with the baking supplies in most supermarkets.

How To Take Pectin

You can mix pectin with orange juice, water, or soft drinks. It has no taste so shouldn’t affect the taste of the beverage you mix it in. It is best to increase your intake gradually to let your system adjust to the added fiber. Start off with a teaspoon a day and then gradually add more in to a max of 3 teaspoons a day. You can also add pectin to broth or soups, applesauce and even baked potatoes.

Lee Dobbins writes about lowcarb-resource.com Low Carb and Low GI eating as well as other weight loss issues. Visit lowcarb-resource.com lowcarb-resource.com for more articles on healthy dieting.

Tags: baked potatoes, cholesterol, diet, lose weight, weight Loss

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For some of us, food is warmth and love. We associate it with home and childhood: tempting smells that greeted us after school on a cold December afternoon. The kitchen served as the center of the house under the kindly direction of the Captain in the apron. If we were good, we might be allowed to stir the pot. If we were very good, we got to clean out the mixing bowl.

As we grew up, we found wonders elsewhere: the coffee shops and diners where adolescents gathered and food was only a platform for the real business of talking, bonding, and flirting. We drank cola and root beer and discovered sundaes, pizza and french fries. But real food was what we ate at home.

Later, we moved on to the pale imitation of food represented by college cafeterias and underground cafes that were heavy on music and political rebellion and light on the menu. We returned home for the holidays and again ate real food, as good as we remembered. Some of us moved on to the non-food of C rations and swore we’d never enjoy eating again.

We moved into the world of work: automats and deli lunches or expense-account steak and martinis where even the most exquisite fare took a back seat to table discussions. We married, moved into new homes, rediscovered the warmth and intimacy of a family kitchen and embraced the delights of gourmet cooking, homemade bread, and nouvelle cuisine.

At the same time, just below our level of awareness, the fast food industry started to blossom into the billion dollar gorilla it is today.

At first, it was small hamburgers and hot dogs with french fries and a drink. At first, it was an occasional visit to “get mom out of the kitchen.” At first, it was just something fast that avoided interruptions in our race to the top.

The menus expanded to encourage more frequent visits. Drive-Thrus that sat closed and empty until noon suddenly discovered how to make breakfast items that could be eaten at the wheel. Chicken, fish, and ribs were added, soon followed by Mexican specialties, baked potatoes, fried vegetables, and sandwiches. The burgers got bigger and so did we.

Somewhere, a brilliant light bulb exploded in an ad man’s brain and “Super-Size” was born. If a burger was good, why not make it bigger for just a little more money? If fries are the staff of life for American teenagers, why not make the portions bigger? Why not make the best purchase value a whole meal, combining everything the customer wants (and maybe something they don’t)? Why not Super-Size the whole meal and really make money?

Rather than an occasional change-of-pace, the Drive-Thru gradually assumed a predominant place in our diets. Astute marketers targeted their sales pitches to the most responsive and easily manipulated niche of the population: children. Tired, time-strapped parents yielded to tearful pleas to visit Ronald or Jack. And our children grew fat.

Teenagers, with their deep-seated psychological preference to live in their cars existed on a diet made up, almost exclusively, of fast food, turning up their noses at the thought of a home-cooked meal. Active and full of energy, they ignored the almost imperceptible puffiness that their intake triggered.

What was there to worry about? The Drive-Thrus were a gift from heaven: tasty food, fast access, car-proof containers, cheap satiation.

Then we woke up. We looked at a world where even the average individual was clearly overweight and more than a third of us were obese, even our children. In a culture obsessed with the appearance of being thin, we were become permanently, indisputably, fat.

The few earlier voices of criticism increased to a low roar. The tasty creations of yesterday became the now-maligned culprits of our condition. To keep the money-machine viable, the fast food moguls adapted to the cries for change: the oil used for frying was trumpeted as unsaturated, salads appeared on menus, substitute sides for french fries became available, and “Super-Size it?” was no longer the order taker’s standard refrain.

The industry breathed a sigh of relief seeing that a few changes made everything all right and the world could return to its infatuation with the Drive-Thru. We beamed with a sense of satisfaction that we had prodded the market in a healthier direction. Then we noticed that we were still fat.

Where had we gone wrong? Well, the “small” burgers were still big: two to three times the size of their relatives of forty years ago. The salads were healthy until drenched with several hundred calories of creamy dressing. To maintain the taste we had come to love, toppings were added: more kinds of cheese, butter, relishes and dipping sauces. And everything was still primarily fried: breakfast, burgers, chicken, potatoes. Even high quality, frequently-changed deep fry oil is loaded with calories to be deposited on our waistlines, hips, and internal organs.

