Magnesium Manifesto

"There is no life without magnesium." -Mark A. Sircus

I feel so overwhelmed. There is simply so much to say, and I have no idea how to say it all coherently because my mind has been spinning with all this new, amazing information for almost a week. I'll do my best. (And I'll pepper as many of my research sources as I can fit in throughout the post, so I'd recommend clicking around and checking them out.)

Magnesium is incredibly important.  (Especially for pregnant women, but I'll get to that later.) Magnesium is probably most well-known for its partnership with calcium in muscle function--calcium contracts muscles, magnesium relaxes them.  But magnesium is actually involved in far more than that.  From what I gather, every time a nerve cell fires, magnesium is required to control the entry of calcium into the body's cells.

Dr. Christianne Northrup sums it up nicely when she says, "Magnesium is essential for the functioning of more than 300 different enzymes in the body, particularly those that produce, transport, store, and utilize energy. . . . In short, living without adequate levels of magnesium is like trying to operate a machine with the power off" (source).  And Mark A. Sircus, a magnesium proponent, describes magnesium as "the source of life" and "the lamp of life" because of its essential role in plant photosynthesis and human bodily functions (source).

As I've immersed myself in studying this amazing mineral over the past week, I have come more and more to see it with deep awe and reverence. Magnesium is at the core of all life and life-giving.  I'm in love with magnesium.

And, unfortunately, most of us are low on magnesium. Magnesium and calcium must be maintained in their proper balance in order to function correctly, but the average modern American consumes far more calcium than necessary and not nearly enough magnesium. That excess calcium can disrupt many important functions. Instead we should take in more magnesium than calcium or at least a 1:1 ratio.

There are myriad ways that magnesium deficiency can manifest itself in your body. Some of those are:

• Anxiety and panic attacks
• Asthma
• Nausea and vomiting
• Headaches and migraines
• Abnormal bowel function, constipation, etc.
• Heart disease
• High blood pressure 
• Muscle pain, cramps, and spasms
• Depression
• Hypoglycemia
• Kidney disease and kidney stones

And low magnesium can lead to several problems of particular interest to women, both pregnant and not pregnant:

• Recurrent miscarriages and premature labor
• Premenstrual syndrome
• Menstrual cramping and bloating
• Infertility caused by spasms in fallopian tubes
• Pregnancy leg cramps
• Pre-ecplampsia
(Source)  

So how do we ensure that we get enough magnesium?

Our ancient ancestors would have obtained more than enough magnesium through plants, nuts, and seeds from the earth's rich non-depleted soil and through soaking in the pristine ocean's limitless supply of magnesium chloride. With soils depleted of nutrients and oceans often too far away and/or full of toxins and pollutants, we aren't quite so lucky. But we can do our best with what we've got.

What are the best food sources of magnesium?

You pretty much can't go wrong with dark leafy greens, nuts, seeds, legumes, salmon, and whole grains.  Some of the best among those sources, according to The World's Healthiest Foods:

• Pumpkin seeds
• Spinach 
• Swiss chard
• Sunflower seeds
• Sesame seeds

Magnesium is also found in hard water.  One site I visited explained:

In a survey of 25 cities in the US, the lowest death rates from heart disease were found in areas where the drinking water supplied above average levels of magnesium. Part of Texas has the highest levels of magnesium in drinking water, and also the lowest cardiovascular mortality rates in the US Australia has some of the lowest drinking water magnesium levels, and also the highest cardiovascular death rate in the world.

How can we improve the body's ability to absorb dietary magnesium?

Avoiding or limiting certain magnesium-depleting foods and beverages will protect your body's magnesium stores, including:

• Soft drinks
• Sugar and refined carbs
• Excess unhealthy fats
• Alcohol 
• Caffeine
• Excess animal protein
• Certain medications, such as diuretics and steroids/corticoids

Increasing consumption of probiotics and prebiotics has also been shown to increase the absorption of essential minerals, in part because of their ability to break down the mineral-binding phytic acid in foods, releasing those formerly bound minerals for absorption. (See here)

Getting vitamin d through regular sunlight exposure will also improve your body's ability to retain magnesium and calcium.  Sunlight seems to do this more efficiently than vitamin d supplements. (See here) 

How else can we get magnesium?

