The Relationship Between Calcium, Magnesium and Stress

Introducing Team CalMax

calcium magnesium and stress in the body
March Madness has begun and college basketball can’t have all the fun! So, here at Dr. Newton’s Naturals, we’re celebrating “March Gladness.” We created our own “bracket,” if you will, with four of our best sellers. Over the next three weeks employees from each team will use their chosen product daily and report on their progress and the awesome benefits of taking one of our “Final Four.”

Team CalMax AKA “The CalMaxinators”

Danice H. – Human Resources
Victoria G. – Inbound Sales
Sean M. – Training
David C. – Information Technology
Jason F. – Finance

Stress Steals the Magnesium Ball

If you’re like most people, when you are exposed to stress, you become irritable, easily fatigued and lose concentration. Your blood pressure may increase as the level of adrenalin, a stress hormone, increases in your blood. Under conditions of mental or physical stress, magnesium is released from your blood cells and goes into the blood plasma, from where it is excreted into the urine. Chronic stress depletes your body of magnesium. The more stressed you are, the greater the loss of magnesium. The lower your magnesium level to begin with, the more reactive to stress you become and the higher your level of adrenalin in stressful situations. Higher adrenalin causes greater loss of magnesium from cells. Sound like a vicious cycle? It is.

Uptight and At-Risk

Personality has a marked effect on the stress-magnesium cycle. A study done in Paris found that stress-induced depletion of magnesium was much greater for people who show the “Type A,” competitive, heart-disease prone behavior pattern than for their less competitive colleagues. Dr. Bella Altura, a physiologist at the State University of New York, has proposed that depletion of magnesium among Type A individuals is the main reason they are at increased risk of heart attacks.

Calcium and Magnesium – Balancing the Ball

You experience the tensing (calcium) and relaxing (magnesium) interaction of these two elements each time your heart beats, when you feel your pulse, and every time you breathe. They are incongruous to one another.

• Calcium excites nerves and magnesium calms them down.
• Calcium makes muscles contract, but magnesium is necessary for muscles to relax.
• Calcium is necessary to the clotting reaction—so needed for wound healing—but magnesium keeps the blood flowing freely and prevents abnormal thickening when clotting reactions would be dangerous.

The key is proper balance between the two. Magnesium is responsible for the body’s proper assimilation and use of calcium, as well as other important nutrients. If we consume too much calcium, without sufficient magnesium, the excess calcium is not utilized correctly and may actually become toxic, causing painful conditions in the body.

Follow Team CalMax over the next few weeks as they report their progress in their quest to beat stress, fight pain and balance the proverbial ball.