Fast food has taken us out of the kitchen into a world where the demand for productivity makes us work harder and longer and steals away any notion of spare time. We run to keep pace with a society spinning ever faster and we eat on the run because to pause is to fail. Is there no escape? This is the Twenty-first Century — returning to the food regimes of fifty or a hundred years ago is improbable. The old fashioned “made from scratch” meals require too much time and effort, except for special occasions, in our fast-paced, two-working-parents, long-work-and-commute lives.

What we can do, if we seek to withdraw from the enormous herd of heavyweights, is to remember that the way to health, slenderness, delayed aging, and increased longevity has been demonstrated repetitively by our little friend, the laboratory rat.

The secret is consistent, prolonged, cheat-proofed, under-eating. Once that core concept has been adopted, and completely internalized, the pathway to a new, thin you becomes clear: eat whatever you want but a LOT LESS. We’re not looking at the old adage of “eat moderately and move around a lot” because we know, from experience, that it doesn’t work. When I say a “lot less” I mean it. You may be eating three times a day, plus snacks. Cutting out a snack here or a dessert there may eventually help you lose weight - if you have twenty years to invest in the attempt.

Don’t “cut back.” Slash, sever, pulverize your portions. If you eat three meals a day, change to eating just one. If you like to graze on six mini-meals or snacks, cut to two. Reducing your overall intake by two thirds should bring you into the zone of your actual daily needs. Yes, it would be nice if you opted to make those reduced calories all highly nutritious but we all know that you are going to eat what you are going to eat, no matter how much the health gurus nag you. So go ahead and eat what you intend, just one third of your usual rations.

To keep your energy on an even keel, you can spread your one meal throughout the day. If your usual lunch is a cheeseburger, fries, and a shake, split it up: a shake for breakfast, a burger for lunch, a dinner of fries and a slice of cheese. Are you then on a diet? Are you using your precious time on specialty shopping and food preparation? Do you have to think about what menu items fit into your prescribed weight plan? No, none of these apply. You are simply eating the way you have always done except one day of your prior food plan now last three days. If you’re worried about your health, take a multivitamin (funny, you weren’t worried about your health on the same fare in the past, were you?) If you are a tall, large-boned individual or you feel (genuinely and persistently) faint, take a canned nutritional booster like Ensure.

It is almost too simple and too easy IF you have really internalized the concept of under-eating and have adopted a “can do,will do,” attitude - the key to everything.

P. S. You’ll save a lot of money too!

Virginia Bola is a licensed psychologist and an admitted diet fanatic. She specializes in therapeutic reframing and the effects of attitudes and motivation on individual goals. The author of The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment Survival Manual, and a free ezine, The Worker’s Edge, she recently completed a psychologically-based weight control book: Diet with an Attitude: A Weight Loss Workbook. She can be reached at DietWithAnAttitude.com DietWithAnAttitude.com

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Each year, millions of people experience a painful condition known as acid reflux. Acid reflux is a condition that is characterized by severe and recurring heartburn. This heartburn occurs when the contents of the stomach are pushed from the stomach upwards into the esophagus.

Your stomach contains powerful acids strong enough to digest the food you eat. This reflux of stomach acid into your esophagus is severely painful. Prolonged reflux can permanently damage the tissue of your esophagus.

Many people consider acid reflux to be on the rise. They attribute this to the modern day diet; foods that cause acid reflux are those foods that are are high in fat, caffeine, sugar and preservatives. Foods that cause acid reflux are those high in these ingredients.

Physicians advise that the only way to successfully manage acid reflux is to modify yoru diet, which includes avoiding foods that cause acid reflux. This is usually the first treatment option explored by most sufferers.

There are a number of foods that cause acid reflux. Simply eliminating these foods that cause acid reflux from your diet will probably give you acid reflux relieve. Chocolate is one of the foods that cause acid reflux. You should also avoid just about any food with high fat content. This includes fried foods. Thus, meat or dairy with high fat content should be banned from your diet.

Eliminating these high fat content — and highly caloric — foods from your diet is beneficial to you in two ways. First, avoiding foods that cause acid reflux will help elminate the symptoms of acid reflux. Second, you may end up losing weight since being overweight aggravates acid reflux symptoms.

Fruits and fruit juices with high acid levels must be excluded from your diet. This includes citrus fruits and fruit juices such as lemons, grapefruit, and oranges. The same goes for highly acidic vegetables. Tomatoes and onions have no place in your acid reflux diet. Beverages you should avoid include soda, tea, coffee and most caffeinated beverages.

Fortunately, there are a number of foods that you can expect will work well in your acid reflux diet. Lean meat is acceptable. So is low-acid fruit such as bananas and apples, and vegetablies such as carrots, green beans, peas and baked potatoes. You will probably be able to tolerate most grains including white bread, whole wheat bread, and brown and white rice.

You should always consult your physician before you begin a new diet. If eliminating foods that cause acid reflux is not able to resolve your problem, your doctor may suggest additional changes. There are over-the-counter drugs and prescription medications available as alternatives to dietary change.

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