Ocean water is a limitless source of magnesium chloride.  And, based on my internet research, magnesium is better absorbed through the skin than the gut.  If you live near a beach with clean water, regular soaks should benefit your magnesium levels.  For the rest of us, taking baths with epsom salts (magnesium sulfate) or magnesium chloride flakes will raise levels of magnesium in the body.

Magnesium is also available, of course, in oral supplements, but these can cause diarrhea in some people.

Pregnant Women, Listen up!

Clearly magnesium is essential for all of us, but I'm becoming convinced that maintaining adequate magnesium levels could reduce or eliminate a large portion of the pregnancy complications women encounter.  And, as I listed earlier, magnesium can also remedy many of the other complaints associated with our womanly cycles.

Dr. Christianne Northrup shared a story that illustrates what I'm talking about:

I was first introduced to magnesium during my obstetrical training, where I saw how effective magnesium sulfate was in preventing seizures and restoring normal blood pressure in pregnant women suffering from toxemia. Magnesium is also frequently given to women having preterm labor to stop contractions. It works! 

A good friend of mine, Alexa, had her third baby in 1994. About seven weeks before the baby was due, she started to have contractions that would only stop when she lay down. Because she was 2.5 centimeters dilated and almost fully effaced (conditions often present when a woman goes into labor with a full-term third child), she was put on bed rest. Luckily this helped, and she was able to avoid a lengthy stay at the hospital. After having her baby, Alexa was extremely run down, had frequent migraines, and severe muscle cramps. She decided to go to a Naturopath for help. He immediately diagnosed severe magnesium deficiency, and she was given weekly magnesium IVs to correct the imbalance. . . .
 
Alexa's OB/GYN was insistent that she get 1500 mgs of calcium every day to protect her baby's and her bones. He told her to take a couple of Tums, an antacid, any day she didn't get enough calcium from the food she ate. Tums contains calcium, and it was the calcium "supplement" he recommended to all his patients. (This was his strategy for keeping her calories from dairy fat down, too.) He never recommended that she increase her magnesium, just her calcium. It's not surprising that she had a magnesium deficiency after following his advice during three pregnancies.  (Source)

This story is frustrating for so many reasons.  But I want to focus on what Dr. Northrup says in the first paragraph.  Doctors know that magnesium helps women with toxemia and preterm labor.  So my question is... if they know it, why do they wait until a woman comes to the E.R. to pump her full of magnesium?  Why are they putting women on bed rest when they have preterm labor instead of teaching them about optimizing their magnesium levels?  Why aren't women with recurrent miscarriages or infertility or PMS or excruciating menstrual cramps being tested for low magnesium?!

Why aren't we all being told how crucial it is to keep our magnesium levels optimal?


I couldn't know this information and not share it.  So here I am.

Magnesium is crucial. 

Please spread the word.

Calling all AZ Birth Junkies

My friend Cassie (who also happened to be the doula--in red--who counter-pressured, encouraged, and photographed me throughout my son's birth) is hosting a viewing of the film Orgasmic Birth at her house in Glendale on May 6th.  (I posted last year about the film.)

Don't let the title turn you off.  I haven't seen the film yet myself, but I appreciated Rixa's review of the film in which she explains:

I found myself particularly troubled with the word “orgasmic.” I think a number of other words describe more accurately what the filmmaker is trying to communicate in this film: ecstatic, empowering, or transformative come to mind. In our society, orgasmic is always used in the narrow, sexual sense. In that sense, orgasmic birth = having a literal orgasm during birth. But that isn’t really what the film is talking about at all. We do see at least one woman literally having an orgasm during her labor (she said it was very unexpected and quite lovely), but the other women experience something else, something more nuanced and more complex than simplistic sexual climax. . . .

The other day, I looked up “orgasmic” in the dictionary. . . . The second meaning, one not in circulation in our everyday language, is “intense or unrestrained excitement” or “a similar point of intensity of emotional excitement.”

I had an “aha!” moment. Debra Pascali-Bonaro is arguing that birth can be a peak emotional, physical, and spiritual experience. And given the right setting and preparation, birth can include moments of ecstasy, transcendence and occasionally even sexual pleasure. Her film explains the hormonal and environmental similarities between making babies and having babies. If we see birth not as just a narrow equivalent of sex, but rather sex and birth and breastfeeding as a continuum of important and inter-related life experiences, then the phrase “orgasmic birth” makes much more sense. Think of it this way: if women were expected to make love in the same kind of setting that they labor and birth in (in a clinical environment, observed by unfamiliar professionals, monitored and tethered to machines, and above all their biological rhythms forced to adhere to a strict timetable), they would undoubtedly have a high rate of sexual dysfunction and disappointment.

