Magnesium is Essential to Mental Health
Magnesium Supplements the Mind
New research highlights magnesium’s vital role in supporting the brain. If your brain could use a little extra support, look to magnesium. Magnesium “rescues” the transmission of signals that underlie memory, learning, sleep, and stress, according to this new research.
Magnesium’s Vital Role in Supporting a Healthy Mind
- Boosts learning ability
- Supports short- and long-term memory
- Promotes positive moods (yep, deficiencies can make you feel funky!)
- Helps extinguish fear memory (one of the goals of psychotherapy)
- Lengthens duration of deep sleep (relaxing mental frames along with muscles)
- Decreases level of stress hormone cortisol (which can keep us awake and edgy)
- Required for synthesis of DNA and RNA (helpful for healthy cellular renewal)
In addition to supporting the brain, magnesium stabilizes heart rate, regulates insulin metabolism, encourages healthy blood pressure, and relaxes blood vessels. Plus it’s is vital to energy production, muscle and nerve function, protein synthesis, and enzyme activity. There’s even an entire set of proteins that have been nicknamed the “magnesome” because of their dependence on magnesium. In fact, it’s involved in over 300 processes in the body!
So, stock up now because your health depends on plenty of magnesium!
10 Food Sources of Magnesium
- Nuts: almonds, cashews, peanuts, and nut butters
- Seeds
- Whole grains: wheat germ, brown rice, quinoa, buckwheat, bran, bulgur wheat
- Beans: navy, kidney, soy, lima
- Fish: halibut, mackerel
- Soy milk
- Cocoa: in fact, many people crave chocolate for the magnesium fix!
- Leafy greens: spinach, swiss chard, okra
- Artichokes
- Acorn squash
Unfortunately, magnesium levels have been declining in our soils for decades so even these top natural sources of magnesium are not as complete as they once were.
Word to the wise: keep on supplementing as any amount of stress can strip your precious magnesium stores in a hurry!