Weight loss article: Fight Fat With Magnesium

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Insulin resistance is a big problem with those who are trying to lose weight. When you overeat or eat the wrong foods (high sugar and high fat foods), you have an excess amount of insulin. It must be absorbed by your cells and then burned for energy or else it will be stored as fat.

Your cells produce insulin receptors to let the glucose into the cell so it can be absorbed. Insulin resistance happens when there are not enough insulin receptors in your cells to absorb the glucose floating around in your bloodstream. Unless you burn enough energy before the glucose gets stored as fat or you burn enough energy to access those fat stores and begin to burn those fat cells for energy, you will gain weight. If this cycle continues, it can lead eventually lead to diabetes.

No one knows for sure why the cells stop producing those insulin receptors but there is a theory called the Ionic Hypothesis of Syndrome X, which blames low magnesium levels for problems associated with too much insulin.

The connection between calcium and magnesium plays an important part in this theory. While calcium is important for bone health, too much of it can cause problems. In addition to maintaining bone health, calcium is responsible for the electrical impulses in the brain, heart, muscles and nerves. Calcium needs to stay outside of the cell to take care of this job. If calcium gets into the cell, it can cause all kinds of problems like diabetes, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, elevated triglycerides and obesity.

Magnesium is very important for cell health and in fact stops calcium from entering the cell. If calcium gets into the cell, it’s not a far stretch to see that a magnesium deficiency can cause insulin resistance. A related school of thought believes that high insulin levels can cause the loss of magnesium in your urine. Either way, it’s worth examining your diet and other health habits to see if a magnesium deficiency could be causing your insulin resistance problem.

Normal, healthy people should get 200-400 mg of magnesium a day, either through diet or supplements or both. You should increase it to 400-600 if you have disorders associated with too much insulin, like diabetes, elevated cholesterol and obesity. (If you have kidney problems, do not take a magnesium supplement.) If you are under a doctor’s care, always check with him or her before adding any supplement to your regimen.

Eunice Coughlin is the founder of http://www.healthy-living-for-moms.com, a resource for moms who seek health and wellness. She has researched health, wellness and weight loss topics and made this information available to people who want to be more knowledgable about their personal health. For more on magnesium, go to http://www.healthy-living-for-moms.com/magnesium_facts.html .