After watching the film three times, here's how Rixa's concludes:

In sum: the birth scenes are incredible and the movie is worth watching for that reason alone. They're not overly romanticized or sanitized. I found them incredibly realistic, in all their variety, about what giving birth normally is like. I'd like a different title, because I think that it will keep many people from watching it, but I also understand the rhetorical power of "orgasmic birth."

Rixa's review helped dispel any hesitancy I might have had about viewing the film.  And I have since heard multiple women describe Orgasmic Birth as their all-time favorite birth film.  Rixa also interviewed Orgasmic Birth's filmmaker, Debra Pascali-Bonaro, if you want to check that out. 

I am looking forward to seeing the film. Are you coming?

Dolphins, revisited

As I was writing my dolphin birth post last Friday, I enlisted my girls' help looking for a little stone dolphin figurine I wanted to include a photo of.  My brother-in-law had brought it back from a trip to South America for me, remembering that I was a fan of dolphins.  I often find it among their toys, so I assumed they might know where it was. They didn't know, but I explained to them (4 and 6 years old) as we searched that I was writing something about how dolphins have babies.  How other dolphins circle around the mommy dolphin to keep her and her new baby safe.  Then, later that night, we told Daddy about it on our way to the store.

I forgot about those conversations until Saturday evening when I walked into the playroom to tell the girls it was almost time for dinner.  As I turned to leave the room, something in their conversation made me pause and walk over to see what they were drawing.  And I found this in front of my 6-year-old...

And a huge grin came across my face. It made my birth-loving mommy-heart proud.

"I love it!" I told her. "I'm definitely keeping this one!"

Oh, and I finally found the stone dolphin on Saturday. It was hiding in one of their play purses in their dress-up closet.

Hear me roar

After a few weeks of caring for her precious first-born baby, my friend Fig declared, "Motherhood is blood, sweat, and tears. Rinse and repeat." Are you nodding and chuckling at the same time? Fig's good at inducing the chuckle-nod. She's so witty. And right on.

So I've been thinking, of late, about how I focus so much on the intense physical challenge of labor (some, including me, call it "pain") that I have sort of neglected to give attention to other physical "pains" associated with bearing and nurturing children. For example...

* The cramping associated with ovulation and/or menstruation is painful for some women.
* PMS can cause painful bloating, headaches, etc.
* Love-making is painful for some women.
* Some women experience round-ligament twinges and/or cramping in early pregnancy.
* Morning sickness can range from mildly bothersome to excruciatingly miserable.
* Some pregnant women suffer with back pain, sciatic nerve pain, joint pain, etc.
* Preterm labor pains keep some women on bed rest for weeks or months.
* Then there are the after-pains (I think they get worse with each birth... wowza!).
* Some women endure general perineal tenderness, pain from perineal tears/episiotomies, or cesarean section wounds.
* Breastfeeding hurts like the (toe-curling) dickens in the beginning, being compounded initially by painful breast engorgement, painful milk let-down, and more intense after-pains due to the uterine contractions produced by suckling.
* The muscle strain from carrying around a 5 to 10 lb newborn can lead to sore arms and/or sore backs, especially with a first child.
* Once an infant has teeth that introduces a whole new kind of potential pain during breastfeeding.
* Back pain can continue and intensify from carrying increasingly hefty babies and toddlers.
* Rinse and repeat.

(And that's not even getting into the emotional pains we endure.)

The other day a first-time pregnant woman I love told me she's pretty sure she'll get an epidural 'cause she's (and these were her exact words) "such a pansy." I couldn't help myself... I rushed toward her, grasped her face in my hands, and said, "No! You're not!" This woman has endured excruciating menstrual cramps every month for over a decade followed by miserable morning sickness for the last couple of months... and she thinks she's a "pansy!"

Look at the list above, ladies. Take a good, long look at it. Do you really think God would entrust those challenges to a bunch of pansies?



Nope.

We are women. We are strong. We can push ourselves to our absolute limit and somehow find the strength to push some more. And then rinse and repeat.

Don't you dare call yourself a pansy. 

