Magnesium Supplements vs LDN?

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Does anyone know if Dr. Bihari recommends taking Magnesium as a

supplement when one also takes LDN. It is thought that most Americans

do not get enough Magnesium in their diet and Magnesium is very

important for good health. And it seems people with Parkinson's are

low in Mg. I would like to start taking it as a supplement. But, I

came accross a long thread on Magnesium in Braintalk Parkinson's and

there was one post that I found to be very curious and very hard to

understand. It seems Magnesium binds to NMDA (opioid?) receptors in

the brain, the same receptors that LDN binds to? Is there anyone who

can recommend taking Magnesium or knows if Magnesium adversly effects

LDN performance?

http://brain.hastypastry.net/forums/showthread.php?t=100535

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09-16-2005, 09:23 PM

pdquestions pdquestions is offline

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Default and this is another, with specific mention of effect of Mg on

Dopamine

Here is a paper that is very interesting:

Quote:

In 1991, we began incorporating drug discrimination methods into our

studies on magnesium and cocaine, since it was known that drugs of

abuse have both reinforcing stimulus effects and discriminative

stimulus effects and both types of stimulus effects contribute to

cocaine's abuse potential. As knowledge of the magnesium-binding site

associated with the NMDA receptor complex surfaced, we expanded our

research to include not only magnesium (an NMDA antagonist), but also

other NMDA antagonists and a number of drugs having common effects

with cocaine (dopamine agonists and dopamine uptake inhibitors). These

findings confirmed that magnesium had stimulus effects in common with

cocaine, which may be related to it's binding to the magnesium site in

the NMDA receptor complex. The NMDA receptor complex in turn has been

shown to regulate the amount of dopamine release, which is important

for the behavioral and addictive effects of cocaine. Work was also

done in collaboration with Spealman to examine the effects of

magnesium and other NMDA antagonists in squirrel monkey trained to

discriminate high training doses of cocaine.

We were subsequently interested in knowing if magnesium itself would

have discriminative stimulus effects and if cocaine and other more

selective monoamine uptake inhibitors as well as other NMDA

antagonists would substitute for magnesium. The results demonstrated

substitution by a low dose of cocaine for magnesium, but also

substitution by all the selective monoamine uptake inhibitors. These

findings suggest that magnesium interacts not only with dopamine, but

also with serotonin and norepinephrine neurotransmitter systems, which

are the same three neurotransmitter systems affected by cocaine. These

findings may explain the high degree of overlap between magnesium and

cocaine that has been observed in ours studies since the 1980's. Other

NMDA antagonists only poorly substituted for the discriminative

stimulus effects of magnesium indicating that magnesium is acting at a

site distinct from the other NMDA antagonists. These data also suggest

that the action of magnesium in the brain is more complex than we

previously thought and its mechanism may include direct interactions

with dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin receptors in addition to

its action at the magnesium binding site in the NMDA receptor complex.

from http://www.bu.edu/behavneuro/research.html

Magnesium is lost from diuretic use (including caffeine), stress,

illness, diarrhea. The monograph from www.iherb.com gives food sources

for mag, and in very small children I recommend that over supplements.

One early sign of deficiency is cold hands/feet in an otherwise

healthy person (without thyroid or Raynaud's issues).

Magnesium oxide is the least bioavailable of all the supplements. But

it is the most common and is in most cal/mag/ mixtures.

I would avoid magnesium aspartate, since aspartic acid is excitatory

like glutamate.

BonnieG recommends magnesium taurate, and if you can find it, fine. I

have used SlowMag successfully --it has a generic Mag64 or MagDelay.

It is helpful for those who are sensitive to loose stools that mag

causes in some people. I myself use mag malate, but that is a really

big pill and not an option for kids.

I did a search for magnesium supplements and did not find much for

kids. There is a product that is magnesium citrate but this can be

very laxative for some. It comes in a powder. This is another reason

why I prefer food choices for kids. Beans, nuts, chocolate, oatmeal

and green/leafey veggies are good sources. I use almonds myself for

snacks.

People with kidney disease should consult a physician before

supplementing with magnesium. Poisonings are rare, but do occur with

the enemas (Fleets) in small children, or people with severely

impaired kidney functions.

Last edited by mrsdoubtfyre : 06-20-2005 at 07:47 AM.

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Old 09-16-2005, 09:29 PM

rosebud rosebud is offline

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Default Okay...lets get on this!

I'm not sure I understood a quarter of what I just read, but I have my

calcium/Magnesium supplement right at the top of my supplements bucket

and I just checked the ratio: 333mg of elemental calcium from a

microbound formula of carbonate, citrate,fumarate, malate, succinate

and glutamate sources AND 167 mg of Elemental Magnesium from a

microbound formula of oxide, citrate, fumarate, malate, succinate and

glutamate sources AND 133 IU of Vit D for good luck. The instructions

(which I've never bothered to read before) say, take one caplet 3 X

daily w