What happens when you suddenly experience STRESS!?

When you are stressed, your body is under intense pressure to move, to act, to think, to make quick decisions, to tense muscles. This can come from emotional, physical, or chemical stresses of any form.  Calcium bursts into cells and starts the “fight or flight” part of the stress response. Your nerve cells begin firing, muscles tense up.  Adrenaline moves into your bloodstream and blood vessels contract.  Your blood pressure rises and your heart pounds.

Your body's way of coping

Remaining in this high calcium, “keyed up” state isn’t good for your health.  Under normal circumstances, once the stress has ceased, Magnesium helps to push the Calcium back outside the cell, allowing the cell to calm down.  Adrenaline drops off, nerves are soothed, muscles become relaxed again. Plenty of Magnesium in your body will carry you through stressful times, but without it you will never completely come out of this state, and you will feel like you are constantly perched ‘on the edge’. Why is depression increasing globally? Could it be because of an epidemic of Magnesium deficiency due to a diet rich in refined grains and sugar?

Magnesium and your Brain

Magnesium affects 300 different chemical reactions in your body, so needless to say, it is impossible to fully determine how many different guises a Magnesium deficiency can take. The most obvious symptoms of mental stress, insomnia, anxiety, depression, sensitivity to sound and other stimuli and irritability can plague you. Way back in 1968, Wacker and Parisi reported that Magnesium deficiency could cause depression, behavioural disturbances, headaches, muscle cramps, seizures, ataxia, psychosis, and irritability – but all were reversible with Magnesium repletion. Sometimes, a Magnesium deficiency will cause these problems.  Many other times, stress will cause a Magnesium deficiency.  A vicious cycle is created - lower Magnesium leads to more stressed states which leads to more stress.   It’s a nasty business, but it can be quickly halted with a Magnesium supplement.