 (Photo by Fife Photography, Fall 2005)

Dolphins and Birth Plans

While I was in California a few weeks ago, we hit the beach. Almost as soon as we got there, we saw something swimming several yards out in the water. At first I didn't know what it was and sort of screamed (thinking shark), "There's an animal!" Once it became clear it was a pod of dolphins, I had to smile to myself, reminiscing.

I used to be mildly (or... very) obsessed with dolphins as an adolescent. I had dolphin figurines, dolphin stuffed animals, dolphin posters, dolphin videos, dolphin stationary, dolphin everything. I did book reports about them, dreamed of swimming with them, toyed with becoming a marine biologist because of them, etc.

I was reminded of that adolescent dolphin fascination again this morning.

Years ago, my sister saw Marsden Wagner's Creating Your Birth Plan at Overstock.com for cheap and, knowing my passion for all things birth-related, she told me about it. I had never heard of the book itself, but I knew simply because it had Marsden Wagner's name on it that it was a book worth having. So I ordered it, and it has basically been collecting dust on my bookshelf ever since.

About 2 weeks ago we got word that my sister-in-law is pregnant after years of infertility. I'm ecstatic for them. And, naturally, I'm feeling protective of her and wanting to do all I can to ensure that she has the best birth experience possible. So I was perusing the birth books on my shelves about a week ago, contemplating which one(s) I should lend to her first, and I pulled out Creating Your Birth Plan, thinking it might be a good one to start with (especially since it has an M.D. in the by-line). As I flipped through the book, however, I realized that I'd probably better read it before I lend it out to anyone, just so I know what I'm sharing with people.

(I lent her Penny Simkin's Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn and The Birth Partner instead. Her husband's currently in physical therapy school, so it seemed fitting to start them off with the words of a fellow PT.)

So I've been skimming through Creating Your Birth Plan off and on over the past week or so. This morning I lingered on p. 176 where Dr. Wagner shares some fascinating details about dolphin birthing. Here's an excerpt:

At its physical and emotional best, support for women in labor has always reminded me of dolphin birth. When a dolphin gives birth to a calf, several female dolphins swim in a circle close to the laboring mother. Slightly farther away, another larger group of all the remaining females in the pod circle around the laboring dolphin. Then, even farther away, all the male dolphins in the pod circle around her. The entire collective comes together to protect the laboring dolphin and her emerging calf from intrusion and harm. A woman giving birth to a baby thrives when she's at the center of a circle of love.

This prompted me to do a google search and discovered that there are actually places where women give birth in the water "assisted" by dolphins.

A Russian male midwife, Igor Charkovsky, says this about the practice: "Dolphins have an affinity with the baby in the womb and are automatically attracted to pregnant women. They sense when a woman is about to give birth and gather round. They give both the mother and child a sense of protection and safety" (source).

I've been mulling over the topic of birth partners in preparation for writing something for the book, so this dolphin stuff feels relevant. And it has reminded me, yet again, how crucial it is for women to have supportive people around them as they give birth. The people we invite or allow to be with us can make or break our birth experiences. I recently encountered a 2005 study indicating that there is a strong correlation between patient satisfaction with care provider and lower cesarean rates. And Penny Simkin's research has demonstrated that the women with the highest long-term levels of satisfaction with their birth experiences were the women who had positive memories of the way they were treated by their care providers. Which brings me back to birth plans.

I think writing a birth plan is a helpful exercise. But I think most women do it too late in the game. A birth plan will do little to help you if the care provider and place of birth you have chosen have a practice style totally incompatible with it. In my opinion, the time to write your birth plan is before you ever choose a doctor or midwife (which is why I toyed with giving my sister-in-law Marsden Wagner's book now). I can't stress enough how important it is to choose the right provider--someone who will support and respect your birth preferences and shares your personal philosophy of birthing. You'll know you've found the right provider when you know you don't need to give them a copy of your birth plan when they arrive to catch your baby. Birth plans, at their best, aren't for labor day, they're for doctor/midwife interviews. Unfortunately, most women don't approach the doctor/midwife selection process this way. Hence, there are far too many battles in the labor room where peace and joy should prevail and far too many cruel jokes among doctors and nurses about "those women" with birth plans. Alas.

Given how protective I feel of my pregnant and laboring loved ones, I suppose it's no surprise I grew up with such an affinity for dolphins. I wish I could circle protectively around them throughout their pregnancies and births as the dolphins do. Maybe if I ever start an official doula business, I'll have a dolphin logo? That would be cool.